Well, I never thought I’d find myself talking about aging, over-rated pub-rockers Oasis on this site, but here we go – powerhouse studio Production IG announced today that their highly anticipated anime show Eden of the East will feature music from the band. To be precise Falling Down, a track off their Dig Out Your Soul recent album, will be used over the opening credits. Far more interesting to me than the music itself is the business wranglings that must have taken place behind the scenes to secure this sort of deal. Are Production IG so recession proof that they can splash out the cash for this kind of deal? Or are Oasis’ record company really desperate to drum up some interest in the Asian markets? I don’t, for a second, believe that the Gallagher brothers are anime fans, but I’m willing to be proven wrong.

Don’t panic though, IG music composer and living legend Kenji Kawai is back to compose the score. Phew.

The show itself looks very interesting – written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama (GiTS:SAC, Jin-Roh, Blood: The Last Vampire) it is the kind of mature anime that has been sadly largely lacking from Japanese schedules for the last few years. From the IG press release:

On November 22, 2010 ten missiles strike Japan. However, this unprecedented terrorist act, later to be called as “Careless Monday,” does not result in any apparent victims, and is soon forgotten by almost everyone. Then, 3 months later… Saki Morimi is a young woman currently in the United States of America on her graduation trip. But just when she is in front of the White House, Washington DC, she gets into trouble, and only the unexpected intervention of one of her fellow countrymen saves her. However, this man, who introduces himself as Akira Takizawa, is a complete mystery. He appears to have lost his memory. and he is stark naked, except for the gun he holds in one hand, and the mobile phone he’s holding with the other hand. A phone that is charged with 8,200,000,000 yen in digital cash.

Check out the trailer and more info (in Japanese) here. The show premieres in Japan next month, with a connected feature film opening at cinemas later in the year. IG have obviously invested a lot in this project, so hopefully they feel they have something special. More details as I get them.

If you’ve read this site before, or even just glanced over it’s archives, then my appreciation and admiration of director Mamoru Oshii is clearly laid out. As such it would seem not only redundant but also somewhat self indulgent to elaborate further on my love of his tense political sci-fi dramas Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor, or his low budget, live action masterpiece Avalon. Ever since his latest feature film The Sky Crawlers was first announced I have been gripped with excitement and anticipation – although, as always, resigned to the long wait us western fans must endure before we are granted an audience. This week that wait finally ended, and putting aside my deep rooted fanboy allegiances for just under two hours, I was able to sit down and see if anime’s most esteemed auteur could still deliver the goods.

Based on a series of novels by Japanese author Hiroshi Mori, The Sky Crawlers takes its time in revealing it’s true nature to the viewer. Oshii is famous for never rushing his narratives and giving his viewers time to indulge in his slowly paced cinematography, but tSC takes its time in revealing even it’s true setting. Much of the truth about what is happening in the world it’s characters inhabit isn’t made clear until it’s final act, and as such it makes it hard to elaborate without drifting into spoiler territory. Simply put, it is set at a time – possibly the future, or equally maybe an alternate past – when humanity has decided that the only way to avoid war is to stage an artificial, and seemingly endless, one. As a result an eternal air conflict is fought between two rival corporations using WWII style fighter planes and bombers, just to fill the war cravings of the global media, economy and watching public.

This concept is not a new one for Oshii, it being the main driving theme of his second, complex Patlabor movie. Then the subject was how small scale, but very real, wars were allowed to rage unhindered in the less developed parts of the world so that the industrial nations could create the illusion of a lasting peace, and made in 1993 it gives a chillingly clairvoyant portrayal of how easily this cosy illusion can be broken through acts of terrorism. To Oshii war is a vital force in modern capitalist societies, the secret fuel that drives their economies and cultures, but while Patlabor 2 meditates openly and explicitly on this train of thought, tSC is all the more subtler. Throughout it’s duration it only hints at it’s thematic backdrop, preferring instead to focus it’s other unique ingredient; it’s characters.

If eternal, staged war is the formula for peace, then one huge moral question faces the society that puts it into practice: who will do the fighting? For the tSC the answer is the ‘Kildren’, apparently genetically engineered clones of teenage children, raised to do nothing but fly and fight for the corporations that mass-produce them. It is through their eyes that we slowly learn not only about their world, but also the abusive psychological effect it has on them. Raised to know nothing but war, they fly routine, daily sorties while filling the gaps within with drinking and mindless, detached sex. In fact everything appears detached to them; their lives are so routine – the war so endless – that even the thrills of partying and combat seem to bore them. The fact that they are designed to never age – forever staying young, knowing that they will only, inevitably, die in battle – only compounding their increasing alienation from both each other and the world they are supposedly fighting for.

