Iwa ni Hana

Toshokan Sensou / Library War (up to Episode 8)

[Spoilers ahead]

1) It seems fair to say that this series focuses on storytelling instead of visual eye-candy. There is seldom any particular frame that stuns you with its beauty, but two such frames came at last at the end of Episode 8.

These would not have been out of place in a Shinkai Makoto movie (and they have the very colour combination that Shinkai uses time and again as well). I want a high-resolution version of these as wallpapers for my 21" monitor.

Two animation films related to Miyazawa Kenji (宮沢賢治): 'Chuumon no Ooi Ryouriten (注文の多い料理店)' and 'Spring and Chaos (イーハトーブ幻想 KENjIの春)

Chuumon no Ooi Ryouriten / 注文の多い料理店 (1993)

The story (which is based on one of Miyazawa Kenji's short stories for children) is simple: Two men hunting for game in the forest stray into a restaurant, where they find out that they are the game of some mysterious creatures. The picturesque art direction is very pleasing - every frame feels like a picture from a well-illustrated children's book.　

According to Wikipedia, Okamoto Tadanari (岡本忠成) was the director of this animation short, but died before he could finish it. Kawamoto Kihacirou (川本喜八郎) stepped in to have it completed. That explains the artistic uniqueness of this animation short. Unfortunately, these two creators are not very well-known inside or outside Japan.

I really ought to set up a picture gallery for this wonderful work.

Spring and Chaos / イーハトーブ幻想 KENjIの春 (1996)

This is essentially the biography of Miyazawa Kenji told in animation. To me, the real meat of this animation film is in two psychedelic sequences - one when he is writing and the other when he is dying.

The sceneries of the natural landscape of the countryside are also pleasant to look at, and yet there is a sense of yearning throughout the film that he really ought to be in a better place than this. This film also does well to illustrate how his blend of idealism brushes painfully against reality. For example, there is a scene where he gazes on farmers working in field and hears a baby crying in the distance, and (to me) this is evocative of the Old Testament curse of Adam having to till the soil and Eve having to bear children after their Fall.

Apparently, this was directed by Kawamori Shouji (河森正治), who has always struck me as a more 'commercial' director (he is now directing Macross F this season). This was a bit of a surprise.

'L’Homme sans tête' directed by Juan Solanas

The premise of the story is interesting: A man, living in rather modest room overlooking a rather depressing industrial landscape, is about to go on a date with the woman of his dreams tonight. However, he does not have a head and he decides to buy a head for this very special date...

The allegory of the story does not go amiss - the protagonist is symbolic of Everyman in modern times. He is but a interchangeable unit of labour in his social/economic environment. He is faceless to himself and to the world at large. To bestow 'individuality' on himself, he goes to a shop to splurge on a head (ie. 'finding his identity' through consumerism). He tries on different heads, and at the end finds the answer to his facelessness.

What touched me in particular was the sharp contrast of images of dehumanizing industrialization (ie. things that make life depressing) against images of finery and romance (ie. things that make life worth living) - especially in the sequence where a red silk handkerchief falls from a hideous industrial complex. There is just something expressive of the meager human hope to pursuit happiness in the face of social/economic factors beyond his control in that sequence.

Another strength of this animation short is the depiction of the nervousness and exhilaration the protagonist feels prior to the date - something that is rather odd and ennobling in these permissive times. The modern dating game too is about interchangeable human units - you are just more faceless to others than you would like to believe.

I heartily recommend this.

Introducing manhua artist Han Lu 韩露 (attn: fans of Yuki Kaori) and a word of prediction about Chinese manhua

Just looking at the picture below, one would have thought that Yuki Kaori came back to the public spotlight at last with new works. Actually they are the earlier works of Han Lu (韩露), the manhua artist of Chang An Huan Ye which I wrote about earlier here.

Among her earlier works was Apocalypse of the War, a series of interconnected short stories told in retrospect about the Second World War. The tone of these stories is a strange combination of seriousness, irony, lyrical poetry, dark twistedness and Yuki-Kaori-style angst. The plots are well thought out and have many twists and turns. I would personally think of this as a product of Han Lu's self-exploratory phase when she imitated the early style of Yuki Kaori to perfection before she embarked on her currently running series Chang An Huan Ye, which is more expressive of her established individual style.

