reviews – Literal Machines

More Than Meets The Eye (Part 1 of X)

August 14, 2019August 14, 2019 SpoilersBelowLeave a comment

For a certain generation, The Transformers: The Movie (1986) is a traumatic and horrible experience that defined childhood forever.

Consider the opening:

We are in space. An eerie, haunting theme plays as, from between two suns, a distant object approaches. It grows closer, and we see it is a large grey sphere, surrounded by spikes, and surmounted by yellow support struts. Two massive yellow claws protrude from its front, surrounding an “eye” of some sorts. It passes by the camera, giving us a close up look at its surface: technologically advanced, covered in crevices and sensors that we know not the purpose of. We see the view from inside, a planet in view from the “eye”, as various scientific/biological processes occur around. A thought occurs: we have never been inside a transformer, have we?

Zoom in on the planet: a metallic paradise. (Is it Cybertron? a young child’s mind asks, grasping for explanation as to how to connect this to Transformers.) A planet of robots, in any case. The music is still wrong, incorrect, despite the happy tunes playing on someone’s radio. Child robots run past on a promenade while older ones conduct experiments. We see the children run past in the back corridor as older, elderly scientist robots walk down a hall, conversing. These robots look like Transformers, but they aren’t. There’s something just wrong about them. The scientists enter a laboratory where an even older robot is conducting an experiment. They deliver some vials of multicolored chemicals (this is how we, as children, know they are scientists: they pour vials of chemicals together). Then, the vials begin to shake on the table. Is it an earthquake?

No. It is Unicron.

Equipment is smashed as its gravitational pull starts to destroy the planet. Just as we saw the planet from above, now we see Unicron from below, on a computer screen. The robots know what’s coming, and they are terrified. The “eye” begins to project a beam, we see the scientists react in horror, and then we truly see how large Unicron is. It is bigger than the entire planet. Its pincer claws dig into the sides, and it begins to eat. The robots run for their lives as roads are scraped up, buildings are smashed, and everything begins to ascend upwards in the unholy light. One robots yells that they need to get to their ships, but even this is futile, as the ships are quickly sucked back into Unicron’s devouring maw. Only one escapes. The other, however, we follow on its journey through Unicron’s digestive system, a comical munching noise in stark contrast to the horror we are witnessing on the screen. The planet and its inhabitants are turned into a grey slurry. Motors and servos whirr with electrical pulses. Nerves glow with life. Unicron glows bright with life.

There is no sign of the planet. There is only Unicron. We pan away.

Two minutes and forty seconds of pure horror. Then right into Lion’s upbeat 80s metal cover of The Transformer‘s theme.

What the hell just happened?

Right after this, we’re treated to a very long battle that consists mainly of killing nearly every named character from the series in gruesome and horrible ways, culminating in the tragic death of Optimus Prime, shot in the back by Megatron. For those who complain that there are no stakes in the fights between robots, no one ever dies, nothing ever changes… Well, here you go. You’ve gotten what you asked for. The lases blasts don’t miss this time.

There’s more to the movie, but, suffice to say, at this point it feels more like a film directed by Takashi Miike or a depressed Yoshiyuki Tomino. Whoever had the idea to make Transformers: The Movie into a Grand Guignol just might have forgotten that their target audience was between the ages of six to ten.

Watching Optimus Prime die was, for a certain generation, our first introduction to real death and religion. As melodramatic as it might seem to some eyes, it never fails to make me cry on a rewatch. It had my partner staring at the screen, mouth agape, unbelieving at the prospect of watching a robot die on an operating table, surrounded by his friends and companions, all of whom are reacting to his death in various ways (grief, guilt, anger, resignation…), slowly fading from bright primary colors to a dull gunmetal gray, and passing along the heart and soul of the Autobot movement to another primary colored robot who denies that he is capable of carrying on the legacy.

“What the fuck did I just watch?” she said.

“A movie for six to ten year olds,” I replied.

The truth of the matter, of course, is simply that there was a new toy line coming out, and they needed to clear out the old stock. Who could sell the ultra cool and hip new Rodimus Prime when you’ve still got Optimus clogging up the shelves? There was no thinking about the film’s legacy post 1986, or how it would look to kids watching it in ’89 or ’95 or even 2019, long after all of those toys had become collector’s items. It simply existed to bridge the gap between TV seasons, and the reaction to it from both fans and parents resulted in some quick additions to G.I. Joe: the Movie (1987) to make it clear that Duke isn’t dead, he’s simply in an off-screen coma, even though he was intended to die in the original script.

So, what does is it mean for a generation of young people to have their heroes killed off so that a company can introduce a new toyline, and, in the process, demonstrate that God is killable?

Because, make no mistake, there was no climactic storytelling arc happening here, no grand ending planned from the beginning. This was just sweeping the old toys off the table so they could sell you new ones. We got to watch Robot Dad die so that Capitalism could function. It’s little wonder so many of them paid attention, and are getting into socialism now.

And Unicron? Well, he’s the closest thing we see to God ever on Transformers. Gigantic on a scale we can hardly believe, powerful beyond conception, transforms into a robot devil…

The Invisibles Isn’t Very Good

May 12, 2019 SpoilersBelow1 Comment

(This one has been in the queue for a while, and I figure I should get this out before the TV show starts up and everyone starts in with their retrospectives.)

Just finished The Invisibles in its nice fat trade paperback editions, and, well, perhaps you had to be there.

I mean, I’m reading this comic out of context. It’s twenty years on, and the world is a very different place than it was in 1999. I’m reading it in four big collected volumes, rather than in individual issues that I waited for with baited breath, with all the reading lists and letter columns and live forums to discuss the book as it came out. I’m thirty five, and not sixteen and encountering these concepts for the very first time. I’d read bits and pieces over the years, but this was the first time I actually sat down and read the whole thing, covers to covers, every word, every panel.

And, really, this book simply isn’t very good, is it?

