Economics, the anime (Spice and Wolf)

Even if economics isn't your thing, if you're a fan of girls with fox ears and bushy tails then Spice and Wolf might still work for you. It's a two-season light romance out of Imagin and released for North American audiences by Funimation (like more than half of all anime these days, I think). It was good enough to keep watching (or I wouldn't have kept watching it) and if you're into romance or economics you'll really like it. If you're into both, then you probably make more money than I do and should just get out of the house and take a girl/guy/both out on the town, maybe make some real romance instead of shutting yourself in and watching a formulaic anime about trade practices in a renaissance-ish guild system. Just saying.

So plot-wise it's pretty simple. This guy, Kraft Lawrence, is a merchant. More in the Dungeons and Dragons sense than the Wall Street one, even if sometimes it felt like a lesson for kids on commodities trading.

His companion is Holo, a local deity who's all high-and-mighty because she's a goddess, but who's a little down on her luck because nobody believes in the old gods anymore. Through an improbable series of events, she basically decides she's going with him wherever he goes, and you spent the next two seasons saying "hell you two, just get a room already."

Most of the plot revolves around their relationship, and the seemingly endless supply of back-door deals and trading shenanigans that Lawrence is always trying to find his way out of. The questions are things like "who's trying to boost the price of one country's silver coins so they can take advantage when the bubble pops?"

That, and how long can a guy travel with someone that looks like this and *not* strike up a relationship?

Also: that's a fox tail. Not a wolf's. But wolves aren't foxy, I guess.

Anyway, it wasn't really my thing, but I guess it was cute.

Speaking of, I'm getting the hell out of Ikebukuro for the next two weeks, so against my better judgement I'm going with Celty's advice and letting Shinra do a couple of posts while I'm gone. I still kind of want to punch him, but the stitches held up fine, and Celty says this would be a good way to repay him. If there's and Yaoi on here when I get back I'm going to slug him.

Yeah, so 2 and a half bushy fox tails out of five. Maybe three. See you in a few weeks.

Another Bad Title (Ergo Proxy)

So this one's another example of a good show with a bad name. "Ergo Proxy" or エルゴプラクシ (Erugo Purakushi) is a pair of English words generally understood by the creator but which don't work out so well in English because that's not how they work. "Proxy" (I looked this up) means "someone or something that does something in the place of someone or something else". So say Tanaka wants money but can't get off his can to shake down someone who owes him, and he sends me instead. That makes me his proxy. "Ergo" is a Latin word that means "therefore". Like, "I think therefore I am," as I keep telling Celty. Except "therefore proxy" doesn't make a lot of sense, especially as it's a character's name: "I am Ergo Proxy, the agent of death" he says.

Whatever. I think the point is that he's the inevitable result of all the things that happen before he shows up. In that sense, it's cool.

So what's it about then?

God, I don't know. It's pretty abstract.

So it's the future, and humanity's screwed everything up. Folks like Re-l Mayer (pronounced "ray-el") and Vincent Law (pronounced "vincent law") and a few other named characters live in a domed city called Romdo. Domed because the outside kills you, pretty much. It sucks like 1984. Everybody's got a creepy android helper with a creepy face and a lack of self-interest, and things are falling apart because there's a virus called "cogito" (I looked it up: "cogito ergo sum" is "I think therefore I am", so "cogito" is "I think") which gives these androids, called AutoReivs, free will. And most of them, upon achieving free will, go on senseless killing sprees.

Creepy as hell, right? You want that thing around while you're sleeping? I didn't think so.

I think one of the main themes of the show is that free will can really suck if you don't know what to do with it. That comes up a lot.

Anyway, there's a creepy shadow government run by Re-l's grandfather, who's so old he might as well be dead, and some creepy floating statues who speak for him.

Hold on, I'll get pictures.

Hello, Re-l? It's me, skepticism.

Creepy shadow government (floating statues on either side)

The four statues are called Berkeley, Husserl, Lacan, and Derrida.