Still, I am curious as to how the tradition of shoujo manga will take root in the PRC and Han Lu will be one indicator of that. Here are a few trends and predictions I have:

1) Emphasis on sibling-like bonding with other young people over romantic love per se

Obviously, the one-child policy in the PRC means that most young people are growing up without siblings these days. You see some of that almost sibling-like bonding among the characters of Chang An Huan Ye. The strange thing is that the story is set in the Tang Dynasty and the characters by implication actually grow up in large families, and yet they form their closest bond with young people from other families and do not interact much with their real siblings (who do not appear at all). I think it is a workable compromise to integrate the sibling-like bonding that readers consciously or subconsciously yearn for into the story and still be able to recreate a confident, historic China (see point 2 for detail).

I say sibling-like bonding will be emphasized over romantic love per se - but then romantic love in Chinese culture has always been something like an extreme form of deep-rooted friendship. Romantic love is typically depicted as something springing naturally from two kindred spirits, and the basis for that is typically sibling-like bonding. For example, in The Dream of the Red Mansion, Baoyu and Daiyu are cousins who grew up together - they are kindred spirits who know each other so well that when Daiyu sends him her old handkerchiefs after a fight, he knows just what she means by that. Any other guy would have been puzzled by what she means by sending him her old handkerchiefs all of a sudden, but not Baoyu. That is the sort of romantic bonding that the Chinese mind sees as ideal.

2) Visions of a forward-looking, outward and confident China

Chang An Huan Ye is set in the time period which is considered to be the peak of Chinese civilization. It was a time when foreigners were welcome and women lived relatively free lives - probably a time present-day China finds easiest to identify with. You can feel something like historic pride in the display of riches and stylishness in the story - something which you also see in big-budget live-action films like Curse of the Golden Flower. I have a feeling that just as pre-war Europe was the place of romance in old-school Japanese shoujo manga, extravagant periods in China's history will emerge as the place of romance in Chinese manhua.

3) No doormat heroine

It is reported that the gender imbalance in the PRC has got to such a state that 50 million men of marriageable age will not find a wife. Also, girls typically outperform boys at school, and young women are typically given preference over young men in hiring decisions (because young women are perceived to be more detail-oriented, cooperative and emotionally mature etc). I think the demographic implications are quite obvious.

To put it simply, in place of the typical doormat heroine (representing the conformist 'good girl'), the crossdressing heroine / the androgynous bishounen (representing what young women secretly yearn to be) in Japanese shoujo manga, I think the typical heroine in Chinese manhua will be a very different animal.

4） Emphasis on mental prowess over physical prowess

It seems fair to say that China reveres the written word (文) and Japan reveres the sword (武). The seat of power in China is held historically by a scholarly elite, whereas the seat of power in Japan is historically held by a samurai elite. Word puzzles and the exchange of repartees in the form of poetry are the Chinese cultural equivalent of dueling with swords in Japan. The concept of 'personal strength' is thus perceived differently. In Japanese manga/anime, the protagonist typically wants to become strong in a physical and combative sense (even in a setting where brute force seems to make little sense). 'Strong' female characters are typically strong in a martial-art sense (ie. Mokoto, Barusa etc). I think in Chinese manhua, the protagonist would typically want to become strong in an intellectual sense, and 'personal strength' will be characterized by mental horsepower. Chang An Huan Ye is again an example - problems are solved by erudite knowledge (ie. of being well-read) and logical reasoning (ie. of having the mental capacity to apply what you have read).

That are just my predictions and interpretations. I am always open to suggestions and corrections.

In the meantime, more gorgeous illustrations of Han Lu after the jump.

Japanese law student blawgs anime/manga/light novels

Just a quick post on a Japanese blog I just stumbled on - apparently it is written by a law school student in Japan. The blogger comments on (among other things) anime/manga/light novels from a legal perspective and also writes parody fanfics with a legal slant.

For example, there is a parody of how Nana would render the preamble of the Constitution of Japan in her own words.* There is also a legal opinion on SOS Brigade as an illegal unincorporated association similar to the Communist Party in pre-war Japan.

The blog also discusses various topics on Japanese law. Personally, I would think of it as a blawg that uses anime/manga/light novels as fodder for fun.

The idea is not new to me though - I remember from a novel I read (Robertson Davis' The Cunning Man) that one of the characters, a doctor with a love of literature, actually sets out to keep a journal on his musings about the illnesses and physical well-being of literary characters - What was the illness Madame Bovary suffers from? What relation does the starch diet of Jane Eyre have on her robust mental health? The doctor often complains that novelists know nothing about medicine and that they ought to take into account the medical histories of their characters when they set out to write novels.

Still, as more and more young people carry their love of anime/manga/light novels into their white-collar professions in adulthood, one may expect fanfiction to be taken to the next level: perhaps in the form of mock transaction agreements securitizing the receivables of membership fees of Ouran High School Host Club into SPVs in the Cayman Islands (this is a plausible explanation of how Kyouga raised funds).

