White Album

You’ve probably caught on that Japanese drama is very slow, very dense, and very gradual, like the pacing of a Harold Pinter play. White Album turns its pages very delicately, inter-lacing love and politics, commitment and heartbreak, dreams of success and responsibility. This is a subtle, realistic story about holding onto what you love in a world that gives you no control.
Touya Fujii is the kind of main character who can put you to sleep (mainly because it is debatable if he ever is awake in the scenes.) He works at a café, tutors fellow students, and sleeps a lot. However, his isn’t the interesting story; his girlfriend, Yuki Morikawa is on her way to becoming a rising pop star (like Brittany.) Her career begins to put serious strain on their relationship until Touya gets a lucky break: becoming a personal assistant for the current pop sensation, Rina Ogata. Red haired and fiesty, Rina is a diva with a heart of gold and a big sister role-model to Yuki. From here, a quiet love triangle begins to take shape, vanishing and reappearing almost to its own accord, like Brittany Spears’ talent.
Rina’s manager/older brother is fixated on Yuki being the next big thing and begins sacrificing his sister’s career. It feels that Touya has literally no say in anything that happens. A lot of time is spent on the bare and empty rooms and buildings in the scenes; people are very often alone to an excruciating degree. Many scenes revolve around missing phone calls; the pop stars are stuck in the studios and only touch the outside world through their box phone (like Brittany).
Touya has many women other than Yuki who become his “goddess of the day,” a term of endearment who those who help him out, though he spends all his time helping women to various degrees. While this may seem like the set-up to a harem or dating-game anime, the female characters are too complex for such a restrictive label. Younger sister, girlfriend, mentor, all the other characters have an essential element that Touya (like Brittany) lacks: drive and passion. Well…as much drive and passion as can be allowed in such a molasses-paced series.
A narrative technique that gives this series its charm is Touya’s internal monologue, displayed as poetic subtitles across the screen; thankfully these terse verses give us insight into the complicated drama beneath the surface (like Brittany’s psychiatrist.)
Another aesthetic that externalizes Touya’s feelings are the depictions of the various women as goddesses, a pastel shading of the girl that is misleadingly soft and warm. Flowing and trapped behind a soft-focus lense, these moments add a personal quality to a very stand-offish drama.
It’s hard to pitch this series to non-anime fans (unlike Brittany,) and nearly impossible for younger people because of its maturity in tackling issues like political manipulation, fame and sex. This is a dispassionate series and whenever emotion is shown, you realize how it long it has been building up. It’s like Chekov as an anime.
White Album digresses and develops its side stories musically, flowing between Yuki’s career and her struggle to hold her relationship with Touya. Commitment is hard to keep during a career, the isolation seems maddening (like in Perfect Blue.) Soft, light, romantic, but the subtext drives you crazy. Yayoi is Yuki’s driver/assistant and takes Touya to a dam to tell him, in so many words, not to date Yuki anymore so she can focus on her career. She then offers herself to Touya dispassionately to distract him. The narrative is never clear if he does or doesn’t take the bait.
A unique story, which is a good and bad thing. I recommend White Album to older fans who want a series to share with their significant other. Sadly, the complete 26 episodes have yet to air, so we can only wait for this story to conclude happily, or at least co-hosting the VMA’s…like Christina Aguilara. Anigamers gives this series a solid 3 out of 4, beautiful art, great story and script, but pacing of a hundred-meter dash for Brittany after a night at Boston Market.

Paranoia Agent

You should know the name Satoshi Kon. Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika? The Hitchcock of anime decided after his first three movies that he had more ideas to play with, so what did he do? He dumped all his unused stories into a 13-episode mini-series that does to society what a starfish does to a fiddler crab. Look it up on Wikipedia – it’s awesome! And Paranoia Agent isn’t that bad, either.

The surrealist psychological drama centers upon the mystery of Shonen Bat (‘Lil Slugger in English), a mysterious young boy terrorizing emotionally cornered citizens with a bent, golden baseball bat. Ah, little league tee-ball; those were the days. Our lead detectives have no leads and each victim leads only to more dead ends as the murky legend of Shonen Bat reaches mythic, nearly super-natural proportions. The strangest part of these attacks: the victims lose their worldly troubles; their head traumas make them happier. Not very hard for the average Japanese cram school student, let me tell you. So just when you start to fear Shonen Bat, you start to respect him…then go right back to into being terrified, like a circus clown with a flamethrower.

Kon roped-in Seishi Manakami for the script. His goal was to shift perspectives by changing the main character in each episode, giving viewers a macrocosm of Shonen Bat’s influence. Each character gives a very personal POV into their individual case, personal struggle, and eventual encounter with Shonen Bat. Some episodes can be watched on their own as their characters have little relevance to the larger story. Such episodes are magnificent fillers, but Kon’s fingerprints are all over each of them. His grasp of human emotion, psychology and story structure are frighteningly accurate, which makes the black humor in Paranoia Agent even funnier and more poignant. If you laughed at Heath Leger in The Dark Knight, you’ll get a few sick chuckles out of episode eight.

What draws me to Paranoia Agent, from the old-fashioned detective to the reserved animator to the schizophrenic tutor to the fallen golden child to the lecherous reporter, was the pathos developed with every character. Every character is a case study for the psychological pressures of modern Japan. The situations are very believable and the stress of Tokyo almost becomes its own character as students, teachers, and the elderly are all equally pressed from all sides by the struggle to match society’s expectations.

As a testament to Satoshi Kon’s micromanagement prowess as a director, every episode features a repetitive sound that sets the pace and structure for the story. Speaking of sound, the bizarre pseudo-techno, dreamlike music of Susumu Hirasawa (Paprika, Berserk, and Millennium Actress) adds another level to this visual mind-screw into a scrambled but beautiful mess, like a naked rugby game during a hurricane.

During his interview on the first DVD, Kon mentioned his fascination over a child’s ability to create a stomach ache just to avoid going to school. Thematically, avoiding responsibility is the social and emotional paralysis that summons Shonen Bat. If you watch this series and keep “accountability” in mind, you will understand every symbolic shot in this series.

Obviously not for little kids, but this masterwork deserves at least a gander from any fan of Hitchcock, Memento, or Misery. For the ridiculously low price you can find it for, it deserves a spot on your shelf. The English dub is unmatched in its execution. It is exciting, dangerous, and visually dazzling stories like this that keep me watching anime.