Eating Crab with a Snow Woman – or the importance of build-up

Japanese Title: Yukionna to Kani wo Kuu

 

Genre: Drama

Length: 69 chapters (8 volumes)

 

Positives:

• The art is quite nice

Negatives:

• The big twist undermines everything
• Several-volume tangent with other irrelevant women

A man intent on killing himself wishes to fulfil one last item on his bucket list before kicking the bucket. He wants to travel north to Hokkaido and eat the best crab. Unfortunately, a loser like him doesn’t have the money for such a trip or such an expensive crab. And so, he decides to rob a rich housewife. Much to his surprise though, she offers not just the money he needs but also her body and company on the journey.

The road trip that follows is one of sightseeing, sex, and food with no concern for the future. Try as they might to celebrate, questions from the past and their private lives invade this last hurrah, entwining two strangers in a bond closer than what they had signed up for.

The premise has a good hook. He’s a piece of shit and we soon see that she is one as well, both of them broken by life and trying to end their grief in each other’s bodies. Classic literary novels very much inspired Eating Crab with a Snow Woman, primarily No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, a Japanese classic and second bestseller of all-time in Japan (also featured in the anime Aoi Bungaku).

I don’t recommend this manga. I can’t fully explain why without going into spoilers, as the big twist undoes this story. So, if you are interested in reading Eating Crab with a Snow Woman yourself, do not read further in this review until you are done.

Okay, before we go on, I need to talk about the main inspiration for this series since it is relevant. No Longer Human is a quasi-autobiographical work about a man suffering from depression, distancing from society, and suicide. It’s a seriously depressing novel. Dazai drowned himself along with his mistress shortly after the release of this book.

The woman in this manga presents herself as a lonely wife betrayed by her successful husband, who has an affair – one similar in circumstance to when he first got with this woman – and leaves her with all the money she could want but none of the love. Her husband even used her holiday plans with his mistress instead. She goes along with the protagonist to escape it all and ends up falling in love with him. However, just before the suicide (they are to drown), when he gets cold feet, we learn that none of her story is relevant to her feelings. In truth, she is fanatically in love with her author husband and wants to kill herself like in his book (inspired by Dazai’s work) so that the attention garnered when the “reality is stranger and more dramatic than fiction,” it will propel him into literary history like Osamu Dazai.

He was her teacher and wrote a literary novel she admired under a pen name, which she figured out. He was much older than her, of course, and they started an affair. She did everything to support his career, including selling herself. He soon realised that she didn’t love him the person – she loved him as the future literary great. Interesting concept. Should have been laid throughout the story and not in a single chapter towards the end. This would allow us to see how she is playing this guy to achieve her dream.

This story highlights the importance of building up to a twist. When you don’t have the build-up, a final act twist will feel as if the writer changed their mind at the last minute. Yes, the twist can fit the world but does it fit the story? Take for instance Jurassic Park and image we are entering the final act, where the writer suddenly decides that the best twist would be to reveal that everything was just a virtual reality simulation. This twist doesn’t break anything but it does make for a rubbish story. Furthermore, it undermines the theme of humanity pushing too far at “playing God” with the resurrection of the dinosaurs, given now that the park wasn’t real. See what I mean? You could have a great VR story about a dinosaur park; however, the story and themes would need to be nothing like Jurassic Park from the start.

There are other moments of pain in Eating Crab with a Snow Woman as well. While he’s beating up the husband for driving the woman to suicide, she “rises from the dead” and catches up to them. This guy lay beside her “dead” body for hours and never noticed she was alive. Rubbish.

The worst section prior to the final act is this tangent lasting several volumes, where the man separates from the woman by accident and can’t find his way back to the hotel. This scenario is itself stupid enough, only then for it to waste our time as some random woman picks him up. She takes in this homeless guy and we meet several of her friends, get to know about her life, and so on, nothing of which is engaging or relevant to the grander story. Honestly, it feels like filler for the author to stall while she figures out the ending (see my Jurassic Park analogy for what happened next).

The twist isn’t infeasible. All it needed was build up in the first half of the story. While you’re at it, cut the entire side story with those other women. This could have been a great tragic manga.

Art – High

Story – Low

Recommendation: Don’t bother. The final twist of Eating Crab with a Snow Woman is so contrary to the story prior that it kills all value. The happy ending is unearned too.

(Find out more about the manga recommendation system here.)