(Source: ttp://d.hatena.ne.jp/ronnor/searchdiary?word=%2a%5b%a3%c9%a3%ce%a3%c4%a3%c5%a3%d8%5d)

* I remember George Orwell in one of his essays also did a similar exercise in rendering a passage of the Old Testament into the language of political propaganda in the 1930s.

A word on androgynous beauty and the appeal of BL in shoujo manga

Let me begin by sharing an idea I have always had in rationalizing why something is beautiful to me:

X does not have the title to bear the aesthetic characteristics of Y, and yet X, under certain circumstances, bears those aesthetic characteristics of Y better than Y does. And the more fleeting or unreal those circumstances are, the more I like X.

For example, maple trees are not flowers, and yet for a few fleeting days at the height of their full glory in autumn, maple trees are more beautiful than any flowers (at least to me). That is why I like maple trees better than any flower.

By the same analogy, Kamijo of the Japanese band Versailles is not a woman, but when he is dressed for a public appearance, he is more beautiful than any woman (at least to me). I cannot say I like his music, but if I were pressed to nominate the most beautiful human being I have ever seen, I would put forth his name without reservation.

Having said that, drawn human beauty moves me in a way that photographed human beauty or even human beauty in the flesh cannot. (It is perhaps by the same analogy that I get hungrier looking at drawn food than at actual food.) This brings me to androgynous beauty in shoujo manga.

There are always what I call ならぬ男 and ならぬ女 in shoujo manga - you may think of the former as l'homme manqué and the latter as la femme manquée. I personally feel that bishounen characters in shoujo manga are essentially young women in drags - they are not so much female fantasies of the ideal man, but female fantasies of what young women could have been, were they given the same social and biological freedom of men and yet retain their feminine qualities.

This is where the only explanation of BL that has made sense to me so far comes in: BL is a projection of romance where marriage, childbirth, family obligations, money, social status and all the rest of it from your typical boy-meets-girl scenario do not really come into play. There is no question of who is marrying up or marrying down. There is no question of little mouths being borne unto this world to feed. There is no question of who should look after elderly parents (typically the wife's responsibility). There is no question of who is making more money and more successful career-wise (always a factor if the woman makes more than the man in a relationship). That is perhaps the appeal of male/male relationships in BL - all factors that are part of the equation of heterosexual relationships are removed, and both persons in the relationship need not compromise their identities and ambitions, whereas a woman in real life typically gives more in a heterosexual relationship (in doing housework, caring for elderly parents on both sides, putting career on hold to care for children, going through abortions of unwanted children). If one understands the weight of responsibilities and sacrifices of a woman in such a relationship and the subconscious or overt apprehension of young girls or young women at those responsibilities, then one may begin to understand the appeal of BL.

Kyoushuu (郷愁): Not just as simple as mere homesickness / nostalgia

There is a powerful concept in the spectrum of Japanese sensibilities called kyoushuu (郷愁). It's right up there with isagiyoi (潔い) - which is another chapter in itself that I will discuss some other time. The dictionary definition of kyoushuu is i) homesickness or ii) nostalgia. However, the way the word is actually used covers wider meanings than that and from my observation it typically falls under four categories:

1) Yearning for one's physical homeland

Homesickness. This is regardless of whether one has or has not been to one's physical homeland before. The bond to the physical homeland is so strong that sometimes it is not uncommon to see it as the primary driving force of a story. Take Toward the Terra, for example - the Japanese audience readily see that it is kyoushuu that sets everything into motion and the intensity of that kyoushuu is something close to irrational madness (狂おしいまでの「地球」への思慕・郷愁の思い). Everything else like romantic love, friendship, family bonds etc take a backseat to kyoushuu. I for one think that it is not just the sci-fi setting of Toward the Terra that facilitates the predominance of kyoushuu over all other sentiments per se - it is in fact a powerful feeling that strikes a resounding chord in the Japanese mind.

In Samurai Champloo, the most emotionally intense scene (to me at least) was in Episode 14 when Mugen falls unconscious and dreams of his past in his homeland, ie. Ryuukyuu. Ikue Asazaki's song Obokuri Ēemui certainly helped to produce that kyoushuu effect. But what was unexpected was that a guy like Mugen who did not ordinarily looked like he gave a damn about anything in this world had such a strong emotional bond to Ryuukyuu.