Derrida the talking statue, and Derrida the, uh, well whatever he was. Not sure I see the resemblance.

Right. So the plot is that this guy, Vincenct Law --

-- a refugee from another dome that got destroyed, and generally dull young man who works the cleanup crew in Romdo, runs into this little girl AutoReiv --

-- who's infected with cogito but who doesn't want to kill anybody, and they run away from Romdo and don't die, while first Re-l, and then later this guy --

-- Raul Creed, Director-General of the Citizen Security Bureau (read: shady secret police), try to chase them down. In the meantime, there's a mystery unraveling about these creatures called Proxies who seem pretty good at killing people (and each other) and not a whole hell of a lot else. And they're interested in Vincent and Re-l, too.

It's a post-apocalyptic science fiction mystery with philosophical underpinnings about the nature and purpose of free will, with a remarkably high body count and a very dark aesthetic.

No, seriously dark. You'll need to watch it in a dark room to see half the action.

It's interesting and a little meta at times, and overall a really good watch. It takes a little patience to get into, and you have to accept that it's done with a 90s goth aesthetic in 2006 (so raccoon-eye makeup is big), but give it a chance and it'll pleasantly surprise you.

Plus, as I've mentioned before, if you like alt-rock, it's got one of the better theme songs, by Monoral.

I'll give it four out of five.

The Hell Did I Just Watch? (FLCL)

So I just watched something called FLCL, pronounced "Fooly Cooly". Put briefly, it's the story of a young boy struggling his way through puberty while sexy and/or robotic intergalactic space pirates fight with domestic security over the transportation potential of the inter-dimensional portal in his head where his brain should be -- set to punk music.

I can't say I understood it, but I liked it well enough.

So this is Naota.

He's the main character. An ordinary middle schooler. His big brother's run off to America to play baseball, leaving his lonely ex-girlfriend to, I don't know, move on to the next in line?

Sullen doesn't even begin to describe this kid, but I'm pretty sure "moody" comes with the territory. He's a kid, growing up. It happens.

So one day he and Mamimi (that's the slightly not-right-in-the-head girlfriend-ish character's name) are standing on a bridge when a crazy chick on a vespa slams into him, and then, if I'm remembering this right, she hits him in the face with an electric bass.

That's Haruko Haruhara. She knocks him unconscious, gives him "mouth to mouth" because I think she's a little perv, and then moves in with Naota's family (such as it is: Naota's dad, a skeezy Manga dealer, and Naota's grand-dad, an only marginally less skeezy old man).

After she hits him in the head, giant robots start (after a delay) climbing out of his forehead whenever he gets, I don't know, angry or sexually confused or pretty much any emotional state associated with being a boy growing up. So it happens pretty frequently.

Yep. Forehead.

This is a very. Weird. Story. I want to say it's all allegorical, and it kind-of is. It's about growing up, and sex, and finding your place in the world, but it's also about forehead-robots and space pirates.

It's also the kind of anime where people will as often look like the pictures above as they will like this:

or like this:

or like this:

or like this:

Yeah, this anime has whole scenes of frantic page-flipping manga, and references to other pop-culture phenomena, so the animation's as likely to look like this:

Yes, that's a giant iron. Just watch the damn show.

As this:

Or this:

What's with those eyebrows?

And the music is awesome. Shinkishi Mitsumune and the Pillows have put out Three. Separate. Albums. of pretty awesome music.

So: roundup. It's a crazy-as-hell, funny coming-of-age story, with girls and robots and aliens, set to punk, all by people who know anime and the people who watch it. It's filled with in-jokes, meta-references, and easter eggs, and it's a travesty that it's only six episodes long.

Five out of five, watch it. You won't understand it, but you'll like it.

Now to leave you, here's a picture of a giant robot, and a link to the closing credits song for the show, "Shooting Star".

Don't say I never gave ya nothin'.