Like, on a structural level, parts of it are clever, I suppose. There’s some inter-cutting, some interesting character design, and, as always, Morrison is very good at describing horrific things, but, there’s really very little of substance to the book if you know what the words he’s using mean.

Take “homeopathic” for instance. This means “Water”. It’s a garbage term. It’s pseudoscience that’s been widely discredited, exposed as a fraud, can be demonstrably shown to contain nothing of value, and is basically just a load of crock. People knew better a hundred years ago. And yet, I’m supposed to be wow’d by the idea of a homeopathic computer injection time machine. That… That doesn’t actually mean anything. That’s just words strung together to sound clever. For all it’s purpose in the narrative, Morrison could have just written “time machine” and the text would be no different. They’re cool sounding, but ultimately meaningless adjectives.

Or “holographic”. There was a big to do over the idea that our world was simply the holographic reflection of a 4D space on a black hole or some such something; it doesn’t actually matter. The point is that there’s an actual scientific idea, which is really quite interesting/boring (depending on how much you like math) when investigated thoroughly, and then there’s the whole “We’re just living in a simulation” thing that Morrison wants us to think he’s clever for using, because Magick-Science, and it… Again, it just doesn’t hang together. It’s lousy dialogue that sounds like it’s saying something, but doesn’t really mean anything. It doesn’t advance the plot. It doesn’t establish characterization in a positive way.

All this sort of thing does is tell me that our heroes are easily duped morons of the sort taken by frauds like Wakefield, Geller, and Trudeau. People who don’t bother to think critically. I’ve read about Jacques Benveniste’s faked water memory experiments and Masaru Emoto’s weird emotional water, you know, the kind of experiments that no one else can get to work, or that prove you can transmit data over a phone line? I know all about the faked Lovecraft magic stuff, because I hung out with Lovecraft scholar Dan Harms for years back in school… You know who’s big into this stuff? Gwyneth Paltrow. She sells magical healing vagina stones for $75 a pop. Rich white women in their 40s eat this shit up.

And blah blah blah consensual reality 4th Dimensional time dislocation transwarps the universal reality inoculation against the Eldritch demonic forces herd mentality onto the unawakened masses of proletariat Johnsons masters thesis to expand the consciousness of the beyond uniforce hundred handed men thinking hundred brained thoughts beyond what you find in your cereal box reality expand the system to smash the systems of rebelled rebellion and establish a new context for brand new youth exchange of idea space system world machine ghostsSee? It’s easy. It takes about five minutes to throw down a bunch of meaningless words and let the reader put them together.

This would be fine if Morrison had something to say. If there was a grander point to the narrative than “We’re all in this together” and “Love one another” and “Stop war so we can go explore space” and “Support corporate overlords, not the government”. But when there’s so little to the story and so little to the characters, it’s difficult to not be let down when it all builds up to shonen anime style “Aha! See, you thought you were behind me, but actually, I am behind you!”, but, you know, psychic and magickal.

That sounds too mean, let me try again: there’s a fascinating book by G.I. Gurdjieff called Beezlebub’s Tales to his Grandson. It’s written in a particularly difficult to read style, with deliberately long sentences and confusing paragraph structure, to force the reader to pay attention to the substance of the work. It’s a classic of mystical literature, and one that’s rightly held as one of the foundational texts of the Fourth Way towards enlightenment. Unfortunately for the book, you can skip right past it to the much more readable Meetings with Remarkable Men and Life is Real Only Then, When I Am. BTthG doesn’t contain any special insights that aren’t in the latter two books: Man is “asleep”, and only through conscious effort to pay attention to his surroundings can he be “awake”, the modern world isn’t very suited to the sort of lifestyle necessary to maintain this sort of conscious effort, and you should probably have sex with me, the author, because I am the most amazing man who ever lived. Pretty easy takeaways that you don’t need to slog through 900 pages of the Devil on a spaceship to understand.

The Invisibles is much the same. There are some cool action sequences, but we’re scolded for enjoying violence. There are some interesting art pieces, but we’re scolded for enjoying media. There are some interesting framing devices and timing sequences, but we’re scolded for not paying attention to the moral. There are some cool characters… Wait, no, there aren’t. All of the protagonists are complete shit. We have a young terrorist who we’re supposed to feel bad for when he gets arrested for burning down a library, we have Grant Morrison the super assassin, we have time travelling Amanda Palmer, we have Lady Homicide: Life on the Streets as interpreted by a rich Scottish man, we have every rather offensive trans cliche possible… And I suppose the ending of “They were really all on the same side as the bad guys” is an ending, but not the uplifting and amazing one that Morrison seems to think it is.

You’ve probably noticed by now that the images in the text portion of this post are from the last arc of Nextwave, not The Invisibles. That’s how easy it is to parody this sort of self-serious, over the top, Yay Psuedopopscience-magick! style of writing.

If the book is bringing you pleasure, fantastic. But is it the book itself, or is it the fan community that has emerged from it? The little bits of the narrative that are alright? The ideas that you took and ran with, well beyond anything that was put down on the page?

I’m fully willing to admit that maybe it’s just me. Maybe there’s another book I need to read to understand it all and love it. But that doesn’t say much about the work as a standalone work, does it? I shouldn’t be yawning and wondering when I’m going to get to the good bits when a book is already mostly over, and then saying “Oh, that’s all?” when I finish it. It was The Filth spread out far longer than thirteen issues. It was From Hell, but in the hands of a lesser writer and a rotating cast of artists of varying quality.

Maybe I’ll try again in another decade and see if I find anything different that time around.

American Evangelion

May 17, 2018 SpoilersBelowLeave a comment

Everyone who couldn’t afford the VHS tapes or DVDs eventually got the chance to watch NGE on Adult Swim, where it was presented in a more or less unedited format, and now a days, it is available to anyone with an internet connection and Google. But back in the late 90’s, anime was much harder to come by. You could put your trust in a fan subber, you could shell out the cash to ADV at your local movie store, or you could wait until it was on TV.

