Burrowowl

As hoped, after fifty episodes, Code Geass is done. Lelouche vi Britannia’s struggle is over, and we have our winners and losers. There are certainly some plot threads that were left unresolved — the interaction between Lloyd and Rashata comes readily to mind — but not many, and none that were prominent to the story. The final plot twist was appropriately dramatic, if not unpredictable. Not to spoil anything, but calling his plan “Zero Requiem” was a dead giveaway.

Over all, I’d give Code Geass an A-. Very much a worthwhile investment of about twenty-four hours of viewing time, a series I’ll likely remember fondly several years from now, and one of the few multi-season shows I’ve been willing to see through to the end recently. I give them credit for maintaining animation quality over the haul and for finding such an entertaining way to mix together so many Japanese animation tropes (particularly the ones I normally avoid). Partial credit for easing off a bit (at least towards the end) from the continuous escalation of scale and power level so typical of the action genre. Deductions for the overabundance of “just as planned” hare-brained plot twists.

Fourty-nine episodes into Code Geass and I just can’t wait for the final episode. Not out of a great burning edge-of-my-seat anticipation of the latest cliffhanger. No. At this point I’m watching with the morbid curiosity of a driver that slows down and glances over at the upended sedan in the median. That guilty little tug that makes you need to know something you don’t really want to know. I’ve already remarked on the silly procession of shocking revelations, crosses, double-crosses, triple-, quadruple- and pentuple-crosses. It’s still going. Happily, it has been several episodes since any new loose ends have been introduced.

Code Geass has been an interesting show, very well-produced and executed despite its manifold thematic problems. Its producers took a broad array of weaknesses and forged them into strengths, but could not seem to get past its cast of over-the-top, too-clever-by-half leading characters. Here’s to hoping there won’t be a third season!

It’s been a while since I’ve commented on any anime. That would be because I’m really only following Code Geass at the moment. This past week saw the twentieth episode of its second season, and I am convinced that the writing staff has been smoking crack. The number of paper-thin plot devices characters has grown completely out of control, with a couple dozen conflicting interests butting heads, and so many plot twists that things have devolved into a simple matter of “what’s this week’s crazy revelation going to be?” This show has truly been a guilty pleasure, what with its Clamp character designs, giant robots, anti-western sentiments, melodrama, love triangles, weaboo fightan action, magical superpowers, and its mess of stupendously-competent characters that keep preventing each other from accomplishing anything.

A big part of me hopes Code Geass ends permanently soon. Wrap up the main thrust of the plot (Lelouche vs. Charles) and be done with it. I’m accepting recommendations for titles that have the following qualities: not a high-school romantic comedy, not tragically hip, reasonably interesting protagonist, reasonably unpredictable plot. Haven’t seen a lot of those floating around lately.

The release schedule was a little halted, but the Madame Mirage plot arc has reached its natural conclusion with issue six. The Kenneth Rocafort artwork held up nicely throughout, and the tale is wrapped up nicely with a rather predictable but well-executed climactic showdown and denouement.

A trade paperback version is slated for later this year, which I recommend if you get the chance. It is well past time that American comic books get past the tired old protagonists and villains of the past. The world only needs so many Batman, Spiderman, and X-Men stories.

Back when I first mentioned the Order of the Stick here, I lamented that far too many of the truly funny comic strips online have kicked the bucket or degenerated into something completely devoid of entertainment value.

Add to the list Chainmail Bikini. It never strayed from its core concept, following a group of RPG nerds fumbling through a grab-bag of hurdles both within the game and at the table. Mostly at the table. As the panels jumped back and forth between the game setting and the gaming table, the bad mix of player preferences and poor DM management of the situation created all manner of amusing conflict. The illustration was excellent, conveying the tone of both settings with deceptive ease. The artwork was unlike the American comic book or comic strip art I see all the time, nor was it some slavish weeaboo attempt at Japanese comic art.

Order of the Stick slogs on at an irregular rate, and Penny Arcade will probably always be good. Real Life Comics rounds out my final three now, which used to tickle a couple of geek niche points but now is mostly just good for poking fun at Texas and our Californian preconceptions about that odd, odd place.

Earlier today I spent matinee money to see Marvel’s new Iron Man movie. Absolutely worth it. It’s probably the best-executed superhero movie of the decade. Go see it. Don’t doubt, just go.

When I first saw a piece of cover art for Madame Mirage, I thought is was some kind of Carmen Sandiego bit. Brunette with a wide-brimmed hat, champagne flute in hand, surrounded by tuxedo-clad assailants. How will Carmen get out of this predicament? I was wrong, of course. The two have little in common save for some thrilling headgear.

Produced by Top Cow Productions, generally known for bringing us Witchblade and comic-book adaptations of Gatchaman and Tomb Raider, Madame Mirage is a tale of treachery and revenge. Set in a near-future where technology led to the rise of heroes and villains with superhuman powers, this series uses a now-familiar premise borrowed from The Watchmen, Powers, The Incredibles, and the Nightmare of Futures Past in that there is a population of former super-heroes and super-villains whose operations have been banned. Some supers turned themselves in and have presumably been put into protective custody, many resisted and were forced into captivity, some went to ground. Madame Mirage uses her powers of illusion in a crusade to bring down a criminal organization that traded in their tights and capes for suits and ties.

