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.)

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – The Terminator is a pop idol?

Japanese Title: Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song

 

Similar: Steins;Gate

Violet Evergarden

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

 

Watched in: Japanese & English

Genre: Action Science Fiction Thriller

Length: 13 episodes

 

Positives:

• Engaging and fast-paced time travel thriller
• Some fascinating future world concepts

Negatives:

• Wildly inconsistent art can be jarring

(Request an anime for review here.)

Take Terminator 2: Judgement Day, combine it with J-pop, and you have yourself a lovely old Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it works.

This story is about an AI called Vivy (a.k.a. Diva) charged with the mission of changing the past to alter the future where AI rose up and massacred humanity. A scientist in the future sends the AI Matsumoto to tell Vivy of the calamity and guide her through time. The scientist chose Vivy because is the last of the old AIs and wasn’t affected by the calamity, and as the first autonomous AI, she sits in a museum in the future, unaffected. Her design was to be a singer at a theme park, her dream to bring everyone joy. Matsumoto is of limited physical capacity, residing in either a teddy bear or a cube, but has great knowledge and analytical capabilities with a preference for hacking. And he loves to talk.

What immediately grabs me in Fluorite Eye’s Song is the world design and general atmosphere. The premise hooks me, yes, but we’ve seen similar many times before. I love the grounded feel of this clean near future world, akin to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

We start at the genesis of the AI revolution. AI in the form of androids already exists, but they rarely pass for human. Each has a singular purpose – this AI is a waiter, this AI cleans the streets, this AI is an information guide, and so on, fulfilled with precision. AI do all menial jobs now, leading to a more utopian society. However, as the technology improves, they become more and more human. Thus, the question becomes, when do we treat them as human? When do they get rights? The opening scenario centres on this very question as a politician campaigns to give AIs names, treating them as individuals. Such dilemmas always fascinate me.

Fluorite’s story focus isn’t on these questions though; they are background to inform the main plot, which is the consequences of the answers garnered by these questions. In the future timeline, for instance, this politician dies in a blast setup by an anti-AI group. Unfortunately for this group, his death draws sympathy and support for a bill that few people initially cared about, setting in motion a series of catastrophic events. Vivy’s first mission is to keep him alive.

Funnily enough, the anti-AI group were right.

One change isn’t enough of course. Fifteen years later, Matsumoto returns to Vivy with a new mission, a new event to nudge in another direction. This time, an AI is going to crash a space hotel on a city. Furthermore, the previous change they made didn’t have the desired effects either, as is traditional for time edit stories. You fix one thing and a dozen other problems arise to take its place. This makes Fluorite engaging, for you never know what will happen next. You simultaneously experience relief when they avert one disaster and a sense of foreboding for the consequences of their actions. Fluorite evokes a bit of Steins;Gate in this way.

Each key event in the timeline occurs some years apart, so we get to jump through time and see the evolution of this world influenced by AI. A few human characters also stick around, aging with each time skip. This structure works.

While the main plot is a success, I do wish there was a little more time for the philosophical and moral aspect of AI. There’s a little bit with moments such a human marrying an AI, just not enough. Perhaps they thought it best not attempted if they couldn’t do it justice, as what is included is executed well enough. For those of you interested in the subject, I highly recommend the film Ex Machina and the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, specifically the episodes focused on the android Data (happened to rewatch stellar episodes “Measure of a Man” and “The Offspring” while going through this anime). Seeing those other titles does show how Fluorite could be better and have more depth in several ways. If the whole concept is new to you, then Fluorite will be an absolute ride – then watch the others afterwards (start Star Trek TNG at season two though – long explanation).

My other criticisms are towards the art and music. The art looks amazing sometimes with high detail, textured colouring, multi-layered shading, and fluid animation. Other times it has no detail, flat colours, single tone shading, and two-frame animation. We’ve seen plenty of amazing looking anime and plenty of downright ugly works, but I can’t recall one that is so inconsistent. This isn’t a case of great action and static in between either. It will randomly cut to high quality shots and then seconds later we’re looking at late 90s anime done on a computer. It stands out every time. Hard to describe without experiencing it for yourself.

As for the music, my criticism isn’t that it’s bad. I wish it were more creative. When you consider Fluorite is all about the future, advanced technology, and AI takeovers, I would expect the music to be more creative than generic J-pop. Even by today’s standards, there’s nothing in this music. Give me something wilder like the opera from The Fifth Element, where they used a computer to make the singer hit impossible notes, infusing that sci-fi element.

Inconsistent art and forgettable music aside, I had a great time with Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song. I want to go to that space hotel (with a different fate than in the anime, of course). It’s quite likely the best anime of its season. I have a couple of others I need to complete, though my sampling doesn’t promise anything better than this or Odd Taxi.

