“Translating” a video game to anime is always risky business because the experience cannot but be different. In the first place, players with a given video game generally have a wide number of choices, or at least a few highly critical ones, which shape the direction of the ending. Directors therefore must choose one option, stick to it, and try to make the viewing public like it. Full disclaimer: I have not played the game. I have heard complaints from those who have, though.

Devil Survivor 2: The Animation takes thirteen episodes to tell its story, charting its own independent path, killing off characters just to show they can be at times (since the people who have played the game say such-and-such can’t be killed off in the game itself, for instance). This is part of a certain tradition in anime, an end-of-the-world story where people fight for the opportunity, not to prevent the end, but to shape the new beginning. However, in this case, our protagonist, Hibiki, given power he did not ask for (but deep down wanted when it came down to saving others), is the boy standing astride the apocalypse yelling, “Stop!”

Essentially a narrative is shaped, filled with fixtures of the Shin Megami Tensei game series such as “demonic” beings summoned by humans, such as the Godzilla-sized, “evil” version of the cutsey series mascot, called (in English) Black Frost, whose picture graces the top of this post. Such is the symbiotic supernatural power that is used to combat the “monsters” that assail humanity, part of a trial by a being/ system that views humanity as unworthy of continued existence. The real conflict is still man vs. man, between one iron-willed individual who thinks that humanity as it stands now truly isn’t worthy of continued existence, and Hibiki, who wants to save not just the world, but also Yamato, the strong-willed individual in question who tries to take the whole world on his shoulders (even as it is consumed by the void).

So does it work?

I found the show to be tolerable because the varied core characters were mainly worth watching, and because the high powered battles were, broadly speaking, done well with a lot of action. Thirteen episodes wasn’t enough time to slow things down and take one’s time. While I’m not as big a fan of the mouthpieced philosophical debate at work – you shouldn’t have to try this hard to justify stopping global universal genocide – my bottom line is, the protagonist and antagonist are both well-acted (so to speak) and carry their crosses convincingly. You don’t have to agree with both of them – or either of them – to take away the sense that the characters believe what they’re saying and believe that they’re right. Any show that can’t produce a credible conflict is difficult to watch, and this show does have a conflict, and does resolve it. That’s important.

I would not nominate this show for true greatness, so I’ll give it a 7 out of 10 with a nod to the animation and song work, but as much as I think the character designs were mostly outstanding, this is a conflict that has been done before and which was handled in a way that feels heartfelt to the main character (at least), but certainly not original. There are also minor characters who were “weakly acted” and deficiencies in the writing, but hey, video game adaptations are hard, and decency is something we should be grateful for. I enjoyed my time and that is that.

While other nations have no lack of artists, it is Japan’s mix of creativity and visual art involved in the cel (celluloid) animation used for anime. While hard economic times and an improvement in technology have created a great rise in the use of computer-generated graphics to supplement cel art, it is ultimately an issue of highly varied visual styles.

I say highly varied, but detractors will say things like, all anime looks alike! and, all anime characters look alike! They’re separated at birth! This criticism is not one I like to indulge in, because I can see a lot of differences in most characters, but I’m looking for them.

Disney Roots

The Japanese style of animation is largely drawn from the rounded looks, including the rounded eyes, used in animation by Walt Disney Studios in its famous films. Certainly, this is augmented by decades of experimentation in manga, styles which are copied to the television or theater screen by hard-working animators diligently working to bring animation to life for the masses.

Still, and this is the issue that I alluded to in my first article in this series, as much as being an animator requires great skill, being a creator requires creativity that simply cannot be acquired by skill alone. This is why a flawless forgery of the work of a master painter is not regarded as equal to the original creation.

Samples of Anime Art

As usual, these are for EDUCATIONAL purposes to present a sample of Japanese culture. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I write too much as it is. – J

For more information on these anime – which are all currently airing – see this early impressions post for the current anime season.

Nurarihyon no Mago

Fortune Arterial

Hakuouki – Hekketsu Roku

To Aru Majutsu No INDEX

Amagami SS

Like Romance Novels On A TV

In American culture, a “chick flick” is a romance oriented movie that occurs from a woman’s perspective and is meant to play to a woman’s tastes.

There is anime like this as well, and Hakuouki: Hekketsu Roku (the sequel to the first Hakuouki) is a leading example.

To make a long story short, this is a historical drama with a fictional supernatural twist, with a female lead who comes to be with the Shinsengumi, “New Select Group,” an elite special police force, during the death throes of the Tokugawa shogunate (i.e. the battles that gave way to the Meiji Restoration). The pretty, but not idealized, female lead is therefore surrounded by handsome, very much idealized male leads and supporting characters.

Also, she happens to be on the losing side, essentially witnessing a tragedy in progress as lives expire; indeed, an entire era and a whole way of life is expiring as the best swordsmen Japan could hope for in that day and age found their blood and heroics for nothing.

Now, without getting into the niceties of plot, that’s essentially the whole show. Last season, the members of the Shinsengumi were still in “wafuku” (Japanese-style clothing,” and this season they’re in snappy Western uniforms as things get really bad, but anyway, that’s the essence of it.

This is not a show to observe military tactics at work, or for swordfighting (there’s lots of edge on edge katana fighting, which is fine for a “chick flick” where women don’t know the niceties of swordfighting, nor do they care). It is a show for seeing a lot of male leads that girls might like to fall for, imagining themselves in various roles and scenes on the side while the television show itself (for at this point, this being anime is quite irrelevant) proceeds towards some kind of historical finality and plot conclusion. The show is mid-way through its second and final season.

I presume final, because there’s not much of the Shinsengumi left to collapse.

A Leap Into “Fantasy”

The point of this is that even though the events portrayed are barely a hundred and forty years ago, they might as well have taken place a full thousand years ago considering the cultural, technological, and psychological chasm between that time and the time modern Japanese (or Western) viewers live in.

In other words, this is a leap into a world of fantasy. It may be fantasy that resonates on a cultural level, but it is no less fantasy than magic spells, swords and flying dragons.

There is also the fantasy of a girl who is not hot, but who is pretty, being sincerely cared about by so many dashing young men, even if fate is against them all. This is very much reflective of romance novel character design.

In this case, the show was merely based on a Playstation 2 game. While most games surrounding romance are explicitly geared for males, this is one of the notable exceptions. Also, it covered a period rich enough in history to provide a platform for well developed characters, settings, animation, and so forth. Obviously, the plot (which I am not getting into) also made a leap in the process.

While hardly a mainstay of Japanese anime, the “chick flick” style represented here does exist as part of the mosaic of entertainment in Japanese society. This show will never approach Naruto or Bleach status, nor was it designed to; however, it offers an opportunity to get a feel for the era, just as Seven Samurai offers us a window into the samurai as they lived, and died, in the wake of the end of the Civil War era.

Hakuouki represents the end of the era that followed the Civil War era, and represents the dawn of Japan’s modern era, which lasted until WWII. There is something of a pattern here.