We’ve spoken before about the prequel to Evangelion, and it’s entertaining but ultimately unnecessary addition to the enjoyment of NGE as a whole, but now let’s take a look at a road not taken: the Americanized, kid friendly dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

This particular unfired bullet was optioned but ultimately not picked up for broadcast by ABC Family Worldwide (later 4Kids Entertainment, after the a complicated situation involving purchases of Fox Kids by both Saban and Disney that we simply don’t have the space to go into here). The basic gist is that Pat Robertson’s International Family Entertainment had bought the license to the “Christian Anime” Neon Genesis Evangelion, sight unseen, in 1995, after Robertson had heard the title as “Genesis Evange-Lion”, as well as a few of the Cross oriented attacks of Sachiel in the first episode, and assuming that it was basically a Christian Voltron.

It wasn’t.

The license sat gathering dust until the purchase, when some brilliant but anonymous staffer realized what was included in the purchase, and brought it to the attention of animation head Arlo Tedeschi, who pounced on the idea of having a giant robot show in the vein of Robotech, and being unafraid to alter the program and incorporate other shows to fit the length, just as Carl Macek had done with Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Calvary Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. Unfortunately, when Tedeschi viewed the “pig in a poke” that he had, he realized that it would be difficult to merge the unique “horror mecha” style of Evangelion with any other series he could get his hands on cheaply (other than Nadia of the Blue Water), so he opted to reuse, edit, and otherwise transform the program to fit the bill.

While never actually produced, the in-house documents and the episode notes I was able to scrounge from the dumpster before shredding provide a fascinating insight into the creation process, the very mercenary attitudes towards character creation, and the ways in which editing existing footage can turn a deeply personal and psychological program into an action comedy. Reaching out to Hideaki Anno for comment on the documents, he replied almost too quickly, saying “Terrible idea, but we needed the money. A dog would never work. It has to be a penguin.”

Characters:

~~Shawn~~ Benji Isaacs: a brash and hot headed young pilot, our hero is trying his hardest to impress his father, Gary, who was quite the mecha pilot in his own day. Drop all the depressing stuff about hospitals and staring at ceilings, because kids don’t want to watch that. Add in exciting rock music whenever he has his headphones in. A bit of retouching to make him smile more and add in more grunting expressions like he’s really fired up should be possible. We can reuse the interiors of the Unit 01 fight against the toilet paper monster (which should be a bit hit with the kids), because he really gets hot and passionate during that fight.

Ray Anderson: we want a second male lead, so I propose using footage of Toji in his suit from the “Jet Alone” episodes to serve as secondary pilot for unit 00. This will allow an easy rivalry between him and ~~Shawn~~ Benji, with a lot of playful school ground fights, but an overall impression that they are friends despite it all.

Anna Langley: other than dropping all the references to her being German, she should translate over without any difficulty. The angry girl who is maybe in love with the protagonist while he wants nothing to do with her is a stock character everyone will recognize.

Rachel Anderson: as a solution to the Rei Ayanami problem, we turn Rei into the sister that Toji is always talking about. This explains why she is often injured: it’s from the Angel attacks, and hence Ray is angry at the Angels and wants to destroy them completely.

Kevin Allen: a young camera obsessed fellow who is always following around Ray and ~~Shawn~~ Benji, he is the source of much of the footage of the battles that end up on the local news.

Michelle Kennedy: the hip and cute homeroom teacher of our cast, she drives a fast car, is addicted to a special brand of cola (can’t show drinking on a kids show after all), and is responsible for leading the missions that our heroes undertake.

Gary Isaacs: a seemingly cold and distant man who watches from afar, he regularly leaves his son tape recorded messages about how proud he is to have him as a son, and how good a job he’s doing as a pilot, because he has trouble speaking to him directly due to an unresolved trauma in his past.

Most of the other characters simply received name changes (Rita for Ritsuko, though editing out her smoking was going to prove expensive) or were dropped entirely (Lorenz and the Seele Pillars).

Sample Plots:

Episode One: Attack the Angel Beast! A mash up of the first two NGE episodes, focusing more on the action sequences and dropping any of the hospital related scenes entirely, Benji is picked up from the train station and rushed to his robot, where he immediately gets in and helps the American Army battle the first Dark Angel. Edit out the crosses.

Episode Two: Dark Angel Attack! A mash up of episodes three and four. Benji and Kevin go camping, and talk about how different life was before they had to deal with the Dark Angels. Benji makes a vow to destroy all of them and make his father proud. Kevin wishes that he could be a cool pilot like Benji. The second Dark Angel attacks, and Benji brings both Kevin and Ray along with him as co-pilots, Ray because Benji could use the help, and Kevin so he can live out his dream of being a pilot.

Episode Three: Battle on the Boats! Mostly footage from episode eight. We finally get to meet Benji’s older brother, Ryan (a very cool spy who Anna has a crush on), and Anna, as the US Navy is attacked by the sea dwelling Dark Angel and they battle it back. Add in some dialogue about how we should stop hunting whales and dolphins and this one is in the can.

Episode Four: Volcano! Mostly unchanged episode ten, but edit out the swimsuit scene.

Episode Five: Dance for Victory! Mostly unchanged episode nine, editing out the original bombing of the angel, and adding in more American music for the longer dance sequences to make up for time. Add in a sub plot about how Anna has loved to dance since she was a kid, while Benji has always thought it was stupid. He learns to get over it and discovers that even things he didn’t like at first can be fun.

Episode Six: We’ve Got the Power! Edited version of episode eleven. Altered so that the power outage is directly the fault of the Angel, and there’s an explanation of how electricity works to satisfy some of the educational aspects that we’re supposed to have.

Episodes Seven and Eight: The Undersea Base! Using edited footage from Nadia episodes five, six, and seven, we follow Benji’s younger sister, Nadine, and her friend John as they investigate the origin of the Dark Angels, which all seem to be coming from the ocean. Reveal that the evil Gargoyle has been in charge of the Angels, and sending them forth to attack the city, because he believes that by covering the planet with water, he can stop the destruction of the world’s ecosystem. Nadine is kidnapped.

Episode Nine: The Robot Monster! Edited version of episode seven. Edit together a longer combat sequence, with both Ray and Benji fighting the Jet Alone robot.

Unfortunately, Tedeschi’s notes stop there, and we can only speculate on where he intended the plot to go based on other scribbling in the margins of the typewritten document:

–Benji and Anna love sub plot?

–What to do with Gargoyle at the ending?

–Why does Nadine have a tan and Benji doesn’t?

–Ending of series + last episodes unusable. More Nadia?

–No ONE DIES

–Needs mascot character for stuffed toys — penguin too weird, maybe a dog?

–Have the robots combine into a bigger robot?

–Emphasize that the Angels are just robots and no one gets hurt, except for Ray’s sister’s broken arm. The Casualties of War.

–Work Rita in more? She used to work for Nemo?

–Gary has to be a hero, not the villain — no evil dads on TV

–Gargoyle is Gary’s Dad?

Genesis Evangelion: a Retrospective

June 29, 2017 SpoilersBelow1 Comment

For all that’s been written about it — exhaustively, I might add — comparatively little has been said about Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s previous incarnation, Genesis Evangelion. I was shocked when I found a fansub of the six episode OVA in a VHS bin at Goodwill, but, well, that’s how we find these things sometimes. They fall into our lives when we are able to appreciate them, not when we think we’d love them best.

Neon Genesis Evangelion, as you probably know, is the story of Shinji Ikari, a young man recruited by the secret organization NERV to pilot a gigantic mech and battle the Angels, bizarre invaders from space that are seeking to obtain something that NERV has hidden deep inside its base. Shinji’s father, Gendo, is the director of NERV, and has been estranged from his son for nearly a decade. Their relationship is easily as important as the battles against the Angels. There’s plenty more, and the show begins to go in some interesting directions around episode eight, but that’s the gist of it.

But while the influence of shows like U.F.O. and Space Runaway Ideon, and the Ultraman and Godzilla franchises have been well documented, curiously little has been said of Hideaki Anno’s use of the framework of the original anime Genesis Evangelion to make his program. This is hardly something new; shows are updated all the time, and their old concepts mined for ideas that can be made relevant for today, so I’m not accusing him of plagiarism, if that’s where you think this is going. I just think it’s an interesting lens to look at the show through.

Genesis Evangelion is the story of a young scientist, Gendo Rokubungi , a brash but kind young pilot, Yui Ikari, a daring inventor, Naoko Akagi, and a hot headed but loyal German-Japanese pilot, Kyoko Soryu. The story has a very strong environmental theme, with the end of the world being immanent in the year 2000 if things aren’t done to prevent it. This culminates in an immanent meteor strike being called down on the South Pole by ENGEL, the organization that has been orchestrating the attacks throughout the show. Unfortunately, this climax is left unresolved, as episode seven was never produced.

As you can imagine, a series starring one young man and three young women has a steady love triangle going. Gendo is your typical 80s protagonist in this regard, though it is a unique choice of the OVA to make him part of the support staff, rather than one of the pilots. Normally he’d be heading up the trio of pilots, in the most “average” of the robots, while one was faster and the other tougher, but instead, Yui and Kyoko are basically evenly matched, their mecha (Units 000 and AAA) differing only in color scheme. Gendo instead spends most of the program buried in computer screens and text books, trying to locate weaknesses and relay potential maneuvers to the pilots, while Naoko coordinates the construction of new weaponry to be rapidly deployed to defeat the various monstrosities. One might think that focusing on the backroom, supply chain aspects of combat would detract from the exciting drama of mech-on-monster combat, but they manage to make it compelling, treating timing an explosive hammer blow or calculating rocket trajectory with a slide rule and paper with all the tension and sweat-dripping pressure that the situation deserves.

This is a decent pick for anyone into 80s fighting robots, though its a bit difficult to track down these days. For the convenience of those unable to find a copy, I’ll provide episode summaries below.

Episode One: Dig For Greatness? Underground Base Attack! — Gendo arrives at NERVE’s underground headquarters, and is shown around by the base commander, Langley Lorenz. He meets the two pilots, Yui and Kyoko, and his direct partner, Naoko. Naoko is the inventor of the MAGI system, a complex computer network that keeps the base running via voice activation. She demonstrates its abilities, having it fetch her coffee, her clipboard, and sliding her chair into position as she sits. Unfortunately, when Gendo tries to use it, he ends up with a tub of water dumped on his head, and is knocked to the floor by a speeding ottoman. The MAGI system flares up with an alert, showing readings on the seismograph that don’t correspond to any known earthquake activities in the region. Listening through the vibrational speakers, there’s a constant grind, as if a huge drill were making its way towards the base. What can they do to defend against it? Units OOO and AAA can’t operate in solid rock? Gendo, however, comes up with a plan. By setting up their own drilling torpedo, they can bore under the source of the drilling and blow whatever it is up to the surface, where the two Units can engage with their full capacities. A quick montage later, the torpedo is launched, and there’s a tense moment of radar watching as they make sure to detonate it directly under the source of the sound. They’ll only get one chance. With a pull of the trigger, the torpedo explodes, knocking the nose straight up, and sending the mechanical worm/drill beast to the surface, where Yui and Kyoko pummel it to pieces. The base is safe. But who could know about its location? Who could be attacking them? Back inside, Yui and Kyoko argue about who did more work in defeating the monster. An exhausted looking Gendo tries to order himself a glass of water through MAGI, end gets a bucket of water on his head, followed by the pan, for his trouble.

