The real world is a scary place.
Not because it’s full of monsters, though we’ll get to that. It’s scary because it’s full of other people. Because it’s full of risks, and setbacks, and harsh truths. It’s scary because to truly look at it, you have to first look at yourself, and acknowledge what you see. Engaging with the real world means acknowledging and embracing every ugly, selfish thing that makes you You, and being honest with yourself is the hardest, scariest thing of all.
Question:
In discussing Maoyuu Maou Yuusha, you talk a lot about whether a show’s ideas or themes are well-articulated. However, I consider myself a person who watches shows for characters, and want my media to be worth empathizing with on a human level. Is there room for this instinct in your cold, blackened critic’s heart?
Bobduh:
Haha, I actually consider myself the same way – most of the stories that effortlessly connect to me are the ones primarily interested in characters and relationships. For instance, Toradora and Chuunibyou are two of my very favorite shows, and they’re far more thematically simplistic than Maoyuu or Penguindrum – they’re just character stories told well. And Evangelion is my actual favorite show, because I think it explores characters more fully than anything else I’ve seen.
But I also find both the craft of storytelling and human nature in general fascinating, and this show is just very unique in its purpose and methods. For instance, in episode 8 of Maoyuu, I loved that the characters’ response to the church condemning the scholar wasn’t something like, “damn the church! How could we have foreseen this?!” or “we have to fight them,” it was: “Unfortunate. If we fight the church, we lose the people. How can we minimize the fallout of this attack?” It’s willing to make a lot of smart assumptions about human nature, and then build on those assumptions to find some really compelling truths.
Question:
Can you explain your scoring/evaluation system a bit? The numbers as they stand just don’t make sense to me – Chuunibyou a 10, CLANNAD a 3, After Story an 8, Nisemonogatari a 9, Nozo no Kanojo X a 4. What’s the system here?
Bobduh:
I actually recently changed my scoring system to make use of the numbers more effectively – anything six and up is “solid” for me, and it’s only 3 and down that I consider “bad”. You can see my current grading system in the About[1]section.
The three main things I look for in a show are: Does this show convey what it wants to in an effective way? Is what it is trying to convey meaningful or distinctive? Does the experience of this show resonate with me emotionally?
So, regarding the shows you listed…
I think Chuunibyou is not terribly ambitious, but it is very, very close to perfect in conveying its characters and story, and it struck me very strongly emotionally. It is, outside of exactly one scene in the first 11 episodes and some extremely slight pacing issues in the finale, what I’d consider a “Perfect Romantic Comedy.”
Clannad, on the other hand, I felt was incredibly ineffective as a comedy, slice of life, or romance – the side arcs murdered the pacing, the characters on the whole were thinly developed, and Jun Maeda has no subtlety in his writing, making the show veer constantly between repetitive slapstick and unearned melodrama. Plus, I found characters like Fuko and Kotomi extraordinarily problematic in their design – perhaps the VN developed them as people, but in anime format they came across as vehicles for viewer’s broken bird fantasies, which I consider one of the very worst things about anime.
In contrast to this, once After Story escapes from the side arcs, it becomes an incredibly effective and very unique look at life after education, something that is both woefully underrepresented in anime and very resonant for me personally. The episode where Tomoya is first forced to semi-interact with his abandoned daughter is honestly one of the most distinctive, effectively directed, and powerful episodes of television I’ve ever seen. But because that is just a subsection of the show (and because I feel the ending undercuts most of the drama the show has earned), it only averages out to an 8.
Nise I already posted that huge-ass analysis of[2] , but in short I think it approaches issues of perspective, self-representation, and the male gaze with incredible intelligence, and while uneven, is such a necessary art experiment that I have to strongly respect it.
Finally, I just thought Nozo no Kanojo was incredibly uneven, and while it had some very interesting ideas (particularly the rare and noteworthy focus on how weird and uncomfortable adolescent intimacy can be), it too often fell into the routines of its genre to be considered a solid work.
I’d actually love to keep talking about any of those shows, since you picked a set of examples that I find extremely interesting as artistic works, even though I personally enjoyed or respected some more than others. There’s something interesting in virtually every show – I pretty much never regret having watched something.
Question:
In that case, would you agree that there’s a fair amount of personal passion in your rating system? Also, would you say the quite harsh scores you give to certain shows (Another, OreImo) is more reflective on your selective process of watching anime than their objective quality?
