Entry 039: "Kamen Teacher"

Dear Internet,

                Imagine if you will a school in Japan so horribly ruined that the teachers are afraid for their lives.  The students play mahjong and poker during class.  They smoke and carry lead pipes while walking the halls.  Gangs abound and destroy the building.  When a new teacher gets hired, he is told not to become too hopeful with the situation.  When he tries to correct the behavior of the students, he is thrown out a fourth floor window.  That is the setting for "Kamen Teacher," a manga from the mind of Tooru Fujisawa who also penned "Great Teacher Onizuka."  What follows is an action packed lesson in discipline.  

                With such a destructive setting it brings into question why the school had not folded in upon itself, especially since it is being herald as the worst of its kind.  That only brings into question just how many of these schools there are that seem to be ruled by the inmates.  Enter, Jumonji Hayato, a masked teacher who hands out supplementary lessons in the form of corporeal punishment that leaves the student with enough bruises that he looks like the last orange at the super market after everyone has squeezed it lumpy.  If they fail his lesson, Jumonji buzz cuts his initials onto the heads of his students so that all can know the lesson he instilled in them.  Eventually, the students are shaving their heads and wearing wigs to hide their shame.  

                "Kamen Teacher" has a lot going for it.  The premise is wild and crazy enough that you know it is going to be filled with ridiculous levels of craziness.  Everything from exploding vehicles and a fighting sequence featuring a Segway makes it into this manga.  Everything action oriented is well over the top and is rightfully so.  The only way that it could go any farther is if it leapt into the world of fantasy.  What makes it even better is the top notch level of drawings.  Everything is pristinely drawn and filled with detail.  Backgrounds are full of little nuances and do not often go blank or black.  When they do, it is only because the rest of the panels are being given priority or that there is not enough room in the panel to do so.  

                Beyond art, there is a central problem that "Kamen Teacher" tries desperately to point out.  There is a real problem with the schools of Japan.  Between bullying, high suicide rates, a broken school system that fixates on rote memorization instead of understanding the fact, and a plethora of other problems, many of which can be found in other countries individually, the Japanese student has much weighing them down.  It is amazing that any of them can come out as functioning adults.  "Kamen Teacher" begins to examine such facets.  It identifies the problem, but it also goes to the root of the problem.  Going back to the plot summary, Jumonji deals out physical punishment to the delinquents who use the same methods to each other and the adults around them.  This enters into the bigger gun fallacy.  If the person you are correcting uses force, than you must use a bigger force against them to placate them.  The problem with this is that it only works for the short term, and not very well.  Eventually the underdog force will find a way to strengthen itself to overpower the dominant force.  It leads to escalation more than anything else.  

                Jumonji is well aware of this, especially if it could rebound onto the other teachers at the school.  Instead, he tries to find the root of the problem.  He attempts to identify the reason that there is no unity among the students of the class.  This includes finding out what occurred before he was hired to teach.  By learning about his students at a personal level and not treating them as a group of stereotypes, Jumonji is able to truly help them.  That does not mean bonding with them or gaining their trust.  It would be laughable to say that most of the students really liked Jumonji by the end.  With that I have come to a point that I have forgotten to mention.

                Jumonji is an alter ego.  There is no real surprise to this.  Jumonji is a masked teacher who is really Gota Araki, the homeroom teacher for class 2-C.  To a certain extent they are the same person, but at the same extent they play two different roles.  While Gota is able to actually teach the students the material and serve as the comic relief, Jumonji acts as the imposing figure that is able to guide the students when they want to push back.  There definitely needs to be a distinct seperation between the two, epically because the ending.  By the end, it is the will and mask of Jumonji that is passed on to others who would bear it.  

                Just by the time that "Kamen Teacher" found a place to settle, its run ran out.  You can tell that the series got canned by how abruptly it ended.  The story showed that it very well could have featured each and every student in the class and the life they had outside the school.  Only two of the students out of the class were given this treatment.  The second one featured Gota learning on a personal level with one student instead of going a roundabout way as he did with the first.  It seemed very much to me that the manga was going to turn into a weekly series about Gota learning about the various problems his students were going through and utilizing Jumonji to aid them, while at the same time watching them turn into good adults.  Instead the manga ends quickly in two or three issues.  What it does with that quick ending is something that questions the solutions that people are willing to go to fix the situation of Japanese schools.

