I have returned, and much like Duke Nukem before me I will likely only be met with mediocrity and disappointment! Having completely skipped the month of January, I'm starting my year in the month of Valentine's Day and have chosen a deliciously sensual title for this post to celebrate.
This week we're checking out Mangirl! and Yama no Susume, also known as "Encouragement of Climb"... what? Check it out after the break!
I spent the better part of my absence catching up on the winter premiers, and what I found out about this winter anime season was so intriguing to me, that I decided to shake things up by only watching two shows for this post. Or at least it would have shaken things up if I hadn't decided to spend the whole of December breaking format and the whole month of January missing in action.
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| I was doing very important research. With like science and stuff. |
Mangirl!
This has nothing to do with the
quality of the show in general, but “Mangirl!” sounds like a nickname I
would’ve had in middle school. “Mangirl!” is fun to say but conjures up some
frightening images, particularly ones that you can find on your own TV screen
on the E! Network on any given day. Of course, these puns only work in a
printed format, because the show’s title is actually pronounced “MAWN-girl”, as
it’s a portmanteau of “manga” and “girl”. I like that. Right away I know what
this show is about. It’s about a girl who’s probably going to do stuff related
to manga production.
Of course, I also liked that
“Working!!” (and by extension “Working’!!”)
had a nice, succinct title and look at where that got me.
“Mangirl!” is an anime based on a
4-koma style comic that debuted early in the year on January 3. The comic
itself is relatively new as well, as it’s serialization began in April of 2011
in Comic Earth Star Magazine. According
to the official plot synopsis, this show is about…
“A team of girls with zero experience in
manga editing are off and running toward their dream of creating the biggest
manga magazine in Japan. They seem to do nothing but run into problems and
failures... But still they're working hard every day.”
Wait a minute. An anime based on a four-panel comic…
… about a team of girls with a dream that they have no
experience with who bumble around and screw up all the time?
Oh god we’re doing this aren’t we?
The show starts with two of the girls showing up at their new
office loudly announcing that they’re starting a manga magazine. You might
think that’s a horribly unengaging way to establish a story, and to the
untrained eye it may seem like this violates “show, don’t tell,” one of the
unwritten commandments of storytelling, but that doesn’t matter because moe moe
kawaii desu ne
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| AH! A FACE THAT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE! THIS SHOW IS A MASTERPIECE! |
Just as the dark-haired character that I don’t hate is
explaining that they need more people to run the magazine, two more people just
sort of show up and we’re told that they’re friends and that they will be
working at the upstart manga mag as well.
The rest of the episode is a slog through the business side
of running a manga. The girls try to figure out the base price of their
magazine, and their initial plan would make them spend more than they make. Oh
economics, you still aren’t funny.
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| HAHAHA! HILARIOUS! |
We then cut immediately to a scene where
they’re trying to sign artists to serialize in their magazine, but they have no
luck in doing so. It looks like this will be the theme of the episode. Our
heroines are new figures in a cutthroat and competitive world, and they’ll have
to work hard to establish brand identity so that artists will be jumping at the
chance to sign onto Comic Earth Star Magazine.
I’m kidding, of course. That would require the writers to
craft an actual story! Instead we cut to a scene about five seconds later and
are literally told that they have “somehow managed to sign 15 series!” The
editor-in-chief-in-training is ready to celebrate, person-I-don’t-hate reminds
her that they can’t celebrate until after their first issue is published. The
next episode preview informs the viewer that—
Wait, what? Next episode? This one just started! Did I fall
asleep or something? The show was pretty bad, but it wasn’t boring enough to
put me to sleep. Turns out I didn’t fall asleep. The show’s episodes are only
three minutes long. Sweet fancy Moses, the hits just keep on coming!
Naturally, I did what any right-thinking adult would do and
watched the rest of the available episodes. Currently there are five episodes
which translates to about fifteen minutes of actual content (and I use that
phrase VERY lightly). To put it into perspective, an episode of “Working!!” has
more content than five episodes of “Mangirl!” At least “Working!!” bothered to
give us a real introduction to its characters.
Okay, I don’t even know where to begin with this because it
feels like almost anything I have to say about this show isn’t fair considering
that episodes are only three minutes long. Aside from the
fact that it breaks every rule of good storytelling, it doesn’t even attempt to
use its time wisely during each episode. They try to pack it full of joke after
joke after manufactured, adorable joke and it’s just plain disorienting.
This is an episode of “Mangirl!” in a nutshell. Girls are trying to do a thing, the
editor-in-chief does something stupid, then the thing they’re trying to do gets
done. That’d be bearable stretched out over three minutes, but that’s not where
it ends. I’ve only just described the first 30 seconds. Strap in cowboy,
because this show ain’t over until your blood glucose level has been
artificially doubled. After that happens, you get to see them do a different
thing while the editor-in-chief does something stupid before it eventually gets
done. Also, you can bet if there is a problem to be resolved, then it’ll be
resolved by smash-cutting to a close up on one of the girls saying that they’ve
finished doing the thing they’re doing.
“But Jake”, you might say, “you’re thinking too critically
about a show that only lasts three minutes. You can’t count on a show to weave
a masterful, compelling narrative in only three minutes.” Maybe so, but I can
name one show that managed to tell a funny interesting story using episodes
that were only five minutes long.
