The naked man with the phone
Japanese animation seems to happen on another planet. Apart from lauded breakthrough films like Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and Satashi Kon’s Millennium Actress, we hear very little of it. The TV side especially maintains a reputation for being trashy, childish and cheap. No bullshit: a lot of TV anime is trashy, childish and cheap, but so is a lot of TV. And on Japanese TV, animation is not a side dish, but a main course. Popular anime shows get prime time slots, long runs of several series, follow-up films and big marketing budgets.
Someone interested in film – or visual entertainment in general – could do worse than keep an eye on this scene. For all the kiddy cash-ins, Japan has exerted a massive influence on animation worldwide. Its animators cultivated uniquely economical ways of describing motion and feeling, born of necessity when the process was painstaking and budgets were low. On this stylistic foundation was built an edifice of sophisticated and mature classics. Ghost in the Shell reinvigorated cyberpunk; Neon Genesis Evangelion used sci-fi tropes to create gut-wrenching Freudian melodrama; Miyazaki won the West over with deft storytelling and unparalleled craft.
Computers gave talented artists and directors a vast array of novel techniques to use and abuse, and offer lowered costs and raised production values across the board. As a result, TV anime through the ’00s increased in quality and quantity, with a constant scramble for new fads and angles, the output often formulaic but occasionally brilliant. Today, anime is slick, popular, confident and keen to try new things. And in Japan, it has a broader demographic appeal than you might expect. Shows for male viewers dominate, roughly split into young adult (shonen) and grown-up (seinen) programming. But there’s a good line in quirky romances for the young female audience (shoujo), and again for their grown up counterparts (josei). In this latter category we find Eden of the East, a smart, unusual thriller. It is definitely a contemporary show: it finished its initial run in June last year, and has a feet-on-the-ground modern day setting. Two movie sequels, one released and one still in development, are showing in Japan only. For this review we’re just looking at the series, which is to be distributed in the US by Funimation.
Combining elements of ensemble comedy, romance and conspiracy thriller, the series draws a cast of charming and believable characters against a Bourne-esque background of shadowy trenchcoats, gadget phones and improbable plot twists. Despite giving a very strong positive impression in the first few episodes, the series fails to make good its promises and ends in a tangle of its own plot threads. Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating example of grown up, contemporary anime, with an assured style and a pleasing willingness to jettison the usual clichés of the form.
Saki is easily the best character in the series, confident and reluctant by turns, and with a quiet sadness that is expressed as much by animation as Saori Hayami’s voice acting. Having little direct connection with the main plot, she gets sidelined later in the series, which is criminal. Her story – she’s a recent graduate and a recent orphan, faced with finding a job and building a life on her own – is more interesting anyway.
The series opens with Saki stood in front of the White House on a trip to Washington DC. She is disappointed to find it lifeless and located a good mile behind a perimeter fence. A romcom-style chance encounter introduces her to a friendly, naked Japanese man holding a gun and a phone. Romcom is the appropriate register: the scene is amusing, not hilarious, and sweet without being properly touching.
The rest of the episode recalls the first Bourne film: the part when Jason meets his female lead and they escape in a 2CV, and you imagine the film might swerve off into a light comedy road trip. Bourne Bourne Bourne – it’s all over this series (naked man with phone, a.k.a. Akira, is the protagonist with an amnesia problem) and even gets a shout out (or is it a disclaimer?) in the first episode.
It’s impossible to ignore the production values. This series has some of the best character design and general attention to detail I’ve seen. Director Kenji Kamiyama probably has something to do with this, being responsible for the excellent and kinetic Ghost in the Shell TV series. This operates on a different level, however, keeping the agoraphobic urban atmosphere but losing the gunplay and danger. Instead, it focuses on the details of character interaction – conversation, reaction and a peppery, melancholic mood. This is made more intriguing by a budding romance between the two leads, which despite being deftly depicted is sidelined as the series proceeds.
As the plot develops, it begins to drag. The short 11-episode run belies the magnificently slow pacing. It attempts, Lost-style, to constantly drip feed you new elements of the mystery, and while this works as a technique to keep you watching, I never felt that I cared about what was going on. The mystery centers on the Selecao, twelve strangers given unlimited power and resources, and a phone with a hotline to a mysterious woman who can make anything you want come true. The geopolitics is robust, but is mixed in with some bizarre, farcical elements and misjudged penis-based comedy (you heard right). For instance:
- An expert hacker and freedom fighter known only as Pants.
- The fabled Johnny Hunter, a woman who kidnaps male virgins and collects their Johnnies. With a cigar cutter, naturally.
- A plot to gather 20,000 unemployed young men (or NEETs in the euphemism of the day), strip them butt naked and take them in shipping containers to do hard labour in India.
The last example is only partly farcical: the 20,000 naked NEETs are kinda played for laughs, but also are an important part of the conspiracy jigsaw. It all comes to a frothy conclusion in the last two episodes, which blow moon-sized craters in the plot and provide a none-too-subtle lead in to the sequel movies.
The NEETs do come up a lot, and here we might find the soul of the series – its message, if anything, is a great sigh of real-life sadness at the talent of Japan’s creative, tech savvy young people going to waste in the face of an uncaring business establishment. In the final analysis, the message comes across as confused and a little insincere, but top marks for effort. I can’t help feeling the British TV could stand to do more like this: addressing an uncomfortable subject in an even-handed way, without compromising the fiction or getting preachy. The closest thing I can think of is Spaced, with its cast of adult children and their lessons in growing up learnt ten years too late.
Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself, but I could see Eden of the East doing well on British TV, and not just because the opening theme is an Oasis song. If, say, Channel 4 were feeling adventurous, this could sit very nicely on a 11pm weekday slot, in place of a new drama or comedy. I get the feeling that Eden of the East is something rare: an anime series for normal people. By forgoing the excesses of the genre, it makes for something with genuinely broad appeal. If it had relied less on abstract mystery and more on its intriguing characters, it could have been a treasure. For now, file it under ‘curiosity’.
Tags: 2009, animation, anime, bourne, eden of the east, japan, kenji kamiyama, Television
If someone made me boss of Channel 4 tonight, I’d immediately see to getting hold of Paranoia Agent for twice-weekly broadcast at 11pm. And so the first episode would be on – tonight!
[...] far this blog has been about cinema (and a little bit of anime), but there’s no reason we should restrict ourselves so completely. We’ve talked about doing [...]