Matt Brown is the adoptive parent of Anime Dream, and has written for the site for eight years. He’s an RPG gamer turned anime fan who lives in Florida and dreams of escaping, someday. A programmer and language enthusiast, he devotes most of his energies to slacking off, raising laziness to an artform. He maintains a pocket-busting love affair with Japanese music. His Twitter personality is MattB_AD. In a very exciting post for me personally, here he looks at an anime set in my adopted hometown of Bristol.

Picture a boy of hardly more than ten years. If you are such a boy, this won’t be difficult for you. Like most boys, wide eyed and innocent, this one is oblivious to the dangers of the world. He has parents who love him and provide for him, so that he might spend enough time with his imagination to get his fill, before biology rears its ugly head. He is curious about his world, his own home, and everything in between.

Disaster strikes. While the adults take care of adult matters like evacuations and blind panic, the boy slips out into a field, where no living soul is present to witness the spectacle of light that he experiences – it is all his own. Our view of the scene changes, weightlessly circling the sky and his frame. We see the green grass above as our bodies float in the sea of stars. The planet’s laser defense system unleashes bolts of light into the heavens, and we see how insignificant we are, next to the cosmos.

Picture a girl of sixteen years. If you are such a girl, you know everything I do and more. She is independent, intelligent, mature beyond her years – unlike the boys her age. Her mother and father are both respected military officers; she will follow in their footsteps, and on to greater status and responsibility when her service for the security of the realm is sufficient. While in training, she meets a boy about her age who is, like herself, a dignitary. Unlike herself, the boy spent his childhood on land, and she in space.

Disaster strikes. Her first chance at combat disappears with an order to remove this boy from the action. As she ferries him toward their destination, the journey is fraught with challenges. The boy reveals his talent for getting into trouble in space, only to redeem himself on the ground, where her feet are less sure than they were in the heavens. He uses his frail body and still-boyish voice to protect her, and if she took a moment, she would realize that he steadied her steps all along. Maybe she already has.

As boys and girls become women and men, the volume of life’s background noise increases to the point where nothing comes in clearly. In the midst of pursuit for fame, fortune, family, or something resembling either, we search for the signal that would connect us again with that source of all happiness. To Hiroyuki Morioka, the gender of childhood wonder is male, and the gateway to romantic love is female. But in a sense, every one of us is both – the anima and animus. The work I’ve just described is Crest of the Stars, originally a three-volume series of light novels which open his Seikai (star world) saga. Morioka’s work shows us a romance that is worlds apart and galaxies wide, but starts with simple boyhood curiosity, and that feeling that proves elusive in adulthood.

Now we travel to England, and back a half century, give or take. You don’t have any trouble going back in time, do you? Science reigns in the town of Bristol – particularly atop a hill, in a small boarding house over a restaurant named Tenkai.

The building’s owner, a beautiful young woman who goes by “China,” is quite adept at the martial arts, which she uses in diffusing fights in her restaurant, and breaking down a tenant’s door to demand rent. The tenant is Professor Breckenridge, a scientist/inventor nobody’s heard of, yet. To appease his landlord, he demonstrates his latest invention – a space reflection lens! She astutely points out that it’s no better than a mirror, before finding that it’s more easily broken than a mirror. Breckenridge likes to spend money on parts instead of rent, and keeping China at bay isn’t something he can alone. Enter Jim Floyd, his assistant, whom he charges with “China management.”

China has a soft spot for Jim, which enables him to sneak parts past her to the lab upstairs. He can’t get away with tricking her indefinitely, though, so China management and inventions are intertwined for the greater good. From small gifts like a genuine moonstone ring, to a birthday message on the moon’s surface and more, keeping China happy enables outlandish feats of science in Bristol.

According to Kenji Tsuruta, China first popped into his mind as secretary to “a sort of scientific Sherlock Holmes.” As he struggled to pay his own bills, the image of China overlapped that of his landlord, and his Spirit of Wonder had its spokesmodel. If discovery is the fuel of wonder, then the spirit is that which fosters discovery. In Tsuruta’s romantic brand of sci-fi, woman is that spirit, and accounting for her desires is the only way to satisfy those boyish dreams.

In “Miss China’s Ring,” Jim and the professor manage China by using their inventions to make outrageous birthday presents for her. In another story, Jim devises a machine that creates a shooting star, so that China can make all the wishes she wants at a predictable time. The formula is pretty consistent: China lets things slide because of her feelings for Jim, and the inventions are fun for her, too.

Across town, a woman named Windy waits for her husband to return from an overseas trip. Her illusion of having him to herself is shattered quickly; when Jack returns, he immediately starts hanging out with her father Gordon, and his buddies, Cooper and Shepherd*, who fifty years prior christened their group as the Scientific Boys Club.

Their story is based on actual science…sort of. Unknown to Windy, the purpose of Jack’s trip was to steal the Mars globe created by Percival Lowell, revealing locations of the now infamous “canals” which Lowell believed were evidence of intelligent life on Mars. This globe, plus a book on ethereal current written by Windy herself, would help the club make their dream of traveling to the Red Planet a reality! It’s a fine idea, but they overlook one crucial factor: Windy. Jack has to stop neglecting his wife, or the whole project is doomed.

Tsuruta’s stories intoxicate. Within their underbelly is the notion that all curiosity can be satisfied, as long as one sees to the forces that govern life and work, and returns that which is given. The converse is also implied: that science is hard, and the people who do it deserve support from everyone. China wants to see the canals, and due to a quirk in Breckenridge’s space-reflection telescope, she sees what she wants. The science club, by contrast, discovers that Lowell’s canals theory is wrong and calls him a liar, despite the irony that their ship, the “Spirit of Science,” is ether-driven – another failed theory, that enjoyed favor prior to the discovery of the photon and its reconciliation with the wave properties of light.

We now know that Lowell’s canals are an optical illusion. Perhaps the most interesting failure of Lowell’s was his “Planet X” theory, which stated that there had to be a planet past Neptune that accounts for the peculiar orbit of Uranus. The data which formed the basis of his theory was wrong, but his work led to the discovery of Pluto. Tsuruta’s work paints the scientific process and its results, both right and wrong, as a virtue deserving of praise, and Percival Lowell is a perfect model for this sentiment. Not every scientist’s work produces a breakthrough, but their contributions are meaningful and often subtle.

