Moving along: Arc the Lad. I’ve been aware of this show via ADV previews for an eternity, and was interested in the games before, but never got to play them.

Arc the Lad was Bee Train’s second production (after PoPoLoCrois Monogatari), made when the studio did nothing but video game adaptations. (Wild Arms: Twilight Venom and Medabots soon followed). These shows differ greatly from what has come to be the Bee Train norm.

One huge difference is that Wild Arms and Arc the Lad were directed by Kawasaki Itsuro (who did a little work on Noir and then presumably left the studio), as opposed to studio head/chief director Mashimo Kouichi. More noticeably, Arc the Lad doesn’t feature a Kajiura Yuki soundtrack, but one by Oshima Michiru (who hadn’t made music for the game that the anime was based on, but would work on the soundtracks for later games in the series.)

I could make the case (but I won’t) that Mashimo Kouichi is a somewhat competent director; and Kajiura Yuki is certainly excellent. These aren’t the elements that make Bee Train shows bad, and changing them isn’t the magic that turns things around. Every Bee Train show’s biggest weakness is its art and animation, and that’s where Arc the Lad has me doing a double-take.

It actually looks nice! Episode one was consistently good-looking—there were even moments that honestly impressed me. My standards may be low right now because the last few things I watched were embarrassingly shitty 1997 OVAs, but I’m pretty sure a Bee Train show has never visually impressed me before. It reminds me that they started off as a subsidiary of Production I.G.

The episode is an in media res introduction to major plot elements by way of a one-off action operation. The main character, Elk, is a fire-controlling, spear-wielding “hunter” (i.e. mercenary). He and a partner infiltrate a hijacked airship with the goal of rescuing its passengers and taking out the hijacker. A mysterious girl who can apparently control beasts and has a big cat with her is part of the cargo. When things come to a head, we learn that the bad guy is a mutant Chimera, which clues Elk in to his involvement with an organization called White House (lol). An airship, presumably sent by White House, takes out the bad guy and grabs up the mysterious girl, while Elk escapes to the ship he flew in on minus a partner.

None of this is terrifically interesting, but it’s portrayed well by the directing and script to create intrigue. Everything happens quickly (this is really Bee Train?!). Elk’s partner is killed without fanfare; little is said by any character that isn’t out of urgency; and Elk shares less than two sentences with the mystery girl before she’s taken away. He doesn’t even have time to fall in love with her!

I’m curious about a lot of things. I learned nothing about the world from this episode, except that it has airships. I assume it’s a fantasy world, presumably some kind of desert planet going by the OP, yet the opening narration brings up the Arc of the Covenant, which would be a weird thing to have in a fantasy world! That “arc,” by the way, is not, “Arc the Lad,” as I understand it—there’s also a character named Arc who hasn’t shown up yet. Presumably he’s the protagonist of the first game, and this anime primarily adapts the second one.

It’s amazing to me that I walked out of a Bee Train show curious about its mysteries instead of rolling my eyes and screaming, “get on with it!” However, I won’t be getting my hopes up. After all, I enjoyed the first episodes of .hack//SIGN, and that show proceeded to shit all over my hopes. With any luck, Arc the Lad won’t be such an asshole. The fact that it’s never been well-reviewed and is, in fact, a Bee Train show, still worries me.

Right off the bat, this episode pulls lame shit very common to anime, though never acceptable; that is, constant replays of shit we’ve just seen minutes ago.

Wait, didn't I just...

The episode starts by recapping Madlax’s mind-capturing moment from the previous episode, and then replays the entire thing in full no more than one minute later.

Are you shitting me?!

Another six minutes later, the scene is played again, this time in red memory-color as opposed to black, like that will somehow trick us into thinking it’s something different.

Is this even a new episode?

A million other things are re-capped as well. First there’s the scene of Margaret stopping ninjas in her sleep from episode thirteen, then Vanessa remembers buying Margaret’s red shoes from all the way back in episode two. We also get two re-utterances of Madlax’s episode thirteen flashback, again in black first and red the second time.