                The ending, if you want to know, brings to light that there are numerous other cases across Japan of other individuals appearing at schools as masked teachers.  The reason for this is not some sort of government funded program or a secret organization trying to correct wayward youth, but it is because the final straw is falling for the common citizen.  The common citizen, with no outside influence other than hearing stories of it elsewhere, is donning the mask and correcting the youth.  The mask acts a protector of their identity and allows them to acts without fear.  The government and the school system are unable to correct the problem, so it falls to the average person to fix the problem.  In a way, "Kamen Teacher" asks when the final straw falls what will Japan and its people do when confronted with their falling young adults.  Will they examine the problem at an individual level by treating the problem by working with the individual and treating them as such, or will they continue to administer broad sweeping generalized reform that manages people like gingerbread men, all coming from the same mold?  Time will tell.

                "Kamen Teacher" is a good manga that did not go on long enough to fully spread its wings.  What it is able to do in its limited run is confront only a few of the many problems that plague the Japanese schools and the students that make it up.  You can even say it criticizes the adults that teach there if you look close enough.  Sadly, it brief run limited its range of possibilities.  What "Kamen Teacher" does cover, it does well.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

 P.S. Tomorrow is the film "Funny Girl."

Entry 038: ".hack//Sign" Ep. 16-End

Dear Internet,

                There, ".hack//Sign" is done with.  I spent two days suffering through this show to scratch it off the backlog.  You can go back and read the last entry that I wrote because a majority of the issues that I took with it in the first 15 episodes is the same that I took with the second half.  

                The pacing of this show is absolutely terrible.  Nothing moves or happens for long segments of the time.  Instead, the show places the bulk emphasis onto character development instead of action oriented plot.  In my last post, I did not include a tag or label for "Action" despite "Sign" being listed as such on Wikipedia.  I withheld that tag because action occurs so very little in the entire course of the show that saying "Sign" was in the Action genre would be like saying "Green Eggs and Ham" should be labeled under suspense because Sam would not eat the eggs.  Past episode 15, the plot does move forward, but it happens all at once, sort as if it was making up for the fact.  There are only about 5 episodes, from 20 on, where the various characters enact with the world around them and actually battle monsters.  I will admit that there was some fighting going on in earlier episodes but those were either meant to be minor distractions or speed bumps as threatening as a shoebox.  The emphasis of the show is not action.  That is essentially what "Sign was going for, but it just highlights the vast waste of potential its setting had for itself.  

                The background sets are something that "Sign" had going for itself.  The artwork is well made and sets the mood instantly with bustling cities, thorny forests, etc.  Towering upside down castles compose a mixed up dungeon that showcase the insanity that rests before the cast.  A ruinous landfill city makes the perfect backdrop for the garbage remains of data.  The areas do have a sense of fantasy about them, but only three or four stand out.  The dozen or more other settings are passed by with little to no care.  There is no sense of spatial awareness brought about by the plot.  The only settings that matter are ones where one cannot usually get to.  The manner that the characters travel is never given a full explanation.  Instead, everyone seems to just beam up with some sort of transport ring.  The city introduced at the beginning of the show never feels special because you can just clink your heels to get back to it.  Other than for Tsukasa, dying has no deep meaning for any of the cast because at worse they get a slap on the wrist by being transported back to a gate and lose some "EXP," which none of them seem to care about.  This lack of danger until episode 25 means that there really is no tension unless you care about Tsukasa, which the story never really got me to do.

                The story wishes to portray Tsukasa as a victim.  And in most applications, it fits.  Tsukasa seems to have suffered tremendously outside of the game world.   Between beatings, a coma, and people dying close to her, Tsukasa has had it rough.  However, for the first seven episodes, and large sections of later episodes, Tsukasa acts as an anti-social coward who would rather runaway from the reality that she is trapped in a virtual fantasy then accept the help of those who are offering it.  She has nearly no motivation in bettering her situation in the least, and the show plays this up for drama.  That is basically what the central axis of the story is, getting Tsukasa to stop being depressed and actually do something.  There was one episode that showed her caring for a sick pig creature and made me hope that a little responsibility would change her, but that did not last long.  It gets even more ridiculous when it is revealed that her emotions, whether happy or sad, is what directly affects the World.  If I wanted to watch a show that follows around an angst ridden teenager slowly getting off their butt to move the plot, I would watch "Evangelion."  At least that was entertaining to watch.

It took 23 episodes for her to get to that point.