When we look to the stars, we see the past of the Universe, and the future of humankind. Time limits our activities off world and slows our progress, because space is so vast. For the Seikai saga, Morioka created the concepts of space-adept “Abh” fashioned by humans (in their own image) for exploration, and a two-dimensional “plane space” to even the score between space and time, to allow us to conceive of deep space travel and its societal implications. Seikai amusingly follows Tsuruta’s Rule: that man will continue to accomplish great things if the woman in his life is content.

Seikai takes time to show us that in Morioka’s vision of the future, little boys will still look to the heavens and feel the immensity of space, no matter what humanity will have accomplished by that time. Spirit of Wonder reminds us that while most things do not remain in the realm of science fiction forever, we can always dream.

*Bonus points if you recognized “Gordon Cooper” and Shepherd as the names of American astronauts. Both Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr. and Alan Shepherd were among the seven astronauts selected for the Mercury program. Shepherd was the first American in space.

Notes on availability:

The Crest of the Stars novels were released in English by TOKYOPOP, and are still widely available. The Banner of the Stars novels are not available in English. All Seikai TV series and OVAs, save for the Banner of the Stars III OVAs, were released in R1 DVD by Bandai Entertainment. Crest of the Stars was released in the UK by Beez Entertainment.

The Scientific Boys Club story is only available in English as an OVA series, published in R1 DVD by Bandai Entertainment in 2003. Copies are still fairly easy to obtain. The Spirit of Wonder manga is partially available in English, courtesy Dark Horse Comics. Miss China’s Ring received an OVA adaptation, which AnimEigo licensed. Unfortunately, that license expired, and copies are difficult to obtain in DVD, although VHS copies aren’t too difficult to snag.

Bradley Meek has more interests than he has time. He likes reading about science and politics, playing PC games and discovering new music, reading novels and comic books, playing complex board games and obsessively checking his Twitter feed. But what he always has more time for is his primary love, animation, and for the last three years he has been a staff reviewer on THEM Anime, and has also recently joined the staff of Anime 3000. Old or new, cute or manly, he has no fear and is willing to tackle any anime. Though, as he details below, this one was a “whoozy.”

There is one completely safe kind of anime: the movie adaptation of popular franchises. Part promotion, and part glorious fan service, these movies are made under a long list of restrictions to keep them from taking the steam out from long running series. The main characters can’t see any kind of development, none of the ongoing plot threads can be tied up, and every character who placed high in the new popularity poll has to show up. You’ve seen the kind before, usually coming from big Shounen Jump series like Bleach, InuYasha or Prince of Tennis. These movies are essentially glorified filler episodes, where nothing is at stake or feels like it really matters in the grand scheme of things. At best, these movies can only aspire to an entertaining time waster that can’t quite replicate why we love the properties they’re based on. Sadly, the norm is closer to the worst case scenario: a flashy waste of time and celluloid.

That was the kind of movie Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer was supposed to be. But Momaru Oshii thought otherwise.

To be fair, Urusei Yatsura was hardly your average popular franchise. In fact, the series is a landmark of anime that rivals even the biggest names. It was the first series to successfully make the jump from a “kid’s cartoon” to a favorite of old and young viewers alike. It made a superstar out of the manga-ka, Rumiko Takahasi, who wrote the comic the series was based on. The main character, the cute, ditzy alien Lum, became an animated idol, with an unprecedented glut of merchandising and toys that was revolutionary at the time. It was the training ground for many directors and animators, including Katsuhiko Nishijima (Project A-Ko franchise), Kazuo Yamazaki (Maison Ikkoku, A Wind Named Amnesia, and the underappreciated Yume Tsukai), Kazuhiro Furuhashi (Rurouni Kenshin), and Junji Nishimura (Ranma 1/2). And probably most importantly, it was pretty damn funny.

The series already had a lot to work with, putting colorful characters from Takahashi’s fertile imagination in increasingly strange situations. And once they ran out of manga to adapt, the series got even better- yes, Urusei Yatsura is the exception to the rule, where the filler was better than most of the canonical material. Under the guidance of Oshii, the series riffed on Japanese culture, politics, and social issues before truly going into the stratosphere, with some episodes that even shed their comedic shell for more experimental fare.

For the uninitiated, the story of Urusei Yatsura goes something like this: Ataru is the biggest high school lecher alive. He indiscriminately chases one skirt after another, much to the shame of his frazzled mother and spaced out father. And he isn’t suave or subtle about it; his pick up lines stop just short of “let’s do it on the street like animals.” And unfortunately, when aliens invade, the fate of the Earth rests on his shoulders.

Oni (a traditional Japanese monster similar to trolls) from space with vastly superior weapons and technology have landed in Tokyo, intent making this planet another addition to their long line of conquests. But these aliens have a strange tradition- before they can start burning national landmarks and enslaving the human race, they have to first play a game of tag against their would-be victims. The Earthlings pick one person to represent them, and that person has seven days to catch the oni‘s representative. If the Earthlings win, the oni go home and life continues as normal. If the oni win, the raping and pillaging will commence immediately. And because of a national lottery, Ataru is humanity’s only hope for salvation. Initially resistant, he comes around when he sees who is opponent is: the luscious oni princess Lum. And dude, for the chance to just touch a hot chick like that, what wouldn’t he do?

Through an ingenious last minute idea worthy of anime’s biggest perv, Ataru wins the game. But, of course, his troubles have only begun. When he let loose a howl to celebrate his victory, the princess Lum mistook that for a marriage proposal… which she happily accepted. And what do you know, at the age of sixteen Ataru suddenly has a wife who has moved in with him, a surrogate kid in the form of Lum’s little cousin, two frazzled parents, weird in-laws, and a whole lot of jealous classmates. But does that stop him from groping other women? In Ataru’s reasoning, “I don’t want just Lum. I want every woman in the world!”

That’s the gist of the first episode, but from there, anything goes. The series doesn’t have a plot so much as a giant canvas for far out comedy with little consequence from episode to episode. One day it can rain oil, then the next day sexy aliens fall from the sky. The town will be destroyed and magically rebuilt in time for the next episode several times over in the first season alone. Weathering the constant abuse is a core cast of rivals for Lum’s affection (though any chance that those relationships will ever go anywhere is all in Ataru’s mind) and several classmates who regularly get caught up in the wackiness. There’s Mendou, the heir to a conglomerate’s fortunes that was probably the origination of the “rich brat” stereotype we see in anime. There’s Lum’s Stormtroopers, a trio of “Lum otaku” who adore her who like a certain Police song. They don’t need Lum merchandise, because they create their own. Poor Shinobu is a girl who has been the object of Ataru’s affections since they were children, which helped her develop a lot of muscle to fight him or anyone else off. Ryuunosuke is a girl who has been forced by her crazy father to dress and act like a man for all her life, though she still dreams of wearing a sailor fuku to school. When these kids are in school, it’s up to poor Onsen-Mark to teach them, and he seems to age with every episode from the stress. Sakura is the school nurse who is also a talented priestess, and looks killer in her red-white miko habit. Her midget monk uncle Cherry, on the other hand, looks like a walking turd. The series ran for a 195 episodes, so this is hardly a complete list, but it should be enough to get you through the movie. But if you want a more detailed look, AnimEigo has posted their liner notes for the DVD release online.

Oshii directed the first half of the series, though you’d have to check the credits to figure that out. All the traits that made him one of animations biggest auteurs hadn’t shown up- no striking visuals, no hound dogs, no endlessly rambling characters talking well above their pay grade, and it’s not even very pretentious. It’s just pure, well executed fun. Oshii made a couple of major changes from the manga, though. Lum’s Stormtroopers were originally a throwaway gag, but presumably Oshii saw some potential in them that Takahashi didn’t, and made them regular members of the cast. Ataru’s best friend and partner in crime from the manga never shows up at all. Oshii also tweaked Lum’s character a bit to make her less bitchy, and more of an affectionate ditz. These are comparatively small changes, though; nothing compared to the liberties he would take when making the second movie.

Oshii wasn’t happy with the first Urusei Yatsura movie, which, while a great movie in its own way, was exactly the kind of safe, simple exercise in fanservice I described above. He wanted to do something different, something daring. Inspired by a chapter of the manga where a rogue god of dreams plays a prank on the characters, he wrote the script to what would become Beautiful Dreamer. Takahashi didn’t like it, and Oshii barely got the approval he needed to start the project. And when the movie came out it tanked hard. Fans were incensed- Oshii had essentially kidnapped their beloved characters for his own story, a story that didn’t represent Urusei Yatsura as they knew it at all. It looked like an exercise in egotism. Critics slammed it. The movie lost money, and Oshii lost his job.

It’s a lovely story: the tortured, visionary artist is exiled from the cold world of commerce where they don’t understand his great art. They don’t understand, man! Those ingrates, those ijits, those fools! They don’t understand art, man, they don’t understand his greatness! I like to imagine that Oshii left the building of Toei Studios with his fist in air, cursing the capitalist system and the greedy CEOs and whatever else came to his mind. They don’t understand!

It’s the kind of story we tell ourselves to feed a misplaced sense of superiority- something to tell ourselves as artists or as an audience to a small art that we just get something the rest of the world doesn’t, or can’t. There is some truth to that- what a world it would be if visionaries like Oshii could take risks with a lot of money and not worry about the consequences. But there’s truth on the other side of the coin, too. Urusei Yatsura had a huge built in fan base, and these fans went into the movie expecting something very different. And when they didn’t get it- well, you know the feeling. And no matter how great your art is, it’s pointless without an audience. This is a movie that has benefited from growing old and moving out of the context it was released in; years later, we can fully appreciate watching Oshii’s budding growth as an artist onscreen. This was the movie where he seemed to fully realize what it was he wanted to do as a director.

I’ve only seen a small number of Oshii films, and to be honest, most of them were a turn off. Ghost in the Shell is simply overrated- the pretentious, stuffy dialogue and ponderous pace drags down the movie despite the incredible visuals and mind opening themes. Innocence was even worse- I tried to watch the movie twice, and fell asleep at both viewings, even when I thought I wasn’t tired. Dreamwork’s botched release certainly didn’t help things. I thought I was done with Oshii- until I fell in love with the Urusei Yatsura franchise and was surprised by Beautiful Dreamer. Here was an Oshii movie that engaged me- accessible yet profound, thoughtful but suspenseful, funny and awe inspiring, daring but not intimidating.

The school is preparing for the big spring festival, and the building is stuffed with students in costume who clog up the stairs, strange machines are being built outside, and there’s even a Nazi-themed tea room. The latter, of course, belongs to our heroes’ class. “Think we should have gone with Ataru’s suggestion of a naked ladies cafe?” asks one of the Lum Stormtroopers, now a Nazi-Lum-Stormtrooper hammering Nazi paraphernalia over the door. Perm, also a Nazi-Lum-Stormtrooper, is pretty sure that anything Ataru suggests is sure to end in disaster. So instead, let’s decorate a tea room celebrating those cool looking Nazis, and Mendou can even bring a WWII tank that he can put in our small classroom. It’ll be a hit!

Naturally, the day before the festival starts, the whole thing blows up in their faces, in a series of events that involve Ataru sleeping in places he shouldn’t be, groping women in his sleep he shouldn’t grope, and pissing off a certain alien you never want to piss off. The tank falls through the floor and several others below it. Over stressed teacher Onsen-Mark now has a disaster on his hands, and he really can’t do much about, since as his students constantly remind him- “the school festival is about student self governance!” The festival starts tomorrow. Maybe they can put it back together by then.

