Gungrave: Is Addictive

Gungrave's Brandon Heat and Harry MacDowell

The story editors for Gungrave manipulated the whole series masterfully from the beginning right to the end.  I'm quite impressed.  For me the most unique part of this series was that the story points weren't driven by revenge - they were driven by forgiveness that resulted in irreparable damage to the merciful.  Idealistic individuals would continually commit to ideals that their humanity and their familial bonds would rarely let them live up to.

Here's a list of betrayed ideals because of family/friendship bonds:

• Cid's son messes up and instead of killing his son, Cid helps him escape and as a result Cid is assassinated by the family to save the Millennien Organization face.

• Bear Walkin is unable to assassinate Cid, who is like a brother to him, so Brandon steps in to save Bear from betraying the family by not carrying out the order.

• When Harry breaks the Millennion's code of iron, by planning to assassinate Big Daddy, Brandon is unable to bring himself to kill Harry, because Harry has been his closest form of family since they met at the orphanage.  As a result Harry, who is afraid of Brandon's code of honour, murders Brandon immediately after.

• Big Daddy betrays what's best for the Millennien Organization, by approving Harry's role as the organization's boss, to protect Maria and her unborn child.  Eventually, Big Daddy's ideals force him to confront Harry and demand that Harry live up to Big Daddy's ideals at which point Harry shoots Big Daddy and puts a hit out on Maria and her unborn child.

• Bear Walkin sides with Harry even though he knows Harry has betrayed the organization, because Harry is married to Bear's daughter, Sherry, and hurting Harry will hurt her.  Bear then finds himself pitted against Brandon to protect Harry and it ends up to be in vain as Sherry is shot during an assassination attempt on Harry.

All of these story points escalate the conflict and bring the story equilibrium further and further out of harmony until the final showdown between Harry and Brandon.

Harry's pattern of forgiveness in the face of betrayals & danger is consistent up until he murders Brandon while they are ascending the elevator.  Before that Harry always acted benevolent in similar situations - consider how Harry dealt with Balladbird Lee who betrayed him to help his brother Cannon Vulcan.  Because Harry's killing of Brandon, his oldest friend, would be so out of character the story editors took great care in crafting  the entire episode to build up to it and make it believable.  That episode alone makes watching the entire series worth watching.

Maybe this is one moral to this story.  No matter how strong an organizations hold is over people, no matter how they attempt to replace your family, real family bonds always take precedence over procedural doctrine.  The only way this does not apply is when a person has no close friends or family.

First Look: Adventure Time and Gungrave

I've taken a look at two more shows this past weekend.  "Adventure Time" and "Gungrave".

Adventure Time is good.  I'm about five episodes in at this point.  It's a madcap rubber hose animation set in a post-apocalyptic world.  The character design is very simple and to give the characters more expression, but only when needed, the animators will add more expressive eyes or additional facial features.  The show doesn't really hold my attention for long enough, but then again I'm not one in favour of madcap comedies with random plots and Deus ex machina thrown in all over the place.

I'm eleven episodes into Gungrave and it's more my style.  You can watch the first four episodes for free at Funimation.com to see if you like it and if you do then I recommend purchasing the series.  It's worth it.  I've added an reasonably priced Amazon link to the left.  It's around $37 for the whole series - crazy amazing deal for the quality of the animation.

Gungrave is focused around death. The plot revolves around death and undeath. It's interesting to see how death is handled in each of the episodes.  For good characters there is usually a fade to another scene and then we hear the gunshot(s). In those instances it's really the musical score that takes centre stage to set the emotion.

At this point, the story isn't particularly unique.  It revolves around a mob family fighting for dominance in an ever complicated world.  The one interesting twist is that the creators have added the undead to the mix with scientific wizardry.  I am, however, hooked into the story by the relationship between the two protagonists who are best friends.  The stage is set for an ultimate showdown between the two and I'm ready to see it unfold.  So even though it's not a unique premise the character development has enfolded in such a way as to totally hook me into watching it right to the end.

In terms of character design the really interesting thing is that Harry, the main character who turns evil, has really large pupils - a trait that is usually reserved for good/cute characters - so I'm intrigued to see if his pupils will grow smaller as his power hungry nature deprives him of his humanity.

