Clichés make a show boring. The more clichéd a story is, the less interesting and enjoyable it becomes. But my theory is that this relationship only holds true until you hit a certain magical event horizon where the laws of the universe break apart, one gets divided by zero and clichés become art.

How people react when I tell them I enjoyed IS

Infinite Stratos was my guilty pleasure from last season. I actually caught the last episode in Japan last month and have since read volumes 4-6 of the light novels, picking up from where the anime leaves off. Hence, I speak on good authority when I say that IS is one huge clichéfest. But for some reason, it’s enjoyable.

Only in anime: girls fight to feed you food

The basic premise of IS is one of the oldest stories ever told by anime: some lucky bastard ends up in a situation where he is constantly surrounded by sex-deprived girls who lust for the first man they bump into in the hallway. The inclusion of fighting mecha is initially reminiscent of Sakura Wars, but the storytelling is closer to Tenchi Muyo.

Hey wasn’t this from Gundam 00?

The Chosen One

In the story, IS are personalized powered armour suits, equipped with insanely powerful weapons ripped straight from the Gundam multiverse that — for very feebly conceived reasons — are not used for warfare but given to teenagers for unspecified purposes that no one really bothers explaining. They can only be piloted by girls, except for the one single exception, chosen by the almighty plot device, that is the main character, Ichika Orimura. As a science fiction, IS is pretty terrible, so it’s a good thing that the author is not trying too hard to make it one.

Spot the tsundere

The cool part about the character interactions is the fact that almost all the heroines are tsundere! Okay, it sounds lame when I articulate it in words, but really it is an impressive feat. Probably.

Of the five female IS pilots chasing after Ichika, only one can be categorically excluded from the tsundere classification, while each of the remaining four represents a different sub-division of tsundere. I am pretty sure making 80% of the characters tsundere violates some kind of international convention governing harem anime. This is either a work of madness or genius.

How people react to IS‘ storytelling

Just to be clear, the story is absolutely terrible. But the story is really not that important when it comes to having a good time with IS. You must enjoy the characters and relish the ridiculous situations they create when they get together. It’s one of those shows.

Of course, such a formula only works well for some quick laughs. The lack of an engaging story is definitely unsustainable in the long run.

Tatenashi Sarashiki is introduced in Vol. 5

The light novels injected life into the post-anime story by introducing a new character, Tatenashi Sarashiki (the playful but capable head of the student council), into the mix, hence covering the previously unoccupied teasing-senpai (i.e. Tama-nee) spot, but it is clear that constantly introducing new characters is not a viable long-term solution to generate interest. The author does take a huge step in advancing the overarching story in Volume 6, but so far it has failed to impress.

Beach episode: the forward pass of harem anime

But for the length of 12 episodes, the formula works just fine. In fact, the anime’s excellent pacing is almost sublime in its execution, like the well-timed punchlines of a skilful comedian. I was particularly impressed by episode 9, the fan-service episode, where the writer has somehow managed to fit an unbelievable amount of character and visual fan-service into one tight 20-minute package. That is truly the work of artisans.

So much armour and yet so little is covered

The animation and art quality is also surprisingly decent and consistent across the 12 episodes, all things considered, especially when you compare it to the typical cookie-cutter low-budget adapted-from-game titles found in great abundance in the same genre. Okay, maybe my bar was just set very low.

Ultimately, it takes a particular kind of mindset to get into IS. In my case, I started with very low, almost non-existent, overall expectations and found myself liking the characters, hence a good story was never within my range of considerations and its absence was not disconcerting. It also helps a great deal if you love tsundere, because the show is full of them… XD

More screencaps

Ichika’s teacher/sister is kind of tsundere

As IS technology advances, the skin exposure increases

The kendo-girl childhood-friend tsundere

The twin-tail childhood-friend Chinese tsundere

The twin-drill refined-lady British tsundere

The stoic tough-yet-naive flat-chested German tsundere

Three tsundere caught in an infinite loop of mutual contempt

Tsundere rule: smiles like this are usually followed by swift violence

Possibly the boss character of some fantasy RPG

Floating shoulders, how do they work?

