Green Jacket 09 – Play the Bebop Blues

The infallible information source Wikipedia quotes Shinichiro Watanabe as being inspired by Masaaki Osumi’s Green Jacket when he was working on Cowboy Bebop. This is the episode that sells that idea for me, and not just because I can’t bear to imagine a director I respect so much drawing strength from the Formula One episode. The title of this week’s episode, “Killer Sings the Blues,” really clinches the comparison. You know, besides the Spike-Lupin, Jet-Jigen, Faye-Fujiko comparisons. Want to watch along? Episodes are here.

They brought back the beatnick-timed-explosion combo for this week’s opening, and wouldn’t you know it? I actually found myself feeling a little nostalgically fond. Which is odd, because I spent an age dragging my feet on this recap. ‘Ugh, didn’t we just escape this guy?’ my persistent procrastination practices seemed to grumble (perturbedly). We were indeed graced just last week by newly minted head Hayao Miyazaki, but don’t let me lazy inner monologue get to you. Other than the fact that it benches Fujiko to damsel duty for pretty much the entire episode (an admittedly sizeable but), this shows a real ‘what-could’ve-been’ shine for Osumi. You can almost hear him saying ‘fire ME, will you? I’LL SHOW YOU with quality output that was missing in consistency before when it would’ve been useful. SO THERE.’

We start in the procedural style, with our guest of the week and a total stranger discussing what’s about to go down with the plot. A hitman’s hit town and is looking for Fujiko, saying his life depends on seeing her again. His name is Poon, which is perhaps the most unfortunate thing this episode could’ve possibly done. This is the guy we’re hanging the episode’s emotional hat on. I imagine you, my dear readers, might have been mature enough to go right for the sexual reference that would’ve made Monkey Punch proud. But I’m stuck some distance back, on the fact that it’s a name that makes every single character forced to speak it sound not unlike a very shrill Pokemon. Especially Fujiko, since most of her dialogue this episode calls for a plaintive and keyed-up note. Poon is not a name you can insert into serious conversation, particularly if that conversation is in Japanese. Then again, as a child I was incredibly attached to a group of characters with names based on (at best) vegetable puns, so what do I know?

Back with our main cast, Lupin and Fujiko are having a date-drive, which will increasingly seem like the only place such things are allowed in the world of Green Jacket. They’re also going around hairpin turns way over the speed limit without seat belts, but it’s cool – as we know, Lupin’s bones are made of rubber. Not to mention most cars made in the 70s were screaming metal death traps. The real purpose of this scene is to showcase what will become a more-or-less standard state for their relationship. And considering how much shit I gave Osumi for certain Really Terrible attempts at writing ‘romance’ for Lupin (in general and with His Lover Fujiko), I concede that this is an excellently done scene. Lupin makes a pass at Fujiko only to rebuffed. Then he exposits the job for the week, a heist to steal plans for a rare computer chip, and suddenly he finds his efforts a touch more warmly received. Just describing it like that, it’s pretty obvious that a betrayal is going in the mix somewhere. But the dialogue and the performance of the actors come across as genuinely sincere and touching, talking about their relationship as a beautiful moment in the present that washes away any bad blood or past betrayals. While other Lupin projects (Secret of Mamo in particular, as well as Fujiko’s Unlucky Days/The Columbus File) have played up the Lupin/Fujiko romance, they tend to frame it much more in the sense of a traditional eternity-and-declarations love story. And that has its charms, don’t get me wrong, but it never feels as genuine to me as moments like this do. Part of the joy of Lupin and Fujiko as characters is the way that they flout conventions, living outside of society’s rules in ways we wish we could. And their relationship is part of the canon’s bedrock: fish swim, birds fly, Bioware games have good writing, and Arsene Lupin loves Fujiko Mine. But they’re not so much the white picket lovey-dovey types as two waves that keep crashing into each other (and have a great time doing so). And honestly? I find their affection more endearing knowing that they can freely spend time apart or close to other people and yet still feel so strongly when they come together again. That’s unusual, and it’s worth preserving. Oh, but speaking of eternal devotion –

Revenge of the metaphors!

Green Jacket 08 – Enter Young Hayao Miyazaki

And now, one of the first works of animation spearheaded by an unknown director named Hayao Miyazaki. He and his future Ghibli-partner Isao Takahata were brought on to inject fresh life into Green Jacket’s abysmal ratings (with original director Masaaki Osumi coming back for two more episodes). I’ve been waiting for these. While Osumi’s episodes range from fascinating trainwrecks to having their own weird if inscrutable charm, watching the Miyazaki run is like seeing a master in training. They’re fun, sharply written, creative, and make the BEST use of Fujiko. And yes, maybe I will propose marriage. If you’d like to watch along, you can find Lupin III Part I on Hulu. Let’s get started, shall we?