The artwork, by Kenneth Rocafort, is an interesting blend of highly-stylized character designs and ink work that creates the impression of details through the use of coloring that gives more texture than precision. In several places, a key character on the page is little more than a doodle of ink lines, but the color work gives a richness to the frame as a whole. It reminds me of some of the older Eclipse trading cards and a Paranoia comic that came out ages ago, when airbrushed art was briefly in vogue. Madame Mirage recalls that brief fad without clinging so tightly to some high-falutin artistic conceit.

The plot itself suffers from a heavy-handed Mary Sue syndrome, with the protagonist outsmarting and outmaneuvering and outclassing her opponents at each turn, with even the cliffhangers working into a pre-arranged plan. Once the main character has so thoroughly demonstrated her superiority over all opposition, it gets harder and harder for me to maintain interest; harrowing predicaments fade away. The edge-of-the-seat anticipation is replaced by a disinterested curiosity as to the precise manner in which the bad guys will trip all over themselves and be duped (again) by some ingenious web of deceit. This is a problem I’ve run into with Superman, the Silver Surfer, and most Robert Heinlein books.

The first plot arc is about to wind down with issue 6, after which we’ll see if the series has any real staying power. If the cliffhanger ending to issue 5 is handled properly, Madame Mirage will likely end up on my subscription list for a while to come. If it continues on its current track, it will have amounted to little more than a trashy little pile of eye-candy at the back of a longbox under my stairs.

Poking around on some of the anime blogs that I view from time to time, I see that we’re heading into a new season of shows soon. It occurred to me that I hadn’t picked up any of the Fall 2007 series. Why was that? In the interest of concision: they sucked.

Maybe they didn’t suck, but they certainly weren’t right for me. Over the past couple of years, the slice-of-life school comedy and endless-string-of-misunderstandings-romance clichés have really worn thin for me. It really doesn’t matter to me if they’ve got some tsundere, yandere, deredere, moeblob, whatever in the show. It’s about as appealing to me as all those prime-time broadcast sitcoms that I never watch either. This meant that shows like Bamboo Blade, Sketchbook, Myself; Yourself, Goshuushou-sama, Clannad, Kimikiss, and whever the heck else people were watching for the past couple of months never had a shot. Didn’t even merit a single viewing and nothing anybody posted in their blogs tempted me to think otherwise.

I gave Ghost Hound a fighting chance, by which I mean I labored through the first couple episodes. There were no characters that appealed to me, nothing about the premise that intrigued me. Having recently seen Ghost Hunt and Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, I’ve got high standards for spooky/creepy content these days. Sorry.

I probably would have watched the second season of Genshiken if it weren’t for the pyschic damage that a couple of episodes of Lucky Star inflicted on me a few months back. Anime geeks making shows about anime geeks brings disturbingly-pathetic images to mind. It was like the main character from NHK Ni Youkoso had made a cartoon while drinking himself to a stupor, crying himself to sleep, and masturbating. It’s a genre niche I’ll have to stay away from for a while.

Gundam 00 I skipped because it’s Gundam. Bandai, you’ve tricked me into watching your crap years ago, but never again! I’ve learned my lesson.

Shakugan no Shana is one of those shows that I watched at first, but just couldn’t get behind. The premise was interesting, but the execution put me off about six episodes into the first season. Watching the second season just wouldn’t have made any sense.

I may go back and check out Rental Magica at some point, and Dragonaut didn’t put me off as much as I figured it would have; I just never made the time for it. The Winter 2008 season isn’t looking too hot at this point, either, but at least there should be some more Sayounara Zetsubou Sensei coming in.

Sayounara Zetsubou Sensei is the tale of a teacher who lives a life of despair. Each episode is generally split into one or two short stories about an interaction between Itoshiki Nozomu and one of his homeroom class students, each of whom has some terribly-exaggerated characteristic, ranging from the perpetually-optimistic Fuura Kafuka to the vocally-withdrawn Otonashi Meru (who is horribly abusive via text message).

Each of the characters’ names are what amount to Japanese-language puns reflecting their personalities. For example, Itoshiki Nozomu is spelled 糸色 望. If you compress the first two characters into one, you get 絶望, which means “despair.” The cast, while individually quite shallow, make for a variety of great comedic gags when mixed together. When Chiri, the obsessive perfectionist, forces herself into a love triangle with the stalker-girl Matoi, the jealousy and moral indignation that follow are simply hilarious.

Production values are excellent, with a rather bold tendency towards switching up the visual presentation at key moments, replacing scenery with solid colors, dramatically altering lighting, and inserting photography to disrupt or enhance the mood of the scene. The production studio, Shaft, goes so far as to oscillate between soft sepia tones with fake scratches and dust to bold colors and high contrast mid-scene. The character designs lend themselves well to character close-ups, which is put to great effect when a character’s forthright attitude in a conversation is reflected by the camera shot: straight on.

On an unusual note: the opening theme song is actually a pretty passable tune. This flies in the face of my general impression that the Japanese should not be allowed near guitars.

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann drew to a close this weekend, bringing to a climax Simon and the Dai Gurren Brigade’s quest for self-determination in the defiance of fate. Gainax did a laudable job of building up to a predictable but appropriate finish, avoiding what many feared would be a fall-on-their-face failure of a series conclusion.

There will be detractors, to be sure. Some people just cannot be satisfied. Bearing in mind that the story was at its heart a straightforward coming-of-age tale, all the pertinent loose ends were neatly tied up, the conclusion of the conflict was consistent with the over-the-top action that came before, and Simon’s eventual fate was appropriate to his character. Good job, Gainax. This was one of the better anime I’ve had the pleasure of watching.

Oh, and I was right about the brush-stroke titles in the end arc. Chalk one up for Burrowowl.