                Then there was the horrible dialog.  Everyone in this show seems to talk like a philosophy professor or pseudo-intellectual.  The dialog never seems to fit the character that is talking.  People that are supposed to be younger than 16 do not talk like kids.  Adults all talk like they are giving a lecture about interpersonal relationships.  There are Meta discussions about hypothetical situations that constantly feel awkward and out of place.  Maybe this was a poor translation that was corrected with the English translation.  I tried to listen to the English dub for a while, and it did add extra dialog that helped to clear up what people were saying.  But after listening to the lackluster voice acting for half an episode, I switched back to Japanese.

Dialog of the year, right there.

                The only saving grace of "Sign" is the musical accompaniment.  The opening song does have rather gratuitous use of Engrish, but the soundtrack is excellent.  From the sweeping vocals that are able to set the stage for the wonderful backgrounds to the Latin chant found near the end, the music takes center stage in this show.  The soundtrack is worth listening to without any context and would be worth the time to listen to instead of the show.  It is too bad that the rest of the show is not up to par.

                Overall, ".hack//Sign" is a bad show.  It takes much too long to get going, and when it does it never quite gets there.  The entire story could have been condensed to half the length or less.  The recap episode condenses about 17 episodes with little of essence being left out.  I wish I had not wasted my time with this show, especially after not even getting a climatic confrontation.  To top it all off was that the show never really got into the intricacies of online verses offline life very well.  It tried, but it never got me to care or felt like it mattered.  Instead, I would have rather spent my time reading "1/2 Prince," which actually does a good job of making a story follow a group of MMO players.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S.  Tomorrow is "Kamen Teacher."

Entry 037: ".hack//Sign" Ep. 1-15

You pronounce the "." but not the "//".

Dear Internet,

                Do you remember your first MMO?  Has the feeling continued throughout the years?  Do you remember having countless people play on your servers over the years?  Meeting, battling monsters, grinding, and finding like minded people and interests?  Was it enjoyable watching them have fun and interact like that?  Do you think they were excited at every turn of events and forming parties to go exploring in caves and dungeons with beasts lying in wait?  I suppose they did and still do.  I only played one MMO for a while until I realized that I had no reason to keep playing.  That pretty much sums up ".hack//Sign."  It is a long winded, slow moving, story empty animation that would make me question following it if I was viewing it on a weekly schedule.

                Let us start off with the barebones plot that has been given so far.  There is Tsukasa, a player in a video game who cannot log out from the system, or The World.  After a while it is hinted that this is because the person playing Tsukasa is in a coma.  Then there are the numerous characters with next to no personality and interesting qualities.  I tried to compose a description for the multiple individuals that populate the show, but after a while none of them seemed to make any difference.  There is Mimiru, a sword wielder who befriends the main character if you want to call it that.  Tsukasa might not because he or she is such a massive pile of depression and angst that it actually slows down the progression of the story to a standstill for the first seven episodes.  There is Bear, another sword wielder who is the oldest member of the cast, but that is really only implied.  There is Silver Knight, the vice-leader of a group of players who act as the defunct police since the administrators and moderators of the game never seem to care what happens at all about what is going on.  He might as well be the leader of the group since Subaru, the pretty girl commander of the Crimson Knights, only ever acts as a figurehead and has not done one useful thing so far.  There are a few other individuals that dot the cast but I do not want to waste my time with them.  Instead of making the plot move forward, they only act as coffee filters, slowing the already molasses speeding story.  Except for the cat, that damn cat that twists the narrative at the Cheshire level.

                The plot has barely moved with 15 episodes down.  So far, the only bit of information about the characters outside of the World is that Tsukasa might be in a coma, that Bear is an older man with a spoiled son, and that Mimiru is a girl that is in high school or near there.  This complete lack of grounding for the characters leaves the viewer to question just who the people that are playing this game are.  Not including some sort of information to the various persons does not create some sort of suspense to their identity when it is the entire cast. Tsukasa identifies the cat as his or her dead mother and meets some sleeping, floating girl who may or may not be the way to log out.  There was an attempt to find a way to get Tsukasa out of the game but that did nothing to the status quo.  