Bobduh:
I actually do try to keep the passion to a minimum, and restrict it to corner cases like the one you mentioned. For instance, I really do think Chuunibyou is more or less a flawless execution of a classic concept, but I’d have to admit that my own preference for romance and character-based shows might knock that one to a 10 over something like, say, Baccano. But I don’t think it’s all that unfair to say shows that strive for deeper meanings or strong emotional resonance are “aiming higher” than pure adventures or comedies – and normally, adventures and comedies are largely improved by the addition of these elements.
I also sometimes use my emotional reaction as a counterweight to my critical assessment of a show – for instance, logically I considered Ano Hana emotionally manipulative and awkwardly constructed, but because I actually did have an emotional reaction to the finale, I figured it was at least partially effective. Obviously the distance between my personal preferences/emotional touchstones and my critical assessments will always result in disconnects, but I try to be aware of it and only use the emotional response as a tool and sounding board, not a general metric.
My previous scoring system was a lot closer to the classic “5 is a failing grade” system – almost everything on my list was 7 or higher, and my grading system was basically 7 = decently flawed but I enjoyed it more than I didn’t, 8 and up are things I’d actively recommend. But I figured copying the classic grading system wasn’t really that valuable – if everything below 6 is just “so bad it’s not worth watching,” why shouldn’t I condense that category? It seemed more useful to stratify degrees of flawed but interesting shows than degrees of terribleness – for the lower shows, I figure “Just plain bad,” “Tooth-grindingly terrible,” and “Literally offensive to my values as a human being” should suffice.
The shows you mentioned kind of betray my own view of the anime medium – that is, I appreciate it and critique it primarily as a narrative, message-based, or character-focused art form, and not a visual one. I mean, I do love great visuals, and when they work in service of a show it’s incredible (Madoka and Hyouka represent two ways visuals can really contribute to themes, characters, and narrative, for example, and Redline works so well because all the narrative elements work in service of the fantastic visuals), but I won’t have mercy on a show just because it has polished production. OreImo might be very competent in its design and animation, but because I find its messages actually offensive and likely developmentally hurtful to its intended audience, I probably couldn’t personally like or critically respect it any less even if it were less competently produced.
Nadeko’s OP is my clear favorite of the season (though the Fire Sisters both kill it dead).
So, as I mentioned in the last discussion, I wasn’t actually planning on rewatching this after having watched the whole series so recently. But as SohumB pointed out in the last thread[1] , these Nadeko episodes play in a really weird sexual space that has definite relevance to my thoughts on Nise – so I’m watching that pair specifically to see what I think.
And my first impression, only a few minutes in, is that the cinematography in this show is much more often interested in pacing than Nise’s constant emotional inference – though obviously both are still in effect, many of the shots seem designed more to keep the visual narrative constantly flowing than to impart a great deal of context.
“Being kind to everybody is irresponsible, after all” – now I actually do want to watch the whole series again, in search of all the ways they articulate variations on this theme. Making one of the core narrative issues of the harem genre a core, overt characteristic of this very self-aware show’s protagonist is one of the greatest successes of this series.
Alright, here’s the scene, Nadeko in the bedroom.
Hm. It’s tricky to say exactly how this scene is supposed to be played – there are a lot of variables involved. Yeah, it’s partially Araragi’s perspective. Yeah, it’s partially also just this season’s more jumpy and propulsive style of visual storytelling. And importantly, this scene also serves a lot of narrative purpose that needs to be conveyed visually – the actual, narrative plot of this scene is her revealing the curse on her body, so a great deal of the visual storytelling is dedicated to clarifying what’s actually happening in the story. Most of what I was discussing in Nise basically contrasted the visual storytelling against the narrative storytelling – here, they’re kind of too muddled together to be playing off each other.
In the next episode, it seems more overtly clear that Araragi’s deeply uncomfortable with this situation, but is maintaining the banter of 9 and the exposition of 10 to keep it from getting any weirder than it has to be.
Hm… that WIDESCREEN scene where she’s getting dressed is questionable. The argument could be made that it’s designed to reflect Nadeko’s sense of vulnerability – but if that’s true, I don’t think it did a great job of it. The fact that they’re lampshading it with the “Widescreen” breaks in the first place leads me to think it’s just pointing out fanservice while unabashedly presenting it.