P.S. Gungrave was produced by Madhouse Studios, who as far as I can tell, are the current cutting edge creators of Japanese anime.  They produced Redline, which I saw at WFAC last November, and the animation in it blew me away.  It was stunning.  Gunther Heinrich gives a very apt review of the film on his blog.

The story for Redline was admittedly weak, generally that would be the end of me liking any film, but in this case it's almost irrelevant due to the artistry used to execute the film.  The word on the street is that Anchor Bay may be the one to release the Blu-Ray for Redline in Canada and if they do I'm buying it the second it's out. It's gorgeous and I'd probably watch it once a day for a week after I got it.  There were about half a dozen films in the WFAC lineup last year that were each reason enough to attend the festival and Redline was one of those films.

Happy Families: a somewhat original animation coming to British Screens via Channel 4

Well, it looks like the UK is going to take another stab at adult animation after their inability to get Bromwell High off the ground in 2005. The show is called "Happy Families" and is starting out as a six-part animated sit-com by brothers Jack and Harry Williams (writers of Honest, The Amazing Dermot & Roman's Empire).  The series has been commissioned by Channel 4's Comedy Commissioning Editor Nerys Evans.

Writers Jack and Harry said: 'Channel 4 commissioning an animation on this scale shows just how committed they are to bringing something new to the comedy schedules. We're delighted to be working with Shane and Nerys on this fun and ambitious project. They're a rare breed of comedy commissioner - in that they have a sense of humour.'

So... even though they're claiming that they will be bringing something new to the comedy schedule it looks like the only real comment that they're willing to make is that their comedy commissioner (which is a rather odd title for said role) has a sense of humour.  At this point they're not releasing artwork, concept or otherwise, so I've provided my own idea of what the family will look like.  It's based upon the show outline:

"Edgar, a put upon wage slave, works for his self obsessed, borderline-evil Father-In-Law Ken Lavender. Married to houseproud wife Wendy, they are parents to three very different children, freaky weirdo Dusty, amiable idiot Jason and highly strung 'Emo' Eve."

Happy Families - What the characters may look like...

I think I may just be in a harping mood tonight, but the show outline is not a new comedic formula by any stretch of the imagination and nothing of what I've read about the show strikes me as original in any way.  They're going with the proven adult animation five person family formula that started with The Simpson's back in 1989 and has since been successfully copied by shows such as Family Guy and Bob's Burgers.  Rough Draft is the studio set to work on the show and their animation work isn't exactly ground breaking or particularly edgy (that being said "Drawn Together" had it's moments).  Just look at Rough Draft's Studio Reel, which seems more inclined to highlight camera moves than any of the animation the studio has produced.  Alex Scarfe did the artwork for the show, which no one has seen. Channel 4 claim Alex is "very talented", but when I did a (admittedly quick) web search to find some of his previous work I couldn't find anything and, unless he's using an alias because this show is so badass, he's not listed on imdb or wikipedia.  

Ok, so what does all this mean?  I believe it actually means that Channel 4 is being cautiously optimistic about the market for adult animation.  As a result of their trepidation they're producing a show that is by the books (to reduce costs they're not using expensive voice actors, they're hiring a studio that while not creative is reliable, and they're aping a formula that has been successful for decades).  I'm not sure how the show will find a way to be funny with so much trepidation on the part of the producers but here's to financial success for "Happy Families", to their being able to find a way to push the envelop, and finally to the people involved pursuing a more risky endeavour later on. 

Cowboy Bebop: Post-Betrayal Tragicomedy with a Wistful Score

I just finished watching the final episode of Cowboy Bebop. To me it's a post-betrayal tragicomedy, in a semi post-apocalyptic interplanetary world, set to an epically wistful score.  The main Cowboy Bebop characters, who have all had traumatic events happen in their past, struggle to lead their lives with a sense of humour and compassion rarely seen in the adult-skewed animation of the North American continent. 

