iconocaust (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} iconocaust) wrote,@ 2007-11-04 01:57:00 |
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Long November
Surefire sign the seasons finally turned: a whole day of rain, pissing down from great and choking sheets of clouds that blanket the city like factory smoke. All in all, a good time to stay indoors, were it not for that whole "work" thing. Fortunately, we managed to grind through Disc 2 of Zipang before I had to catch the commute -- it's a show that's rapidly growing on me despite misgivings about the fact that it filches the central plot of '80s time travel flick The Final Countdown, then drapes it in the Rising Sun with nary a wink or nod. Sure, jingoism is a sticky thing in almost any creative work, but hardcore Japanese nationalism in a World War II setting? Fortunately, Zipang keeps a fairly even keel; creator Kaiji Kawaguchi already courted controversy for flirting with overt militarism via The Silent Service back in the '80s, but the rah-rah flag waving stays at a relative minimum here. Indeed, given how shamelessly Countdown demonised the Japanese, Zipang's barely-glimpsed American characters are painted with remarkable fairness and humanity; in a neat twist, it's the Japanese Empire, not the Allies, who poses the biggest threat to the time-displaced Mirai and her crew.
Mind you, six episodes in is perhaps not the best time to draw conclusions; considering that the original manga is still ongoing, there's still plenty of time for the whole business to go south. But for the moment, it's a tautly written, honest-to-goodness adult series that underscores the fact that anime can aspire to so much more than the gaudy shonen crap clogging up the back end of Adult Swim these days. And with Stewart and Colbert deep-sixed by the writer's strike, there'll be plenty of time to catch up on the rest of the series in the coming weeks.
Surefire sign the seasons finally turned: a whole day of rain, pissing down from great and choking sheets of clouds that blanket the city like factory smoke. All in all, a good time to stay indoors, were it not for that whole "work" thing. Fortunately, we managed to grind through Disc 2 of Zipang before I had to catch the commute -- it's a show that's rapidly growing on me despite misgivings about the fact that it filches the central plot of '80s time travel flick The Final Countdown, then drapes it in the Rising Sun with nary a wink or nod. Sure, jingoism is a sticky thing in almost any creative work, but hardcore Japanese nationalism in a World War II setting? Fortunately, Zipang keeps a fairly even keel; creator Kaiji Kawaguchi already courted controversy for flirting with overt militarism via The Silent Service back in the '80s, but the rah-rah flag waving stays at a relative minimum here. Indeed, given how shamelessly Countdown demonised the Japanese, Zipang's barely-glimpsed American characters are painted with remarkable fairness and humanity; in a neat twist, it's the Japanese Empire, not the Allies, who poses the biggest threat to the time-displaced Mirai and her crew.
Mind you, six episodes in is perhaps not the best time to draw conclusions; considering that the original manga is still ongoing, there's still plenty of time for the whole business to go south. But for the moment, it's a tautly written, honest-to-goodness adult series that underscores the fact that anime can aspire to so much more than the gaudy shonen crap clogging up the back end of Adult Swim these days. And with Stewart and Colbert deep-sixed by the writer's strike, there'll be plenty of time to catch up on the rest of the series in the coming weeks.
