Author: scottlarouxwrites

Hopeful moe student council president.

As Time Changes – Clannad #3

scottlarouxwritesLeave a comment

As Time Changes – Clannad #3

Posts may contain spoilers for the entire series.

Our third week of Clannad brings with it a third post and a new format. The past two posts have been arranged as a chronological flow of analysis that I tried to demonstrate some kind of logical progression within. That structure worked well enough, but I also feel it has its shortcomings. Partly as a matter of remedying those shortcomings and partly because the main ideas of this post will be more difficult to link together into a coherent storyline, I’m experimenting a bit with structure this time. I want to divide my thoughts into clear sections.

c3p1

Clannad is a story made up of a lot of key recurring elements, and one of the best ways to engage with it is to trace those elements throughout the series. For that reason, organizing posts into distinct sections that clearly mark which specific element they deal with might make that job of “tracing” easier for both you and me. All that being said, I’m not committing to this structure by any means. I’m leaving myself open to continue experimenting or to return to old structures–whatever seems to fit the episode and topic at hand.

The above text has been my own repeating element: some unnecessary ramblings about my writing process for these posts. I’ll apologize for wasting time, but I can’t promise I’ll stop. Anyway, on to the show.Read More »

Advertisement

As Time Changes – Clannad #2

scottlarouxwritesLeave a comment

As Time Changes – Clannad #2

Welcome back to our long climb. I have no doubt in my mind that the hardest part of this project will be thinking up new introductions for each post. Well, at least I’ve gotten this one out of the way.

Last time, we opened up a lot of puzzle boxes about the relationships between time, change, life, and death. Our characters are going to be working through these puzzles all story long, trying to sort out their own feelings towards these topics as we make our own interpretations. Behind all of this is an emotional thesis: “I hate this town.” I had begun to clarify that “town” shouldn’t be taken entirely at face value. The “town” in question is more than just a location with geographical borders and city ordinances, etc. As we’ve already heard from Tomoya himself, part of what the “town” encompasses is the idea of his school days–their repetitive, boring nature that serves as nothing but a brief respite from his home life.

e2c1

We’ll flesh out our idea of the “town” just as we build up our understanding of those puzzles I mentioned.Read More »

As Time Changes – Clannad #1

scottlarouxwrites1 Comment

As Time Changes – Clannad #1

Note: I am working with two copies of Clannad: one with lackluster image quality and one with a lackluster translation. The images in this series will be from the copy with less terrible image quality, and as such there may be discrepancies between quotations and subtitles shown.

The first time I wrote about Clannad for this blog, I mentioned how I wanted to give the story the attention it deserved in a series of posts. I wasn’t ready for such a project at the time and–in fact–I’m probably not ready for it now either. Yet, I want to get to work on it. However long it takes me. To be fair, I am compromising a bit. My original plan was to focus on the visual novel–a form that would take me much longer to parse and would make cataloging/accessing relevant quotes and screenshots much more cumbersome. Time just doesn’t allow for that right now.

You’ll have to settle for ~50 individual episodes instead.

clp1

In many ways, Clannad is a story that I have grown up with, and that I’m sure I have yet to finish growing up with. Being able to rediscover the story across multiple media has certainly encouraged that relationship, as has the range of the plot’s timeline itself. I’ve been able to rediscover Clannad as I “rediscover” myself (but more on that eventually). I’ve also found myself discovering Clannad elsewhere–across visual novels and anime. The anime adaptation is perhaps the flagship of the Key and KyoAni collaborations, growing out of and pushing forward the KyoAni style and structure that has proved too influential to ignore.Read More »

Space and Time in Yuru Camp

scottlarouxwritesLeave a comment

Space and Time in Yuru Camp

Yuru Camp, an iyashikei about an outdoor activity that (frankly) most people who watch seasonal anime will not engage in, somehow managed to match the popularity of all its diverse seasonal contemporaries. Bearing in mind that those contemporaries included a Trigger/A-1 Pictures co-produced action series featuring a cute dinosaur (Darling in the Franxx) and a highly anticipated KyoAni adaptation (Violet Evergarden), that’s quite the accomplishment for a no-name studio and director. One naturally wonders what made Yuru Camp so successful.