86 (Eighty-Six) – Ethically Sourced Warfare

Japanese Title: 86 – Eighty-Six –

 

Related: 86 2^nd Season (TBR)

Similar: Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans

Aldnoah.Zero

Guilty Crown

 

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Action Drama Science Fiction

Length: 11 episodes

 

Positives:

• Visually nice
• More focus on non-combat side of war is interesting
• Good music

Negatives:

• Most characters are nothing
• World building needs work
• Lacks nuance

(Request an anime for review here.)

“Ethically sourced warfare.” This is the creed of the Republic of San Magnolia, for in the war with the Empire there are no casualties on their side. Only AI drones die for this conflict. Or so they say. In truth, the zero casualty count refers to the Alba, a silver-haired race that lives in luxury and without worry in the Republic’s eighty-five districts. The others – those of the wrong race – are the front line soldiers. These drones aren’t unmanned. These outcasts are known as the Eighty-Six and when they die, they aren’t human casualties because they aren’t human in the eyes of the Republic.

Vladilena is a rising star in the Republic military, recently assigned to take over as Handler for the “drones” of squadron Spearhead, a unit infamous for driving its Handlers mad. Leading Spearhead is Shinei, a.k.a. Undertaker, a repeat lone survivor of many battles with a special connection to the dead. Vladilena knows the truth of this war, working to keep her unit alive and to spread the message about the atrocities facing the Eighty-Six.

With a premise like that, I’m in from episode one. I like that we see military “service” for the Alba as a cushy desk job. Regulations are whatever as long as you don’t go against the grain. Looking at this city, you wouldn’t imagine there is a bloody war happening not far away. I am also surprised that the “drones aren’t unmanned” fact wasn’t kept as a twist. Generally, the protagonist would get this new job guiding a bunch of AI drones, many of which die in the war – doesn’t matter because they’re just machines, of course – until the mid-point turn that forces her out into the world and she sees the truth. All those drones she sacrificed for the sake of winning a skirmish? Real people, dead, because of her. Now she would work to make up for her ignorance. That’s the normal structure. Interesting to see 86 reveal the information upfront.

This change allows the story to be less action focused, which may put some people off. Instead, more time goes towards conversation between Vladilena in the city and Shinei on the frontline, sometimes bringing in the rest of Spearhead. 86 is about the effects of war rather than the war itself. For the first season anyway. I haven’t read the source material, but I wouldn’t be surprised for action to take up a larger and larger share as the story progresses.

Early conflict for Vladilena is her approach to dealing with these outsiders. She takes that classic well-meaning but actually condescending approach that we see between rich philanthropists and the poor in the real world. She’s so certain of being in the right amongst her peers, is so much more progressive than them that she doesn’t consider perhaps she doesn’t know as much about the Eighty-Six as she thinks. Just because she knows more than the others, it doesn’t mean she can swoop in and tell the Eighty-Six who they should be and how to fix everything. I like that. It’s a good seasonal arc for her.

However, 86 isn’t as good as I had hoped it would be on initial impression. Cutting back on action in a war story is a bit of a risk. Action is much easier to pull off than dialogue is in keeping an audience engaged. When dialogue is the centre, characters become of utmost importance as the driving force of the narrative.

The cast of characters is a problem in 86. When examined, there are only three real characters: the protagonist, her scientist friend, and Undertaker. Everyone else is nothing. The series dedicates two episodes to characterising the rest of the Spearhead crew, as they remind Vladilena that even with her kind words she is still an upper class citizen safe in her palace. She cannot relate to them nor be one of them. In fact, she hasn’t bothered to ask for their real names. And so, she gets to know them better until they let her into their lives – remotely – and grow closer. Despite this, each of these side characters are little more than one line bios in the series’ archive. There are too many of them, for one, that they end up as this singular entity of hive-minded thought. I can’t truly distinguish them in any meaningful way. Those important names arrive in a rapid-fire sequence, many of which are sci-fi names that take effort to remember. But who will bother to remember when they are so boring?

Add to this Shinei the Undertaker. He is of the quiet reserved type, a favourite archetype of mine, which is one of the most difficult to pull off without coming across as bland. Shinei isn’t as strong of a character as he needs to be for such a story. Lean 90% action and he would do fine. The audience wouldn’t particularly care when they attend for the action. His backstory and reason for driving handlers insane is interesting for the future. Right now, there’s not enough to him to make me think, “I care about this guy. I care about all he’s been through. I want him to have better.”