At least they'll never have to show these clips again... right?

An entire nine minutes pass before anything resembling new plot development appears in the episode, in the form of Carrossea telling Margaret about how her book is being sought after. Nothing more becomes of this plot point.

And now there’s lesbians, so why am I even complaining, amiright?

Carrossea is the first person to take note of the show’s resident Aztec Space Ninja, seen here standing on a ladder just becasue it’s slightly more ninja-like than standing on level ground with her opponent. Then she “the gods of olympus have abandoned me“s off the edge and disappears with her ninja magic.

Finally, after sixteen minutes of fuck-all occuring, Madlax stars wandering the streets, presumably in search of the red-light district. By the way, for a city with so many lights, so known for being active and tourist-heavy, where the fuck are the people?

Of course she fucking is, this is not news.

Sniper girl has the opportunity to kill Madlax, but relents because Madlax is now retarded; however, Madlax then gets her mind back for no discernable reason and beats up sniper girl. For the fourth or fifth time, she has sniper girl at her mercy and spares her. At this point, I barely even feel the need to point it out. Whereas I raged the other times, now I just sigh, “fuck you, Madlax,” and get on with life.

The episode ends with both Margaret and Madlax wanting pasta for dinner. Bet you didn’t see that coming!

That was fun. It’s nice to be blogging this godawful shit again, even if nothing happened in this episode. Come back next week, and I promise there’ll be a post here!

To celebrate reaching the halfway point, I wanted to do something big and special, so here it is: an audio commentary on Fucking Madlax episode thirteen! 22 minutes of bad anime, my droning voice, and retarded on-screen captions. I hope you enjoy it!

My excursion from Nafrece, land of my heart, taken form in the beauteous cuteness that is my young lover, ever slightly absent of mind but never so of my adoration, even as I quiz the nature of the shape-shifting snakes that are her follicle dilemma, was to be a trip purely of business, neverminding the vicarious excitement of co-workers gushing that Gazth-Sonika is the paradise of this world. Yet while the mildly impressive beauties of the middle-upper-class metaphorical eden indeed delighted an otherwise somber effort in search of truth, ’twas a beauty wholly of the flesh which scorched my heart that I might even for a while forget my true love’s face whilst tangled betwixt bedding comforts and the ample thighs of a mercenary.

Her name alone might drive me MAD, so intensely that the breakdown of my constitution constitutes an utter loss of faculties, resulting in a fetid stream of excrement expelling itself from my body as though I’d been treated to a box full of LAXatives. I dare utter it only between the lines, for fear that if placed upon them, it may take my mind away again.

She was a lit stick of dynamite thrown in my face. An eldritch abomination slithering from the depths of hell up into my hotel room. There for my protection, though she might’ve killed me through all those times she took my breath away (without mention of the times her humble services flatly failed to accomplish anything). From the moment I laid eyes on her, my advances were stunted only by a putrid aura emanating around her—I sent her to the shower as soon as we got to the room.

While she was occupied, I contacted my informant, the one who had insisted upon a mercenary for my protection.

“Have you regrouped with her?” he asked.

“She has a mullet.” I responded.

Before the conversation could proceed, my correspondent was suddenly silenced. I spun to react, meeting with the woman fresh from the shower. As per my fear, the removal of her stench had not stayed the onslaught of bestial hideousness, but in this state she was approachable.

Upon the site of my CG fan dildo—the ultimate aphrodisiac—she was too horny even to stand, ass-planting herself parallel to me. She looked me in the eyes as my gaze remained fixated on her Roadwarrior-era cut. ‘Twas the first disaster of the head more startling than my lover’s back home to ever grace me with its presence. The heat of my disgust set a fire between my legs.

I went straight to business, pouncing forward and shoving her sturdy body back onto the bed—knowing as I did that for it to budge, it only could have caved willingly. Opening the drapery of her shower gown, I dug the cavernous depths of her ample, unyielding thighs. It felt like hours upon suffocating hours of battling a continuous onslaught of flesh before I emerged upon her glorious muff.