This is a job for Admiral Ackbar’s brother

Some kind of futuristic mating ritual

I think this is what people call a reach around?

Okay so this is my favourite character in the show…

●__◎

Unlimited?! That’s over 9000!

Okay not twin drill. More like quad drill. It’s the future

Bunny ears…

How people react when I told them I was going to Tokyo last month

Eye-patch moé?

Mecha designs in the IS universe are often suspiciously convenient…

tl;dr version: Infinite Stratos is for people who appreciate the finer subtleties of tsundere.

Level E is an amazing underhyped show. It’s Men in Black with Japanese comedy and self parody. You have to wonder why it took them 15 years to adapt the original into anime.

The first three episodes of Level E do a good job of concealing its true nature. But don’t be misled; finish the third episode and be amazed. Episode four follows up with a complete wtf turnabout with a thoughtful twist and episode five is just pure parody gold.

Now this may all seem incredibly vague, but it’s hard to talk about Level E without spoiling the surprise that makes it great. In fact, I can’t really think of how to review it.

Instead I’ll just talk about episode 5. If my vague praises have already sold you on the series, then stop reading now and go watch it yourself.

In episode 5, the main character, an alien prince from the planet Dogura, is bored and decides to kidnap five school kids to turn them into sentai heroes to fight against their alien homeroom teacher, who is secretly an intergalactic assassin.

Unlike the 2-bit protagonists in most sentai stories, these kids are unwilling (except for the dorky one) to fight for what appears to be a pervert dressed in tights, but reluctantly agree because the prince threatens to hold them hostage.

The helpful instruction manual

The prince dubs them “Colour Change Rangers”. Their transformation devices (which are really toys bought on the intergalactic equivalent of the Home Shopping Network) grant them minuscule powers like lighting a small fire.

They have to wear their silly costumes in order to “level up” and gain better powers, while the prince gets to speak directly into their minds through the devices and annoy them endlessly with his self-composed Colour Change Rangers theme song.

Really, what if Zordon were just a bored alien prince who wanted to make some human kids dress up in silly costumes and shout embarrassing slogans? Epic trolling.

Even alien assassins have dreams

Come to think of it, Level E itself is one huge troll.

Big Dreams Little Tokyo (IMDb entry) is one of those movies that seek to explore the meaning of culture in today’s globalizing world that serves as a melting pot of ethnic identities. It has been making its way around various independent film festivals and has received many positive reviews. Two weeks ago, Mr. Dave Boyle, the director and also the lead actor, presented me with an opportunity to review the movie before its DVD and theatrical release in America next year. Of course I was not the only blogger offered to do this, but I did feel a tingle of joy to receive such a request.

Two weeks later, I’m sitting in my room with the screener DVD (digitally watermarked to prevent piracy) in hand and a movie review to write. So here we go.

“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”

The story is about Boyd, an American who speaks fluent Japanese, and his dream of success as a businessman. He wrote a book which teaches English to Japanese speakers and he runs his own one-person company (his apartment) where he conducts English lessons. He spends his days going from house to house to promote his book and he frequently gets chased out of the book store’s owner for trying to peddle his goods in the store. He lives with a 200-pound Japanese American guy called Jerome who spends his time putting on weight and learning Japanese because he wants to be a professional sumo wrestler.

“Just…another…20…pounds.”

In a way, this film reminds me of Lost in Translation, except it doesn’t really deal with Japanese culture. It has a lot of “Japan” element in it and indeed Japanese plays an important role in the story, but it’s not a movie that deals with Japan and its culture the way Translation did. It’s really a movie about ethnic identity in today’s generation, with Japanese being used as a device to tell that story. Or at least that’s what I think anyway.

Besides the main character and his room mate, we get to meet a Mexican who works as a sushi chef, a Japanese corporate boss who likes to shake hands instead of bow and various other characters who seem somewhat out of place in their roles. It is through the (often humorous) interactions between this cast of cultural misfits that we, the viewers, get to enjoy an interesting commentary on the way we think about our own racial identities in today’s world.