Maybe this whole arc is supposed to be uncomfortably voyeuristic – it definitely comes across that way to me. The way they emphasize Nadeko’s clear discomfort in 9 supports that interpretation, too.
I wasn’t sure before, but it seems like Nadeko’s “attempting to remove the curse only made things worse” might intentionally reflect Hanekawa’s “trying to help everybody will come back to haunt you.” This idea is also pretty ridiculously overt during Nise’s Karen Bee. And Araragi’s barely-remembered interactions with young Nadeko causing long-lasting unintended emotional consequences is yet another reflection of it.
Araragi drawing attention to the pain of her scales causing her even more discomfort – another scene playing with her unwilling vulnerability during this arc.
And now, with the school swimsuit (can’t believe I didn’t remember that), I’m even more confident this arc is definitely playing with the expectations of this kind of show, and how the kind of voyeurism they normally represent would actually relate to characters who you’re supposed to treat as human beings. In fact, this seems like a more blunt reaction to standard fanservice than most of Nise does – while that goes beyond mere criticism and begins to address positive ways cinematography can address sexuality, these episodes are basically saying, “here’s one of those young girls you like seeing dressed up and stripped down so much. Look how much she’s enjoying what you’re doing to her”
Hah, I really like the use of a music-box rearrangement of Nadeko’s theme for this climactic scene.
It’s interesting that the kind of affection she has for Araragi isn’t just standard romance – in the scene she reminisces about, she is fawning over the ways he’s taken care of her. Remind anybody of anything? Yeah, she’s positioning herself as a moe object.
“And now we’re torturing her. You like that? This still getting you off?”
This episode’s brutal.
Ironically enough, this theme of Araragi’s helpful nature being an obsessive and unhealthy thing was something I was always hoping Clannad would actually bring up – hell, that show even had plenty of already-existing motivation for a complex like that, in the presence of Tomoya’s father as an example he’d be rebelling against.
Okay, those two episodes were really interesting. I think the ways it worked as a meta-commentary on sexuality and storytelling in anime wasn’t as tightly woven into the actual emotional/narrative story of the show as it is throughout Nisemonogatari, but it definitely wasn’t as interested in subtlety in general – these episodes came across as legitimately angry, and creator passion is pretty much as satisfying to me as character passion.
These episodes seem, in a wide variety of very overt ways, to be about the kind of voyeurism that’s often taken for granted in anime, and how that informs the viewer’s “relationship” with characters, and what that actually means in a human sense. The “widescreen” scene that begins episode 10 is the only one that resembles the traditional voyeurism of fanservice – in episode 9, she’s aware she’s being watched, and is deeply uncomfortable and ashamed because of it. In episode 10, they frame her exorcism in one of the most classically anime-fanservice tropes there is (the school swimsuit), and then take it a step too far, and then take it ten steps too far, seemingly all to make the viewer aware of their own reactions to this kind of material. It’s crazy stuff, and I don’t think it comes across as entirely natural (thus my recollection of these episodes as playing in weird sexual space that seemed somewhat unrelated to the narrative/emotional goals of the characters), but it’s certainly a strong and fiercely articulated argument.
So, I just finished Nisemonogatari for the first time. And I’m pretty much blown away. And I need to talk about it.
(You might want to sit down, I’ll be here a while)
I’d put off watching this second season for a decent while, for two very specific reasons. First, while I found the first season very unique and artistically compelling, it didn’t really resonate with me at all until that last, basically perfect episode. And second, from everything I’d read online, it seemed like the second season amped the fanservice up to 11. And fanservice, well…
It’s bad. The way it’s normally used, it demeans and objectifies characters, and distracts/detracts from whatever a show is trying to do narrative-wise and emotionally. It makes the camera itself a lecherous observer of characters, and not simply the best framing device for the story being told. It adds to a value unrelated to a show as an artistic work, and in fact normally detracts from its artistic worth and the narrative/emotional weight of any scene. It demeans the audience as well, implying we’re unable to be entertained by the show’s actual worth, and the implications regarding my base-instinct-oriented nature colors my experience as a viewer. It proves that the creators of the show are not taking that show and its characters seriously – and if they’re not, why the fuck should I?
However
Nisemonogatari is not interested in fanservice.
Nisemonogatari is a show specifically about sexuality, perspective, and the conventions of camera use (yeah, I know it’s not an actual camera, bear with me).