Even the episode’s title, “The Gang’s-All-Here Playing Card Strategy” sounds like the shows been dying for this moment to arrive – so much so that they had to cram as many excited words in there as possible). We open on a soon-to-be-mark in what will become the classic Lupin tradition: he’s fat, surrounded by ungainly wealth, and his head was pulled from the womb by extremely vigorous forceps. This cranially deficient megalomaniac is named Mr. Gold, which on the cleverness scale is right up there with naming your villain “Mal.” He’s counting his money and cooing over his Plot Coupon, a deck of cards that supposedly brings luck. But Lupin calls and is kind enough to warn Mr. Gold that he’ll be relieving the man of his treasure.

Get your diplomas and your cheap alcohol, because we’ve finally graduated from “thief” to “gentleman thief.” Up to now there’s been a serious lack of focus in the series, which is a mixed bag. On the one hand it allowed for spontaneity in the narrative, without the necessity of the heist formula that Red Jacket would eventually become super glued to. And on the other hand, the early stuff is so all over the place in tone, style, and objective that there’s no real reason to keep coming back. If later series and specials fall into a rut of routine then the second half of Green Jacket is that formula’s new-car smell, with the jobs spanning any number of setups or careening off into totally different paths after an initial or planned theft (as some of the best Lupin episodes do). It’s a comfort food strategy to be sure, but when competently executed a gathering of stand-alone adventures are nothing to sneeze at.

Following the title card the scene changes to the night of the heist, where an elaborate soiree is being held. Because that’s what you want to do when you’re trying to protect your valuables. Invite a lot of strangers over and house them in a room with multiple exits. And no, the police guard is not enough. Not even the guy standing on the rough in the bright red trench coat.

Lupin is no match for the power of the Canadian Mountie

 

Not to mention the fact that Zenigata now gets to be a permanent fixture in the cast, after only showing up in two of the seven preceding episodes. This will mean that his competence will eventually start taking a hit, but nothing is perfect. Except Inspector Koichi Zenigata, the World’s Greatest Cop.

I see you’re here to ignore – is that logic? NEVER LEAVE

Do You Ever Wonder What Time It Is? Modern Media and Storytelling

Part of me is convinced that someone on the Adventure Time staff is a fan of Red vs. Blue. It’s more a gut feeling than what one might call ‘empirical evidence’ or ‘substantiated by a single shred of proof.’ Both are blazing successes, of course, characterized by a short and loosely linked episode format, but it’s the narrative style that I want to talk about today. In the bizarre mental land that this theory lives in, both shows are sterling examples of the new-narrative for internet long-standers (okay, AT is on TV, but it very much lives in the comedic stylings of the internet).

Back in 2003, RvB started a serialized comedy show and released it onto the wild west of the internet, hoping to attract consistent viewership with the idea that you could come back to one place on the internet each week to see an ongoing story. Well, duh, you might say, but this was back in the day when one-shots were the big thing – even stuff like Homestar Runner just had a core set of re-used characters without any particular interest in narrative. Rooster Teeth’s machinima (stories filmed using videogame engines) project was doing something pretty unusual for the medium at the time – I’d go so far as to say they were pioneers on the subject of narrative machinima (not the first, but formative for sure, not to mention an early work that’s still going). It worked, too. As the story goes, the first episode had more than a million downloads within the first week. It wormed its way into many a heart, though the decade spanning duration of the series means that you tend to find fans who stopped watching around the first three seasons and others who fell in around the sixth (the eleventh just finished airing).

As far as the content of the narrative it, uh…starts a little on the light side. It is a consecutive narrative, in the most basic sense – events that have occurred remain in continuity, and there’s dramatic climax from one season to the next (boy did they love their cliffhangers in the early days). It’s just that those plot events tended to be with a comedic focus, with the stories pursuing what Burnie found to be the best reaping ground for jokes than any kind of deep world building or character introspection. The first five seasons, known collectively as The Blood Gulch Chronicles, more or less stayed that way aside of a surprisingly bittersweet conclusion. When it started up again, things took a decidedly more plotty turn, if one that was content to move at its own pace.
How about Cartoon Network’s current darling, Adventure Time? It’s well into its fifth season now, and I at least would’ve never guessed from the outset that the deeply, deeply weird little piece of surreal children’s media the show started out as would later weave in an apocalypse and plentiful gut wrenching. What is it about the appeal that speaks to so many, and inspired such a similar trajectory?