                And that is one of the biggest underlining problems so far with "Sign."  Nothing changes the status quo.  Everything pretty much stays the same.  The only exception is that at one time Tsukasa was wanted by the Crimson Knights, but now he is not because of a deal struck up between the two.  Other than that, the settings are not really changing because the characters are able to go from one place to another in the blink of an eye.  There was a hidden dungeon at one point, but it lasted all on one episode before collapsing.  The action is nearly nonexistent.  You would think that a show that has a fantasy video game as its setting would have intense battles against mythic beasts that can kill with one swipe of their paw.  No, instead the bulk of "Sign" is about interpersonal relationships.  People talk on and on and do very little in between.  After talking to one person, they go and talk to another, sometimes lying and sometimes manipulating information.  But it never really feels that anything actually changes.  Even when one individual betrays Bear's trust by telling someone else about a secret, he continues to treat that character the same as before with little reason as to why.  "Sign" even had an entire episode where Mimiru sits and waits for Tsukasa.  A passerby references "Waiting for Godot," which Bear later explains the reference.  "Godot" is not just a comparison to that episode but to the entire show so far.  The audience is waiting for something to happen but the cast would rather talk about nothing in particular.

                To top that all off is the complete roundabout way all the characters talk.  Every time they talk it seems like they are referencing something that needs to be asked to be explained.  Imagine if I said "It took off after a little push," when meeting you after having not seen you for a while.  You would then say, "What took off?"  I would reply, "The airplane, remember?"  There might be an understanding that it was the airplane if that was the last thing that we were monitoring last, but starting a conversation like that is plan out rude and pointlessly add confusion.  I should not expect you to instantly remember what we were doing when last we met, nor should I begin talking to you by making a confused statement that constantly warrants a question to clarify.  That is the nature of "Sign," a bunch of confusion between the numerous characters that really never gets anywhere.  It is like a spinning top, going around in circles and only moves away from where it started when winding down.

She said this twice in ten seconds.

                Tomorrow might be better.  So far, "Sign" is reading like a "No U-turns" on the highway.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

Entry 036: "Throne of Blood" (1957)

Dear Internet,

                Recreating a masterpiece is not something easy.  Remaking one from the foundation up is neither so.  Even when one has a nearly guaranteed formula, it does not ensure a well made final product.  Why do I mention all this?  It is because "Throne of Blood," Akira Kurosawa's 1957 dramatic film, is a transpose of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" to the era of samurai and warlords.  There is no denying that.  It took me nearly half the movie to figure that out, but I was too far along enjoying it to count it against it.  This film is one of those rare cases where the original material is not shred apart to the point where only a chalk outline of its original nature remains or the original concept feels out of place.  "Throne" does not go for a perfect reproduction of "Macbeth," nor should it.  Instead it weaves a tale that could easily be mistaken for a completely Japanese film with no outside influence.

                The story starts with a foggy featureless mountainside with an eerie song being sung in the background about the numerous people that have died there.  A monument comes into view reading, "Here stood Spider's Web Castle."  Already the viewer knows that the story occurs sometime in the past and that the castle has fallen.  The subject is not if the fall of the characters will occur but when they will.  The scene changes to the castle in its heyday.  Various messengers on horseback begin to deliver messages to the lord of the castle telling him of an incoming attack by a traitorous general, Fujimaki, which has begun to overtake the various forts that guard the castle.  Quickly other messengers begin to appear telling the lord that two of his commanders has turned the tide of the battle and defeated the mutinous Fujimaki.  The two commanders, Miki and Washizu, are summoned to the castle but get lost along the way.  They are met by a spirit who predicts that Washizu will be installed as the Lord of the North Garrison and then the eventual Sovereign of the Spider's Web Castle and that Miki will become Commander of First Fortress and his son will be the ruler of Spider's Web Castle.  The spirit disappears and the two find their way to the castle where they receive the titles that the ghost had predicted they would obtain.  From there, the fall of the two begins.

                I have already ahead of myself.  First there is the spirit that meets them in the forest and how the two meet him.  Everything about the scene before, during, and after the spirit are so overwhelmingly reminiscent of a Japanese ghost story that one would have trouble identifying it as the Three Witches scene from "Macbeth."  Before the two find the spirit, they are sent to wander the woods while on horseback.  When the two men find it, the spirit sings a spine tingling song while working on a spinning wheel.  Compound that with the name of the castle and forest, you end up with the classic ghost story of a spider making its web.  The makeup on the spirit makes it nearly identical to ukiyo-e and other Japanese wood-block prints.  Even the rest of the cast is given makeup to make them appear as classical drawings.  Then there is the twig hut that the spirit "lives" in, which is only composed of a skeleton and completely see-through.  The technical seen can be seen when the hut disappears in a long shot while the camera is in the shot.  Piles of skeletons dot the area around the immaterial hut.  Afterwards, the two men are allowed back to the realm of the living, but only after riding through a thick fog for a while.  