Episode Two: Computerized Confusion! What Good Are They If the Radio is Out? — Yui and Kyoko are relaxing after a long training session. Naoko enters and asks them what they thought of her new training programs. They laugh, and Yui explains that if the real monsters were half as tough, they’d be out of a job. Kyoko wonders why they don’t just send out the training robots instead, and save her and Yui for the real dangerous situations. Naoko wonders if that isn’t a half bad idea, and says she’ll bring it up at her next staff meeting. Yui whaps Kyoko over the head with the magazine she was reading, and explains that if they do that, they’ll be out of a job. They wrestle in a big cloud of smoke, with Kyoko maintaining that they’re too important to ever be fired, and Yui worrying about what’d happen if they were replaced by machines. Meanwhile, Gendo is reviewing the events of the previous episode (a convenient way to save the studio’s animation budget), as well as a few attacks that haven’t been filmed. He’s noticed that the attacks seem oddly spaced out. Why don’t they just commit a huge all out assault if they have all these resources? What’s holding them back? Naoko presents the robot idea, and Gendo is somewhat keen on it. It would keep his friends out of danger — he doesn’t like the idea of Yui or Kyoko being hurt. Naoko teases him about it, asking him which he likes better, while leaning over his desk and stroking his chin. Gendo’s face turns red, steam comes out of his ears, and he babbles incoherently about how he couldn’t possibly decide because they are all so wonderful and such precious friends. She taps him on the forehead with her clipboard, and laughs. That evening, once everyone has gone to bed, the proximity alarm blares, and a gigantic centipede creature makes its way towards the base. It skitters around the trees, careful not to knock a single one over. Naoko activates the training assault robots, while Yui and Kyoko watch on, irritated. It seems to go well at first, with the centipede being pummeled left and right, but then it quivers, and sends out a big electric shock. Naoko loses control of the training robots, and they begin to march on the base alongside the centipede. Yui and Kyoko rush to their Units and launch, and now have to battle not only the centipede, but their own trainers. They trade quips as they bash their way through the smaller robots, complaining about “bright ideas” and “wanting a challenge then receiving it”. The centipede tries its electrical attack again, but because there are no radio waves to hijack, it doesn’t work. They stomp the centipede into the ground with a double kick, and it explodes in a shower of debris as the two mechs high five. Back in the base, Yui and Kyoko are relaxing in some reused footage from the beginning of the episode. They aren’t sure how they’re going to keep up their training regimen since all the robots have been destroyed. Naoko enters, excited, and begins explaining how she’s used this opportunity to build newer and better robots that’ll be even tougher and stronger than the last models. Yui and Kyoko mug at the camera as it iris wipes to black, centered on their grimacing faces.

Episode Three: Arial Assault! The Secret of ENGEL Revealed? — Naoko’s cousin, Makoto Katsuragi, has come to visit. This handsome young doctor has some theories about where the monsters are coming from, but doesn’t think its safe to discuss them in the base. He continually fiddles with a small pendant around his neck, a gift from his senpai. Yui and Kyoko both jockey for his attention, assuring him that he’s completely safe, and that they’d kill anything that tried to harm him. This irritates Gendo, who can’t seem to articulate why he’s missing the attention he doesn’t normally seem to be able to handle. Naoko ends the fight by suggesting that they discuss things in the new plane she’s been experimenting with. With a full air guard supporting them, the huge, high tech craft takes to the air, and Naoko shows off all the various armaments, radar packages, and other technological wonders that she’s packed into the warplane. Around a table in the plane’s “war room”, Makoto explains that a secret organization, ENGEL, has been attempting to undo the damage that mankind has done to the Earth, and seeks to restore the world to its previous state of “Oneness. No pain, no separation, no time, no loss. All are one”. Gendo doesn’t think that this is such a bad goal, because there’s a hole in the ozone layer, the rain forests are being destroyed, the oceans polluted, animals are regularly going extinct… Naoko agrees with him, but explains that ENGEL’s methods are simply going too far. They wish to reduce the Earth’s population to a fraction of its current size, by any means necessary. There is an explosion outside, and through the window, an attack plane has blown up one of their escorts! Naoko quickly assigns Yui and Kyoko to gunner stations, and they fend off the assault in an homage to Star Wars. Makoto can’t understand how they found him. Gendo wants to take a closer look at his necklace. Inside is a small transmitter, which Gendo crushes under his heel. Gendo asks when the last time Makoto saw his senpai was. He admits it’s been years. They bring down the last of the attacking planes, but their own crash lands. Thankfully, none of them are injured due to the special modifications that Naoko installed — an impact resistant foam that held them in place and absorbed the blow. Outside, they are confronted by a downed enemy pilot, bleeding from a severe injury in his side, but still aiming a pistol at them. Yui demands that he take off his helmet before he shoots them. The pilot, it turns out, is a beautiful woman — Makoto’s senpai, Barbara. Makoto demands to know why she is doing this. She tells him that if he has to ask, he has already forgotten. She tries to fire, but Yui and Kyoko have used Makoto’s talking as a distraction to rush her, and her shot goes wild. The pistol is knocked from her hands. “Why?” Makoto asks as she dies in his arms. “Why does it have to be like this?”