Most fan service happens by making the camera take the perspective of an outsider, an intruder to the scene – or at “best” the perspective of the lecherous or hapless protagonist. Fan service is all about the male gaze, that is, women are framed in a way that accentuates their sexuality not because that’s how they see themselves, but just because the cameraman finds that sexy.
In Nisemonogatari, the cameraman has got greater concerns than that. Every shot is purposeful, and from a specific perspective or mentality.
Example 1: the scene with Nadeko.
In this scene, Nadeko is specifically and obviously trying to seduce the oblivious Araragi. To that end, Nadeko is in control of the camera. The camera is portraying her exactly how she wants to be perceived, and most of the humor of the scene is drawn from the contrast between her fumbling, obvious advances and Araragi’s upbeat obliviousness. This is the first of many scenes where a female character attempts to use her sexuality as a weapon, and Araragi’s responses make it clear that the camera is not from his male perspective – it is portraying the way she is attempting but failing to be perceived. Additionally, this is the first of countless scenes where almost all the emotional content of the exchange is contained in the direction, not the script. This isn’t surprising, considering this show is directed by the great Akiyuki Shinbo, but it’s clear even this early that Shinbo has a bone to pick with the way anime portrays sexuality, and his superior, winking control of the camera’s eye comes up again and again.
Let’s run through a few more examples. The next scene, Araragi meets his sister, and this is completely unsexualized – in fact, they even go so far as to incorporate a traditionally grossly fanservicey shot (a crotch shot), but because of her outfit and stance, it’s totally neutral. At this point in time, neither of these characters consider the other sexually at all, so why would the camera? Shinbo knows what many directors fail to either know or care about – that the positioning of the camera both has a significant emotional effect on the viewer, and always conveys information. Information about tone, about self-image, about stakes, about the way one character views another… anime is a medium with literally infinite framing potential, and Shinbo is going to talk about that whether the viewer likes it or not.
The next scene we’re with Kanbaru, and it’s back to “fanservice” – but the context is entirely different from the Nadeko scene. In this sequence, it’s a girl using her body to deliberately fuck with Araragi, because that’s the rapport they share. Unlike Nadeko, there is no subtlety in Kanbaru’s sexuality, both because that’s more representative of her in-your-face personality, and because she just knows Araragi better. She uses her sexuality as a weapon, not to seduce Araragi, but to simply throw him off guard. But again, she is entirely in control of the camera’s eye.
Skipping ahead, we have an episode where Shinobu is naked basically the entire time, but the tone and impression are completely different. The camera trivializes her nudity because to her, it is trivial – it is not sexualized, and is treated in a way very similar to Horo from Spice and Wolf – it doesn’t shy away from it, but also doesn’t fetishize or draw attention to it. Meanwhile, in a brief conversation with a fully clothed Hanekawa, the camera is all about the character’s sexuality. This is because Hanekawa is an inherently seductive presence to Araragi, and they both know it – the sexual tension just barely unacknowledged between them is apparent in the camera’s eye. Again, all these scenes contain the majority of their context simply in the framing of the character – while their conversations are more whimsical and plot or banter-focused, a huge amount of information about the relationship the characters share is conveyed through the camerawork alone. Intelligent cinematography is like a freaking superpower.
And now we get to the big one.
Episode 8. Dental hygiene. The last great point of this series.
To me, firstly, this episode is goddamn hilarious. The primary joke of the second half is, “brushing teeth should not be this sexy,” and that joke only works if the audience can feel how sexy it is for those characters. And this team is obviously gifted enough to know how to pull off a scene like that.
And that’s impressive enough on its own. But what I really think this episode is doing, what I think the point is from the beginning straight through the end, is talking about Intimacy.
I think, and this is pure hypothesis, but it seems pretty reasonable to me, that Shinbo asked himself, “what do people who love fanservice get out of it? Why are they watching an anime, and not just porn? What does this show have that actual direct sexual gratification lacks?”
Intimacy.