Here's a brief synopsis of the Cowboy Bebop universe:
The series is set in the year 2071 with humanity settled throughout Earth's Solar System, which has been made accessible through hyperspace gates.  Interplanetary colonization was spurred on by the explosion of an experimental hyperspace gateway in 2022 that severely damaged the Moon and sent moon debris flying down to earth and wiping out most of Earth's population.  Moon debris now orbits around Earth and as the orbits decay meteor bombardments continue to rain down on Earth making it barely habitable.  As a result Mars is now the new central hub of human civilization.  The various pockets of humanity are ruled over by governments, which are often controlled by powerful interplanetary crime syndicates.  There is an Inter-Solar System Police force (ISSP), but due to the power of the syndicates ISSP effectiveness is limited and criminals are often dealt with by a bounty hunters, often referred to as cowboys, who deliver their catches to police stations for the posted reward. 

Main Characters on Cowboy Bebop:
Jet - Previously part of a crime syndicate was betrayed by his partner.
Spike - Previously part of ISSP was betrayed by his partner.
Faye - Am average person who was cryogenically frozen after an accident was betrayed by her doctor. Edward - A talented child cyber hacker was forgotten/deserted at a daycare by her father.
Ein - A brilliant dog, who may be able to talk to Edward, was tested on by doctors as a lab animal.

The main characters (aside from Edward) are decidedly grown-up in their interactions with people outside their inner circle, although they often act childish with their shipmates.  They also all have hope.  Hope that one day they will find someone they can believe in, trust.  Someone to protect them - someone that won't abandon them.

I'll write more as my thoughts coalesce about this engaging series.

When do audiences approve of graphic depictions of animated violence?

The ethics of depicting violence in film and animation has always fascinated me.  Do audiences ever approve the kill off of characters?  Even if audiences will approve the death of a character - should you do it?  Does the manner of death matter?  

The answer to the latter is yes, it matters, and there are specific ways to go about ending characters lives and each method will evoke particular emotions from your viewers.  Once you learn these you'll be able to determine which method you use.

For this example, let's say you feel your story won't be complete without a scene depicting a graphically violence act, but you want to make sure that the majority of your audience won't be too offended by it.  Well, that requires very special characters.  To use extreme examples, lets look at two shows that have actually based their franchises on depicting character types that generally receive audience approval for being killed off.  These shows are Superjail and Happy Tree Friends.

We're going to start with Superjail. Even though the violence depicted is extreme and unconventional the creators have followed a very conventional narrative tactic to justify the violence to the audience.  The majority of the characters killed are all inmates, and thus criminals, and so we as a society tacitly approve their deaths.  You can see this narrative tactic used all the time, especially by Disney.  When "evil" characters die it's a "good" thing.  Disney's version is like lethal injection while Superjail's version is like nothing I've ever seen before.  The key to having the audiences approve these deaths is by doing little to no character building aside from assigning the role of inmate - otherwise you'll end up eliciting reactions similar to the ones caused by the electrocution scene from The Green Mile. 

Side Note: The Green Mile is actually the perfect example of a writer, Stephen King, turning this conventional 'it's okay to kill inmates because they're criminals' narrative on it's head.  If you haven't seen the Green Mile yet, you should, it's a fantastic film.  I cried at the end.

Now let's move on to Happy Tree Friends where the creators have made the sweetest characters known to man and then had them die the most horrible deaths imaginable.  This of course taps into our inner dark side.  We've all been in situations where someone is just far too cheerful when we're having a gloomy day and it would likely raise our spirits if we fantasized about them falling down a well. Happy Tree friends is the creative expression of just such a feeling - and in their case the well would include spikes, a motion activated flamethrower, and a portal to the sun's surface.

Ok, so those are two ways to get tacit audience approval for graphic displays of violence in your animations.  Depict it happening to either the happiest or the worst members of a society.  Going after the average character always seems to hit a little too close to home for most viewers, but sometimes you can get away with it by spending a little time enhancing their happiness/evil characteristics during the episode that things go horrible awry for them.

Interview Review: The Gospel According to The Simpsons

Ok, by now I'm sure you've noticed the current unofficial theme to the blog: Religion, Sex, and Race in adult animation. Yesterday, while I was washing the dishes and listening to CBC radio, Tapestry had an interview with Mark Pinsky about his book "The Gospel According to The Simpsons". Due to my current theme, this topic immediately caught my attention and I jotted down little notes in-between washing the plates and silverware.