2) Yearning for a unique time/place in one's past

This is probably closest to what we understand as 'nostalgia' in English. This is not unique to Japanese per se. You see some of that in the works of Shinkai Makoto (though I think in his works nostalgia is contrasted against saudade - there is longing not only for something that is past and never to be returned, but also for something from the past that might return. But this, again, is another chapter in itself.)

Also, those of you who know Chinese may find it strange that kyou 郷 can refer to a place other than one's ancestral homeland, but apparently in Japanese words like furusato 故郷 refers not only to the physical place where one's ancestor come from, but to a place an individual has been to and lived in for a while. In other words, one individual may have several furusato.

3) Yearning for an experience not in one's past but in the past of one's ancestors

Toward the Terra also covers some of this. But the true meaning of this shade of kyoushuu is (I think) exemplified in this description of Tenshu Monogatari: 'This is a work that magnificently depicts through animation otherworldly beings and the kyoushuu for the illusion of fleeting love (妖しきものや儚き恋の幻への郷愁を、アニメーションによって見事に表現してみせた作品である。)'. In the context of the story, kyoushuu actually refers to the yearning of the heroine (who has never fallen in love before) to repeat her mother's mistake in falling in love with a mortal man.

There is something to the idea that one's life extends beyond one's birth, to the experience of one's parents and grandparents, and perhaps back to a time immemorial. The brain may have no memory of such experience, but the body remembers, and the body yearns for a deja-vu of that experience.

4) Yearning for an idealized/fantasized past

I have always complained that historic drama is not a forte of anime. I was puzzled to read review after review in Japanese saying that Miyazaki Hayao's movies like My Neighbour Totoro reeks of kyoushuu. It is the same thing with Mushishi - review after review of it in Japanese speak of the world of Mushishi as of unique worldview, pulse of life and kyoushuu (独特の世界観・生命感と郷愁).

I suppose My Neighbour Totoro may remind older Japanese audience of rural Japan in 1958, though I suspect the world of My Neighbour Totoro is probably an idealized version of rural Japan in 1958. As for Mushishi, the timeline is deliberately left vague - a good guess would be the Meiji Era, though if anything one gets the feeling that time never really moves in those isolated villages that Ginko visits - they seem to exist in some timeless vacuum.

I think this shade of kyoushuu refers not to the real historic past, but to an idealized or fantasized past. But the way the word kyoushuu shows up in Japanese sentences makes one think that the Japanese mind regards real history and fantasized history nearly as one. To put it another way, there is an extreme readiness in the Japanese mind to embrace fantasies that the western mind would find puzzling. (Think Ikki Tousen).

But there you have it, kyoushuu covers not only the objective past, but also the subjective past.

(Are there other examples of kyoushuu you can think of?)

Chinese animation short: 'The Face (面)'

I think I will just let the video speak for itself (no dialogue so no subtitles):

I like the art direction, and its heavy-handed depiction of the savagery of urban life.  It really feels ouch too.

Introducing gorgeous Chinese historic fantasy manhua 'Chang An Huan Ye (长安幻夜)'

Chang An Huan Ye (长安幻夜) is Chinese novel and manhua adaptation set in the Tang dynasty. Chang An at the time was (as we know) the capital of China, the greatest empire in the world. It was a city of luxuries and refined culture - it was also cosmopolitan in the sense that foreigners from far and wide traveled to and lived in Chang An. Among them was a jeweler from Uzbekistan named An Bi Cheng (安碧城).

Here is my summary of the character bios from Wikipedia:

Li Lang Ya (李琅琊) - One of the nephews of the emperor and the ninth son of an imperial prince. A typical  'aristocratic man of leisure'. He is gentle and lazy. His greatest pastime is to indulge himself in various supernatural stories. He has great knowledge in this area, and perhaps for this reason he sometimes lives in fantasy. He can be unexpectedly sharp at times, but most often he is extremely gullible. From the point-of-view of outsiders, he seems to be a problem child who leans towards being bookish and melancholic.

Huang  Fu Duan Hua (皇甫端华) - Li's best friend. He is from a family of military men and has a formidable rank in the army in spite of his young age. He is a playboy and does not like paying attention to details. He has all the flamboyant and over-the-top characteristics of an aristocratic young man. He knows he is handsome and makes a great fuss of this in front of women. He leads a busy and decadent life being in and out of relationships.

An Bi Cheng (安碧城) - The owner of a jewelery shop. He has both Chinese and Uzbekistan blood. He is blond and has green eyes, and is interested in anything to do with jewelery. He knows about rituals and magic tricks from dubious sources. There are many points mysterious about him - but the essential point is that underneath his beautiful appearance is a fervent heart burning for love of money.   

I think the illustrations speak a thousand words  - more after the jump: