Entry 046: "Saki" Ep. 16-25 End

Dear Internet,

                There, I have finished "Saki."  I am done with t and have no desire to go back to it.  A majority of the things that I talked about in my last post continued into this episode.  About the only difference was that some of the gender dynamics were rescinded, but not by much.  There was an elder male character that was introduced as the grandfather as one of the side female mahjong players, who had taught her how to play.  The farthest his character got was admitting regret that he was unable to finance the possibility of allowing his granddaughter to enter a prestigious high school with other high skilled players.  This was about where his character ended.  I am not sure what I was hoping for, maybe some sort of soliloquy about an older generation placing its hopes and dreams upon its children or the value of mahjong as a means of creating friendships.  None of that, and just another male character glossed over.  One step forward and two steps back, however.

                The only male member of the mahjong club continues to be seen as the butt monkey of the show.  He enters a singles tournament and loses in the first match.  Later on, he is shown to be playing an online match and his score is so horribly bad that it defies logic.  How in the world can a player be that bad when he plays in the same club with lightning wielding mahjong prodigies?  Surely, some of that static electricity would rub off onto him.  Is he so busy being the club gofer and buying them tacos that he has no time to actually play the game?  And why does he even play at all if he is so bad?  No one has that kind of patience or could receive any kind of joy by playing a game that they never win at all.  Is it because of the friends he has made in the club?  It would have to be because there is no other reason.  Sadly, they treat him more as a servant than anything else.  In the last episodes, when all the characters from four different schools get together to play mahjong to get better as a sort of "training camp," he gets left behind to play online mahjong.  Why?  The show gives no explanation.  One would think that playing against a wide range of highly skilled players would benefit him, but it is more likely that they figured that playing against him would be a waste of their own time.  This is made even worse when one realizes that there is a player at the "training camp" who is apparently even newer to the game than he is.

Pot and kettle, folks.

                Perhaps, I am stressing the male gender dynamic on this show too much.  The show is supposed to center around the female characters and their relationships, but even that feels awkward and forced to pander to an audience that asks for nothing but brain candy.  For example, there is no conflict on this show that stems from interpersonal relationships.  Everyone gets along with one another to the point that nobody can possibly be considered an antagonist or threat.  When one of the main characters gets her stuffed penguin stolen from her, the thieves admit to their crime and are instantly forgiven.  When the same penguin rips apart, it is instantly fixed like new.  When it is finally returned, there are no misunderstandings or hard feelings anywhere to be found.  Where is the conflict?  Where are the misunderstandings or lack of trust in strangers?  It does not exist.  Problems are barely squeaked out from the plot and are resolved in minutes.  When I saw the penguin stolen and ripped apart, I was hoping to see that it might lead to some sort of ill will and rivalry.  Instead the tension is dissipated before it is even allowed to be made.  This is not the only time that tension falls apart like this.  Numerous times, characters are introduced and given some sort of back story where they had to overcome obstacles.  The problem with this is that all their problems are in the past and have no bearing on the current situation.  Their obstacles have already been cleared.  They are no longer battling the demons of their past.  All it does is add pointless filler in an attempt to create a menagerie of characters that the audience can fawn over.  It does nothing to actually affect the story, but only hopes to account for the play style of the next random character.  

                Another thing that shows how pandering this show is the way characters betray their personalities.  The rich girl who is either composed all the time or a comical wreck blushes beat red when given a compliment.  The strategic calculating girl falls all to pieces when her friend praises her.  This continues so on, and I can understand that there are certain times when one looses composure, but "Saki" does this to nearly every character to the point where it undermines the character traits placed upon those characters.  It is like saying that under every single female's outer coating is a gooey center that is just waiting to be gush.  Every female gets this treatment, even the single one that I thought would actually be a point of conflict.  One of the other mahjong clubs in the show has a female coach to lead the group.  When one of the members of this group does not perform satisfactory to the coach's expectations, the coach slaps the student across the face.  Think about that for a moment, the adult coach slaps the student across the face, not for losing but not playing as well as she should have.  Bells and sirens should have been going off, and the show admits to this drama and creates tension in later scenes.  However, when the team eventually falls out of the tournament, the coach is rather ennui and gives a little praise to one student who tried her hardest to turn the game around.  Not only is there no explanation given as to why the coach has a turn of heart, but it also is a return to the lack of conflict that the show centers around.  No one can be the bad guy, and no one can create over arching problems.  The show could have played up the tension even more by having the coach get caught physically abusing her students or having the players create a united front against the coach to make her back down.  There was something like the latter that occurred at the slapping scene, but it was a single character the stood up against her.  It all just feels so anticlimactic since there is no crescendo outside of the matches.

                The matches is what is apparently the big draw of this show, but it is to the point where all the audience does is sit back and wait until the big hands are played.  I can understand that the show wants to skip through all of the pointless interlude during play in the same way that a baseball show would gloss over the time in between innings.  It would be boring to watch if that extra time was still there.  However, when the good hands are being played, it goes by so fast that I do not even have time to see what is going on.  Perhaps this has more to do with the fact that I am unfamiliar with the game, but making the game speed by to the point where it is a blur does not help it in the least.  On top of that is the fact that the game feels so much like it is based on luck rather than skill that I cannot help but this that I am being had.  Give me a chess board or maybe "Clue."  Those are pure skill games.  I do not have to worry about some sort of "heart of cards" or "feeling the flow" of the game.

So, it boils down to random draws?

                Do I need to point out again the fan service that this show deals out left and right or would one recognize how silly and out of place it all feels?  You do not have to answer that, Internet.  Even the show ponders this question.

The tiles float as well as this plot.

                "Saki" is a bad show.  It is painfully boring and nonsensical to watch.  Even nonsensical shows like "Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo" are at least comical with its nonsense.  "Saki" can either fall into two categories of audience.  Either it is for those who play mahjong, who I imagine would question the purpose of framing mahjong games with such an abysmal plot, or it is supposed to be for those who want to watch high school girls interacting with one another and swoon over the notion that they are doing cute things, sometimes to each other.  As someone who knows nothing about the game and finds the notion of another high school drama that adds nothing new, I would rather spend the time learning the game from an angry elderly Chinese man who chain smokes and yells profanity in a language that I do not understand whenever I screw up.  That would at least be more entertaining if not more educational.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow is  the 1963 "Lord of the Flies" movie.

Entry 045: "Saki" Episodes 1-15

Dear Internet,

                "Saki" is a Japanese animation based upon the manga of the same name.  The story follows the titular character, Saki Miyanaga, as she enters her highschool mahjong club.  Saki is not unfamiliar to the game, for she played it with her family, she admits.  However, her experiences were less than enjoyable.  If she won too much, she was chastised, and if she lost, she had her sweets withheld.  To combat this, she learned to play without winning or losing, making her final score plus or minus zero.  This is apparently a very difficult feat that catches the eye of her other club members.  What follows is the journey into the world of mahjong.  

                "Saki" does not feel terribly unique.  There are a few other mahjong centered works out there, not many but there are.  I have not had a chance to watch them, but I definitely feel like I would rather be doing so.  If you examine the way the show handles the game that it centers around, "Saki" falls a bit short.  There is little to no explanation at the beginning episodes.  And before I get any further, let me say this is not solitaire mahjong that most Westerners would think, which is more like a cross between Old Maid and 52 Pickup.  There are a few terms being defined here and there, but nothing is explained from the ground up.  I cannot mark against the show for my own lack of knowledge of the game of mahjong, but it is hard to follow along when I do not even know what all the tile sets consist of.  I am fifteen episodes in and they may as well be making up the rules as they go like the first season of "Yu-Gi-Oh" for all I know.  While I was watching "Saki," "Eyeshield 21" constantly came up in my mind.  You can go back and read those reviews if you wish, but I will try and save you some effort.

                Weighing the two shows against one another exposes a number of things.  They both fit one of the most used formats of Japanese anime/manga, which is to say that they follow a bunch of high school students who participate in a shared extracurricular activity.  Nearly every club, sport, and other group has been done to the point where it is less a format and more a formula.  Take a few tired out character types, throw a dart at a wall filled with club groups, pull a card from a pile to determine that weeks plot, and BOOM you have a show.  This is not to say that having a formula is a bad thing, but adding nothing new to the situation leads to stagnation.  It is even worse if the show is not very entertaining.

                Let me try and weigh a few things between the two shows.  "Eyeshield 21" had plenty use of laser lights.  When some player was racing down the field, clouds of dust would blow behind them having been raised from a field drenched with hours of rain.  When someone would jump three meters into the air to catch the winning pass, an image of the great Mountain Everest would appear into everyone's minds.  If someone was able to run a perfect route, then they would appear as a coal locomotive running at full steam, plowing into any unfortunate soul in its path. All of this was meant to illustrate a point.  A majority of them were meant to give physical emphasis to the actions that the individuals were enacting.  The rest were to illustrate the mental image that other were imagining.  "Saki" does the same thing, or at least it tries to.  Numerous times in the show, a character will pick up or place a mahjong tile and lighting will leave their fingertips.  If they lay down a few tiles, they might spark with electricity for a few seconds after.  One character is apparently able to make all her discarded tiles completely disappear from the sight of the other players because she is so invisible herself.  

Perhaps the Japanese should harness that energy as a new type of energy source.

                The differences between how the two shows handle these overly emphasized actions are minute but the difference is important.  "Eyeshield" was trying to add more effect to pure physical actions.  The characters were running, jumping, catching, etc.  All of these were already feats.  The additional graphics are just there to add some extra excitement.  "Saki" uses similar effects but only because the actions that the characters do are not physical.  Mahjong is a sitting game.  The players only move their arms and never very quickly.  There might be a small light of hand trick outside of official matches, but those are rare.  "Saki" uses the various outlandish laser light graphics not to add dramatics to actions, but to create it.  If there were no lightning bolts shooting out of people's eyes and fingers, there would be nothing to highlight the importance of the hands the characters played.  "Eyeshield" had numerous "special moves" that all had some crazy over the top feel to it, but at least each one was explained as a certain technique and given real world equivalents.  "Saki" just feels like it has to add the effects to keep its audience interested. 

                Another big problem with "Saki" is gender roles, which is only highlighted when juxtaposed with "Eyeshield 21."  The cast dynamics are completely switched around.  "Saki" has a cast nearly completely composed of teenage girls.  At the time of this writing, there are five guys that have lasted longer than five minutes as a passing individual.  There is the male mahjong club member, two fathers of the main cast, a butler, and an announcer.   The male club member is nothing more than a gofer and low skilled player.  One father is a shown to disregard his daughter's feelings about which school she wants.  The other father is Saki's, who by implication is one of those whose bullying led to her refusing to play well.  The butler is only the only useful male, but he only exists as a miraculous problem solver.  The announcer is constantly shown up in his examinations by the female mahjong pro.  Oh, wait, there is the photographer who accompanies the reporter, but he has no real role.  The two shows are supposed to share the same age and gender demographic, except "Saki" is supposed to have a slightly older group.  "Eyeshield 21" is filled with males to the brim.  I think I even counted nearly every female character in one post.  The difference here is that in "Eyeshield 21" the female characters were actually important and significant.  They managed the teams or provided emotional support to the players.  The dynamics of the show would be drastically different if they were removed.  In "Saki," the only reason guys are there are to make jokes about breasts, but even those are mostly handed to other female characters to deliver.  Males are either useless bodies whose roles could be easily completely cut out or are the source of problems that the show does not want to talk about.  Even the most important male character, the one in the club, has no bearing in the games being played since the games are gender exclusive.  He has had no big effect on the plot.  Even when he runs out to obtain food for one member of the club in time for the second half of her match, she still does poorly in the rest of her round.  He introduced Saki to the club, but that is about it.  After that first episode, he is a butt monkey and gofer.

                But why do I mention demographics and "Eyeshield" in all of this?  It is because the dynamics of the two seem so far apart despite its key audience is only different by a few years.  It can be argued that the difference is a big one.  For there comes a time at when boys stop looking at the fairer sex as a foreign concept that warrants self segregation but is instead as a heavenly body come down from the plane of paradise.  Boys begin to like girls.  However, each show handles it differently to such an extent that it highlights the problem with "Saki."  "Eyeshield 21" handles the girls with respect, treating them as individuals with their own problems and goals.  "Saki" treats them as eye candy meant to gawked at.  This is evident by the gratuitous amount of fan service that is poured out like yesterday's bathwater.  Throughout the show, steam clouds, blaring gleams of light, and well placed angles abound.  I can barely see past all that PLOT.  Would "Eyeshield 21" have done such blatant pandering if it was aimed at an older audience?  No, because it aimed for a higher ideal.  It was a showcase of ideals that showed what a male should strive for.  It showed that a man should be determined, hard working, striving for a goal, working together with his peers, creating bonds of friendship, becoming a better individual for its own sake, and so on.  "Saki" on the other hand has nothing to preach or impart on its audience.  There are no model men, just supermodel women to look at who are busy looking at each other.

Expect to be reminded of this by someone at least twice an episode.

                Tomorrow will be the final ten episodes, and try to cover the other glaring flaws of the show.  I do not think that it will get much better in that brief amount of time.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

Entry 044: "The Complete Father Brown" Pt. 2 End

Dear Internet,

                Well, I have finished "The Complete Father Brown," which I have learned is not actually complete.  There are 51 "Father Brown" stories, and this collection only covers 49 of them.  Before you ask, no, I will not hunt them down and speed read them for this review.  If you want an opinion bad enough for them, you can go ask Cleverbot.  I am already terribly behind and am writing this well after I should have started it.

                The fourth and fifth books, "The Secret of Father Brown" and "The Scandal of Father Brown," are really where Chesterton takes a strong emphasis on the nature of Father Brown and the manner that he approaches the mysteries placed before him.  In fact, it is the main focus of the vignettes that frame "Secret," the forth book.  What separates Father Brown from Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes copycats is the manner that Father Brown solves each case.  He does not pour over the evidence with a fine tooth comb and recall a mountain of obscure scientific knowledge that no sane individual would be able to retain.  He does not withhold evidence like a smart alec.  What he does do is examine the crime from the perspective of the supposed criminal and go through everything that would make the person commit the crime to the point just shy of committing it himself.  He examines the individuals that are suspected, those that are not, and examines the philosophies of each.  Father Brown attempts to understand the people that he meets as well as the philosophy that each lives by.  That might be putting it bluntly, since most characters, and real world individuals, would not admit to living by a specific philosophy.  Father Brown searches for a motive foremost and the manner of the crime falls into place.  This manner of crime solving is most apparent in the last two books.  

                What are also apparent in the last two books are the same length and flow elements that I had already mentioned.  The stories can sometimes get too complex at first for my taste.  It can be a bit hard to determine just who is essential to solving the crime, but I feel that is more my own fault that the book's.  Especially since that is a core aspect of the mystery story.  Creating a little confusion is tantamount to making the reader feel like a fool.  All mystery stories are made to make the reader feel like a fool, but a rightful and fair fool.  Nobody likes being made a fool if they are made so dishonestly.  Chesterton makes sure not to let this happen.  Everything is there for the reader to figure out for themselves.  Sometimes it is what is left out that makes a clue, but it is pointed out once the solution comes around and is usually shown to have been an obvious hole.

                Overall, "Father Brown" is a wonderful collection of stories that are simply enjoyable all around.  Some of the stories feel dated.  Considering that some of them are at least a hundred years old, this should be expected.  A large majority of the stories, however, are still solvable by today's standards.  The characters are enjoyable and well made, stretching a large spectrum of characteristics.  The crimes have a large range of possibilities that rarely do they feel like they are repeating.  The settings are illustrated well enough that they are painted before the reader.  All of this adds up to a good series of stories, but "Father Brown" is more than just that.  It has good dogma, which is essential to a work being great.  There are underlining levels of the human condition and how the characters react to it which are essential to the stories.  If a character is a Communist, Bolshevik, Christian, Puritan, Atheist, or some other group, it is essential to the plot, but never in the way might that one expect.  The doctrine of each group is analyzed and examined.  There is an amazing insight into each one that reveals the hidden facets that would be rather obvious, but somehow might not be.  Chesterton is a writer that constantly points out the truth and calls out the problem in any given situation, whose insight continues to resonate a hundred years later.

                On the matter of murder stories that I mentioned yesterday, there were 49 stories.  Approximately 18 were murder cases, 11 were theft ones, 10 had the crime avoided, and 10 had no crime actually take place.  These numbers are not very accurate since some stories had both theft and murder.  There were also a few that might be easily categorized a fifth category.  The concentration of murder stories were highest in the latter books, and book two had the least concentration of murders.  It still felt like those Brits were dropping like leaves on a windy autumn evening.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S.  Next is the anime "Saki."

Entry 043: "The Complete Father Brown" Pt. 1

Dear Internet,

                I suspect you have been well.  I surely hope that you did not stop working whilst I was gone.  Even while I was away, I was busy reading while I could.  Even when I was completely sick with a stomach ache for the entire duration of my time away, I kept reading when I could find the chance.  But alas, I was unable to complete "The Complete Father Brown."  Although, 554 pages out of 718 is nothing to sneeze at while being sick.  At the same time because of the abundance of stories that I have read in those 554 pages, doing a single post for the complete book would have forced me to cover too much material for a single post.  In a way, it is better that I did not finish it in these two weeks and force to shrink down a review.  So, here is what I will do for you, Internet.  I will try and cover the first three books that "Complete" includes in this post, and tomorrow I will try to cover the remaining two books, provided that I can finish the remaining 164 pages, which should not be that difficult.  The first three books are "The Innocence of Father Brown," "The Wisdom of Father Brown," and "The Incredulity of Father Brown."