Episode Four: Enemy Insertion! Who is This New Pilot? — Langley Lorenz introduces a new pilot to the group, Ray Ayanami, a pretty direct palette swap of Ray Amuro from Mobile Suit Gundam. This albino gentleman is charming, if quiet, and seems to fit right in with the group, making the occasional joke and quoting aphorisms wrong. The team sorties against three identical monsters that resemble praying mantises. Ray’s Unit 111 is damaged, but he disables two of the enemies while Yui and Kyoko finish them off. They chastise him for fighting so recklessly, but they’re glad he isn’t hurt. His mech, on the other hand, is going to be grounded for an extended period of time. The mantis severed numerous cables and circuits that will need to be replaced, a lengthy and personnel consuming process, unlike the usual replacement of Armor Trauma shields that is done to the Units. Gendo puts his mind to devising a way to repair the mech quicker, while Naoko tries to synthesize a new alloy that would resist the cutting force of the blades. The next day, two mantises attack the base, both larger than the previous ones. Yui and Kyoko deploy the Impact Hammer and Vibra Sword to dispatch their foes. Meanwhile, Ray sneaks deeper into the NERVE base, and begins to copy something from the core of the MAGI computer. He radios to his companions, and tries to transmit the data he’s copied, but is caught by Gendo, who had wondered where Ray had wandered off to. Shocked by his new friend’s betrayal, they wrestle, and Ray’s radio transmitter is shattered. Gendo asks him “Why?” as they tussle, and Ray shouts that Gendo would never understand, that he’s never cared for something like this, loved something so deeply he’d kill to save it. Gendo asks why they can’t work together, and Ray says that it’s far too late for that, that if they don’t do this now, there won’t be a world left to save. They struggle against a guard rail, and Ray throws himself over it, not wanting to be captured. Naoko and a team of armed guards rush in just as Ray disappears over the edge. They don’t find his body at the bottom of the drop. Gendo, shaken, wonders what could possibly be so bad that they feel the need to do this. Naoko promises to try and figure out what data Ray was trying to steal, in the hopes of figuring out their motives, and to try and reverse engineer the smashed radio and locate the ENGEL base. Once they’re alone, Naoko gives him a kiss and tells Gendo she’s glad he’s alright. That evening, Yui visits Gendo in his quarters, where he’s laying in bed listening to his Walkman. She asks if he’s alright, and offers to teach him how to fight so he’ll be safe if that ever happen again. He thanks her, and asks how Ray could betray them like that. Wasn’t he their friend? Yui doesn’t have a good answer, and says that that’s just how some people are. But he’s not hurt, and that’s the important thing. She leans in and gives him a kiss.

Episode Five: Two By Sea! Aqueous Mecha Attack! — Naoko is able to decipher some of the data from the smashed radio, and determine that it was broadcasting a signal to somewhere in a triangle of water in the pacific ocean. Yui and Kyoko are excited to have an opportunity to go sailing, Gendo looks forward to doing some fishing, and Naoko is excited to try out the new frog suits she’s designed for Units 000 and AAA. Langley reminds them that this won’t be a trip to the beach, it’s going to be work, and all four grumble. They assemble on the Isonami, and Naoko takes them on a tour of the ship’s various technological wonders, from its gravametic cannons to its geostationary satellite uplink targeting computers to its built in pool and theatre. It seems half-cruise liner, half war-ship in terms of comfort and armaments. Because this is the closest the show comes to a “beach episode”, we get a sequence of the girls romping on deck in swimsuits, swimming, wrestling, splitting watermelon, sunbathing, etc. as the Isonami makes its way towards Triangle Delta set to Triangle (トライアングル) by popular idol singer Hiroko Yakushimaru. As they approach, the team suits up, and the song continues, but the montage transitions into them arming for combat, getting the mecha prepared for deep sea use, modifying the weaponry to fire underwater, studying radar patterns and maps. They stop directly above the enemy base, and using steel cable, the Units descend down onto the sunken fortress. It is crucial that the cables not be severed, else the Units will not be able to be retrieved. On the way down, they are attacked by a large, manta ray like monster, that swoops in from below, practically invisible in the swirling sand and mud that it kicks up. By trusting Kyoko’s judgement, Yui is able to slice the ray’s side and tail off, and it crashes into the depths. The base itself has been abandoned, but the information the team is able to retrieve about ENGEL is crucial. Their leader, Keel, has been contacted by a group from space calling itself The First Race, and they plan on returning to their planet. It must be made ready for their arrival. They are displeased by the treatment that humanity has given their old homeworld, and they see to set it straight. Keel begged them to give him a chance to solve the problem, and the First Race consented, albeit under strict constraints. They would return in two years, and if the world was not as they left it, they would cleanse the planet entirely and start humanity over from scratch. After watching this exchange, our heroes realize that they’ve been led into a trap — the base is rigged to explode. Yui manages to hurl one of the bombs up into the stratosphere, where it detonates harmlessly, but the secondary bomb can only be delayed, not removed, despite Naoko and Gendo’s best efforts. Cramming everyone into the cockpits of the mecha and leaving behind the smaller submarines that they took down, the four of them begin a desperate climb up the cable, racing back to the ship before the base explodes and takes them with it. Another manta-ray appears, and attempts to slice the cables apart. Naoko and Kyoko attempt to sacrifice themselves to stop the ray and save Gendo and Yui by diving down onto the ray and stabbing it through the back, but their fall is halted by the other mech catching them by the hand and hauling them back up. “I can’t abandon you,” Yui says. “Who would I compete against?” They make it on-board the ship as the explosion rocks the surface of the sea, and sends the Isonami flying across the waves, but thankfully not overturning her due to the various stabilization and water thrust systems built into her.