st1

The answer you’ll find throughout discussion posts and YouTube reviews is that it’s comfy–a description that’s as much of a meme is it is the truth. However, if we go a step further and try to answer why it’s comfy, we might learn something about iyashikei as a whole. Lately, every season of anime is filled up with slice of life or would-be iyashikei shows. Most of these shows come across as formulaic and wind up lost in the dustbin with the mobile game adaptations. So what makes Yuru Camp stand out as comfy when so many of its peers fall into the trap of being boring?Read More »

2018 Retrospective

scottlarouxwrites4 Comments

2018 Retrospective

There are spoilers ahead. If you see a show title you haven’t watched yet, you might want to skip that section until you have.

This was a year full of quality and diverse anime, and even the most cynical curmudgeon couldn’t have come out of it having enjoyed nothing. It was also an incredibly busy year for me, which kept me from watching so many of these shows until just the past couple of months. That being said, I believe that my relative inactivity in 2018 was all for the purpose of having a fantastic 2019, throughout which I hope to deliver you all my best work–both in discussing anime and in my own creative endeavors.

retr1

But since this is a post meant to celebrate anime and not my aspirations, let’s move on! The same rules apply as always: only shows that began their first cour and season in 2018 were considered. Films, remakes, and reboots were all excluded for the same reasons as usual. To say it for the (now) fourth time: I decided on these five shows as the anime that will best represent 2018 to my mind–whether that be for my emotional response to them, my appreciation of their execution, my investment in their extratextual hooplah, or any other reason I explain below. This was the hardest retrospective to put together yet!

So let’s celebrate some of the year’s anime.Read More »

What It Means to Speak: Melodramatic Articulation in Anime

scottlarouxwritesLeave a comment

What It Means to Speak: Melodramatic Articulation in Anime

This essay contains significant spoilers for Toradora!, The Anthem of the Heart, and A Silent Voice.

Introduction

In her autobiography, From Truant to Anime Screenwriter, Mari Okada faces the quintessential melodramatic dilemma: how can I speak aloud what I feel inside?

“I’m hopelessly inadequate with words,” she writes. “Whenever I try to say something, the words will clog up in my throat… Until I became a scenario writer, I’d thought that it was solitary work where you could carefully pick the right words to use and express your feelings perfectly. But that’s not how it was at all. Being an anime scenario writer means grappling with people. You can’t just write your feelings in text; you have to say the words out loud.”

When we imagine the pivotal conflicts and climaxes of melodramas, it is easy to gloss over the mechanics through which those scenes are expressed. We think of love confessions, emotional outbursts, and flowing tears, but always with a focus on their emotional weight and register. This is where the negative characterization of melodrama is often grounded–its “hysterics” and “manipulations”. Rarely do we examine the construction of such scenes in terms of their specific, observable actions and reactions. In short, what are the characters actually doing during these confessions and outbursts?Read More »

First Thoughts on Maquia

scottlarouxwrites1 Comment

First Thoughts on Maquia

As with Your Name, I want to get my initial impressions of Mari Okada’s Maquia out there while the film is fresh in my head. I’ll likely revisit the movie once it sees an official home release, discussing it from some perspective concerning melodrama. After all, there’s no better pair than Okada and melodrama. But in the meantime, here are my musings on the film after two theater viewings (both with surprisingly mannered audiences). No major spoilers ahead.

mft1

Obviously the biggest draw for Maquia is its status as Okada’s directorial debut. I was certainly interested in seeing what her “vision” for her own words were for once, as well as whether her writing would change now that she held the ultimate responsibility for transmuting the story to screen. Overall, I think her recent experience writing for The Anthem of the Heart benefited her a lot in directing Maquia. Being heavily involved in an anime film production–and overcoming the production and personal struggles surrounding that project, according to her autobiography–seems to have given Okada enough know-how and confidence to succeed with Maquia.Read More »

5 Favorite Episodes

scottlarouxwritesLeave a comment

5 Favorite Episodes

After a hiatus from writing about anime, I figured I could simultaneously celebrate my birthday and ease myself back into the process by writing about my five favorite anime episodes. Picking a top five or top ten series list is difficult because of the endless criteria I could use to rank shows. However, when it comes to individual episodes, it’s a lot easier to break the content down and compare my feelings of each option.