 

The Lich is not funny

Green Jacket 07 – How to Steal Your Ex’s Valuables

I spent this week’s recap struggling not to scribble a hearty beard on my computer screen, because today’s episode, “A Wolf Calls a Wolf,” (prep your reference shots, because that was one of the names Lupin went by Stateside for a while) stars the anti-Goemon. It’s my only explanation. Of course, this is also the most competently directed episode of the first set, so perhaps I should’ve expected madness. Get out yer handkerchiefs dearest readers, cause we’re about to wave a tearful farewell to director Masaaki Osumi. Then we have to let him back in with a reluctant expression for episodes 9 and 12 (the latter being one I actually like a fair bit). Beyond that, (pre)Ghibli hills as far as the eye can see. Want to watch along from the start? You can find Lupin III Part I on Hulu.

No sense counting your clever and lighthearted heists before they’re hatched, especially when there’s some A+ scenes yet before us. This week we start with Our Hero(ish) Lupin, who you may recall declared himself able to do anything, failing spectacularly in his attempts to recreate the training montage from Kill Bill. He’s going through all of this to steal the Book of Secrets, which details the forging of the legendary sword Zantetsuken. Then he too can wield the Mary Sue of inanimate objects, or at least fence it for a good price. To be fair, the end result of his training is probably fairly accurate to what the average person would look like after trying the same thing.

 

Even his blush stickers are bruised

The bandages are obviously to prove a comedic point, since he sheds them almost instantly once he hears that Goemon will be at this challenge as well. But you can’t say ‘it’s for comedy’ and have that be the in-universe reason that something happens (unless you have a meta-type character like Deadpool), so I choose to believe he was trying a sympathy bid to con Jigen into doing the housework. Lupin strikes me as the sort of person who wants absolutely nothing to do with whatever isn’t his current flame of passion, like that asshole roommate who just keeps passing the stack of dishes and eating off of napkins until you finally cave and scrub out the baby mold spores first.

And Now, Games to be Watched

Are you finally living on your own, but desperate to recreate the experience of listening to a drunken roommate or sibling scream at bundles of code, as interpreted through a low quality microphone? Then you can only be suffering from a lethal case of nostalgia poisoning, and should seek help immediately – the heady aroma of old socks and cheetos should snap you out of it (okay, that’s my one gamer slob joke, just to get the stereotype out of the way). If, on the other hand, you’re one of the many people with an interest in videogames but without the ailing and befuddled millionaire spouse or back pocket oil field necessary to support the hobby, I have good news.

On this newfangled series of tubes there’s a whole genre known as the “Let’s Play,” or LP. They can range from screenshot-with-commentary (a familiar format around these parts), to silent video walkthroughs, to highlight reels. But the most popular use is to show off a game in its entirety with player commentary over top, either “blind” to create the experience of an average player or experienced to show off the ‘ideal’ experience.

WHAT?! I hear you saying, running several blocks to flip the nearest table while screaming about the importance of the interactive experience. Behind the noise are those arching one kempt eyebrow, wondering what the point would be in watching someone else play insert-stereotypical-casual-game-here when you could be downloading for free. The thing is, at their very best LPs are like the ultimate fancy tv sports package – the players are engaging and knowledgeable about the game, talented enough to keep the viewer from suffering through repeated failures but easygoing enough to endear themselves. Some of them even offer that delicious bonus known as context, show off things the average gamer couldn’t find for themselves, or suffer for the sake of your so-bad-it’s-unbelievable curiosity.

Since I’m forever harping on the ‘good stories can come in any form’ chestnut, I thought I’d offer five of my favorites from this glorious internet born oddity, each with a different type of appeal to scratch that co-gamer itch. Because I just got tired of tying people up to sit next to me when I booted up the game machine.

Know a great specimen I missed? I’d love to hear about it down in the comments.

Green Jacket 06 – Corpses Are a Diamond’s Best Friend

You thought we might’ve been onto something last week, but you thought incorrectly! Instead of anachronistic samurai we’re moving on to dead mob bosses, who are only slightly less used as plot devices than dead (or soon to be dead) Nazis. Today’s episode is “Rainy Afternoons are Dangerous,” and I am not filled with confidence about strong strides of improvement in the writing. Want to play along? You can find Lupin III Part I on Hulu. Or just jump in, and let’s get started.

Say, did you know that water is really difficult to animate? The process of making it react and lay convincingly against real world objects is a nightmare, so having lots and lots of rain is one way to show that you’ve got a really snazzy budget (yes, I am saying that’s the entire reason for the apparent monsoon running through Green vs Red). You know what’s not the greatest place to show that off? A television show that’s working on a limited budget and has bottom of the barrel ratings. Our intrepid team isn’t to be stopped, though, and while the actual raindrops look more or less like the scratching-the-film trick used in such stunning cinematic masterpieces as Xanadu, the water’s impact on the streets, nice details like rain running in rivulets off of a post, and residue dripping off of Lupin do look pretty good.