Overall Quality – High

Recommendation: Watch it. Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song is an easy recommendation.

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

Positive: None

Negative: None

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.

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

Positive: None

Negative: None

Dota: Dragon’s Blood – does it know how to last hit?

Similar: Castlevania

Orphen

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

 

Watched in: English

Genre: Action Fantasy

Length: 8 episodes

 

Positives:

• Quality production
• Love the variety of accents
• The elven goddess is a creepy and effective antagonist

Negatives:

• Feels like it’s missing lore context if you aren’t familiar with the source

(Request an anime for review here.)

Full disclosure, I know nothing about Dota 2 lore. This review comes from the perspective of someone who doesn’t play the game or read any related lore. I did play the original DotA mod a decent amount and watched a few tournaments, but to be honest, I didn’t know there was any lore to the game. A one paragraph profile per character, sure, though nothing more. As such, if you are a loremaster, your experience may vary.

For those even less familiar with the material than me, Dota 2 is the standalone sequel to the original DotA mod from Warcraft 3. The mod proved more popular than Warcraft 3 itself until game studio Valve hired key developers to make a complete game, independent of Warcraft and Blizzard. The worst business move Blizzard ever made was not capitalising on DotA and they’ve since shot themselves in the foot with their StarCraft 2 and abysmal Warcraft 3 Reforged modding policy. Valve just had to change a few character and item names to avoid direct reference to trademarks, though references are still in place – the burst fire mage Lina the Slayer, based on Lina Inverse from Slayers, is still in the game, for example. Dota 2 has gone on to reach massive heights with the largest prize pools in esports history with its world championships each year, The International.

Dota: Dragon’s Blood brings together a handful of characters from Dota 2’s large cast of “Heroes” for an adult fantasy adventure. The protagonist is Davion the Dragon Knight, who slays dragons for a living only to have the soul of an elder dragon merge with his body during a fight with a demon. He can now transform against his will into a human-dragon hybrid monster (think the Hulk). He soon joins forces with Mirana, “princess of nothing,” to stop this demon from claiming more dragon souls. Meanwhile, the elven mage Invoker plots against the elven goddess Selemene, whose sycophantic followers wreak genocide across elven lands.

The best thing I can say immediately about Dragon’s Blood – or any game to film tie-in – is its disregard for the source material’s gameplay. Unless it’s something like Wreck it Ralph where the game is the point of the story, trying to incorporate gameplay elements in a film/series is cringe inducing (see Uwe Boll films for reference). It finally feels like Hollywood is starting to grasp how to adapt games for screen. Then again, Sony’s upcoming offerings don’t look promising, so perhaps it’s only in the animation sector.

Speaking of animation, Studio Mir (The Legend of Korra) once again makes the art form a delight to behold. The action scenes are fluid and violent, even on the horror side at times. This isn’t a series for kids. The character designs are classic high fantasy and coming from a game that requires distinct silhouettes for visibility in combat, there is variety. On a world building level, again, classic fantasy except for the elves, who are far less noble than the stereotype. Love that most of them are Australian and the actors do a good job for non-natives. It matches their society better than the typical Oxford English. The world grabs me.

However, the characters are a little lacking and this is where I wonder if my unfamiliarity with the source has an effect. I have not looked into the lore since finishing the series either – want to keep my outsider’s perspective. After all, you shouldn’t need outside material to enjoy a good adaptation. Had I been well acquainted with Davion and Mirana beforehand, would they engage me? I’m not even certain if all notable characters in Dragon’s Blood are from the game. I assume so.

Mirana is supposed to be a princess of “nothing” and yet, I don’t have the impression of a princess nor do I feel the shadow of secrets from her backstory. She’s fine though not compelling. The same is true of Davion. His personality does make him entertaining – I’ll give him that.

The more interesting characters are the antagonists Selemene and the not-as-antagonistic Invoker. Selemene is the Goddess of the Moon but more akin to a goddess of lust and obsession, as she forces her followers to pledge undying love to her. She’s psychotic about this. You want a favour from her? You had better be ready to say you love her or off with your head. It sounds mundane on paper yet she is genuinely threatening. She has a much stronger presence than the main villain consuming dragon souls (I often forgot he was in the story). Against her we have Invoker, who is a sympathetic antagonist with a personal story that drives engagement. I want more of the elven subplot over the main plot.

In all, Dota: Dragon’s Blood is certainly good enough for a relative outsider to the franchise, like myself, to find reason to watch this anime. I am looking forward to the next season and that’s worth something. Riot Games has an animated series of its own on the way for their game League of Legends, which I am much more familiar with, so it will be interesting to see how that compares.

Overall Quality – Medium

Recommendation: Try it. Even the Dota illiterate can enjoy this fantasy series.

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

Positive:

Negative: None