Favorite Anime

AKKO:

Okabe RintaroU – Steins;Gate

WARNING – SPOILERS BELOW

Steins; Gate is a dark/psychological drama anime. I’ve rated it in the Masterpiece category, and it’s my #2 favorite series. The main character, Okabe, takes the cake for my favorite male anime character. He is one of the most deep and complex characters I have seen in anime. Really, it’s because the entire anime of Steins;Gate is devoted to exploring his personality. Even the other characters’s purpose within the anime was to help us understand Okabe. At first, Steins;Gate is silly and fun, but it takes a very serious dark turn.

Okabe has a tremendous amount of depth in the anime. Even his initially silly personality is explained – it was originally done for Mayuri’s sake. Eventually, it became a part of him just as much as it was for her. Okabe is marked by several different kinds of relationships with the other characters. What was most interesting is how he reacts to the main tragedy of the anime – the killing of an untouchable character. What is really well done is seeing how the constant deaths take their toll on Okabe. Eventually, the death itself becomes meaningless as Okabe becomes desensitized to it – it becomes yet another number.

Part of the toll that is taken is the passage of time. The anime itself is over the course of two weeks. However, due to the effect of time traveling and repeating events over and over again, it was probably years’ worth of time. They never really say how long it was, but it had a significant impact on Okabe. Interestingly, it even changes the nature of the relationships between Okabe and the others because he has had years’ worth of time with them that they did not get to experience. It created some really interesting dynamics.

Okabe is a rare character because we got to see what happens when a person is pushed too far. In addition to having his motivation of saving his childhood friend, his actions become slowly tainted by anger, frustration, and desperation as the deaths keep mounting. It was so well animated, that you can see the stress of the situation keep weighing on Okabe. The result was the most powerful scene I have watched to date – the confrontation between Shining Finger and Okabe. The sheer raw intensity of that scene is unmatched in any other anime I have seen. It was the culmination of anger, betrayal, and desperation even somewhat mitigated by his still lingering feeling of friendship. An extremely complex scene within an absolutely stellar anime.

Zenko:

Yakushimaru / Myoue – Kyousougiga

WARNING – SPOILERS BELOW

This was, in all honesty, a very tough decision, and my conclusion actually surprised me a little when I really narrowed it down to Yakushimaru / Myoue from Kyousogiga. But it’s true—he has it all. The depth of character, the slowly unfolding backstory, the personality, the great animation of facial expressions…. In the insanity of multiple universes and crazy characters, Yakushimaru stands out as a solid rock of practicality (sometimes to the point of pessimism), even with his magic monk beads.

I watched Kyousogiga beginning with episode 0 (which I do highly recommend), so my first introduction to Yakushimaru was as the “man-slut monk” that seems to be the guardian of three kids in a dream-like world. He’s grumpy and sarcastic from the get-go (which I liked), and then one immediately gets to add to it that he sincerely cares for little Koto. It was a great start that just kept getting better as the story unfolded.

Yakushimaru is a fascinating entity. Little Koto may be the main character of Kyousogiga, but the whole story is really about Yakushimaru trying to find his place in the world—either world!—and his long, long journey to get there. When watching it, it isn’t about saving the world from destruction (even though that’s what’s technically going on), it’s about saving Yakushimaru. It’s about Yakushimaru coming to grips with who and what he is.

So, who is he? He is not the natural son of the monk and the rabbit-in-goddess-human-form, he is a human boy adopted by them…when he was dead, having killed himself upon seeing that his real family had been murdered. He is then brought back to life to become the son and heir of the unusual couple, three things he does not want. His siblings are drawings come to life to push him toward inheriting the monk’s divine powers to create, but Yakushimaru doesn’t want it…and fights it for hundreds of years in a fantastical world where he desperately clings to any scrap of mortal humanity that remains within him. With the arrival of little Koto, he finally adopts himself into the family by finding his place as her big brother and acting on that filial love by accepting his own existence as meaningful and truly needed by someone.

Congrats, Yakushimaru, you really are my favorite.

AKKO

WARNING – SPOILERS BELOW

For the purpose of the anime challenge, I consider Code Geass and Code Geass R2 to be the same “series.” Code Geass is rare in the anime world as being an “anime-first” series – it didn’t start out as a light novel or a manga or a visual novel (video game). I saw this anime back in 2007 or early 2008 and then I saw its sequel, Code Geass R2 in 2008. About 7 years later, it still remains my favorite anime series.

It’s a dark/psychological anime with some mecha elements – situated perfectly in my favorite “strike zone.” It’s very melodramatic, but also an extremely intense spiral of ever greater tragedy. I still remember watching the first episode, which ends with Lelouch using the Geass power to force several soldiers to kill themselves. I thought “this is going to be good,” and boy, was it.

There are a lot of things I count as my “favorite” about this anime, but a couple things really stand out. The protagonist was a genius, but a highly flawed character. He makes serious mistakes that have actual consequences both against him and within the world. Really, this anime was an example of consequences – things that characters did had very real impact on everyone else. To accomplish this, the writing was exceptionally well-put together. There’s a dramatic principle called Chekhov’s Gun: “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” – Anton Chekhov. In Code Geass, the rifle was fired.

I would be hard pressed to find many extraneous things in there – even the silly school scenes had important parts to play. One of the really interesting parts was how it used comedy to rest and reset from the tragedies, which otherwise could have been overwhelming.

I’m a fan of endings other than happy endings, if done well. If you take Code Geass as a standalone, it’s a very dark tale of a boy who tries to change his fate/ place in society but ultimately fails, getting everyone killed. Code Geass R2 goes further and takes on a somewhat redemptive nature that is still very tragic. I won’t spoil the interpretation of the end of Code Geass R2, but if you are paying close attention, you know exactly what happened. That ending is one of the strongest scenes I have ever seen.

Zenko

I have to admit that Code Geass is probably tied here, but since Akko has pretty much said it all for our mutual love of Code Geass, I figured I might as well slide into my other favorite.

There are so many varied elements in this anime, the superb balance of which really makes it solid. It is a story with deep, meaningful purpose told through the ups and downs of the brothers’ journey to get their bodies back. There are intense sequences where they literally fight for their lives, emotional moments to make you cry, and ridiculously funny scenes where one is reminded that they really are just kids. But it’s not just the Elric brothers—there are so many deep characters to get to know, and by the time that final season’s theme song comes around, those aren’t just a bunch of faces that it pans across…that is everyone you know and love.

The animation style in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood feels as if it was designed with my preferences in mind. There is a certain soft roundness to it, every face is unique and wonderfully expressive, and the style changes to fit the mood. It is smooth and dynamic in fight scenes, amazingly subtle and detailed in the tender moments, and then flips out into the wildly expressive cartoonish style for the comedic parts.

It is this masterful balance of these three areas (not only reflected in the animation, but the story, as well) that keeps it moving without getting bogged down in any one element, and puts one on something of an emotional rollercoaster by the end (I cried for probably the last four episodes). It lends credibility and multi-faceted personalities to each character, all backed by a strongly-built world with a great amount of detail and wonderfully convoluted elements that I simply love.

On a final, brief note: the Japanese voice actors really complete the characters with supremely expressive voices and delivery that really complete the experience and demonstrate just how well-rounded this show is in its execution.

Full marks, Brotherhood. Zenko signing off.