These are my notes from the interview with Mr. Pinsky. I haven't fact checked all the references he made or read the book myself, but everything sounded fairly credible from what I know about the material.


Statements made by Mark Pinsky during the interview and my shoddy notes on it. 
Click here to listen to the Mary Hynes interview with Mark Pinsky for free on the CBC website 

In animation, as opposed to live action, depictions of Jesus and/or God are accepted as depictions or commentary. This gives animation the ability to critique and comment on various aspects of religion in ways that live action depictions can't because, for whatever reason, people become offended by them.

The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy all have different approaches to their commentary/inclusion of religion. Both The Simpsons and South Park portray religions/Gods as existing whereas Family Guy generally mock the existence of God(s) and pokes fun at anyone that has faith.

For example, when Homer is having a discussion with God the conversation is ended with God having to leave to appear in a tortilla in Mexico. The interesting part about this is that in this episode God is actually appearing in the tortilla. This event confirms that the shows writers are not only affirming the existence of God they are also affirming that God does indeed manifest in various objects.

If a similar plot line was happening in Family Guy God may be shown to exist, but he would likely have to go deal with some lunatic who believed that Gos was in a tortilla.  So, God may be affirmed as existing, but believers would likely be shown to be rather silly.

Simpsons was the first sit-com to portray a realistic view of an average North American family that attends church. Previous to this religion was suggested, but never discussed or depicted in any critical way and attempts to portray religion appeared preachy. The Simpsons portrayal allowed other TV shows the freedom to begin to reference religion as well.

Pinsky also believes that The Simpsons is unique in it's ability to comment on religion because it's writers so obviously have a deep understanding of religion and their commentary comes across as 'insider' views as opposed to snarky attack humour.

When God is depicted in The Simpsons he has five fingers and toes suggesting that he is more 'real' than the other characters that have four fingers and toes.

The Simpsons was also one of the first North American shows to depict main characters that practice religions other than Christianity. Lisa, while being a skeptic, is a secular budhhist;, Apu is Hindu; Krusty is Jewish.


End of statements made by Mark Pinsky during the interview and my shoddy notes on said interview. 



During the interview Pinsky also referenced one of my own favourite quotes from The Simpsons so I thought I'd share it with you:

Marge: I can’t believe you’re giving up church, Homer.

Homer: Hey, what’s the big deal about going to some building every Sunday? I mean, isn’t God everywhere? And don’t you think that the Almighty has better things to worry about than where one little guy spends one measly hour of his week? And what if we picked the wrong religion? Every week we’re just making God madder and madder.

Bart: Testify!

Marge: [Groans]

On the surface it looks like this is the everyman protesting religion, but if you dig a little deeper you notice that he's using layman's terms to express this message from Corinthians:

Corinthians 15:12–18 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

So basically Homer is using the argument that if you're misrepresenting God by having faith in something that is incorrect it is more damning than having no faith at all. What a wonderful hymnal for religious apathy.

Anyway, just thought I'd pass on my notes on this interview with Mark Pinsky about "The Gospel According to The Simpsons" since it was rather intriguing.

Movie Review: Rock and Rule

Overall Message

Rock has the power to change the world, and depending on the song, demons can be released or vanquished by it.

Story (Spoiler Alert)

Earth has been ravaged by a nuclear war that wiped out all humans and replaced them with mutated, anthropomorphic rodents.  The story centres around Mok, an aging rock star, who is trying to bring a demon to earth from another dimension and Angel, who is a keyboardist in a band who dreams of being a lead singer

Through scientific research Mok has found out he can transport the demon to earth and harness it's power by using a specific frequency that can only be created by a live singer.  Upon discovering this, he travels the world looking for a singer with the right vocal frequency.  

Cut to Angel trying to convince her boyfriend, Omar the band's lead singer, to let her sing.  Unfortunately Omar is too focused on hogging the stage to give her a shot.  During the performance Angel defies Omar and sings her own song.  Of course, Mok just happens to be in the bar for Angel's first performance and his ring (designed to detect the right frequency) lights up.  Mok then invites the band to his mansion.  He separates the band mates and tries to get Angel to agree to sign a record deal with him.  Angel says she'll do it, but only with her bandmates, at which point Mok kidnaps Angel, and tells the other band members that she is going to pursue a career with him.  Omar, her boyfriend, believes she has selfishly abandoned them, but the other two bandmates are suspicious of Mok and convince Omar to follow Mok and talk to Angel.

