[Eight] Human Hands — Given

The cold opening of Given‘s first episode was my favorite six minutes of any anime this year. Despite not knowing anything about the story going into the series, these first six minutes floored me with their beauty and focus through framing, cinematography, and willingness to be quiet when necessary. (Too few pieces of media in general, not just anime, know how to be quiet when necessary).

Revisiting it having watched the entirety of the series showcases just how much care they put into this opening sequence.

[Nine] Round and round like dancing laundry — Carole & Tuesday

One of the most popular songs of my adolescence was The Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way.” If you actually bother to listen to the lyrics of this song they make no sense whatsoever beyond random phrases set to a catchy tune. Comprehension didn’t matter when a friend belted out “Tell me whyyyyyy” and you could immediately follow up with “Ain’t nothing but a heartache.”

Carole and Tuesday and how we talk about music

A world without music. A world without art. A world without — insert Shoji Kawamori voice here — culture.

This is the setting of Carole and Tuesday. Fifty years after Mars was colonized by humanity, everything culture-related is designed by algorithms. It’s not a society without culture per se, but it’s one where art is completely removed from human hands — a much more realistic outcome of what is currently happening across every artistic discipline.

Carole and Tuesday isn’t the first series to take on a world without music or art, but it could end up being one of the most prescient.

What The Idolm@ster SideM gets more than any other entry in the franchise (and how we talk about idol shows)

The opening moments of The Idolm@ster: SideM‘s seventh episode involve high school light music club turned idol group High x Joker’s Shiki Iseya trying to convince his fellow bandmates to film a promotional video. Jun Fuyumi reminds him that they have to request permission first. Haruna Wakazato and Hayato Akiyama quickly chime in.

“Because we are—”

“Idols~”

Cue disbelieving laughter.

Although the scene is a setup for what’s to come  — High x Joker fumbling through the making of their own PV — it’s also buoyant, guileless in a way that few idol shows are. By nature, anime idol television there to sell you the product of the idols themselves and their accompanying game or merchandise. This requires toeing the line between artifice and marketability. Err too heavily on the artificial in order to promote your idols, and would-be fans will walk away.

Fortunately, SideM is here to remind us that an idol show can be both genuine and marketable. SideM is just in time too, with all of the criticism that’s been heaped on idol shows —more specifically, male idol shows — as of late. Where The Idolm@ster (Anim@s) is now heralded as a surprising critical darling and The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls (Derem@s) gained traction in its second half, SideM has failed to catch on in the west like its Idolm@ster brethren. SideM is easily accessible, but rarely discussed. It didn’t earn enough traction to be featured weekly on Anime News Network. Reddit and Twitter discussion have been well below what even the maligned first half of Derem@s mustered.

There are myriad reasons for this, and one glaringly obvious one, but it’s certainly not due to a lack of quality. Consider this my case for watching SideM.

Watching someone do something that they love is always a special treat, and an unfortunately rarer occasion in real life than it is in anime idol series. SideM gets this more than any other entry in the franchise. Nothing is more charming than watching people realize that they’re really really good at what they do. 

[Six] Talkin’ ’bout my generation (A Silent Voice)

“While I was location-hunting in Gifu I started wondering what Shoya was like at that point: a kid who feels invincible but also deals with perhaps unfounded frustration. This song appeared in my mind with a bang.”

–Naoko Yamada on the use of The Who’s “My Generation” in A Silent Voice

Naoko Yamada makes many precise directorial choices in her film adaptation of A Silent Voice, including but not limited to the use of flower language and other non-verbal forms of communication to form emotional snapshots of the lead characters.

The most polarizing choice was her insistence that the film lead off with The Who’s “My Generation.” This naturally created a licensing nightmare, for which Yamada took full responsibility according to multiple interviews prior to the film’s release. “My Generation” also became the primary citation of the movie’s detractors, who said that the use of the song indicated a misunderstanding of the original manga’s meaning.