                Father Brown is the titular character, a small and simple Catholic priest who normally resides in England.  Occasionally he will travel to far off lands for missionary work or travel from other reason, but the majority of his time is spent there in England.  The stories he is a part of are mysteries that abound with the usual list of theft, disappearances, murder and so forth.  All is in a day's work for the little priest who relies on common sense and reason to determine the culprit.  Unlike the private eye or the police officer of other mystery stories, Father Brown is less concerned with the justice of mankind but with the soul of the man who falls by the evils of his deeds.

                "The Innocence of Father Brown" and "The Wisdom of Father Brown" should be taken hand in hand for a number of reasons.  The first is the timeframe of the publication.  "Innocence" was published in 1911, and "Wisdom" in 1914.  "Incredulity" was not published until 1926, which marks a twelve year gap between books and the largest gap between any of the Father Brown books.  The second reason is the style of writing.  While it can be argued that Chesterton has a unique and almost iconic style of writing, after that twelve year gap there is a very distinct difference between how the stories are handled.  The manner that Father Brown handles the cases presented before him are the same but there is a slight difference that might be overlooked.  This is mostly due to the third reason, the length of the stories.  In the first and second books, there are twelve stories apiece.  "Incredulity" only has eight, as well as later books.  With each book averaging 150 pages, this means that the first two books move much quicker from one story to the next than the later ones.  This is probably due to the fact that Chesterton had to write the stories in "Innocence" for individual publications and had to keep them brief.  I cannot find information that hints that "Wisdom" was published in the same manner, but it can be reasoned that "Incredulity" definitely did not have this limitation because of the length of the stories and because of how long after it was published hints to a different manner of publication.

                The first two books with their quicker stories are fast paced and include less detail.  There are fewer characters and the mysteries are wrapped up sooner.  The stories are bite sized and quickly eaten and digested.  That quickness is a rather nice in that the stories never sit too long and mull constantly over the mystery.  There is also a certain lightheartedness to the stories that are harder to find in the later books.  I might have to come back to this point in my next review, but in the first two books, there seems to be a lot less murders going on.  I will get a final count to you tomorrow.  Instead there are thefts or implications of theft, much more often.  With the way that the stories go, I would be deadly afraid of ever meeting Father Brown, because it seems people are constantly getting killed while he is around.  The only way to prevent such from occurring to myself would be to stay constantly near the priest until someone else does die.  But I digress into that topic that all mystery series all fall into as they go on.  Eventually people are going to be killed, a lot.

                The third book, however, takes a slightly different turn.  Father Brown is recognized the world over as a sleuth and his advice on mysterious matters are sought out.  The stories are longer and more in-depth.  The mysteries are then of course more complex and harder for the reader to figure out.  I do not want to come across saying that more complex mysteries are a bad thing, but after reading two books filled with much shorter stories, it required me to change gears to reading ones that are more multifaceted in its presentation.  This has an instant effect on the reader.  Since more information is available, the clues can be hidden in more places and every little detail can set off the hairpin reflexes of the reader.  Chesterton knows this and works it to his advantage.  At the same time, Chesterton is able to expand on some of the core dynamics that make Father Brown unique.  

                Father Brown is a priest first.  Saying his business is in souls would be accurate but at the same time blasphemous to say is as such, lest it imply that he trades them like a money lender does with collateral.  He cares about the individuals that he meets, but not in a showy fashion.  He does not chase after the criminal at the end of the story many times, especially if there is a police officer around to do so.  His duty is foremost that of a confessor, and if he can see some redeeming light in the criminal, Father Brown will seek out the soul to save it.  It is a refreshing change from cop dramas where the main character is constantly itching to punch the criminal in the face.

                The only thing that I can say against the third book is that there is not enough of Flambeau, the world renowned thief turned private investigator.  For one reason or another he is my most favorite character in the books.  Perhaps it is because he is more relatable than Father Brown, because sometimes Father Brown's quiet nature comes across as being indifferent to his surroundings when in fact he is mulling over the details.  It could be that Flambeau lives so much more passionately than Father Brown.  I am not sure what exactly my reason for liking Flambeaus is so much.  What did strike me was that he does not even show up in the third book, or at least not much at all.  He makes a key appearance in the forth book but that will be for tomorrow.

                With that I think I will stop here for now, Internet.  There are one or two things that I still want to talk about, but I will roll those in together with the fourth and fifth books.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop