Nijusseiki Denki Mokuroku: Eureka Evrika (Sparks of Tomorrow) – 01

It would be fair to say I’m somewhat conflicted about Sparks of Tomorrow. The truth is Kyoto Animation’s adaptations of their own LNs almost never do squat for me. It’s the core of their business model – the means by which they pay better and offer better working conditions, and mostly bypass the production committee process. All that is good, very good. But the problem is this material is rarely better than mediocre – Tsurune is about as close to a connection as I have with any of these shows. I used to talk about the KyoAni “postage meter” a lot – how much are they mailing it in with any given project?

But the specifics of Nijusseiki Denki Mokuroku: Eureka Evrika make me want to love it. It was in development when the arson attack happened, and everything attached to it – hard and virtual – was lost. That it finally made it to the screen all these years later is pretty inspirational, a testament to the studio’s resilience. I celebrate its existence and what that existence says about Kyoto Animation’s recovery from a heinous tragedy, the worst the anime industry has ever seen.

In the end, though, how much we want to like something is irrelevant. I can say that Sparks of Tomorrow is better than some of these in-house projects. It’s not cookie-cutter – the moe vamping is minimal at least. And while the overall look is as lush and gorgeous as we’ve come to expect, it diverges from the usual visual template a bit – lots of derpy faces and such things we don’t normally associate with KyoAni. It’s a literal steampunk take on Kyoto in the first decade of the 20th Century – an alternative timeline where electricity has stumbled out of the gate and steam risen to the forefront of technological advancement.

The story is pretty generic, honestly. The younger brother of the guy whose “20th Century Electricity Catalogue” was going to change the world carries on after he dies in what I presume was the Russo-Japanese war. There’s a mega-dojikko, and a white-haired pantomime villain trying to steal the catalogue. It’s inoffensive in a silly sort of way, and – as ever – looks absolutely fantastic. But I was already drifting by the end of the first episode, which is a pretty bad sign. I’ll give it another week to see if Eureka Evrika can do enough to at least threaten the bubble, but at this point I’d consider that a long shot.

Sora wa Akai Kawa no Hotori (Red River) – 01

You know the drill by now – an ancient shoujo gets a reboot (or first adaptation, as in this case) for reasons no one is quite sure of. Anime is addicted to this formula lately so I assume it must be making money in some way that’s not immediately obvious. In this case the manga ran for 28 volumes from 1995-2002 and while it was quite popular, my sense was that it wasn’t considered to have aged all that well. And I certainly never heard anyone clamoring that it needed to be an anime.

So here we are. As is standard in these cases the budget for Red River isn’t huge, and it shows. It doesn’t look terrible or anything but it’s palpably cheap and visually uninspired. I don’t know who wins with these shows – fans of the source material are never happy, and I don’t see them spearing tons of new viewers or anything. For story, we have a high school girl named Yuuri who’s just had her first kiss. But before she can get too much mileage out of that she’s kidnapped to the 14th Century BCE – the Hittite Empire to be exact – by a queen intent on using her as a human sacrifice to curse her son’s older brothers to death and clear a path to the throne.

The business with that son saving Yuuri from sacrifice by pretending he’d defiled her was amusing after a fashion, but on the whole there as something vaguely uncomfortable about the vibe of the whole episode for me. I guess there is an empowerment angle here, as Yuuri is going to become some sort of warrior priestess or something. But if I’m slightly curious about that it’s really nothing more than curiosity drawing me back for another episode.

Koukaku Kidoutai THE GHOST IN THE SHELL – 01

I guess it would be fair to say this is another series I want to like more than I do. But the truth is I’ve never really gotten Ghost in the Shell. I sort of understand why it’s popular but none of its many incarnations, with all their big-name directors and high-end Production I.G. animation, ever made me feel a thing. But that GitS is one of the most famous names in anime is undeniable. And that makes any new version a newsworthy event in this corner of the universe.

Because I do have a considerable detach from the franchise, I can’t really speak to whether this version is “good” compared to any of the others. We’ve moved to Science SARU, and the director is Mokochan. He’s worked with some well-known figures but never directed before as far as I can see. What I do know is that this is touted as the most faithful adaptation to the manga, which is neither here nor there to me but will matter to serious fans. All in all the look of the series works for me – it’s extremely retro, maybe late-90s-2000’s in style. I like the music a lot too.

Content-wise, well – I still don’t feel anything. I’ve never really bonded with anime that was obviously reveling in how cool it is. and GitS always strikes me as one of them. One can see how many times this template has been copied, so credit to Shirow Masamune for that. The pacing here is really manic – it powers through an insane amount of plot in 22 minutes – and seems to be speaking directly to viewers who are already intensely familiar with the material. So I would imagine many of them would be happy with this, though I’m the wrong one to ask.

As a curiosity I will check out another ep or two, because I’m a fan of retro anime styling when done well, and this is. And there’s always that nagging doubt in the back of your mind about being the defective one for not seeing what so many others see, and that maybe something will just “click”. Probably not, but no harm in making sure.