The boys attempts to meet with Angel are unsuccessful and they end up being captured and mind washed by Mok.  When Mok shows Angel the boys being tortured she agrees to sing for him if he lets them go.  During the concert when the demon is released Angel finds a way to send it back to hell along with Mok and save the what's left of Earth.  

Critique 

Overall this animation is to be admired for a variety of reasons.  The lead female character is a stand alone that never requires the assistance of her male companions, the supporting animation visuals are way ahead of their time, the character animation is high-end (they don't use cycles and each frame has been carefully drawn), and the animation for the demon alone is worth seeing the film for (loads of shading, flowing organic shapes, freaky visuals).  Don't believe me?  Watch the film :)

Ideas

There needed to be more edges in the characters.  Both in terms of traits and character designs.  The characters are childish in design while the sets take on the feel of a post-apocalyptic Blade Runner.  It feels like there were too many genres blended as a result of aesthetic changes during the production process and not enough of a budget to go back and update the previous work that was initially designed for a younger audience.

Angel was too much of a goody two shoes.  I wanted Angel to lose it on Mok, break his arm or smash his nose, anything to really show she was pissed off.  

I wanted to like Omar, but he was too self centred, the only non-self centred things he did came as a result of his band mates suggestions.  He needed to have some good deeds originate directly from himself.   

Mok was the best character.  For me, he was the only main character that jived well with the story and overall aesthetic.  

Conclusion

Overall, Rock and Rule as an animation is fantastic.  Unfortunately from a marketing point of view it had a foot in two age group categories and as a result neither one totally embraced it.  To broaden the appeal to the older age group, I believe that Nelvana would have needed to find a way to push the sex quotient just a little higher.  The easiest way to do that would have been to make the characters human.  Then the scene at Club 666 with all the bouncing breasts and pert nipples would have made every boy from the eighties run out to buy this movie.  I think that's the main difference between Heavy Metal and Rock and Rule.  Heavy Metal, even though the plot was shaky, had sex scenes with nudity -and as funny as that is- it played a large part in making made Heavy Metal a financial success.

This film represents a special time in history when animation was reinventing itself after the golden age of Disney and if you haven't seen Rock and Rule yet, I've listed some amazing deals from Amazon below.  

    

Voice acting for Animation. What counts?

It is my belief that voice actors need to embrace the character they are playing and then amp up the range and sincerity. When a character professes to like something it should be over the top, but still retain sincerity. The great thing about this is that you know when an actor gets it because you and everyone else will feel it. If an actors performance doesn't make you feel it, don't fool yourself, it's not right. Never go with a performance that's 'good' or 'ok' take the time to work with your actor until they get the right voice/inflection and you feel it -or find another actor- because with animation there's way too much work involved after the voice record to go back and try again.

One show that has great use of comic sincerity in both words and actions is Archer. Anything the characters say will be backed up by over the top actions - usually in the form of knives in the back or a shot to the leg.

While we're on the topic of sincerity a great comic juxtaposition for that trait is the addition of a fickle nature. This gives them to ability to believably replace what they just professed to love with something of equal or lesser value. The humour quotient rises exponentially if they are convinced by another character to replace the first item with something of lesser value. The first episode (Check it out on YouTube)  of the 'League of Super Evil' plays this out by the book for Lightening Liz when the lose'rs get her to trade her XGL Prototype Battle Armor from her father for the 'stuff I found in the kitchen' bot.

Eggs Gone Wild - You Look Pretty

The key to all of this is finding voice actors that are about to convey intensity & believability through their voice. I'd have to say that I feel that the best vocal performance I've gotten from an actor playing such a sincere and 'over the top' character was for Stephanie in the 'Eggs Gone Wild' episode 'You Look Pretty'. This voice actor pretty much nailed it as far as I'm concerned.