The next day, the tank is back in place, the Nazi paraphernalia is up, and the gang is almost ready for the festival. But Onsen-Mark has been sent home- the recent events have simply been too much for him. Realizing that she made a serious mix-up in the medication she gave him- a giant jar of laxatives instead of a giant jar of sedatives; really, it was a mistake anyone could have made- school nurse Sakura races to Onsen-Mark’s house. In the first of many surreal scenes that also serve as biting satire, she finds him in an apartments so covered in mold the floor is as slick as ice. The ceiling, the windows, the closet- everything is covered in a sick-green coating. Only the TV escaped untouched. Onsen-Mark is sitting in the filth, watching a soap opera with a glazed look in his eyes. The only way to save him, Sakura realizes, is to physically throw him out of the window and several streets down the block, mold and all.

When Sakura finally sits Onsen-Mark down to talk to him, it seems that the teacher’s mind has finally snapped. He starts rambling about reality and dreams and turtles and old Japanese legends and why are people always saying the festival will be the next day it will always be the next he can’t even remember what day it is. “I feel like I’ve been repeating the same events over and over again,” he says. An hour later, in a certain classroom, a tank has fallen through the flimsy wooden floor because a certain student was sleeping in places he shouldn’t be, groping women in his sleep he shouldn’t grope, and pissing off a certain alien you never want to piss off.

Shortly after his dazed discussion with Sakura, Onsen-Mark disappears.

Sakura realizes that something is wrong, and tries to find her uncle Cherry, who should know what to do. But he’s gone as well, his hobo tent gone to waste, and his cooking pot broken and rusting from disuse. Sakura tries to send the students home. But whether they were going by bus or taxi or limo or train, they all find the city eerily empty, and none of them could find their homes. Well, except for one- everyone ends up crashing at Ataru’s place.

Later, over breakfast, Sakura tries to explain what is happening to the city. There is an old Japanese legend of a man named Urashima Taro who once helped a turtle god, and to thank Taro for his assistance, the turtle god carried Taro on his back to the pleasure palaces of the dragons. The pleasure palace was filled with everything a man could want, and Taro reveled in his reward. But when he returns home, he finds centuries have passed and his village is gone.

Now say a man has a dream about being a butterfly, then wakes up to go to work. Who’s to say it wasn’t the butterfly’s dream of a working man? And have you ever noticed how time flies by when you’re having fun, or slows to a crawl when you’re miserable? Keep following me here- what if, instead of one man, the entire city was riding on the back of the turtle god? What if the events of the last few days have been repeating over and over again, and we never noticed because we were too tired or too busy? What if all of our reality is simply someone’s dream? Are you following me, Ataru? Ataru? ATARU?!

Naturally, only the diligent Mendou understands what Sakura is saying. The rest are happily oblivious.

That’s only the first thirty minutes of the movie. There’s many more memorable scenes, including the founding of a great socialist utopia, roller skating in the strangest post-apocalypse you’ve possibly ever seen where the atom bomb was the steady march of time, and the gang exploring a schoolhouse haunted not by ghosts, but by weird twists in reality and perception.

Watching Beautiful Dreamer is like looking at a photo album of a good friend’s childhood. You recognize maybe their hair and eyes, and that rogue grin, but the album can only hint at the features of your friend’s adult life. The movie is prototypical Oshii; you can see him developing the themes and ideas that would later make him famous. The movie asks ponderous questions and is filled with striking visuals. It does strange things with our sense of time, space and reality. There is still no hound dog, though. But interestingly enough, what makes the movie successful may not be what we would recognize as an Oshii film today.

Oshii may have tried to make something deeper than the light comedy that made Urusei Yatsura and the movie Only You such hits, but in Beautiful Dreamer, comedy is one of its best assets. Oshii and his staff were dealing with characters they knew very well, and because of that, they had the comedic timing and reactions down to a “T.” It’s a perfect way to offset the gravity of the plot, and it makes the entire movie much more entertaining. Obviously, latter Oshii movies would be missing any kind of comedy entirely. The movie is also very sentimental, though how that comes about is something of a spoiler. That makes the movie more heartfelt and humane; contrast that with the cynical philosophical ramblings in Innocence. These traits might have simply been carry-overs from a clever low brow series, and they may take they movie “down” a notch from high art, but it makes the whole thing work very well. It may have seemed to fans that Oshii had taken characters they knew and loved and inserted them into a strange artsy film where they acted in strange ways, but without the traits of the original series, the movie would have been less successful as a memorable piece of art.

Before the glorious days of the Internet, before certain fans would selflessly sweat over a three thousand word synopsis of a sprawling franchise simply so that a near stranger can have content for his blog, some people would see Beautiful Dreamer cold.  The Sci-Fi Channel ran the movie back in 1998, when only those who dared to endure small dark rooms with sweaty old men knew who any of these characters were. Many of them still fell in love with it, and claim that it’s the best introduction to the franchise. While I’m not so sure about that, the options as I see it are this: if you watch the movie without seeing the series, you will see one of the great works of anime, but miss out on all the subtleties that only a fan of the series will pick up on. But watching the series is a huge investment of time, and not all of us have that. So I suggest this: if you’ve never seen the movie or the series, pick up copies of Only You and Beautiful Dreamer. Only You is a good introduction to the series and the characters, and will make your viewing of the next movie all the more rewarding. Or don’t. Either way, in my mind, this is one of the canonical series and movies of anime, and any fan who hasn’t seen these are doing themselves a disservice.

Alex Leavitt writes for The Department of Alchemy, while working “for real” as a research specialist in the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT in Boston, MA. After studying abroad in Kyoto, Japan in 2008, Alex returned to the States to travel around the country speaking at major anime conventions such as Anime Expo (Los Angeles, CA), Otakon (Baltimore, MD), and Anime Boston. Follow his eccentricities over on Twitter at @alexleavitt.

Back in 2006, as a college freshman downloading anime with his roommates, I happened across a short subtitled series called REC. Since I like to encourage fans to seek out shows that are not mainstream (like the Anime World Order offerings of Fist of the North Star, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, etc.) but in particular also those that do not have large fan followings (for example, Dennou Coil), I want to revisit REC, because it’s an interesting case study for a show of its type — romance, seinen, and (strangely) extremely short — because we can understand how this anime works with its novel format and lower budget.