The toothbrush scene is so erotically charged because of the intimacy involved, and everything in the show/episode leads into this. First, Karen and Araragi’s relationship always has a weird, semi-flirtatious charge to it, as they’ve moved from younger traditional antagonistic siblings to one of those bicker-flirting couples. Then, everything Karen does at the start of this episode is designed to put Araragi off his guard and in a place of intimacy/discomfort. Her outfit does so much work here, and it’s all her intentional, meaningful decision. First, it serves as a striking contrast against both her normal outfit and her personality – the bee exercise outfit is absolutely her, androgyny is absolutelyher, carefree sexlessness is absolutely her, and putting her in such a constricting, gendered, sexually charged outfit serves to throw off all preconceptions Araragi has about interacting with her. Second, the fact that it isn’t her outfit, and in fact doesn’t fit her at all, puts her in a place of vulnerability, and this also throws off Araragi. Finally, it directly is designed to be sexy, and prove she’s in control of her sexuality, which is something Araragi has clearly been struggling to come to grips with as he attempts to act like a role model for his sisters. All of these things further Karen’s goals in this episode – make Araragi so uncomfortable he’ll agree to introduce her to Kanbaru. All these are choices of the character, not the learing cameraman, and the effect these choices have on both Araragi and the audience is very much the intended effect. Everything else she does – the confession about how his insults used to really get to her, her basically physically assaulting him – all these further that one clearly understood goal.
But I was talking about intimacy. So, what the actual toothbrush scene does obviously builds off this place of discomfort/vulnerability/overt sexuality she’s been intentionally provoking. It combines this with the relationship these two have been building, a great deal of bantering buildup, and a close monologue from Araragi to place the sex stuff in a position of complete emotional honesty. Sure, it’s also played for humor – but the humor is mostly based on the fact that it’s funny brushing teeth can be this sexy, and as I said, for that joke to work at all, the audience has to truly understand that this scene is sexy to these characters. Most powerful moments in most media are powerful not just because of the audience’s emotional reaction to a situation, but because they can empathize with a character’s emotional reaction to a situation. This effect drags us further into the text/film/show and girders our connection with the characters involved – at that moment, we feel for them more deeply than we do for ourselves. Thus, all the prep work of this episode works to help us understand these characters completely at this moment, and when they react to this scene as if it’s incredibly erotic, we can understand it to be erotic as well. The connection between the characters is honest, and the way the show is conveying their emotions to the audience is honest as well – intimacy is really just another word for honesty. This honesty, which makes this scene so strong, is a part of why most fanservice is so bad – because it’s dishonest to the characters, and portrays them as sexual objects when they’re not actually feeling like sexual objects in that moment. But more than that, this honesty is almost entirely lacking in conventional pornography. Conventional pornography is generally a collection of soul-deadened actors performing a service for a fee – sure, they’re naked, but it’s the furthest thing from intimacy you could possibly imagine. To find someone disrobe emotionally, you have to look to art. And so the point of this scene is “Even in a scene as ridiculous as this, honesty can make it ring true.”
One last tangent, but it was very interesting to me, and I never would have thought of it if not for the strong points raised by Nisemonogatari. I think this intimacy issue is a large part of why something like K-On is so damn successful. This is a kind of fractured and difficult point to make, mainly because the characterization in K-On is very difficult to describe as “honest,” but I think from the point of view that these are valid characters, K-On attempts to create a continuous mood of emotional honesty and friendly, unabashed intimacy. It invites the viewer into a safe, loving environment free from any of the hidden motives and defenses that characterize the real world, and is always completely honest with the viewer. For those who watch Community, K-On is basically like the ultimate Abed experience – a world based on rules you understand entirely that loves you unconditionally, and is willing to share all of its emotional secrets with you. Intimacy porn. I mainly bring this up because there was a thread a few days ago where someone said they like K-On because the characters feel “real.” Now, to anyone who knows anything about character writing or, frankly, human beings, that’s a ridiculous statement – but I think what was really meant there was that the characters feel honest, which, though they are very fabricated constructions, is certainly true within the context of that show.
So yeah, the toothbrush scene forced me to reevaluate and perhaps legitimize the emotional appeal of “cute girls doing cute things”. And I think that’s exactly the point Shinbo was trying to make – that sex will never be as appealing as honesty, and that intimacy is ultimately the core of the erotic. And that this, in addition to the issues about male gaze, camerawork, storytelling, and perspective he’s already addressed, is why fanservice normally hurts shows – it’s impersonal and dishonest.
So no, I don’t think Nisemonogatari is a big fan of fanservice. In fact, I think it’s the ultimate, staggeringly coherent statement against it, complete with endless demonstrations of the ways sexuality really can be used to enhance and augment storytelling. And I could not be more freaking impressed.