It hung broad and loose like the sleeve of a wizard, gaping and breathing like a tunnel beckoning the car of my fist to drive through—perhaps my entire arm. Even my foot wouldn’t have met much resistance. Her clitoris was Moby Dick in the ocean of her vulva—as massive as it was strangely elusive. With all the spirit of Ahab, I thrust the spear of my tongue upon it. This generated the first of near constant waves of liquid crashing against the helm of my cheeks. There simply was no end to it.

All the while, she never moved nor made a sound. Only when I sought brief respite and a grasp of precious air did I catch a glimpse of her satisfied face, full of modest approval.

“That was nice,” she said. And then she rose from the bed, reminding me that she had to get dressed and get to work.

I knew she had to go, but I couldn’t let her. Upon her completed dressing, I shoved her unto the couch and began touching her all over (and much over there was to be touched, might I add). I lost myself in her, imagining only the sensation that I fantasized her feeling, unlikely as it might’ve been that she could feel anything. A couple minutes of that and then she shoved me off, again with a smile saying, “I appreciate it, but I’m busy.” Finally, I allowed her leave.

Night fell whilst I remained transfixed upon the bed, all day touching myself and thinking of the rolling mountains and rough, flame-scarred plains of that unforgettable body. And then, finally, a sound! My demi-goddess of Hell had returned, and started to undress, ready to sleep on the couch. Surely this was a tease!

She obliged. Three infinite hours, the blackest shadow play we acted out in the moonlight, constant growls and barks in passion and rage, our bodies crushing and smushing one another. Before long, I was covered in bruises, suspecting a fractured rib and busted lip. Every limb was soaked in vagina filth from constant curiosity over just how much I could fit inside that void of her crotch. Our demonic dance only dwindled to a halt when no part of my body remained capable of movement.

Basking in the afterglow, my head full of fuck, I asked.

Ah, what a thing I had done, to forget my true love in throws of horrendous, passionate battle against another the same age as she. Though filled with shame, tears welling in my eyes, I knew that I had followed the true intentions of my heart. I regretted nothing.

I know not what became of the monstrous woman. She faded in the night like the terrors thereof which she so resembled, and by morning and my waking, she was nowhere to be found. I never saw her again. The next night, my flight back to Nafrece was waiting. I decided to forget all which occurred on that night and speak not of it again.

The night is long in Gazth-Sonika.

~The Mullet and the Muff, end~

Audience reactions to The Mullet and the Muff.

In all seriousness, I genuinely enjoyed this episode. Whereas episode seven stood out as a good episode for Madlax, this was simply a good episode. There were lots of lesbian overtones, some really stand-out moments (especially the beginning of Madlax’s confrontation with the sniper bitch), and for once, the fight used an element of tactics to be interesting, which works way better with this shitty animation than straight-up action scenes. And the animation wasn’t as bad as usual in this episode, either.

I seriously fucking doubt she has that high of a success rate.

Just because it was a great episode doesn’t mean that nothing stupid happened, but I’m willing to forgive all of that because stupid stuff happens in almost all anime. Ordinarily, I’m very forgiving of stupid stuff—it’s only when the stupid stuff reaches overwhelming levels and is coupled with crappy visuals that I feel the need to rage about it.

When Madlax says something stupid like this, it doesn’t bother me because this scene is well done. Whereas the rest of the show had me making fun of sniper girl for being worthless, this episode did enough to show her as ruthless and dangerous that her threat became real during the fight, and I was willing to buy that she might be good enough to sense presence or whatever stupid shit. I wasn’t even really all that pissed when the fight ended with Madlax needlessly sparing her yet again.

I’m not going to get my hopes up that this show might be good in the next episode, because I made that mistake with episodes seven and eight. Tune in next week to see how it turns out!