REC aired on TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) from the beginning of February 2006 to the end of March 2006. A small run for a small show: the series only adds up to nine episodes, plus one additional OVA episode included with the DVD packaging. In addition, though, each episode only lasts 12 minutes each, a very different format from the approximately-25-minute episodes we normally view on television. At under two full hours viewing time (without including the extra episode), you can watch the entire series in an afternoon. REC’s length therefore provides its viewers with a much faster narrative flow than other ordinary anime series, a change with which modern ONA (original net animations) are currently experimenting and succeeding.

And with its quick movement, REC’s story is neither difficult nor demanding to follow. The plot follows the interwoven heartstrings of Fumihiko Matsumaru, a salaryman that works for the advertising section of a confectionary company, and Aka Onda, an amateur seiyuu (voice actress) beginning to make her mark in the industry. The two meet as a passionate Aka stops a stood-up Matsumaru from throwing away his absent date’s ticket to a local Audrey Hepburn film. After the two return home (how coincidental that they live in the same neighborhood), Matsumaru wakes in the middle of the night to sirens down the street. He finds Aka outside her burning apartment building and, as she has nowhere to go, brings her to his place for the night. Then, in an (un)expected fit of emotion and desperation, the couple kiss, introduce each other (they hadn’t before this moment…), and have sex. A strange turn of events that only escalates the following day, as Matsumaru’s project at work is accepted: his half-tree-half-cat mascot will be featured in a commercial for a new leaf-shaped snack. And who will voice this mascot? None other than Aka Onda, budding voice actress extraordinaire. Now, the two must attempt not to conflate their business and personal relationships while Aka remains in Matsumaru’s bedroom for the next month while refusing to continue any sort of romantic relationship (even though everybody knows that one is developing without even having had to begin watching this television show).

The immediate verdict? Watch it. It will not be a waste of your two-hour afternoon break. The show might, however, suffer from what I would like to call “otaku sentimentality.” To explain, let’s turn to the manga.

REC was adapted from the •REC manga (yes, there’s a dot at the beginning, just like how it appears on any video capturing device), written and drawn by Q-taro Hanamizawa, also famous for such works as… well, they’re pretty unknown. The comic was serialized in the relatively-new seinen (older boys’/men’s) magazine Sunday GX, which has also featured RahXephon and Black Lagoon. SHAFT (yes, the company behind such recent hits as Bakemonogatari, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and… well, there are too many, so hit that link!) ended up producing the series, directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, who also directed Kino’s Journey, Ghost Hound, and Serial Experiments Lain (see these three shows for better directorial work).

As a seinen work transformed into an animated series, you won’t find much moé here, but the manga doesn’t diverge from straight-up panty-flashing, shower scenes, and a breast here and there. However, the subject matter — voice acting and everything that comes with it, including Japanese animation — might throw off a few American anime fans if they were to “analyze” the show. This series does not pander to moé fanatics, regardless of how much you want to peg Aka with that term, just because she has big eyes and a short stature. Helped by some excellently-bad lines like, “Just because we… did it once doesn’t mean we’re together or anything like that…,” “When I hear Aka saying ‘Welcome home!’, I’ll be very happy,” and “Deep inside, he is longing for a girlfriend,” Matsumaru’s somewhat creepy obsession with Aka (particularly visualized in the manga) might come off as pandering to a subset of fans (I mean, there are a number of people out there who want to hear their favorite seiyuu moan in their ears), but in my opinion it’s just poor writing. You shouldn’t come to REC expecting anything spectacular.

As for appeal, if you want a cute romance, REC should be right up your alley. If you’ve come for the next hit, you won’t be surprised when you see that the BitTorrent stats for this series’ fansubbed translation are hitting near zero seeds. The animation is pretty average, only augmented by a few instances of unnatural CG, and a lot of scenes — particularly those romantic, emotional, or memorial ones (aka. half the show) — are whitewashed in an attempt to shoujo-ize this bit of seinen entertainment. Also, the low-quality backgrounds are a bit apparent: they look almost painted from a five-year-old’s watercolor set. But for a “late night show” (it appeared on TBS at around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning), REC follows the conventions of most shows appealing to a slightly older male audience.

The more interesting aspect of the show might have been the voice acting, but for a show about an amateur voice actress, the producers certainly went out of their way to find an… amateur voice actress. Not that the voice acting in the show is poor, but it’s not going to hit any high notes either by featuring Sakai Kanako, who has most recently voiced Akari on the hot, mechanical-bishounen haremfest, Miracle Train. Personally, I liked Aka’s “Audrey Hepburn” voice better than her own, but if you’re looking for a critical look into the Japanese animation industry, go check out Animation Runner Kuromi.

Watch this show to add it to your mental repertoire. One challenge might be to pick out all of the Audrey Hepburn references throughout the series. Of course, it’s always nice to have seen average shows more than once, especially since REC has that 12-minute novelty going for it. Or, I suppose you could always play the anime’s visual novel adaptation. But if you’re looking for a recent romance that’s sure to keep you on your toes, I recommend Toradora wholeheartedly.

Having never been imported into the English-speaking realm, REC is still available over at AnimeSuki, though you might want to beg someone to seed you a copy. Just be prepared to deal with your average fansub design clichés:

Ed Fonseca is the brave soul commandeering edythemighty.com, otakuexperience.com, and a range of other one-man enterprises on the internet, as well as a frequent contributor on the iPhone-themed website touchmyapps.com. A native of Puerto Rico living in the Cajun heartland of New Orleans, he spends his days watching new anime and saying “I saw it done better in an anime 10 years ago!” You can find him on twitter as edythemighty.

Ushio and Tora is one of those 90s shounen anime that follows the formula set forth by shows like Tenchi Muyo and Inuyasha – a member of a family with priests and priestesses who unleash a powerful demon presence that soon becomes the main character’s companion. Airing almost a decade before the other two, Ushio and Tora is a collection of 10 episodes of bad shounen clichés in a time where these clichés were being defined.

At one point, Ushio and Tora earned its creator several awards for the series, and even had a videogame adaptation on the SNES platform, which today looks and feels its age. Though it probably won’t be getting an updated flash version like many Inuyasha games such as the one on Adult Swim’s website, it’s still in the history books as proof of Ushio and Tora’s initial popularity, but subsequent fade into semi-obscurity and cult status.

