Tokyo 24-ku – 01

The new season finally kicks off, always a bit of a landmark moment, especially when it’s the first season of the year.  Once in a while one of the big guns is the first to fire but but these series are definitely not that – all of them come from deep in the “Modestly Interested” pile.  Starting a new season off with zaku somehow feels a little more natural anyway…

Tokyo 24-ku, a sci-fi original from CloverWorks, has generated quite a few headlines.  Unfortunately they’re because animation director Itou Kiminori has gone public with his concerns that the production is “a sinking boat made of mud” – regaling social media with stories of the staff working insane hours with no support from the studio.  CloverWorks has a reputation probably second only to MAPPA in this respect, so there’s no reason to doubt him at his work.  Nevertheless it’s unusual for a highly-placed staff member to be so publicly honest with the details of an impending production disaster.

This sucks, of course – another tale of a broken industry leaving a production and its staff hanging out to dry.  I can’t honestly say the signs of it are that apparent in the premiere, which is more or less generic in terms of visuals.  In fact generic is the word I’d use to describe it generally – to be honest I didn’t make it to the end, though in my defense it was a double-episode (what is it with double-length premieres these days?).  The premise is generic too – a bunch of guys in a fictional special ward of Tokyo abandoned by foreign militaries get a letter from a dead friend urging them to save the future.  In the season preview post I described it as the sort of anime premise you might find auto-generated by a bot on Twitter.

None of this was abjectly terrible in any specific was I could pinpoint (though the opening narration was pretty grating), but the whole of it just thoroughly bored me.  Maybe there’s more here and I tried to stick it out just in case, but if there is it looks like I’m going to miss out.

Orient – 01

“Generic” seems to be the word of the day here.  It certainly applies to Orient, about as formulaic a shounen fantasy as you could imagine after one episode.  It comes from the mangaka Ohtaka Shinobu, creator of Magi and its various spinoff progeny, so one might reasonably have had higher expectations.  I found Magi to be pretty good on the whole, though in the anime at least it seriously lost the plot and quickly became tiresome.  Orient does not seem to be as well-regarded by readers, and based on the premiere I can kind of see why.  This wasn’t bad, but it was very plain yogurt.

For a premise we have a world called Hinomoto, which is effectively warring states Japan.  It was taken over by oni called Kishin, under whose rule the samurai who resist them (Bushi) are portrayed through indoctrination from childhood as villains, and the oni as benevolent overlords.  Specifically the boys at least are trained to become miners (effectively slaves), including the one called Musashi.  His best friend Kojirou is the son of a Bushi and thus a social outcast, but Musashi lets his resentment simmer while he plays the role of high achiever in school.

I did find Orient more interesting than Tokyo 24-ku, though that’s more an indictment of the latter than an endorsement of the former.  I guess what we have is two different types of generic (that word again), but Orient at least isn’t trying to seem trendy or cool.  Unpretentious and mediocre is better than pretentious and mediocre I suppose, but in the end the result is pretty much a wash.  I may give Orient one more episode but I don’t have a lot of hopes here.

Hakozume: Koban Joshi no Gyakushuu – 01

If I went into these three shows with roughly the same (modest) expectations, Police in a Pod certainly fared the best.  If you’re a foreigner living in Japan your feelings about cops are probably mixed.  I wouldn’t remotely put it on equal terms (if nothing else because in Japan police are almost never armed), but if caucasians want to understand what POC in the States feel like whenever the police are involved, they should try living in Japan for a while.  Foreigners (especially in Tokyo) are randomly targeted for harassment by the cops (rumor has it they have a harassment quota but I think they just like it), and some friends have real horror stories to tell.  I’ve been lucky – in my case it’s generally been relatively minor – but it’s something that’s never far from your mind.

As such, I’m pretty skeptical about Japanese beat cop stories (detectives are another matter – they don’t have time to waste dicking gaijin around) – they tend to be copaganda as often as not.  On the other hand, the sexist world of the police here (and just about everywhere, I imagine) is a theme with a lot of potential for exploration – and indeed,  Hakozume: Koban Joshi no Gyakushuu’s premiere does touch on how female cops are invariably pigeonholed into the looking after lost kids/school lecture roles.  As well, the manga seems quite well-regarded – it won the Shogakukan Manga Award last year, and has also received a live-action adaptation.

Given all that, it’s not surprising that this premiere was pretty good.  The two mains are jaded rookie cop Kawai Mai and Sgt. Fuji, who’s been demoted from the criminal affairs division for bullying junior officers.  Fuji’s clearly got serious anger issues, and a cop with rage and bullying problems is no laughing matter – but here it is mostly played for comedy.  And somehow it does end up being fairly funny, though it really shouldn’t.  The whole bit with the veteran burglar was very silly but it had a certain charm to it – as did the final scene with Mai’s dad.

The fact is, Japan is a country with very little casual street crime.  And thus, beat cops are going to have a pretty boring job most of the time.  I think the derision (at least open) they’re subjected to is grossly exaggerated for comic effect, but I’m sure there are those who struggle to find meaning in a job where they might not make a huge impact and don’t get much recognition.  Cops are like any other profession – there are good ones and bad ones.  It’s just that with cops the bad ones are in a position to do a lot of damage, and whether or not Hakozume: Koban Joshi no Gyakushuu chooses to make light of that is going to be a factor in how much slack I cut it.