Although I still can’t provide a specific order for these five episodes, they are still my overall top five favorites. Spoilers for each show, of course!

Chihayafuru Season 2, Episode 24

While the entire series is a beautiful exploration of both niche passions and competition, this episode stands out as the most romantic. And romantic is the most appropriate word to use here. Chihayafuru features a love triangle, and although it seems to be the show’s main draw at first, it becomes more like a representation of how romantic each character’s feelings towards karuta are. In competition, a “love” of the game is always mentioned, but Chihayafuru expands that feeling to encompass all meanings of “love.”

epi1

Chihayafuru is so successful at this because of how it blends shoujo/josei stylistic elements with the rich cultural context of karuta as a sport, but also for how it treats its competitor characters and their skills. Chihayafuru does not feature the kinds of brutal physical advantages you might find in a show like Haikyuu!!. There are no characters who are so tall, so strong, so naturally imposing that other characters fear them. Characters are instead described as having “studied”. They’re hyped up on the basis of their composure or mental fitness more than their speed or strength (though speed is still a major highlight).Read More »

What Matters in Storytelling

scottlarouxwritesLeave a comment

What Matters in Storytelling: Plot Holes and Other Nonsense

I thought this issue would be something I could make fun of on Twitter and then forget about, but it continues to show up online and offline. At this point, I just want some selfish catharsis. More than ever, I see people focus their criticism on parts of stories (read: anime and movies) that simply do not matter or, at least, matter so little as to be inconsequential. This has always been an issue and probably always will, but I say “more than ever” because I think the kinds of anime and movies that are getting the most attention lately have set themselves up for these kinds of vapid criticisms.

I divided these criticisms that “don’t matter” into two types for the sake of organizational ease. They could (and should) be broken down even further, but since I’m not trying to wage intellectual war or anything, I left them as broad categories. I will be mentioning certain creators by name in this post, but that’s mostly for the sake of example. I’m more concerned with the arguments than the people making them.

5cSQGM1
I’m not sure who I am in this picture anymore

I’m presenting the following list of “what doesn’t matter” as factual because I believe it is factual. That doesn’t mean that people are “wrong” for pointing out things that fall under these categories, but that–however true what they’re saying is–it ultimately doesn’t matter for the function of a story. If you want to deny what I’m presenting as fact, that’s fine too. I’m just expressing the rules I follow, not decreeing law. Although it would be cool if I could make it law…

Anyway, here’s the list.Read More »

Freedom in Nisemonogatari (Karen Bee)

scottlarouxwritesLeave a comment

Freedom in Nisemonogatari (Karen Bee)

Karen Bee is Nadeko Snake’s longer and more bearable cousin. The arc is of an overall higher quality than Nadeko Snake, but that quality is stretched across an absurdly indulgent seven episodes. By the time the arc finishes, you’ll have trouble remembering which moments were part of it and–more importantly–which even mattered. Most of the arc is a collection of decent (or even great) standalone scenes mashed together with a bit too much narrative freedom.

mkb1

Although there’s no way to prove a claim like this, and though proving it would accomplish nothing, I feel that Nisio Isin wrote many of Karen Bee’s scenes without any intention of ever making a single story out of them. The narrative structure of the arc reflects this with its unmotivated flashbacks and checklist of fanservice cameos. The arc opens on a scene of a bound Araragi, rolls the opening theme, then flashes back to the day before without any trigger. Nonlinear storytelling is useful as a narrative hook–we do wind up wondering how/why Araragi was captured by Senjougahara–but feels cheap when most of what we see in the flashback is irrelevant to the story.Read More »