Ushio and Tora tells the tale of young highschooler Ushio, who lives in a shrine with his immediate family, which includes his priest grandfather. Not unlike Tenchi Muyo, his grandfather tells Ushio stories of a demon named Tora, trapped in a room on the shrine’s premises, held there by the power of a mystic spear once wielded by the demon hunter who beat Tora. After Ushio unseals Tora, he finds that the demon’s presence attracts other demons, which soon become a danger to Ushio’s family and friends. Ushio agrees to free Tora after the demon agrees to help him, and Ushio wields the mystical spear, which grants him great demon slaying powers.

Throughout the course of the anime, Ushio and Tora build a rather tenuous but all the more friendly relationship as Tora becomes accustomed to humans and the new world he has awoken to. Throughout the series we see Tora learning to cope with all the wonders of the modern world, which results in some very funny scenes, as the old demon has to battle the evils of the now, including metal demons, human women too smelly to eat, and more and more strange things. These scenes easily remind anyone of Inuyasha’s adventures in Kagome’s time, where his super sensitive nose and hearing cause him troubles as well adjusting to all the pollution in Kagome’s time. In the end, we walk away knowing: It’s hard out there for a demon nowadays.

These interactions Tora has with his new environment and the people around him are one of my favorite parts of the anime, as they show a very adorable, lost, but ultimately dangerous and wild demon fighting in a modern place unknown to him, not unlike a hipster who moves from the middle of Nowhere, Ohio to the bustling metropolis of New York.

Tora is not alone in this brave, new world. Ushio is along, but only because he agrees to be Tora’s snack if he helps him defeat the demons that have come to his city. This forms the basis of these two’s relationship at first, one trying to eat the other, but over time, rather predictably, Tora starts to show some degree of compassion for this brave human. Ushio is not afraid to face down demons, now matter how big they are, if it’s to protect his family and friends. This fearless shounen archetype will later reappear endlessly throughout the next decade, much to our enjoyment – or chagrin.

This fearless male lead inevitably means that there’s a helpless female character that Ushio and Tora must always save. This just so happens to be Inuoe, who is able to see Tora unlike most other humans, as she comes from a lineage of powerful priestesses. Several other powerful humans appear, including yet another stereotype, the angry vengeful demon hunter. Ushio and Tora is packed full of cheesy but very funny characters such as these, which make the series as a whole a treat, and a valuable look into the past, before Bleach, before Naruto, etc.

At only 10 episodes and available through $10-$15 through Amazon and other online retailers, it’s very easy to buy this anime, and fall in love with all the cheesiness it has to offer in its very limited run. Ushio and Tora firmly established over ten years ago much of what is taken as cliché nowadays, but the series itself still remains fresh and accessible to today’s audience of animation enthusiasts looking for something “new”.

The Reverse Thieves are a blogging duo made up of the stylish Narutaki and the indomitable Hisui. With a detective theme they report on and analyze all aspects of anime and manga fandom with the hope to promote critical analysis and an overall love of Japanese pop culture. Their complementary eclectic tastes, over all positive attitude, and emphasis on character studies make their reviews a unique voice in the blogging community. The duo can frequently be found puttering around East Coast anime conventions and presenting panels on a wide variety of subjects. They also like to orchestrate large-scale projects that bring together various elements of the blogosphere and the fan community including the Otaku Diaries and the Secret Santa Project. You can visit them at http://www.reversethieves.com.

Whether you are just curious about the mecha genre but don’t know where to start or you are a seasoned fan hoping to recruit others, this guide is for you! (cue cheesy infomercial music and scrolling 800-number) Some mecha fans are pretty much born that way by virtue of the innate appeal of robots. But many people have to be coaxed into the fandom. This is a guide for the self-starter and/or the recruiter.

Our beginner level shows have a strong robot presence but the stories mostly focus on the characters or comedy and keep the robots more in the background. These are great shows to introduce your friends or yourself to the world of robot anime without being overwhelmed by the hardware. Check the robot level on these shows to see just how much is in each. When you or your friend has watched enough of the beginners shows to be not only comfortable but curious, take up the intermediate category. While these stories still focus on the characters and plot we also have increased the amount of robot action present, hence no robot level necessary. If all goes according to plan, after finishing an intermediate show or two anyone will be comfortable enough to try any number of other robot shows and judge them without taking off points just because there are robots prominently featured. But let us emphasize that this guide is to help people see the variety of robot anime, not necessarily make a mecha-head out of them.

Before we dive in, we’d like to give some general tips to those who are trying to recruit others! Most important is to think about who the person is and picking a show that is right for them, not right for yourself. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of picking your personal favorite while ignoring two shows better tailored to your friend’s taste. You may love Full Metal Panic! but the fantasy setting of Escaflowne might work better for someone who reads Pern books. Another great strategy is watching shows with a group. The more the merrier! Some shows are born to be watched with others, it has the ability to make things more funny, more suspenseful, or more whatever the feeling the show is exuding may be. And finally, remember, in the end you know your friends better than us. You don’t have to pick these shows, but try to apply our ideas of character focus of comedy as a great lead in to the robot genre! These are more guidelines to get you thinking rather than hard and fast rules.