Less convincing is the setup: Lupin, the master thief and practically precognitive master of his surroundings, was out running in the rain and got a note reading ‘HELP ME’ taped to his back. This note is still legible despite the rain (unless it perhaps said KICK ME to start with), and the tape didn’t get soggy and unstick itself. If you want to play with rain physics, show, I’m going to start thinking about everything else too. By the way, Jigen can tell from a distance and without directly looking at it that it’s a woman’s handwriting. You might call it lazy animation, but I prefer to think of it as proof that the gunman’s developing powers of meta-awareness. And hey, let’s be fair. Awesome Lupin stories have had their share of stupid setups (I see you there, Tokyo Crisis. With your totally 90s use of psychic powers in large eyed adolescent girls).

A knock at the door reveals “Kids’ Meal,” the least indicatively named gangster of all time. He’s Fujiko’s lackey, as we’ll discover, so I choose to believe she forcibly renamed him as such for not showing her the proper amount of respect. Fujiko doesn’t fuck around, y’all. Anyway, Kids’ Meal is here to pick Lupin up and take him to the damsel in distress. Jigen isn’t up for this nonsense himself, but he says he’s totally cool with their open relationship Lupin gallivanting after a pretty girl yet again.

Is it not as much fun if he’s not mad at you?

 

Hey, does that seem weird to you, given that Jigen is forever grouching about women in general and Fujiko particularly? Don’t worry about it. This week’s episode is completely confident in its ability to write Jigen, and also seems to quite like him as a character. And Dead or Alive is one of the good Lupin films. Pay no mind to the cord-like protrusion from the back of my neck.

BUT WEREN’T THEY TRAGIC: Verisimilitude to Melodrama in Five Easy Steps

For those of you who haven’t read Paradise Kiss, you’re missing out. It’s been reprinted in the last few years, you see. It’s a beautifully told slice-of-life story about adolescence on the brink of responsibility, and the screw ups you make trying to find a life outside of what your family’s expected. For those of you who haven’t watched Paradise Kiss…you should probably just read it.

ParaKiss, as the title is sometimes shortened, is penned by Ai Yazawa of Nana fame. She’s often praised (quite rightfully) for her superb hand at writing well rounded female characters and real-world relationships. The five volume manga tells the story of Yukari, a girl who’s spent her life trying to please her mother’s demand for academic success despite the fact that it’s neither easy nor interesting for her. One day she’s snared by a group of teens from the nearby performing arts school, who beg her to be their model for the school’s upcoming fashion show. She’s totally uninterested…until the group’s handsome leader George puts it a bit more persuasively. Yukari finds herself in a whole world of firsts, questioning whether the romantic world of fashion is truly what she wants to do with her life, or if it’s just a way to hide from the real world. The story is intimate and raw, and its overarching metaphor of the fashion club as the main characters’ lives – beautiful, apparently effortless garments made from thankless, toiling work in an unknown basement coalesced behind a creative spark and an attractive front face – is a surprisingly effective punch to the gut. This is no ‘lives of the rich and beautiful.’ Yukari definitely has lucky breaks based on the people she knows, but that only gets her in the door, while her work ethic carries her forward. Nor does her beauty signal all well on the romantic front: she’s emotionally immature, in way over her head with the distant and issue-laden George, and the story isn’t afraid to show the shallow ugliness that can come from a self-centered outlook.

Okay now, pop quiz, everybody: what are the major movements of a romance story? You have the initial, usually chance, meeting; always tinged with some kind of strong fascination, whether or not they think they dislike one another. After a courtship or familiarizing period of varying awkwardness (about 2/3 of the way through the story) the couple will get together in some manner – this can be sex for an adult aimed story, or a more chaste form of physical/emotional intimacy. In the third act the relationship will be tested by the outside world (circumstances or a rival) and/or the characters own flaws that have ruined relationships in the past. However, the new couple’s love is strong enough to overcome these factors, and there’s a happy ending. It’s a rock solid formula, one that’s flexible enough to accommodate multiple premises and character types while still offering the reader a sense of comforting familiarity.