                All of this adds up to something ethereal.  The spirit sings of the weaknesses of man and compares them to insects.  With the comparison of the spirit to that of a spider, the song fits.  Already the spirit had captured the two in his physical trap.  They were in his parlor whilst trying to get to the castle.  With only a few words, he was able to ensnare them in his mental trap.  By telling them of the promotions that they were to receive that day, which had already been decided, the second part of the prophecy would then become an enticing bait for them.  If the spirit was right about one thing, why would it not be right again?  It can be argued that even without the words of Asaji, Lady Macbeth here, Washizu would still aim for becoming the next ruler of Spider's Web Castle.  

                Another thing that I want to cover is that the entirety of the characters presented and the scenes presented are like those met in Japanese operas and paintings.  I already said that the spirit was a near photocopy of Japanese folklore descriptions, but the rest of the cast fit this.  Each character is given identification that a stage play would make use of to identify the cast to a large crowd that needs quick identification, or a painting that uses symbols to distinguish various persons.  Washizu and Miki are both introduced wearing flags on their backs, one a centipede and the other a hare respectively.  Not only does this create a quick visual reference to distinguish the two for the viewer, as would be the same reason on the battlefield for soldiers, but it also gives an insight into their personalities.  Washizu, mirroring the actions of Macbeth, slinks and crawls his way to the lordship with a poisonous bite.  Miki is slaughtered helplessly while never being a threat to Washizu.  Then there is the crown of the lord of the castle.  The crown has upon it a crescent that is so large that you might pull a muscle if you twisted your head too fast while wearing it.  Practicality aside, it acts as a quick identifier as well as the scepter he wields, which looks more like a fan, but I digress.

                If we continue down the story, we come across Asaji, Washizu's wife.  She is the only true villain of the film, and how she is a villain.  She is not in the film for ten minutes and she creates more problems than some antagonists do in entire shows.  Give her another ten minutes and she has turned Washizu's life and moral system utterly upside down.  Not only does she plant murderous thoughts in the heart of her husband about claiming the throne, but she also makes him believe his childhood friend Miki is planning to betray him.  Much of her actions are the same that Lady Macbeth did in the source play, but here they have some renewed vigor.  Kurosawa magnifies the betrayal of the king by placing Asaji and Washizu in front of a room with the blood of the traitor Fujimaki adorning the wall, molding and decaying the wooden panels.  The viewer and Asaji wait expectantly while the regicide is committed.  To complicate her character and the reason for Washizu's betrayal is her pregnancy that has a surprising turn of events later on in the story.

                Asaji is the only named female character in "Throne" that makes an appearance.  There is a midwife and other females who are not named, as well as the late lord's wife who is neither named nor shown because she commits suicide off screen.  With Asaji being the only female of note, there is a terrible danger of the film as coming across as misogynistic.  Even the witches are changed into a male spirit.  The only argument that the film is not saying that a woman's tongue is the seed of destruction and dissonance is the same one that makes it.  Again, Asaji is the only female, not because women are not present in such events and stories, but because there is little capacity for them in such stories.  "Throne" is about war and politics.  It is about commanders of soldiers rising through the ranks because of conflict.  Inserting female roles for the sake of it would detract from the work unless there was context behind it.  Could have the poisoned words that Asaji spouted have been said by a male subordinate of Washizu?  Yes, but Washizu would probably not have listened to him.  Here, the fact that it was his wife made all the difference.  If anything, "Throne" is a cautionary tale to both genders.  It warns men of the softness of their hearts to their wife's words and cautions wives about the hold they have over their husbands, for the reason for the betrayal eventually became for naught.

                "Throne of Blood" is a great film to be watched again.  There is something special about how Kurosawa captured the core aspect of "Macbeth" while not degrading it.  It is a unique film that can be watched without even knowing about "Macbeth," and that is what is important.  It does not become some sort of "I spy" game where you spend more time guessing the reference than watching the film, like "O Brother, Where Art Thou."  Instead, it spins a spider's web of deceit and murder that can chill the marrow by wholly transporting the audience into a world of spirits and cutthroat subordinates. 

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow is " .hack//Sign" the animation.