The Magic Ingredients for Adult Animation: Race, Sex, & Religion

Not quite the virgins he was expecting

Before I dip into the magic ingredients I want to state for the record that the term 'adult animation' has always seemed a bit weird to me.  Probably because I associate the term directly with the term 'adult films', aka porn, and I expect that others might as well.  As a result when I talk to people about the animation I make I often favour the term 'adult-skewed animations' because I feel it will be less misleading or at least prompt further questions instead of having them assume I make animated porn.  On other occasions when I'm feeling mischievous I make no such distinctions just to see how people will react.

Alright, now back to the magic ingredients.  They're fairly simple as the title suggests they are race, sex & religion.  How did I come up with these?  Well, they're the topics that animation for the general populace skirts around like the plague.  That makes them the exclusive domain of adult animation.  Most decent adult animation series have developed a way to critically and humorously discuss these issues and because audiences can't get similar discussions on these topics from their other shows they always come back to get their fix.  The further an animation series is willing to go in discussing these issues the more interest it will garner.  Mind you, if a show alienates too large of an audience with controversial scenes then the broadcasters will shut it down because advertisers won't pay for time slots during the show, just look at Family Guys record of being canceled and then brought back according to public outcry.

That's the tip of the day.  If you're making an adult-skewed animation your trump cards are the freedom to incorporate controversial scenes dealing with race, sex, & religion.

Love Stinks, but at least we have Brillo, David, and Archer.

So these days I'm back to playing the creator game.  Create a new adult animation series.  Brush the dust off the creative forces inside and bring something new into the world.  I believe the challenge to writing a successful adult animated TV series is coming up with a new way to express what people believe to be true, but don't know how to say, or by saying something that people want to say, but don't have the balls to because of the possible repercussions.

One of my friends is currently exploring Andy Warhol's filmic works and going through the process of recreating similar pieces of his own each week.  It reminds me of the power of artists like Warhol whose work in and of itself doesn't look that powerful, some might say children could have done it, and yet these works continue to fascinate and inspire artists today decades after their creation.

Warhol's Brillo Box

You might argue that Andy Warhol's Brillo Box is nothing like Michelangelo's David, but aside from the skill required to to create one verse the other I think you might have your work cut out for you to argue that angle.  I have no intention of arguing any such thing.  I'm more interested in talking about the similarities.  One of which is that they both have similar spacial oddities.  The Brillo box is oversized - as is David (aside from his wedding tackle).

But I digress, what I'm really interested in examining is the process that lead to these two geniuses creating works that caught the imaginations of their audiences at the time of their creation.  Either work, created in the time of the other, would have been inconsequential and I'd postulate that a great artist becomes so by being able to tap into creative forces that will allow them to create a work that will affect those in their society.

Michelangelo's David

To me, creating an animated show that incorporates various pieces of the societal puzzle is similar; it needs to come at a time when audiences are receptive to it otherwise the interest won't be great enough to sustain the creative process required to sustain a show.  So while the friend I mentioned previously is pursuing the illusive Warhol I am once again taping into the world of animated shows that have struck a cord with their audiences recently to see if I can ascertain as to why.  There is a caveat to that though, I'm only watching shows that also strike a cord with me. Sorry Squidbillies.

So far the winner is Archer, followed immediately by Bob's Burgers and then Clone High.  Drawn Together is good, but it didn't fully draw me in.

Archer has completely flawed characters.  Even the ones you at first root for as the underdogs succumb to their flaws and betray themselves and others, but at the same time they remain loveable.  Maybe this is because they don't pretend that their flaws don't exist.  They also take joy in their own hypocrisy, which maybe helps the viewer delight a little more in it as well.  Anyway, I'm starting to ramble now.  I'm still letting Archer permeate through my senses, but it's the first animation I've watched since seeing Robot Chicken where once I started I couldn't unglue my eyes until I'd watched every episode available.  The final second season episode of Archer "Double Trouble" airs later today and I'm waiting with baited breathe.  I'll check back in once I've seen it and then maybe my thoughts on Warhol, Michelangelo, and Archer will coalesce into something more than late night (early morning for some) ramblings.

Oh, and by the way, the working title for the new series I'm putting together is: 'Love Stinks'.  It revolves loosely around a heroine with flatulence issues.