There’s no excuse for this slowness. .hack//SIGN could be cut by half its length and lose nothing—hell, it’d probably work with just six episodes. The only reason I can think of for it to be so drawn out is because it’s a franchise tie-in. At the dawn of the franchise, it probably made sense to do at least two cours, even though there clearly wasn’t substantial material for it.

When I get too frustrated while watching, I soothe myself by staring at Lady Subaru. Her ever-present midriff and back, perfect breasts (not evident in the above shot), and ridiculously thin waistline are capable of calming my rage just enough to sneak some enjoyment into an episode. In the last post, I spilled some bullshit about why I like Lady Subaru, but this is the real truth: she’s hot.

Sora was also excellent in this episode with his constant vocalization of sound effects; but even he wasn’t the most entertaining character today, thanks to the introduction of Crim, who’s basically Kamina from Gurren Lagann, but with ridiculous hair.

Speaking of that crazy hair, Crim is weird looking. He barely resembles anyone else in the show, and indeed, looks like no other Sadamoto Yoshiyuki character that I can think of. It’s as though he was drawn by a different designer. Nevertheless, he’s a cool guy with an awesome voice, as performed by Miki Shinichiro (whom I best know for playing Roy Mustang in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Kojirou in Pokemon).

This episode also contained one of the most flagrant affronts to logical sense in the show so far. While the concept of an in-game prison with an anti-summoning barrier makes plenty of sense, since we know that Tsukasa, who can’t log off, isn’t getting out of there, the method by which they capture Tsukasa is ridiculous. A gang of Crimson Knights tackles him to the ground, and then they all teleport, taking him along. I can think of no good reason that they had to tackle him. I can accept being able to teleport another player with some sort of mod powers, but this should be perfectly possible just with the character on-screen. It’s ridiculous enough that characters are even capable of tackling one-another to begin with, but at least that’s been previously established. This is just nonsense.

Alas, with or without the stupidity, this was among the most tolerable episodes of the show so far. That I spent most of it counting how many times they showed Subaru’s boots and imagining her potentially cute feet just speaks for how little that amounts to.

This week, I’m trying something a little different. The format I’m using doesn’t work well with the site’s thin columns, so instead I ask that you follow this link (presented in glorious Comic Sans) for the rest of the post:

.hack//SIGN tries to be atomospheric and mysterious, but it fails because the show is ugly. I’m not just talking about the low-quality character art and animation—Serial Experiment Lain is pretty low-quality in those regards, but it’s still interesting to look at because of its thick, well-realized style. .hack//SIGN is boring to look at, always.

It seems like .hack//SIGN tries to take on each element of its plot one at a time. Episode three was entirely about the Key of the Twilight—episode four is about Bear’s investigation into Tsukasa outside of the game and the possibility of his being a girl. It also touches on the possibility that Tsukasa’s dead mom is talking to him in the game—an element that really should’ve been introduced in episode three, considering that we saw Tsukasa in the dreamy world plenty of times in that episode, but only now do we learn of the voice he’s been speaking to each time he goes there. Episode three had plenty of room.

And there’s the real issue—these episodes have plenty of room to get through the plot more quickly. That isn’t something I’d ordinarily demand of a series, either. If .hack//SIGN was rife with interesting dialog or visuals or characters or something, then it wouldn’t be so bad, but as it stands, only the amazing soundtrack makes the long stretches of failed atmosphere sufferable. I know how Mashimo Kouichi likes the music to set the tone, but what’s happening is my paying attention to the music while the rest of the show is background noise.

At the very least, there was a scene in this episode that I liked. It’s at the beginning, when Bear is talking to Subaru and being a wise-ass. (I’ve realized that Bear is just a natural douche, almost like he can’t help it.) Subaru puts up a perfect troll defense, letting Bear know that she’s fully aware of what logic and information are presenting to her. This is why I enjoy Subaru (besides her hot character design)—she always seems to be on top of things and realizes the situation. It’s a shame I’ve only gotten to see her in serious or distressing situations so far.