BEGINNER LEVEL

Eureka Seven: When Renton meets Eureka, he decides to join a group of outsiders who are trying to disrupt the government and to awaken the people to what has been kept hidden from them. The colorful cast of characters, their growth, and both the friendships and relationships are central to this show. The series shines as it takes a look at love from new to mature. Eureka Seven’s character designs, music, and surfer culture all give it a very hip feel. And the unfolding of the many mysteries encountered is capturing. (more information) (full review) Robot level: Medium

Code Geass – Lelouch of the Rebellion: Lelouch becomes a revolutionary to free Japan after he gains the ability to control people’s actions. With its slick character designs and animation its obvious that Code Geass has modern appeal. While this series has a lot of battles the focus is on Lelouch out thinking his opponents and the tricks up his sleeve. There is also a great deal of intrigue, politics, and moral ambiguity that are touched on in the series that give it much needed spice. (more information) Robot level: Medium

The Vision of Escaflowne: Hitomi is an ordinary girl until she is transported to a magical world where she must help to over throw an evil empire. Escaflowne has story elements and characters that appeal to both guys and gals by mixing the action and romance and keeping not only Hitomi at the forefront but also Van and his struggles. There are plenty of battles but many take place outside of mechas. Music by Yoko Kanno. This series boasts more of fantasy vibe than a mecha one making it a good bridge between the two. (more information) Robot level: Low

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080 – War in the Pocket: A soldier behind enemy lines befriends a young boy as they both discover the true price of war. This is a Gundam series so of course the robots are important, but more to move along the plot which is demonstrated by there being only a couple of fights in the entire show. 0080 is heavily focused on themes such as moral decisions and how war affects civilians. This is also by far the shortest series on the list which can help to sell it. (more information) (full review) Robot level: Low

Full Metal Panic!: Military officer Sagara has to go undercover to high school in order to protect Chidori and her secret power. Don’t take the “protecting the girl” part of this series too seriously, Chidori is strong and capable. Full Metal Panic! has a high comedy factor that mostly stems from Sagara being a complete fish out of water and socially awkward to the extreme. This creates a serious juxtaposition between the action and the school life scenario. (more information) Robot level: Medium

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: This is sort of an exception to our rules since it has high robot content, but its popularity with non-mecha fans can’t be denied. This comes from many reasons including its bold but enjoyable archetypal characters and its incredibly over the top theatrics and fights. The sweet/sour approach to comedy and action is worked very well. Plus plenty of Yoko service for the guys, but also Kamina, Viral, and Simon score high for girls. The show has plenty of homage and themes but can easily be overlooked by newcomers. (more information) Robot level: High

INTERMEDIATE LEVEL

The Big O: Roger Smith is a negotiator in a city where everyone has lost their memories a mysterious happening that Roger is looking for answer to. With its distinctly Batman vibe, The Big O easily reaches out to a western audience. This is also accentuated by its striking visual style and its world that draws the viewer in. The characters are bold, broad stroked archetypes but made immensely enjoyable. (more information)

RahXephon: After Ayato is rescued from Tokyo which is occupied by alien invaders from another dimension, he is recruited into fighting to overthrow them. RahXephon is a very character based drama where the robot fights are more of a punctuation of the emotions. There is also a strong romantic plot as its centerpiece. You can see strong elements of symbolism throughout but it can be ignored if the viewer wishes. (more information)

Vandread: In a universe where men and women are at war, the two factions must come together on one ship to fight an alien threat. Vandread can easily be sold to people who watch shonen romance while sneaking in a good deal of robot action on the side. A mostly female, easy on the eyes, crew is an easy selling point to guys. The series for the most part is light and breezy comedy but counterbalanced with enough action and tension to keep the pace brisk. (more information)

Turn A Gundam: Loran becomes torn between two worlds which pushes him to try to find a peaceful resolution to a war between the Earth and the Moon. While this is part of the Gundam franchise, there will sometimes be episodes without any robot fights at all. Turn A focuses more on complex and compelling character based political drama. Music by Yoko Kanno. Turn A Gundam is a unique mecha show whose protagonist is primarily a man of peace. (more information) (full review)

Giant Robo – The Day the Earth Stood Still: Daisaku works with the Experts of Justice to foil the evil organization Big Fire’s plans for world domination. This series is over the top in many ways including high energy fight scenes not involving robots which will hook conventional action fans. The quality of the production is apparent in its powerful full orchestral soundtrack that grabs your attention, the meticulously detailed animation, and some superb storytelling. (more information)

Aim for the Top! Gunbuster: Teenager Noriko joins enters a training school where she must learn to pilot a giant robot to fight invaders from beyond the solar system. This show has a gradual build from comedy to drama that invests the viewers in the story and just may surprise them. Gunbuster has amazing OAV quality animation that makes it great eye candy and a short running time that adds to it’s accessibility. (more information)

Now before we wrap this up, let us mention a few shows that are loved, that are great, but may not be the best thing to throw at someone or yourself if you are just starting out. And be aware that people will praise them, they may even say you should watch them, but it could be folly. In general, the “super robot” genre is a precarious one for people new to the scene. The robots are like the main characters in most super robot shows so you better like robots if you watch them. Series like The King of Braves GaoGaiGar, Mobile Fighter G Gundam, and Shinkon Gattai Godannar!! which lift heavily from the subsect, and Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z Hen all land a spot here for this reason. There are also shows like Armored Trooper Votoms and Mobile Police Patlabor that are character intensive but the robot stuff is so heavy that you have to want it, you can’t ignore it. And lastly, be careful of older shows in general, design/animation can really work against you. So a classic like Mobile Suit Gundam are best to hold off on till later.

Please realize we are talking in broad strokes here. Nothing will work for everyone and likewise some of the things we say to avoid may actually bring in a new fan here and there. At times I am absolutely convinced that we watch robot show for completely different reasons than then average mecha enthusiast does. We watch robot shows for the characters and love the robots. Most mecha enthusiasts watch shows for the robots and love the characters. But this unique perspective on the genre is what made us want to compile this guide!

This Saturday I’m off to Thailand, for some much needed relaxing, culture and raving on the beach at the Full Moon Party. Hopefully I won’t be bumping into our friend Sagat, above. Good news though is you won’t be going without content here – quite the opposite in fact. My call for guest writers before Christmas had an amazing response, with the result that some of my favourite bloggers have contributed some really exciting posts to keep you entertained in my absence. To whet your appetite here’s a schedule of what you can expect:

25 Jan – Hisui and Narataki (Reverse Thieves)

28 Jan – Ed Fonseca (Otaku Experience)

30 Jan – Alex Leavitt (Department of Alchemy, MIT)

1 Feb – Bradley Meek (Them Anime, Anime 3000)

4 Feb – Matt Brown (Anime Dream)

What are they going to be writing about? Well, that would be telling. Just trust me – this is some interesting, quality shit you are about to be treated to. Controversial even. Someone even criticizes Oshii at one point. Yeah, that’s right. Criticizes Oshii. On my website. Want to find out who is #otakumanup enought to try and do that? Then you’re just going to have to check back and see. Believe me, it’ll be worth it – all the posts are of exceptional quality and fantastic reads. Enjoy them, and I’ll see you when I get back.