Another disappointment relates to the world building. After a strong establishing episode, the world barely builds. We end up see and knowing almost nothing of this world, which is a problem in a completely fictional setting. Even the social world building amounts to little when, in one episode, Vladilena gives a lecture and announces to a whole class of cadets the truth about the drones. She suffers zero consequences. I get that she is a bit of a prodigy and related to people of high rank but this should be high treason. Isn’t the whole point that everyone is blissfully ignorant and to break that ignorance could undo the fabric of societal order? Even if everyone is aware but chooses to feign ignorance because it gives them easy lives, it should still have consequences. When a story does things like this, it renders the rules of this world meaningless. When everything is meaningless (and your characters aren’t good enough), why should I care?

What started out as promising has end up being an average anime that neither offends nor excites. There is room for improvement though I am not hopeful. I probably won’t be watching season 2, which is all you need to know, I suppose.

Overall Quality – Medium

Recommendation: Try it. If you’re up for a war story by way of anime, 86 is a decent watch.

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Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive: None

Negative: None

Link Click – Dive into mystery

Chinese Title: Shiguang Dailiren

 

Related: Link Click 2^nd Season (TBR)

Similar: Death Parade

Steins;Gate

Id: Invaded

 

Watched in: Chinese

Genre: Contemporary Drama Fantasy Mystery

Length: 11 episodes

 

Positives:

• Great character animation without generic expressions
• Engaging short stories
• “Page turning” pace and plots

Negatives:

• Vocal audio sounds a little off

(Request an anime for review here.)

Time for my dip into China’s offering of anime for the season (we won’t count the increasing number of Japanese content animated in China). We’ve had some rubbish with The King’s Avatar but we’ve also had greatness with Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. Now I look at something different once again with the contemporary fantasy mystery Link Click.

This short series centres around two young men with different powers that work in tandem to “investigate” photographs. Xiaoshi can enter photos and possess the photographer, travelling to see the past from their perspective. Meanwhile, Guang acts as the “eye in the sky” with his ability to look into a photo and see what occurred in a limited time around its taking. He knows how the scene plays out, guiding Xiaoshi from the present via some form of telepathy. The photo doesn’t need to be of the subject. Time and place matter. Together, they take on cases for clients in need of information or a correction for something in the past. For example, the first case has them entering the life of an assistant to a chief financial officer to acquire evidence of fraud.

There is only one rule: don’t change the past in any appreciable way. However, by becoming their targets, experiencing life from their perspective, they may get more than they bargained for. Xiaoshi feels a subject’s pain most of all. He has to fight against a need to make things right.

I love this premise. It has immediate promises of drama, mystery, tension, and twists. I’m pleased to say that Link Click delivers on all of these promises.

Drama comes from the interesting and varied choice of target characters to inhabit, even when they don’t seem interesting on paper. One case has the guys trying to find the secret ingredient to an amazing noodle recipe. It’s just two ordinary people in business together selling noodles. As we see their relationship deteriorate though, the drama keeps us hooked and wanting to know how this will end. Each victim receives full characterisation in a single episode. Not an easy task. On the other end, there are high drama targets, such as the assistant mentioned previously who is a victim of sexual abuse from her boss, physical abuse from colleagues, and is just all round miserable. Drama escalates in a later case when it cuts close to home for Xiaoshi while possessing some stranger with past regrets. An early concern I had was a lack of connection between the two protagonists and the cases. They would solve a case involving strangers and move on to the next. Thankfully, after a few of these, cases become more personal (even if unintentionally) and the drama grips tighter. This is where Link Click elevates itself. The emotional core is strong.

Mystery, tension, and twists work as a trio thanks to good plotting and the right pacing across several compelling cases. The first few episodes work as standalone short stories, but matters build into longer cases with higher stakes. At that point, I had to go full binge to find out what happens next. Link Click has the perfect hooks of a mystery series. I can’t say much more than that.

If I had to present any negatives, I would say it needs a little more in several areas. Mind you, these have easy fixes and the second season could very well step it up in most regards. The stoic Guang, for instance, is still rather flat for a main character, particularly alongside Xiaoshi who we come to know much better over the course of the season. Maybe it’s because Xiaoshi takes the lion’s share of screen time. I also want more from the antagonists. They aren’t as present as they should be for hero versus villain scenarios. They feel a tad distant. With the introduction of what seems like the first major villain headed into the next season, the battle of wits may have more back and forth. Give me a touch of that Death Note. The audio placement for the voice acting is a little off – something common in Chinese anime, for some reason – though not a major problem.