I still find this character very difficult to believe.

A bit of digression: I’ve been playing a lot of video games since I started watching this show. As indicated by my post on episode two, I got back into Ragnarok Online (though my shitty internet connection is doing its best to keep me away from it), and thanks to the arrival of Touhou 13 Ten Desires, I went on a huge doujin game binge. I have to thank .hack for this surge in my interest in games, as it’s been a lot of fun.

The more I go thinking about the mechanics of the World, I can justify most of it by considering it to be like Phantasy Star Online. Initially, I planned to criticize Bear and Mimiru’s dungeon fight in this episode as not obeying game rules, but in PSO, you pretty much just go out and attack shit like that. I’m still not excusing the whole walking-in-on-instances-without-permission thing, though.

Yesterday snuck up on me—until now, I’d watched all of and written about most of these episodes long before the posts went up, so now that I’ve slacked until it caught up with me, I’m late. Good thing I don’t have anything to say about this episode.

Like episode six, nine was mostly slow and boring; though at least it was among the least offensive episodes so far. Besides Luciano being the worst sniper ever and some other contrivances, nothing bothered me so much that I feel like bitching about it. So let’s talk about something else.

In my post on episode six, I linked to the “Bee Train Fan Forum,” declaring its members my arch-nemeses. One of the mods from that forum found the post, thought it was funny, and linked to it in a thread. I got a trackback from that link and headed there to find a lot of people hatin’, so I signed up for an account and went in to chill the atmosphere. You see, while they may be my arch-nemeses, they’d also be valuable readers for this site, being as they actually watch and care about these shows.

I didn't hate the understated fanservice of this ep.

The aforementioned mod, a gentleman named Fellini 8.5, said that he enjoys my site and linked me to an assload of posts he’s written about the girls-with-guns shows (links at bottom of post); namely his favorite—Madlax—so that I could read another person’s perspective. It was definitely an interesting experience.

First, here’s something he said in response to my declaration that the animation and art quality of Bee Train shows are “undeniably bad”:

“…so, like, I’m actually a trained animator (who wasn’t particularly very good at drawing and went to follow another more lucrative career path), and the animation is actually more “economical” and minimalaist, and way better than a lot of anime out there.  The shots that are really key have some absolutely wonderfully done cuts.  The rest is a bit of classic cinematic handwaving, really — which I’m quite a sucker for, because most anime totally ignores cinematic fundamentals in exchange for a “moving manga” aesthetic, not that there’s anything wrong with that (except for the fact that it usually sucks).

That said, over the years since I first discovered this, I’ve found a few Japanese commercial animators and shows that are far more superior, but I still stand by my opinion that most of what what’s out there still falls far short of MADLAX.

…And that there’s far more western shows that animate circles around most (commercial) Japanese shows… but that’s my character-animation bias showing…  (This could easily wind up a debate in another on-topic thread… if we want to, then sure!)”

Fellini isn’t wrong on accounts where preference plays a role in what’s “good” or “bad,” though I do think he’s underestimating the “average” anime. When I say “average” here, I mean average by the number of shows, not by this kind of meaningful average. I get the sense that Fellini hasn’t seen a whole ton of anime, as opposed to myself whose seen at least some of just about every damn thing.

I would like to posit that the “average” anime (quality-wise) in this day and age would be anything produced by AIC or ZEXCS. In the cases of currently-airing shows, that would be the likes of Nekogami Yaoyorozu and Itsuka Tenma no Kuro-Usagi. Keep that in mind.

Fellini criticizes the “moving manga” aesthetic, which comes down to preference. The basic theory behind Japanese animation (as I understand it) is “beautiful key frames.” Studios seem to have bragging rights as long as all the key frames look good, regardless of if anything actually moves (I don’t make that huge of an exception; I’d like to see animation). Plenty of shows these days also contain “sakuga” scenes, wherein the focus becomes animation fluidity, and these are a big bonus for a series, but it’s not seen as necessary to be like that all the time. A series that has great key frames and busts out the sakuga for fight scenes is something I’d consider very high quality (take, for instance, this season’s Sacred Seven by studio Sunrise, which has a particularly large number of sakuga fight scenes).