It’s a little show called Azumanga Daioh. Perhaps you’ve
heard of it?
Azumanga, another show based on a four-panel comic, broadcast
a wildly successful anime adaptation back in 2002. “But Jake”, you might say,
“Azumanga’s episodes were 25 minutes long, a standard anime episode length.” You’d
be half-right about this. What a lot of people forget is that Azumanga was
originally broadcast as five-minute segments that were released every weekday.
If you watch an episode of Azumanga, you’ll notice that there are little titles
for each part of the episode. Those individually titled segments were the
actual episodes of Azumanga Daioh. The 25 minute versions are just anthologies
of the week’s adventures.
That’s the key difference between good short storytelling and
bad short storytelling, pacing. Azumanga knew how to pace its jokes and still
tell a quick, fun story. We can think of Azumanga Daioh as an expert marksman
who knows how to direct his shots with precision and care. Meanwhile, Mangirl!
delivers its jokes rapidly and haphazardly, like a cocky 20-year-old who just
bought a P90. Sure it’ll hit its mark every once in a while, but it won’t do it
with any real grace and the mediocrity surrounding it distracts from the lucky
shots.
Plus, this show is a weekly show. That means you watch a
three minute show, and then you have to wait before you can have the privilege
of watching the next one. That is not how you retain an audience. You
absolutely do not have the talent to justify that wait-to-return time ratio,
Mangirl. This show is Bakuman for stupid people.
Also, the opening theme might be the worst thing I have ever
heard in my life. I’ve been watching iDOLM@STER, and even the worst song from
iM@S is better than Mangirl!’s opening.
Yama no Susume/ Encouragement of Climb
Golly dammit, it’s another three minute
long show! Is this a thing now? Can I expect this to become another trend?
K-On! was popular for reasons I’ll never understand, so is this the next thing
that the dumbest among the anime fandom will sing the praises of for incredibly
superficial “mai waifu” style reasons?
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| THEY REFERENCED THAT ONE SHOW 10/10 GOTY! |
I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I do know
that it doesn’t automatically have to be a bad thing. As I said before, you can
tell an interesting story in a very short amount of time if you’re mindful of your
limitations and have enough self-restraint to know what to show and when. This
show did it right.
Mangirl! was probably the worst show I could’ve used to give
myself a crash course in three-minute entertainment. It was erratic, bloated,
and just plain stupid. Where Encouragement
succeeds though is that it focuses on its characters versus the events
surrounding them. The hardest thing for a writer to do isn’t coming up with the
events of a story, it’s figuring out what the events mean for your character
and how they will react to an event and how they will grow as an individual
because of it. This show is about its characters and it has a lot of heart.
Aoi is a girl who has just started
high school. Stay with me on this; I know it isn’t a promising start. In the
first act (if you can divide a three minute episode into acts), we get the
sense that she’s not very sociable and likes to keep to herself. Again, stay
with me. She’s settling in for a peaceful
first year when another girl shows up at her desk and calls her by her
first name.
It turns out that when Aoi was in
elementary school, she had a very close friend named Haruka who she used to go
hiking and climbing with.
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| Oh... Sorry, I'll wait in the car. |
A VERY close friend.
Anyway, during one particular
climb, Aoi promised Haruka that they would climb a mountain together one day
when they were older. A real one. Like K2 or something. I don’t know much about
mountains, so I can’t be funny about this. The point is, it was a sweet scene
that did a great job of establishing that Aoi wasn’t always the way she is now.
Unfortunately she never expected
Haruka to show up half a decade later with climbing gear and a fantastic
memory.
The final section of the first
episode is devoted to telling the story of how Aoi ended up so different from
the way she was in elementary school. One day, while pretending to climb Mount
McKinley on a jungle gym, she got a little overzealous and broke a bone. It was
so traumatic for her that she developed a fear of heights. Needless to say,
climbing a mountain is not on the top of her priority list.
And so the episode ends with a
smiling Haruka dragging a crying Aoi off to her house to plan their big climb.
The subsequent episodes build on
the foundation set by the first three minute segment by focusing primarily on
character development. Again, this is a show that knows how to use its time
wisely. Each episode generally focuses on a single day in our main character’s
life. This sounds like something that shouldn’t be a big deal, but with shows
like Mangirl trying to pack as much jokes and moe as they can into one episode,
to the point that they just tell you what story events have happened between
scenes so that they can get to the next joke.
There are five episodes of Encouragement out so far, and each one
does a very effective job of making me care about Aoi and her struggle to
overcome her fear of heights and her social anxiety, and clearly she’s made
significant progress in this short amount of time. She goes on a hike up a
small mountain trail with Haruka, realizes how important the memories of her
childhood were, and makes a new friend. And all of this happens in three minute
increments that don’t feel rushed. Wow. This is a very well-made show.
The art direction is fantastic, and
the animation is very good. Its also funnier than Mangirl! despite not being billed as a comedy. The only real complaint I have is that it is very
short. I know I said it uses it’s time wisely, but I feel like this show would
be great, not just good, if it were given even two more minutes per episode.
Definitely check it out if you have time (and if you don’t have three minutes
to spare, then what the hell are you doing here?).
SIDE-NOTE: I don't actually think Aoi is a lesbian, however I wouldn't complain if this show decided to be daring and develop an honest, romantic attraction between the two girls that wasn't simply used as fetish fuel for pervy otaku.
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