The image of robotic, innocence stripped children being used as weapons in this way is a disturbing one, and one seen to devastating effect in Madhouses‘ groundbreaking 2003 series Gunslinger Girl. Now, as then, it appears the target of critique is anime itself, and perhaps to some larger extent Japanese culture as a whole. For decades anime and manga have made children their assassins and war heroes, and both Gunslinger Girl and Oshii attempt to deconstruct these respective memes, showing instead the brutal reality of how that could manifest in real life. tSC goes a stage further though, coupling this with the earlier theme of the need for perpetual war, and perhaps turning it into an attack on the endless repition of anime subject material, the boredom of the characters representing Oshii’s own disdain at the stale offerings much of the industry produces. At times it even feels like an attack on himself; the use of character names from his previous works is jarring to any watching fan, and coupled with his frequent visual signatures it is almost as though Oshii-san is looking back at his portfolio of work with disappointment at his own lack of originality. If The Sky Crawlers reassures his audience of only one thing its that he shouldn’t be so harsh on himself.

Visually, the film is sumptuous and intoxicating as we have come to expect from the director and his highly experienced creative team at Production IG. The green fields and cloudscape filled blue skies mark a refreshing change of palette from their usual dark, urban environments – but while also maintaining the director’s trademark cold, stark and lonely atmospheres. While the character design is suitably minimal compared to previous IG works, the mechanical design is as phenomenal as expected, the retro-but-futuristic fighter planes betraying a Miyazaki-like fetishism towards WWII aircraft engineering and attention to detail. The dogfight sequences themselves are breathtaking, and again show IG’s mastery of the use of combining CGI and traditional cell animation. Here they had help from FX studio Polygon Pictures, whose recent portfolio shows they are clearly industry leaders – and I don’t say that just because I know someone that works there.

In fact, the opening and regularly punctuating dogfight sequences are perhaps Oshii’s greatest trick. Not only do they break up the mesmerising monotony of watching the Kildren’s routine lives unfold, but they also make the audience participants in their world. The action sequences are so exhilirating, so beautifully choreographed that the viewer ends up almost craving them to return to the screen, and thus becomes the gawping, voyeristic, war-demanding public of the Kildren’s world, and thus ultimately the guilty abuser. It’s a master stroke of manipulation, and a subtle one that perhaps doesn’t truly reveal itself until the films final, bloody dogfight.

Despite it’s deeply thematic nature and social commentary, The Sky Crawlers is perhaps Oshii’s most accessible film since Patlabor. Gone, thankfully, are the philosophical ramblings of GiTS 2: Innocence, instead the discussion is more subtle, the plot more linear. In many ways it feels that Oshii, although rapidly becoming what is considered a veteran filmmaker, is still learning from mistakes and honing his skills. Plus, as always with his work, it’s nothing else if not a visual masterpiece, the imagery and score from Oshii’s long time composer of choice Kenji Kawai combining again to make a compelling and memorable viewing experience. It’s not an easy ride at times, but The Sky Crawlers is certainly one you can’t afford to miss.

I know a lot of people really dug the Anime Guide to Headphones image I posted up a few months ago, myself included, so I couldn’t resist picking up the book it was meant to promote when I stumbled across it in Mandarake.

Yet again – as with all these Japanese artbooks – it’s beautifully printed. Each double page spread features a page of Japanese text and diagrams about a particular brand and model of headphones opposite a large, full colour illustration of a girl modeling them.

The illustrations are by a variety of mangaka, and of amazing quality throughout. Luckily they are never quite hentai, but they do at times resort to all to familiar manga theme of objectifying, overly-stylising and sexualising teenage girls. It’s the only part of animanga culture that ever makes me feel uncomfortable – but believe me, I saw far, far worse when I was in Tokyo. Far worse.

Towards the end of the book the illustrations give way to pages and pages of Japanese text and photos, which seem to consist of interviews with the artists and some musicians – including the legendary Kenji Kawai, making this an interesting purchase for Oshii fanatics like myself. Shame I can’t understand it. Time to get back to my Japanese practice, I guess…

Some of you might remember my concern back in June when I first reported on Production IG’s planned visual update to Oshii’s 1995 classic Ghost in the Shell. Well, the Blu-ray of GiTS 2.0 (not to be confused with GiTS 2: Innocence, which will also be referred to a lot in this piece) hit Japanese stores a few weeks ago, and via sources that I’m not at liberty to identify I have managed to get my hands on a preview copy – months before the (still yet to be confirmed) UK release. So it was that I found myself, on the first morning of 2009, sitting down to watch one of my favourite movies of all time again, but instead of being filled with the usual satisfying feeling of anticipation, I was gripped with something nearer to dread.