“I should be saving the world in New York right now.”

Interesting side note: James Kyson Lee, who plays Ando in the hit TV series Heroes, is an angry shopkeeper in the movie. He doesn’t really do much, but it’s kind of cool considering how I just started watching Heroes recently. LOL. Actually the shopkeeper is also quite fascinating because he’s clearly Japanese but he always speaks English and he hates it when Boyd speaks Japanese to him. In a way, he seems to have rejected part of him, perhaps in his attempt to integrate himself into American society.

“Good day, would you like to learn English?”

While nominally a comedy, it’s not the kind of “Jim Carrey” humour that’s commonplace in cinemas today. It’s subtle in execution, perhaps too subtle sometimes. Much of the dialogue is in Japanese, and some of the jokes make use of it. For example, in the opening scene of the movie, Boyd is trying (but failing) to convince three drunken Japanese businessmen to buy his book. They are more amused by his command of Japanese and one of them asks him to say “this morning, every morning” in Japanese. If you don’t speak Japanese, it’s a little hard to get this joke. Basically, it’s “kesa maiasa” (今朝毎朝), which sounds like “kiss my ass” when you say it out loud. There’s also a tako/taco joke in a later part of the story.

Two Mexican chefs preparing udon.

As Boyd and Jerome try to achieve their dreams, they face the challenge of overcoming social prejudices due to their unique circumstances. Boyd has trouble making people take him seriously because they are too busy getting excited over his fluent Japanese. Jerome feels like he’s too American to be a sumo wrestler and at the same time too Japanese to really be American. In one scene, two guys from Okinawa refuse to take English lessons from Jerome because he’s not white, despite the fact that he speaks perfectly accented English.

Along the way, Boyd meets a Japanese nurse, Mai, who wants to improve her English and ends up taking lessons from him. Hilarity and some light drama ensue. With her help, difficulties are resolved and eventually Boyd and Jerome learn to come to terms with both sides of their identities and everyone lives happily ever after. Or something like that.

“She’s hot!”

One of my favourite scenes happens near the end, when Boyd and the Mexican Japanese chef ends up as interpretors for a takeover negotiation between a Mexican factory owner (who bears an uncanny resemblance to George W. Bush) and representatives of a Japanese corporation. Unhappy differences are resolved thanks to some creative interpreting by them. This reminded me of a scene in Lost in Translation where the director passionately gives out instructions to Bob, the main character, in Japanese and his interpretor condenses everything into brief translations that lose their original meanings.

The Mexican factory owner and the Japanese salarymen eventually hit it off despite the cultural and language barriers, with a little help from the universal male language: alcohol. It’s a pretty entertaining scene.

It’s like one of those yakuza movies…except with some Mexicans.

It’s also very interesting to note that throughout the movie, there’s no direct mention of where it is set in. Indeed, from the first few scenes it seemed like the movie was set in Japan. I was somewhat confused when Boyd said that his book cost eighteen dollars because it’s kind of weird for people to use dollars in Japan. It is only later in the film where you see signs that say “Japantown” and even then we never get to find out which Japantown it is. I think this is a very clever set-up because it really makes you realize just how we perceive the world through stereotypes that can turn out to be very wrong in this age of rampant cultural cross-pollination. Or perhaps it was completely unintentional and I’m just reading too much into it. LOL.

My girlfriend thinks that the girl in the middle is cute.

In conclusion, it’s a great movie! Having studied Japanese for the past five years, I find that the film really resonated with the way I feel. I’ve always been a supporter of cultural globalization and I think that the movie did an excellent job of telling that story in a light-hearted and digestible manner. I especially loved the final scene which I find to be the perfect cumulation of the film’s messages, but I shall refrain from describing it. You’ll just have to watch it for yourself when the movie is released in early 2008! Meanwhile, I have to mail the DVD back.

P.S. I wish more movie directors would send me their works for pre-release reviews. Steven Spielberg, I’m looking your way! ;)