Problems usually come up when the fantasy collides with a sense of reality, and the latter’s likely to give out long before the former. This, I think, is what’s at the heart of a lot of romance-related cynicism. It’s not just the predictability, but the fact that without careful plotting and writing the stories are much faster to fall into cliché than in genres with more varied constructions. Paradise Kiss the manga is masterful about its approach to the archetypes of romance, marrying them to the extreme verisimilitude of adult slice-of-life. Yukari’s tempestuous relationship with George follows the roadmap, for the most part, to a T. They’re drawn irresistibly to one another; there are concerns about a virginal versus experienced partner, intimations of another woman and George’s bad-boy emotional issues. It’s a set up for the kind of happily ever after that would have a brooding man with too many abs on the cover. Only…this happens instead.

Professional Words, Unprofessional Nerves (January 2014)

Instead of an editorial today, I wanted to take a moment to highlight two published pieces of mine, as well as a short (and somewhat surreal) author interview. Worry not, things will return to normal posthaste.

Courtship by Wire:

“I woke up one morning and thought that you might be a serial killer. I never told you why.”
Published September 2013

Flash Fiction. Proof that the painfully awkward misunderstandings of first love are by no means limited to the real world. Not all of us become convinced the person who gives us the warm fuzzies is secretly plotting our death, though.

Genre Surfing:

“The radio on his belt grows from faint hiss to incoming frequency in the middle of dinner, detailing a horror story of shattered lives. I fill in the emptied spot at the table.”

Published November 2013

Flash Fiction. Wrap yourself up in stories long enough, and you start thinking of everything that way. It’s a lot easier to turn family into late-night TV than to wonder if they’re ever coming home again, isn’t it?

The Interview:

“Subtlety is bizarrely easier to grasp once you’ve let it all hang out.”
Published September 2013

A series of oddities and observances, all the stranger for being divorced from the questions that the lovely editor originally sent to me. But they run the gamut from style questions, to the world of writing at large, to my unwavering obsession with HP Lovecraft’s hilarious fear of seafood. If you’ve any lingering questions, please feel free to ask them around here – I consider this blog a sort of informal, ongoing AMA.

A fantastic week to you all, and glad tidings additionally. See you Friday!

Back to my usual swanning about
(thanks to Rainbow Jacket for the screencap)

Cyclical Narrative, Reboots, and Fear of the Unknown, or: Kaworu and Homura are Time Travelling BFFs

If you don’t like it, do it again. Rewrite it, reboot it, or remember a time when things were better than they truly were. The world’s in an uncertain state all over and the art of humanity is ever ready to reflect its maker’s mental state: in this case, a desire to start over in the face of our mistakes. And boy, have there been a lot of spins on the time travel formula as of late. It’s not as if there weren’t any before (Back to the Future and Star Trek’s seminal “City on the Edge of Forever” spring immediately to mind), but the tone has definitely changed. The message of the two stories above, for instance, is overwhelmingly a case of ‘don’t change the past, because even with good intentions you can’t possibly comprehend what you’re doing.’ There’re stories like Donnie Darko, which explore a theoretical happier occasion only for it to collapse as reality reasserts itself. And there are time loops like Groundhog Day or Wolf’s Rain, centering on a character or group’s growth pursuing a goal (and usually having a motivational shift of varying degrees due to said growth). It’s the last one I want to talk about, because I seem to keep tripping over it these days. There’s discussion of spoilers for Madoka and Evangelion below, so tread with care.

Yeah, this again

Green Jacket 05 - Sword vs. Death Dolphin

You know how you make a crazy person look good? Ensure that everyone around them looks twice as nuts. “The Coming of Goemon the 13th” is about as straightforward as titles get, if with a bizarre aura of retrospective about it. Modern viewers will know Goemon as the living plot device and/or the world’s manliest moeblob, as well as an integral part of Lupin’s adventures. Integral in the sense that if he were left out there would be a pitchfork happy riot, anyway. The trouble with a character who springs from a gimmick (anachronistic samurai! Why not!) is that the writers will always have to think twice as hard about how they fit into the flow of a given narrative. Sometimes this manifests with audience POV-type characters like Fry of Futurama, or fish-out-of-water comedic relief like Starfire of the animated Teen Titans. Inevitably, though, there will be a rash of jokes near the beginning that quickly peter out excepting when the writer needs to explain something to the viewer or thought of a funny one-liner. It’s inconsistent, is what I’m saying, if common enough that you’re likely to unconsciously write it off as status quo.

But that’s really a discussion for another week. First, let’s look at the introduction episode, the one where the writers thought the character would be coolest, and isn’t it nifty how they shake up the established dynamic. Want to watch along? Lupin III Part I is over on Hulu.

Goemon Ishikawa XIII is a man who does his training in the traditional way – in the woods, with no one around to help in case of an accident or equipment malfunction. Today, he has an unexpected audience.

Fangirl the Third