The ‘problem’ – if it is really one at all – is the issue of progress. In the nine years between GiTS and GiTS 2: Innocence technology changed. In this time the tech teams at Production IG focused on becoming the masters at seamlessly merging CGI imagery with conventional hand drawn animation, with GiTS 2 being heralded as the pinnacle of this across the industry. And with these new technological changes came aesthetic ones; Oshii switched palettes from green and blue tones to more deep, orange ones, and the computer interfaces and displays that are such an important part of the GiTS environment became more sophisticated and refined as the software used to create them got cheaper, quicker and maturer. And while these displays had been the only thing to be rendered by computer in the first movie, the sequel employed CGI in nearly every scene.

Suddenly, you could run the two movies and – arguably – something didn’t look quite right. At times they looked like different worlds. The computer displays in GiTS started to look outmoded by today’s standards, let alone compared to the future they were meant to predict. Some of the cityscapes looked uninspiring – perhaps – in comparison to the epic computer rendered vistas of GiTS 2. Production IG had hit the same problem Lucas had hit with the Star Wars prequels – when you’re making heavy SFX based science fiction, your work is always going to look dated. Luckily then, that you can now go back and change it…

Before we talk about this anymore, lets have a look at the evidence. By far the biggest section of the film to have been altered is the well known, and often mimicked, opening sequence, with Major Kusanagi leaping off a skyscraper to assassinate a foreign diplomat. I’ve grabbed some images from both versions of the film for comparison.

The first thing you notice is the palette switch, as well as how the old computer maps that open the film have been completely re-designed and rendered.

Then it hits you, every external shot in the sequence – including the Major herself – have been recreated in CGI.

And this is where I first started to have problems with GiTS 2.0. CGI Kusanagi doesn’t look quite right. Well, she looks fine on her own, but inter-cut with the other characters – who are still hand drawn from the orignial – she looks jarring. Almost, at times, like you’re watching two different films.

From here you’re into the ‘cyborg birth’ opening sequence, which has also been completely redone, with much more sophisticated CGI and the same green-to-orange palette change, the again bring it more into line with the companion sequence in GiTS 2.

Later on in the film there’s also some CGI rendered helicopters and vehicles, although luckily the climactic spider tank battle sequence has survived untouched. There’s also a few minor dialogue changes, as well as a female voice actor for the Puppet Master, which makes a bit more visual sense and the plot a little easier to follow. But otherwise the rest of the movie has remained largely untouched.

Sitting writing this after watching GiTS 2.0 for the first time only a few hours ago, I’m still a little undecided as to how I feel about it. One major issue i have is that I always loved the original’s aesthetic, far more than I did it’s sequel’s. The video game style graphics, the green-blue palette…the whole film captured the 80′s cyberpunk vibe of Shirow’s original manga (all be it with a far darker, more serious tone) as well as developing on the themes and aesthetics of works like Bladerunner and Neuromancer that came before it. Don’t get me wrong, I like GiTS 2: Innocence, and I found the new palette that Oshii had brought over from Avalon appealing, but it was a different film to the original, a different world. And I was happy with that – time had passed in the real world, and I was happy to just accept it had passed in the GiTS world too. Things change, especially technology. Characters had clearly aged, so why couldn’t everything else had moved on as well?

Also the beauty of the original film for me was that it didn’t actually rely too much on futuristic design and visual effects to create it’s haunting atmosphere. The best science fiction works because it manipulates the familiar and believable, and what truly makes GiTS a masterpiece is the noir atmosphere, Oshii’s pacing, his slow pans, and the beautifully drawn Tokyo Hong Kong street scenes.

In fact watching it after returning from Tokyo, it’s remarkable how un-futuristic the architecture is in GiTS, with the sequel’s towering CGI mega-scrapers and smoggy vistas starting to look a little Fifth Element in comparison. It’s these things that give the original it’s feeling of edgy, ‘just around the corner’ realism, and if it’s any consolation, all of that is still here in 2.0.

Personally there are still a lot of unanswered questions for me. Why was this made? Is it just another IG tech demo? How much as Oshii actually involved? Wasn’t he busy making Sky Crawlers at the time, and is this really just a marketing exercise for that movie – it having been shown at the same time at some Japanese theaters?

Not that there’s nothing at all to recommend this release. As previously mentioned, the beautiful pacing and gentle street scenes are all still intact, and this is the best they’ve ever been seen. It’s a great transfer, and has clearly been cleaned up in places in the process, and it’s the better for it. Kenji Kawai‘s legendary score has also been given an audibly noticeable remaster, and sounds stunning all over again. I was only given the main feature, but the Japanese collectors release featured not only some interesting looking extras but also a copy of the original – although it’s unsure whether that has been given the same gorgeous visual polish in the transition to Blu-ray. Only time will tell what is included on any western releases.

Only one thing is certain – if you’re a GiTS fan then you can’t kid yourself – you’re going to want to see this. Whether you end up loving it, hating it, or – like me – wondering whether it was really necessary is something still to be determined.

ありがとうございます to The Laughing Man for securing me this review copy. The net is vast and infinite…