Germany lost, I'm sad, and other things (namely, meeting Satoshi Kon and Macross).
29 June 2008
Euro Cup is evil…
Germany just lost, 0-1, to Spain. I’m ready to grab a gun of some sort and kill people, though it’s really not that bad. These commentators just have to keep on rubbing it in, “Germany was obviously not the best team tonight.” Christ, I know they weren’t, don’t keep making me feel miserable. I spent the second half of the game rolling around on my living room floor in agony. With about ten minutes left, I just gave up. The last time the Germans won a major title, I was four, I don’t even think I knew what football was! Though, I have to say, Spain played a good game. I just feel so bad for Michael Ballack, he looked so sad. So, here’s to waiting another two years for the World Cup.
Satoshi Kon is not…
In other news, my friend procured tickets to a recent Satoshi Kon retrospective at Lincoln Center and invited me to go along. We were there for the showing of Paprika and an interview with Satoshi Kon afterwards. Seeing Paprika up on a big screen was a gorgeous experience. My first viewing of Paprika was rather miserable, the quality of the video killed it, almost. During the audience Q&A, I was really tempted to ask, “Mr. Kon! Why are you so good?” But I decided against that piece of rather trivial self indulgence.
The man has an incredible sense of humor. He was also a lot taller than I figured him to be, this lanky Japanese man with a pony tail that, if he sat a certain way in his leather armchair, reminded me of my own grandfather. He shared his seat, quite literally, with his Nikon, “the pride of Japan” as he called it and just randomly snapped pictures of the audience throughout the interview. At one point, someone asked him how he came up with characters like Hana from Tokyo Godfathers and he replied that since he had no transvestite or homosexual friends, he took to dressing up like Hana. Apparently, he doesn’t go around looking for work, most of his projects are recommended to him by people who’ve seen his previous films.
He also said that people who meet him for the first time are surprised by how nice he is, most people thought he must’ve been incredibly scary to turn out the stuff he does. Immediately after watching Paranoia Agent, I would’ve agreed with those fans, that show scared me to no end. Now that I’m writing about, I seem to recall so much more of what he said, except I don’t think anyone really wants me to regurgatate the entire interview.
I walked away with an autograph and I have to say, it was an indecently pleasant experience to be in the presence of such genius.
And now, Macross Frontier, finally…
This wasn’t exactly what I planned when I promised to write a Macross Frontier post. I had such a torrent of emotions and things to say right after I watched episodes four through ten, and I lost most of it through a week of finals and the Euro Cup.
I remember Owen S labeling Macross as a mecha centric show, differentiating it from Code Geass, which, in his words, was a Vehicle mecha. While I’m not a big fan of Geass, I do recognize that mecha in Geass is secondary to the plot and character. The recent Frontier spin-off of the series proves that categorization wrong entirely, so wrong I’m willing to say that Frontier pulls off the Vehicle Mecha gambit better than Geass.
What really surprised me was how rich of a romance story Frontier created. The love square (it’s not really a triangle anymore) between Ranka, Alto and Cheryl, and that new kid, that weird robotic kid who saved Ranka’s life during the film shoot and his eventual role in all of it, just makes for this really intriguing and delicious, if you remember all of Ranka’s Nyan Nyan commercials, pork bun of a show. Surrounded on the outside by the tennous and deceptive skin of a generic mecha show, Frontier has just a little bit more of something real, something that made me stop and wonder, something that Gundam 00 missed entirely. I’m thinking along the lines of hope, along the lines of something beautiful, something as big and as impressive as they make Cheryl Nome’s stardom out to be.
There was something incredible to an episode like “First Attack”, the combination of music and action, just the excitement building up during that concert, when Ranka and Cheryl are both singing and Alto is fighting, there was just something so gripping and so poweful. Infinity was the most amazing song, the most amazing song as it played during that episode. The songs, all of Cheryl’s pop star hits are so well tuned to the show. Kanno’s renditions of Cheryl’s pop songs are just so convincing. Diamond Crevasse, Infinity I can see at the top of some Japanese pop chart. They fit the show like a glass slipper, I can’t imagine the show without the music at all.
Really, though, after that episode, the wonder that first had me hook, line and sinker wore off a little. I just saw episode 11 recently and what struck me the most was the animation quality. Though, I really shouldn’t be surprised, animation quality has its way of dipping and climbing. I’m sure with the recent turn of events, something deeper and more sinister is brewing. The movie episode retained some of that wonder, just the way it happened. I’m a fangirl at heart and I love shipping people, and sometimes I wish to god Alto and Ranka would end up together, but the way it’s playing out, he might end up with Cheryl. And now, Cheryl and Alto are off somewhere else and Ranka has that cute, little Green squirrel boy, I’m so conflicted! That kiss between Alto and Cheryl and how Ranka saw it, and her kiss later, the show just has me spinning in circles. Knocked back and force like a pinball between the wavering emotions of these people.
The soundtrack is amazing, need I say more? After reading Paul’s take on the soundtrack, I’ve been looking forward to hearing it. Kanno doesn’t disappoint, she never disappoints.
I guess I was too quick to call Soul Eater the best show of the season because Frontier just stole my heart. And I just realized that I haven’t even finished the rest of the spring shows, people already have summer previews going up! Good god, I need to catch up!
Suggest watching episode 12 then: it takes things and turns them around a bit with a panache that Geass rarely manages, although it’s campy when it happens. Campy, but cute.
And I see you’ve discovered what Macross fans first found 25 years ago – it’s, as Kawamori says, a show about love and the power of emotion set against a background of war and grand events, like an opera with more of a pop/rock vibe to it. The original, and Gundam, helped kick-start a whole genre of shows which weren’t about super-robots (Mazinger, etc), but about the people who piloted them – the ones who weren’t supermen or superwomen, but rather more ordinary people caught up in events not necessarily of their own volition. And about relationships that develop, or are stressed, by the strains imposed by battle and the odd run-in.