Link Click is a great anime and an easy binge at 11 episodes with a fast pace that ramps up in the second half as the stakes reach new heights. I look forward to the next season.

Overall Quality – High

Recommendation: Watch it. Link Click is a gem of the season and well worth a watch.

(Request reviews here. Find out more about the rating system here.)

 

Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive: None

Negative: None

A Whisker Away – One True Cat Girl?

Japanese Title: Nakitai Watashi wa Neko wo Kaburu

 

Similar: The Cat Returns

A Silent Voice

 

Watched in: Japanese

Genre: Supernatural Comedy Drama Romance

Length: 1 hr. 44 min. movie

 

Positives:

• The girl’s cat-like behaviour
• The cats
• Animation is brilliant

Negatives:

• The boy is bland
• Romance doesn’t really work

(Request an anime for review here.)

Miyo is a girl in love. A little too much in love if you ask most people. Her target is Kento, a quiet boy who keeps his troubles to himself. She comes from a disjointed family with an overbearing mother – in Miyo’s view – and a weak father. Instead, this energetic girl throws all attention into drawing the eye of her crush. Nothing works. Opportunity arises when a fat cat sells her a mask that transforms her into a cute little cat, after which she uses her newfound form to visit Kento in disguise. He takes the cat in and calls her Taro.

The girl, I like, particularly the way they animated her. The animators managed to convey how a human would move if inhabited by the spirit of a cat. In one scene, she hears two boys at school making fun of Kento, so she jumps off a walkway, crashes through the branches of a tree, and lands before them like a wild cat. Perfect embodiment of the character. She’s so full of energy and life.

However! She doesn’t quite work in this story. Or is it that the story doesn’t work around her? If I didn’t know A Whisker Away was a children’s film, I would have expected a completely different direction around the halfway mark. Miyo is obsessed with this guy, performs crazy gestures to get his attention and show what he means to her. Unfortunately, there isn’t much of a foundation to the supposed relationship between these two. She comes across as…creepy isn’t the right word – more like crazy. I know this is a children’s film all in good fun, but it doesn’t mesh well. It needed a “before” segment, where we see something that justifies her fanatical behaviour. Perhaps they used to be close friends (and we see this) and she’s trying to break him from depression, or there’s some sort of magic that wiped her from his memory and she can’t tell him about it, but the curse never said anything about making him fall for her all over again. You know, something. The tiny glimpses we receive aren’t enough. At all.

In a more dramatic film, her behaviour would be set up for a confrontation about her one-sided obsession and end in a broken heart. In an adult horror film, she’d pull out a knife. No, wait! Brass knuckles with claws on them that leave scratch marks like a cat. The final twist would be that she was never cat – it was all in her head! Someone get on this film, stat!

Anyway, where was I.

Ah yes, the other piece that doesn’t fit the Whisker Away puzzle is Kento. He’s as bland as a grey cement wall. Feels like she wants to host a pity party for him, not show affection, at times. This is where that before segment would have helped as well. It could setup a personality for him before he breaks and she has to pull him back together again. Furthermore, when he does finally pay attention to her after the real price for the cat transformation is revealed, he changes in a flash to help her, presumably falling in love at the same time. There needs to be more to sell his change. As is, he’s a dull character who feels largely unimportant until the final act. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the story had twisted away from him to become a self-discovery tale for Miyo. I half expected it.

A Whisker Away isn’t as good a Mari Okada’s other work (she wrote this one) I recently reviewed, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (wrote and directed). I recommend that film before this. A Whisker Away is still alright though – Miyo cat is adorable. I like all the cat stuff. And it is a pretty film.

Overall Quality – Medium

Recommendation: For anyone in need of an easy time. A Whisker Away is an overly simple anime film. However, this doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable.

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Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive:

Negative: None

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms – Anime Review

Japanese Title: Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana wo Kazarou

 

Similar: Wolf Children

Violet Evergarden

Mirai of the Future

 

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Drama Fantasy

Length: 1 hr. 55 min. movie

 

Positives:

• Beautiful to behold
• Emotionally resonant main story
• Great acting

Negatives:

• Subplots are underbaked

(Request an anime for review here.)

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms comes from Mari Okada, a veteran screenwriter of the industry, having adapted many manga to animation. She’s been involved in some anime I enjoy (Iron-Blooded Orphans, AnoHana, for example) and some I don’t think highly of (Vampire Knight chief amongst them). This is her first time directing. And what a promising debut it is.