Episode Six: Discovery! ENGEL Base is Go! — Assembling every piece of information they’ve ever gathered about ENGEL, Gendo and Naoko work late into the night, calculating the trajectories of every monster, every transmission, every sighting, every stray probability that might lead them to finding their enemy. After the data is fed into the MAGI system, they sit in front of the printer, waiting for a response, sipping tea. Naoko asks Gendo why he joined NERVE. He replies that he was listless, drifting after university, and needed a place where he belonged. He asks her the same question. She replies that no one else would give her the freedom and resources to build things like this — everywhere else she went, people tried to box her in, tried to force her into positions she didn’t want to take, to work towards goals she didn’t care about. “And you care about this one?” Gendo asks. “Saving the world? I’ll do for now,” she replies, and kisses him. Before it can go any further, the screen flashes to life, and the printer begins to ratchet back and forth with a scroll of results: ENGEL is based out of the South Pole. The team is scrambled, cold weather modifications are made to the Units, and soon they are airlifted towards the ENGEL base. What follows is an amazingly choreographed fight sequence, where Units 000 and AAA battle multiple beasts across the snowy surface, while Gendo and Naoko speed towards the base in a tracked transport. The animators really outdid themselves here, and I didn’t notice any reused animations for attacks nor and loss of detail even in wide shots. Each beast is unique, as well, ranging from a Lovecraft inspired giant penguin to a bizarre hippo/giraffe hybrid to a strange bird/squid thing. This sequence is a good third of the episode. With the mess of battle strewn behind them, they arrive at the base, and Yui tears off the front of the fortress. NERVE troops rush in, and quickly the base falls to their forces. Keel is brought before them, and the team questions him. He raves, explaining that it’s too late now, that the time is up, that they know he’s failed, that they’ve doomed them all, that they need to look at the sky. Up above is a gigantic meteorite, just approaching the moon. They don’t have long to figure out how to destroy it and save the planet. It’ll be a difficult thing to hit, because it’s coming at the Earth from “below”. Gendo assembles all the paper and graphs required to do the math for firing an explosive laden rocket at the meteor, and Naoko checks his work. “Will this work?” Yui asks. “If it doesn’t, this will be worse than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs,” Gendo replies. Yui grabs him by the shoulders and kisses him, in full view of everyone present, for much longer than perhaps is proper. “For luck, and because I might not get a chance to do it again later,” she explains. Naoko looks sullen as she transmits their firing solutions to the Central Missile Authority. The missiles are launched, and as they approach the meteor, the screen pauses, and cuts to the familiar “to be continued” that every other episode has ended on.

Only, in this case, there was no seventh episode. Why, precisely, I haven’t been able to track down, but its exactly the sort of frustrating ending that encourages someone to pick it up and finish it, or, in Anno’s case, re-invent the series with a much darker tone, and turn it into an allegory for growing up and learning to live without your parent’s (or anyone’s, really) approval. This is definitely a show in the post-Tomino era, unafraid to show people being killed in the crossfire and emphasizing the military role of the robots, but it also isn’t nearly as extreme or groundbreaking as its contemporaries. I won’t lie and say that it’s a hidden gem that’s so much better than NGE, or that viewing it vastly enhances your understanding of the sequel, because, honestly, so much was altered that you get all the broad strokes of “new continuity” from the flashback sequences in NGE. It’s more of a curiosity than an essential part of the viewing experience. Ideon and U.F.O. are far more “necessary”, if you’re the sort who makes assertions like that.

I certainly don’t feel that my time or my $1 was wasted. If you can find a copy, it’s probably worth it. This isn’t some 40+ episode monster you’ll be devoting a week or more to; it’s a relatively short OVA that you can finish up in one sitting. Don’t break your head looking for it, but if it falls into your lap, give it a watch.

“I am Always Late to the Party” by Donna Greenhauser

March 16, 2017March 16, 2017 SpoilersBelowLeave a comment

I’m not one of those people who are glued to book reviews and clamoring to read the latest thing, despite my profession. I prefer to give books a bit of time to age, and to see if it’s just going to be a flash in the pan that no one will care about in a year or so (Water for Elephants, Sarah’s Key) or will actually enter the modern canon as worthy of the time it takes to really read a novel.

Because I’m not, nor have I ever been, one of those folks who can speed through page after page, skimming through the boring bits, glancing over descriptions, jumping ahead to the action. For better or for worse, I read every word.

This isn’t a moral stand or a judgement on those who can read faster than I can. I’d find it rather useful if I could hustle through a novel in a weekend, or knock off six chapters in an evening. And I’m not going to make some preposterous claim, like that I enjoy slowly read novels on a deeper level or something. I just don’t read very fast. It’s something I’ve accepted.

It also means that, for me, while reading is a pleasurable and leisurely activity, it is also one that is undertaken with great care. Is whatever book I’m about to embark upon going to be more worth my time than Kant or Hegel? Woolf or Joyce? Pynchon or Wallace?

(It does seem to make reading certain philosophy easier, because I’m used to reading at a very slow pace, whereas, for example, a companion of mine once flew into a rage because she couldn’t deal with the long sentences, but also couldn’t turn her long ingrained speed-reading off. Another friend of mine used to fast-forward through parts of movies that she found boring, and then get angry at the films when she couldn’t understand what was happening (she was the quintessential person in the movie theatre “Why did they kill that guy? I thought he was with them? He was with the bad guys? When did they say that?”), but that’s a separate problem)

Which brings us around, the long way, to Greenhauser’s I am Always Late to the Party.

It’s a novel that came out a few years back, and one that I didn’t pay much attention to on its release, though a lot of folks seemed quite taken by it.

A quick plot summary: Esther, a woman in her late 20s, attempts to “rationalize” her life, by making everything she possibly can completely optimal. She counts her steps, she notes how many times she chews each different type of food, she measures how long she needs to sleep given what activities she has performed each day, etc. etc. She figures that by doing this, she will save herself enough time and effort that she’ll have time to be happy, that the main source of her unhappiness comes from how busy she is, and if she had the time to relax, she wouldn’t hate herself nor the world around her. She has encounters with various folks, there’s minor plot lines running throughout the book about her landlord trying to get with her sister, her boss dissolving the company because of mismanaged funds, her ex-boyfriend who lives down the street from her job trying to get back on his feet after their recent break-up, but the main thrust is Esther herself trying to solve the condition of her life by making more time.

She fails, as you might imagine.

But what struck me as brilliant about the book was not the set up, nor the rather predictable ending where her best friend lets her know The Secret that life isn’t just a series of tasks to be performed, but something to be relished and enjoyed, and that if you spend all your time trying to make yourself happy, rather than finding happiness, you’ll never succeed, and all that… No, it’s that this section comes while there’s still a good third of the book left, and Esther’s reply is “Yeah, no shit. But I don’t have any money. My job is falling apart. I can’t just fuck off to India for two months, Siobhan,” which, needless to say, isn’t the reaction she was expecting.

