House of the rising Moonglum

*SPOILERS* for Noir and Gasaraki. Smaller for Noir than Gasaraki, but definitely there for both.

Recently finished watching two anime series. Noir and Gasaraki. Noir was just incredible. It might even surpass Trigun as my all time favorite. The main reason I liked it so much? It had an ending. Not only that, it was a good ending. So many anime series go on into eternity, or if they do end, end just because they ran out of money *cough* Evangenlion *cough*. But not so here, they had a good story, good character development, and even did a good job tying it all up in the end, in a way that left you feeling shockingly happy given the nature of much of the show. I was NOT expecting to come away feeling happy. (Happy as in happy, not happy as in having enjoyed it.) Also, I loved the music. It was really good music. No, actually it was incredible music. I’m actually thinking about getting the soundtrack.

Another thing I really liked about it was how simple the story turns out to be. It is a simple story once you know all the details, but they made it into a real mystery by showing it through the eyes of kids, misplaced memories and all that. Then they stuck in a bunch of different groups with differing motives, but in the end it was just two groups fighting over simple resource allocation. Really slick. I like having a story that you can actually know what happened through the whole show by the end. I also like that they show a little more of the main flashback each episode, but each time it gives enough additional information that it doesn’t get boring. I also like that it is the SAME flashback for everyone. That, honestly, blew my mind. (And also explained why they showed it so much. Because different characters were having it at different moments.)

So if Noir did the ending thing correctly, Gasaraki didn’t. To their credit they didn’t just run out of money and through a big pile of monkey dung on the screen and call it Evangelion. I like the characters, and the idea of god powered giant robots is cool, though pretty much universal. Now, having the robots activate though no dancing was unique though. Over all though, as the series wore on, it became less interesting. Although, in light of my recent post on food = oil, the whole bit with the US stopping all grain exports causing mass panic in Japan seemed much more believable. And man were the Japanese suckered. That poor guy whacked himself in shame at the US’s “greatness”. It is true that we would never see such magnanimity from our current leadership, but as if reinstating the grain trade for this year’s harvest is going to help out next year’s at all! The resources will still be bad the next year, and the US will just do the same thing again, only this time they won’t have the super genius of a leader to pull their asses out of the fire.

Oh and by the way, writers of Gasaraki, you aren’t fooling anyone. We know that the old man was supposed to be Mishima. C’mon the military coup, and long winded political views just gave it away. And, while looking for that last link OMG, Stokes knew after all what Mishima was going to do! Well, I guess it is obvious in retrospect, but still. Duuude.

One other thing I really really liked was that when the old man was convincing the general to join his cause (and what a stupid cause it was… lets live the old ways, because it was harder and suffering makes you better. Then we could all be like the samurai again. Mike and I were joking about the seven samurai and how they all ate gruel, but then it turned out that was what he really meant!) they didn’t make us sit through the convincing! They just had him come in, and cut away, and then “three days later” the general was convinced. Sweet! A much more persuasive argument than they could have had any hope of actually showing.

But then they pooped on the screen and called it art. I knew we were in trouble when they put critical dialog in the opening credits of the final episode. I hate it when Anime writers do that: when they smoke a bunch of bad crack and then write the last episode. Oh well, the rest of the series was good, and Noir was awesome.