Maquia, at its heart, is a story about motherhood and mortality. In this world reside the Iorph, an elf-like race that lives hundreds of years separate from the rest of the world. They pass the days weaving a magic cloth that records the totality of their memories as one endless history. Though Iorph live in peace, the world outside marches on with the unstoppable tide of progress and evolution. The royal family of the nearby Mezarte kingdom have long used the dragon-esque Renato as their symbol of power, but a disease has afflicted the creatures and it kills them one at a time. In search of a new symbol to prove their “divine” status, the king sends his soldiers to capture an Iorph and discover the secret to their long life – one will have to marry his son, if forced to.

The titular Maquia escapes the onslaught atop a sick Renato. As she flees into the outside world, she happens upon a camp of travellers, all slaughtered by bandits save for a lone baby. She pries the crying thing from her mother’s rigid fingers and sets her sole mission in life to protect this child at all costs. Her journey will take her into foreign lands of varied people, both good and bad, and there will be many challenges for someone so naïve of reality. However, she could have never anticipated her long life to be the greatest challenge of all.

I went into this film blind and I didn’t expect it to hit so hard. The main story of Maquia and her son is a beautiful one loaded with goodness and a pure heart. The question of what would happen if someone seemingly immortal had to raise a mortal in mortal society is a fascinating one. I love stories that explore the challenges of immortality. There is a hint of this in The Lord of the Rings, of course, and I recently saw the film The Age of Adeline about a woman who stops aging after an accident and must move house every decade to avoid anyone noticing. However, I’ve never seen one focus so wholeheartedly on the child of the immortal. They are usually a subplot. Maquia dedicates almost all attention to this emotional thread and it is a triumph. I won’t talk of it further. Experience it for yourself – the perfect Mother’s Day film as well.

Complementing the beautiful story are beautiful visuals. The film opens on the Iorph town in the mountains, a sparkling paradise of ivory towers, glittering pools, and greenery that lifts the spirits. It even does bloom correctly! The wider world has just as much detail and visual greatness to drink in. I love it all, from the design of the main city of Mezarte to the wrought wood interior of a village shop. Nothing feels lazy or cut short by the art department.

However, not all is great in the world of Maquia, for now I must talk of the subplots. I don’t think a single one succeeds. There are three subplots. The most important is that of the kidnapped Iorph woman forced to marry the human prince and bear his child. Then we have the Iorph man on a quest to rescue her. And lastly, there is the involvement of other nations in a war. All three threads are so underbaked that the viewer has to make so many assumptions and fill in so many gaps to make them interesting.

It feels as if there wasn’t enough screen time for everything, so cuts were made to preserve the main story. Of course, the main is most important, but if a subplot no longer fulfils its purpose, then it has to change or leave altogether.

The problems are most notable with the kidnapped Iorph. The king orders her kidnapping, marriage, and child bearing to add the Ioprh’s long life to his bloodline. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is just about everything else. First, the knight who leads the raid on the Iorph town. He orders the killing of anyone who resists – not a kind bone in his body – yet later scenes have him acting as if he cares for the woman. Did he fall in love with her at some point? If so, and you want us to care an iota, you need to show this transformation. How are we supposed to believe he goes from one of the most evil people in her life to someone that cares about her? Maybe that isn’t even the case and he’s the same as ever. Who knows? Maquia doesn’t show us enough to get answers.

Deeper in the same thread, I have more questions. Why doesn’t she escape when given the chance? She tries to explain that she can’t because of her daughter, but she’s never seen her and there’s no reason she can’t leave now and get her daughter out later. Will the king kill the daughter if the mother leaves? Maybe. There’s no indication of the sort because, again, there isn’t enough time in this thread. Why didn’t she escape before the birth when able? I keep waiting for it to go into detail, but nothing unfurls before the finale.

The Iorph lover’s subplot has too many spoilers to detail here, but it’s the same case of missing detail. We cut to these subplots in between extended sections of great main story content, with timeskips in each case, though the detail worsens the further we go. The problem isn’t confusion. None of these are hard to understand. They are just so listless, void of the emotion that permeates the main plot. A woman forced into marriage, separated from her own child; a man out to rescue his lover for decades – these stories should hit hard, just like the primary thread. They don’t. The contrast in narrative quality between the main and subplots is night and day.

All considered though, main story is most important and Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms executes that brilliantly, well enough to recommend itself despite any side issues. It is worth your time.

Overall Quality – High

Recommendation: Watch it. Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms is a beautiful, heartfelt film I can recommend to anyone.

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Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)

Positive:

Negative: None