Speed Grapher – The End
30 January 2008
Speed Grapher’s been on my To Watch List for ages, sitting in the dark recesses of my external hard drive, waiting. When I pulled it out last night and decided, with intense determination, to plow through all twenty something episodes of the GONZO production, I really wasn’t sure what I was in for. Reading blurbs is an essential part to shopping for books, DVDs, even anime, but since I didn’t pay a penny for the fansubbed post-licensing Speed Grapher episodes, I simply dove head first into the series. And I dove head first into a deep, abysmal, bottomless pit of black…stuff.
In retrospect, Speed Grapher scared me more than anything, not the shock value of seeing a mad dentist sprout drill tipped spider legs, but the hideousness brought to light by the show. For some reason, GONZO has a knack for turning out incredibly moralistic (see: Pumpkin Scissors), severely critical and metaphoric series, as if they were standing on a pulpit, preaching to the rest of the world through anime, exposing the horrors and injustices of the world and how easily people get away with it.
Speed Grapher is like one giant life lesson. You’ve got this guy who loves taking pictures for the sake of taking pictures, a war photographer who risks his own life to record bits and pieces of history, a rarity in a world seduced by money and intoxicated by greed. You’ve got another guy, who (here comes the spoilers) was severely screwed over in his childhood, both parents killed, sister taken away, all because his father didn’t have the money to pay off his debts. He’s a crazy bio-weapon out for revenge on, basically, the entire human race. Fast forward a decade or two, these two guys, who have unknowingly met each other before on a distant battlefield, clash. And, the cherry to top it all off, bio-weapon guy runs a ‘club’ that lets people attain their ultimate desires. There more, but it gets complicated. Another GONZO trademark, there’s no way in hell to explain the plot in less than one paragraph.
The creepiest part, the part that freaks me out the most, is still how Speed Grapher plays and toys with human nature. The mutations of the Euphorias, the terrifying shapes they take on, how indulgent they are with their desires, how sick and depraved they become, how close, how utterly close it is to the truth, it’s like the message in the car mirror, “Objects are closer than they appear”. One of these days, it’s going to catch up with us and sadly people, myself included, are just walking blindly right into it.
Forget the terrible animation, forget the storyline even, there’s something a bit more alarming here. Speed Grapher might have even been allegorical, over exaggerating the truth so much to make its point. Well, it got it across. Another GONZO thing, everyone of its shows carries the largest banner advocating one ideal or another and waves it like crazy for the entirety of the show. Speed Grapher’s banner reads something like: The world’s a fucked place, do something about it. I can’t really think of any other way to sum up Speed Grapher, with all it’s sex and violence and money and death and for some strange reason, a sweetness, a bittersweetness that lingers like an aftertaste. Saiga, the photographer, and people like him, that’s the aftertaste, and maybe even a bit of hope.
And…Yet another GONZO thing, Speed Grapher doesn’t beat around the bush. Darker Than Black reminds me, for one reason or another, of Speed Grapher and takes a three mile detour to get around to saying something and fails to deliver the message entirely. Speed Grapher has one goal, that’s not to say it didn’t stray from it’s intended path and dabble in social commentary and all that other melodrama, but in the end, you walk away knowing damn well what you saw with a crystal clear understanding of what the show meant. Stuff that takes such a simple and not so pseudo-intellectual path is rare.
I can’t say Speed Grapher had unique characters, Suitengu, bio-weapon man, looks like Sephiroth no matter what I do, but Saiga’s not a character I’m going to forget soon. Not only did he fall for a terminal, mutant goddess less than half his age, he risked everything for it, even possible death by his crazy, obsessive detective girlfriend who goes around pumping things full of lead under ‘self-defense’. And then he went blind for her, he paid his contract in full, if you will. There are a couple of Saiga/Kagura scenes that were ridiculously cheesy, but at the same time, I loved them. The first parachute scene when they escape from the Kagura’s home and when they flee the wedding by helicopter, reminiscent of that whole Matrix sequence with the chopper (don’t ask.) I’m all for the couple, despite the age gap. A good love story is a good love story, to hell with society, if he’s in love with her, so be it! Kagura as character, though, was less than satisfying. Damsels in distress are one thing, but she barely spoke for a good chunk of the time and anything she said for the other good chunk of the time, was “Saiga-san! I want to stay with Saiga-san!”
Lesser characters that I’m going to have a hard time forgetting, Tsujidou, Wakabe and Niihari. Shockingly enough, all three were extremely loyal to Suitengu, two of them risking their lives for him. I guess they owed him their lives to begin with. And, though, I started off hating Suitengu to pieces, I couldn’t help but pity him, as sense we’re being honest, Shinsen, too. I hate the fact there is no true line between love and hate, instead there’s just this great big area of grey pity. A more memorable scene, in the epilogue of sorts, was when Niihari says that he has a dream, he’s going to get rich and erect three building in the middle of the city, one for Suitengu, one for Tsujidou and one for Wakabe. Camaraderie like that gets me.
Speed Grapher had style. Not as cool and slick as Bebop, not as refined and melancholic as Darker Than Black, but it had style, the gritty, battered, shocking reality of a stunning photograph, framing in one snap shot all the sins of society.
It’s nice to see you blogging again. Keep up the good work!
Speed Grapher is one of those shows that I can list a number of faults for, but enjoy it nonetheless. The animation really is embarrasingly ropey but the story and characters are, for the most part, great. A can only agree on Suitengu and his loyal henchmen, and how the Saiga/Kagura relationship was somehow really…sweet. Yeah, I wish that Kagura stood up for herself a bit more, but that’s a minor thing really (that scene in the transvestite’s club where she sang ‘Amazing Grace’ was my favourite of hers, but I can’t put my finger as to exactly why).
Gonzo seem to be incapable of getting the style and the substance balanced right – with the exception of Last Exile and one or two others, their shows are excessive in one and deficient in the other. What I especially loved about this series though was how it didn’t do subtle at all – it showed the 80s throwback society for the crappiness that it was…with characters in the middle of it who were marvellously immune from the greed and selfishness that surrounded them.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was surprisingly thought-provoking…not to mention tremendous fun.