While I appreciate the fluidity of American animation, I don’t like the way most American cartoons look (and yes, I watch a lot of them). American animation rarely focuses on character design and doesn’t usually have individual shots that wow. The best anime for me, stylistically, are the ones with very strong individual shots. (A best-of would be any of the Evangelion movies and any of Shinbo Akiyuki’s better works, most notably Le Portrait de Petit Cossette and Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica—in those shows, I find myself thinking that every other image would make a good desktop background.)

I love animation as a medium, and I appreciate all that it can do, but I don’t think better fluidity makes better-looking show. My focus is character designs (and subsequently, character art—character animation is important, but a backseat to character art for me), visual style (by individual cut), and sakuga fights.

Now, those aforementioned AIC and ZEXCS shows don’t have any big sakuga moments, and they aren’t particularly strong visually, but at the very least, they have attractive character designs (almost everything does these days IMO, hence “average”), and for the most part, consistently attractive key frames/character art. That, for me, is enough to make them watchable without groaning and bitching about the animation quality.

The Madlax-in-night-city shots are the closest things in Madlax to something I like.

I admit that before Fellini pointed it out, it hadn’t occurred to me that Bee Train might be trying for a different aesthetic from most anime. I consider visuals to be the worst part of every Bee Train show (yes, even worse than the dialog), because they don’t appeal to my preferences. The character art is highly inconsistent (as I’ve addressed on this site), there are almost no attractive individual moments worth saving, and there’s never, ever any sakuga animation.

But I’m not giving Bee Train a pass on the basis of preference. Regardless of whether Fellini accepts the level that these shows appeal to his preferences, it’s not like they’re the masters of that approach. It’s not like there’s a ton of movement in Bee Train shows (after all half the fucking screen time is panning shots and close-ups of people’s eyes), and while I can’t say I know what Fellini means by “cinematic hand-waving,” it doesn’t sound like something a show should be bragging about.

The tons of posts that Fellini’s done about Madlax are quite interesting and show where different perspectives and viewing styles really come into play.

I firmly believe that there’s no right way to watch anime, and that different people have their own viewing styles. I’m certainly one prone to analyzing anime, but my style of analysis and the conclusions that it brings are different from those of others.

I try to find meaning by looking at the people who create anime. I research the directors, writers, animators, studios, and try to figure out what about them and the shows they’ve done can help me interpret their other works. I’m a bloodhound for “creative intent,” and I pride myself on being able to see in a show what I believe those who created it see—my judgement then comes from how well I feel those creators were able to convey what they tried to show.

But what I’m doing is still guesswork and assumptions, and even if you think I’m good at it and agree with my thoughts, it doesn’t make either of us right, nor does it mean that we’re better consumers. There’s a tendency among canon-fags to think that there shouldn’t be more to a work than what exists, but this isn’t true—it can’t be true, because everyone’s viewing experience is going to be skewed by their life experience—and often, it isn’t the creator’s intent for the viewer to get exactly one thing out of a work.

Reading Fellini’s posts, there’s a lot of stuff that I flatly don’t find true or agree with. He sees some things as “interesting setup” that I see as “contrived bullshit.” His “foreshadowing” is my “forcing plot into the story.” He says about the maid in episode six, “her and Vanessa posing there in the dusk as a challenge to the Dorkus Maximus is quite satisfying,” whereas my opinion of that scene was, “there’s all these fucking panning shots, why the fuck are they just staring at each-other god damn it?!”

He isn’t wrong, and I’m not wrong. It’s just that he’s a Bee Train Fan and I Hate Bee Train.

[Fellini's Madlax coverage on Bee Train Fan: eps 1–4, eps 5–8, eps 9–12, eps 13–16, the rest. Coverage on his blog: here.]