Now, they don’t have a big breakdown shouting match or anything, which is another point I liked, because far too often female friendships are depicted as fragile or petty, and this honestly felt like a realistic relationship. Siobhan takes it in stride, and lets Esther complain some more. She’s a good friend. They go out drinking, and through the strange vicissitudes of fate, end up crashing a very fancy party hosted by Simon, who is an amalgamation of a number of business person stereotypes. Esther looks like Simon’s ex-girlfriend from behind, and he ends up shouting a ton of nasty things at her, which Esther initially takes as criticism at her crashing the party. But then he gets more personal, going on about parts of their “relationship”, and finishes by calling her Grace. Only after he’s made a fool of himself does she turn around and say “I think you meant to say that to someone else.”

Esther and Siobhan get back to Esther’s apartment, and Siobhan passes out in Esther’s bed. Esther tries sleeping on the couch, but finds that this has fully thrown her attempts to control her life astray. It will take weeks for her to get back on track. But when she controlled everything, she wasn’t happy. What was she doing with all that spare time? Trying to figure out ways to arrange for more spare time? And when she let herself go and didn’t care, at the end of the night, regardless of how good a time she had, she was still back in the same place. What was the point? Why bother with any of it? She goes to the top of her building, intending to jump, but finds that the entire roof has been encircled with fencing and safety nets to prevent this very thing. She laughs, “A sad, private laugh, the sort you’d imagine coming from a clown’s tent as he takes off his make-up after the night is over”, and goes back downstairs.

There’s some plot wrapping up after that (Siobhan punches Judd, Esther’s ex-, when he shows up the next morning, her landlord and her sister finally go on a date, her boss sells the company and Esther doesn’t lose her job, she meets Grace and learns what an ass Simon was during their relationship, etc.), but this is really where the novel ends in terms of character development and significant action.

It isn’t that she chooses not to commit suicide, it is that suicide is made just inconvenient enough for her not to bother making the effort. Her life isn’t good, per se, but she is forbidden from stopping it easily. She must go on living, happy or not, unless she really doesn’t want to. And, which is why I’m glad the novel doesn’t end on the rooftop, the world doesn’t care whether or not she likes it or hates it. Life still moves on for other people.

One will hope that it will keep its place in the literary consciousness, but sadly, I’ve not seen a copy in bookstores since I bought mine.

So it goes, I guess.

The Backstroke of the West: Language and Function

March 3, 2017 SpoilersBelowLeave a comment

Revenge of the Sith is not the best Star Wars movie. It has wonderful visuals, an interesting story, and some really nice action sequences, but it is bogged down by some strange directorial choices, some odd dialogue choices, and the occasional poor acting performance.

Backstroke of the West, on the otherhand, is just brilliant. I’m well aware it was made as a joke. The film was purchased as a Chinese bootleg, translated into Chinese, and then back into English, with all the attendant “engrish” and strangeness that comes from bulk machine translation. Some enterprising souls then dubbed the entire thing over an HD copy into the form above. On a surface level, it’s a silly curio, taken to an extreme level. Years back, Vader’s “No!” translated as “Do not want!” was a series of memetic images that floated around the internet, and this, no doubt, is just as quotable.

However, sitting there and actually watching it, once I got into the movie, after the opening crawl and once the novelty began to wear off, I began to really enjoy it. It was like watching the film again with a fresh pair of eyes and ears. It’s one thing when you’re watching a film that was obviously in another language — even as a child, I was under no illusion that the Godzilla movies were originally in English, and that’s why people’s mouths didn’t match the dialogue — but to export it into a feature length science fiction film, it managed to give the distance and foreignness that most sci fi is simply lacking. I could actually pay attention to the movie, rather than worry about the acting or nitpicking details.

Let me explain further: there is no logical reason why characters in Star Wars should be speaking English. It’s possible, of course, that the intergalactic lingua franca just happens to sound exactly like English, but there’s no in-universe reason why the characters all speak late 20th century American and British accented English — Star Wars isn’t one of those franchises where it’s revealed at the end that Luke and Leia are actually Adam and Eve, or that Tattooine is really Mars after a devastating collapse caused all of humanity to leave Earth. In fact, Star Wars is explicitly set in the past, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away”. It is for our convenience as movie viewers that the films are presented in our native languages.

Movies use this sort of shorthand all the time. One famous example is in 1987’s Dirty Dancing. The film is set in 1963, and yet Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze’s final dance number is to Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes’s Academy Award winning (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life, a decidedly contemporary track that became one of the most iconic late 80’s songs. It’s a song that literally could not have been composed or produced in 1963, due to its use of synthesizers, drum machines, vocal processing, etc. Yet we literally see a character put on a 45 before Swayze takes the stage. They aren’t dancing to silence. They could have used a more contemporary track; there’s a wealth of music from the 60’s that would have been appropriate. But in an attempt to convey the feeling, energy, and passion between the characters, the director and producer used a very modern song to keep the sequence from feeling nostalgic or old. Watching them dance to Time of My Life better conveys to the audience how it would have felt to have them dance to something from the 60’s, realism be damned.

And so, having the characters in Revenge of the Sith speak at a remove, in a slightly more alien tongue, actually helped make the film a more enjoyable experience. You can’t quite understand exactly what’s happening, except for the parts that are perfectly clear. The words are recognizable, but not coherent. You’re forced to focus on the visuals and expressions, rather than vocals, and exposition is cut down to almost nothing.

The result is an emotional rollercoaster, a film of violent pathos, a tragedy of anguish and heartbreak. Gold and Ratio Tile simply cannot find equal footing with one another, despite The Plum Of’s attempts to reconcile them. Mr. Speaker’s takeover is awful in it’s inevitability. The fall of the Presbyterian Church seems destined, because the Hopeless Situation Warriors cannot see the trouble before their own faces. Had they put a little more trust in Gold, perhaps it would not have been so, but they did not, and thus the West conquered all, without the people even noticing.

I’ve always said that there was a good movie hiding inside Revenge of the Sith. It just took a quirk of translation to find it.