Fernando Ramos is Editor-in-Chief of Anime3000.com. Hailing from beautiful San Diego, California, his incurable addiction to cartoons has led him to his current residence of Saitama, Japan, where staying up late winter nights editing articles only reminds him that SD would never get this cold. An avid photography and video fan, he also produces occasional videos and he also writes the photography/rant column Japan Jumble for the site. Find him as Saitamarama on Flickr and HelloNavi on Twitter.

Anticipation for Assault Girls has been mixed, to say the least. While it has Mamoru Oshii on the marquee line and implications of being a follow-up to 2001’s brain-teaser Avalon, most fans (like myself) were skeptical about just how utterly mainstream everything looked. Dune “inspired” sandworms and gals with fetish-tastic outfits packing heavy firepower to blow them up are fun and all, but it just lacks the depth and psychology by way of sociopolitics that drenches Oshii’s work and makes it stand out from the glut of countless Japanese-girls-with-guns pieces. It didn’t help matters that the previous two shorts that form the basis of Assault Girls were little more than flashy (and hilarious) action set-pieces with, you guessed it, hot girls.

However, the aforementioned shorts were virtually devoid of any context. We barely knew who our characters were or what they were after besides one last bite of KFC. It was boom-boom-bang-bang night after day and roll credits. This left Oshii open to take the characters in virtually any direction he so wished; and boy did he ever.

Simply put, he shoehorns all the chaos of the shorts into the timeline of his previous live-action film, Avalon. A lengthy voice-over prologue explains (in many big words) to us in no uncertain terms what that goulash was all about: capitalism had reached it’s brink due to our technological advances and society has been pushed to its logical limit. Now we are in the age of Pax Technologica: in short, a world-wide Neo-Communism. Having settled fanboy arguments over just what parts of Avalon actually did happen, we find that the Avalon game has also gotten itself some upgrades since the days of Polish MMORPGers, now seeming to run on Windows Vista instead of Commie-DOS.

Also of note is that, where Avalon was constantly jumping between and blurring the line between the real world and the online one, here we are firmly in the virtual. Outside of a few select throwaway lines and a single scene lasting less than a minute, there is little suggestion of there being a world outside the game. When Avalon was first released in 2001, World of Warcraft was in its infancy, Google was just a search engine and Wikipedia had just begun to be noticed. Humanity was still able to exist disconnected. Things have changed. “We are wired and there’s no getting out now,” is what Oshii seems to be saying. Furthermore, instead of the overexposed yellow slosh over everything in the previous film, Assault Girls opts to merely mute all but the loudest colors if to acknowledge that that the binary may well be just as just tangible as the physical.

Similarly, the tone of the film is much more colorful than the somber Avalon, at times having more in common with Takashi Miike or Quentin Tarantino than with the man who brought us Ghost in the Shell. Characters are introduced with campy still-frame title cards and the furious fun of the action screams for a wild saxophone score instead of the Kenji Kawai mood-synth that does. As icing on the cake, the film is separated into pretentiously titled chapters, Kill Bill-style.

In fact, despite writing the script himself in lieu of his frequent collaborator Kazunori Ito, this is probably Oshii’s least “Oshii” work since Beautiful Dreamer. Basset hounds are nowhere in sight (we do get dogs, but more on that later), the fisheye lenses are put in storage and, prologue notwithstanding, the movie is, much like the trailer promised, mostly concerned with hot chicks blowing shit up real good, visually if not thematically. The three leads jump, run and gun with beauty and grace. While Meisa Kuroki makes for a foxy heroine in her skin-tight rear-accentuating battle gear, it is Babel beauty Rinko Kikuchi as the cute mute mage Lucifer who steals the show for this reviewer. She gets no dialogue beyond a few dubbed-over crow calls (don’t ask), her Harajuku-influenced attire and playful ethereal dancing had my and my equally silent fellow theatre-goers’ full attention.

Yet beyond the absurdity lies a subversive shadow. Oshii has never been beyond playing with the audience. This is the man who threw Hitler and Christ into Urusei Yatsura for crying out loud. The most noticeable of these subversions lies with the fact that we have an all-Japanese cast speaking English. It is well-written modern English peppered with slang, but the performances are stilted and frequently garbled by a Sky Crawlers-esque static filter. However, unlike that film, it is not a mere atmospheric flourish. Here, it is made apparent that this is a rule imposed by the game: only English is permitted with “local languages” being verboten.

It doesn’t take a political science major to see the subtext of political subjugation via linguistics. Sealing the deal is the abundance of Japanese symbology in the landscape of Avalon(f): a statue of Ninomiya Sontoku (a fixture at Japanese schools but historically noteworthy for his economic and humanistic philosophies) and, instead of the infamous basset hound, a shiba inu, one of the domestic breeds of Japan, sniffing around at it. Also, randomly, a character takes out an antagonist in a direct visual quote of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon. It’s not subtle symbolism or commentary, but it stands out in the parade of explosions and live-action fanservice. It’s Oshii throwing yet another middle finger to the Establishment, much like the undertones of cultural warfare in the Patlabor movies.

This is all well and good, but the film does have infuriating aspects that keep it from being an instant classic. Like Oshii’s earlier live-action work in the Keroberos Panzer Corps universe, it feels more like a salad bowl of ideas than an actual good movie in its own right. The lack of actors and no major sets adds to the feeling that this was just a side project Oshii wanted to bang out in a few months than his next opus. Perhaps the most infuriating thing is the absence of an ending. This is not an exaggeration. We tune into this world for 80-some minutes and then, just when things are looking to really get heated up, we’re thrown into the credits. As the ending theme by otaku favorite KOTOKO starts cranking up and the audience around me starts getting cranky, we are reminded of a possible rationale:

“GENEON UNIVERSAL PRESENTS: A FILM BY MAMORU OSHII”

Figures.