Shelf Life

Bridge Over Troubled Arakawa

Arakawa Under the Bridge is another pricey release from NIS America with a large book included (I reviewed Wagnaria!! a couple weeks ago). Blind-buying NIS releases puts me worrisomely close to a speculator; I suspected this limited edition box would be easy to re-sell if I didn't like the show. Fortunately, I liked Arakawa a lot. I might not re-watch it, but it seems like a great candidate to loan to friends.

Ko is a twenty-something rich kid from a family with a strict motto about always paying off their debts (like the Lannisters… or not). One day, Ko's life is saved by Nino, a homeless girl living under a bridge. Ko is determined to pay her back immediately… but her condition is that they become lovers. Fortunately for the inexperienced Ko, the beyond-socially-inept Nino doesn't quite know what dating means.

In fact, Nino just might be schizophrenic, considering she sincerely believes she is literally from Venus. Nino's not alone in her madness; living along the riverbank she calls home is a thriving community of eccentric homeless people, each with their own quirks. There's a guy who is permanently dressed as a kappa, a guy who wears a star mask 24/7, and a violent cross-dressing nun who runs a chapel for these loonies. Hoshi (the star-headed guy) is murderously jealous of Ko's relationship with the beautiful Nino, and sets about trying to sabotage their relationship. Further complicating matters, Ko's father's company tries to get him to stop living under the bridge just as he settles in.

A lot of Japanese comedy seems to be based on a premise where someone is doing something crazy or weird, while a "normal" straight-man bystander freaks out and yells at them. Although Arakawa certainly fits into this frame of humor, Ko is not entirely normal, despite being the voice of reason in many situations. This saves the show from feeling tired. Particularly, Ko's flashbacks to his traumatic upbringing are both disturbing and memorable.

The humor works well and I laughed a lot. In one of my favorite scenes, Ko presents an ideal date to Nino in a series of storyboard panels (almost kamishibai style). After a helicopter tour of Tokyo, he says, they will dine with the prime minister until such a time that the first lady feels like singing karaoke, backed by a full orchestra in the restaurant. Nino doesn't really get it, but enjoys Ko's picture show.

Although the riverbank setting is a little limited (most action takes place on a grassy field), the show makes a lot of effort to stay visually interesting. Different painting styles are employed to depict the foliage, characters wear patterned clothing, and the commercial eye-catches parody a variety of manga styles. Arakawa is one of the more artistically experimental anime series I've seen in recent memory. Even the previews are all unsettling yet hilarious live action footage of the kappa character.

The set comes with both Blu-rays and DVDs. The book contains a lot of nice staff and cast interviews, along with oddly lengthy and extraneous character descriptions and plot summaries. There isn't a dub, but the subtitle translation is particularly adept and charming (even going so far as to use slang like "sheeple" to convey meaning).

Episode 12 has some closure, but there is another season yet to come. It's too bad this is so crazy expensive, I'd like more people to watch Arakawa. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to marathon it with friends?[TOP]

I try to use the word "breathtaking" sparingly in reviews. I'm not sure if there was restoration work done for the DVD release, but watching this on my HDTV at 16:9 almost brought tears to my eyes as I contemplated several decades of international anime fans passing this film along on tattered VHS tapes well after the 1981 theatrical run.

To be perfectly fair, the film may be breathtaking, but the ending is nonsensical. The plot starts off strong enough. Two years after the end of Galaxy Express 999, humans and machines are embroiled in life-or-death warfare. The film's opening is reminiscent of Space Battleship Yamato, with a devastated Earth rocked by series of explosions. Tetsuro, now a young fighter in the human resistance, receives a mysterious message from Maetel telling him to board the 999 once more. More of a man than a boy, Tetsuro leaves behind his small band of gray-haired rebels and boards the train, whose route is now significantly altered because of similarly devastating human-machine battles on other planets.

That is an awesome plot (in a literal way rather than colloquially; it filled me with awe), but things slowly start to go wrong. We're introduced to Faust, a cool-looking, but evil machine-knight with strange powers (wearing a helm strikingly reminiscent of the playbill cover for Amadeus), who throws off the storyline. The plot seriously runs off the rails when the 999 is diverted to Andromeda. There are three major plot twists in Andromeda; one is believable, one is shamelessly derivative of another contemporary movie, and the third I didn't understand at all. I'm willing to look past these flaws and still love and shelve this movie, but I'm not going to rationalize it. 90% of Adieu makes sense, but that last 10% is serious nonsense.

Animators, filmmakers, and studios use "reels" as their resumes, collections of gorgeous shots and scenes from the work they've done over the years. Adieu is filled with one reel-worthy scene after another. The animators and everyone involved have taken great care to show the beautiful train chugging through ever more spectacular nebulas, then one-upping themselves with incredibly well-realized luminescent cityscapes of the future.

This movie (along with the previous film) is science fiction that I can safely pass along to my brother (a non-anime fan), who insisted on re-watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) far too many times during our childhood. You might not remember the original Star Trek movie, but it suffers from some seriously long beauty pans over the Enterprise. Adieu is filled with similar pans (and often with similar late-70's synth music), but where Star Trek: The Motion Picture I is incredibly boring, Adieu manages to stay exciting throughout. It is surely a mark in Rintaro's favor that his long, contemplative shots on characters' eyes or experimental visual effects never stray into the doldrums.

I'm all in favor of judging movies and television based on the strength of the narrative first and spectacle like visual effects second (or sixth, like Aristotle). Special effects films with crappy stories (perhaps The Cell?) tend not to be lasting, memorable works of art. Adieu is now 30 years old, but, as far as I'm concerned, it has stood the test of time. The effects and art designs don't look dated in a bad way (if anything, they look dated in a good way).

Adieu is an epic summer blockbuster made for the ages, with a palpable reverence for the original source material. It belongs on your shelf in a place of honor, next to other anime feature classics like The Dagger of Kamui, Nausicaa, and Paprika.

The image gallery extra is disappointingly short. I'm not convinced of Scott McNeil as Harlock in the dub; he just doesn't sound like he's taking Harlock seriously enough. Sometimes the rest of the cast has the same mood/tone problem, so I found myself switching back to the Japanese for very dramatic scenes.[TOP]