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Outside the Box #3: The latest anime I've watched
Without doubt, FLAG is the best modern anime series I've seen since my transformation from Geeky Gamer to....whatever you want to call my new lifestyle.
The entire 13-episode series (I'm only up to #4) is told through camera lenses, so right there it has me. Not just through the lens of the photographer on the scene, but also security cameras, webcams, and the camera mounts. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thewulf put it when he first mentioned them to me, "don't let the transforming robots fool you, this is one of the most sophisticated anime you've ever likely to watch."
The story follows a young, idealistic (and don't those two words always seem to go together?) photojournalist as she begins to document a war-ravaged fictional Middle Eastern country that is torn apart by religious jihad. At the end of the first episode, she is chosen by the UN to join up with the first transforming mechanized infantry unit ever deployed.
It is an amazing, subtle, intense integration of the mecha genre with real world politics, and so far has been extremely sensitive to issues of religion and extremism. It even offers tantalizing hints that it will be delving into a topic which I've long contemplated: the psychological effects of a human being connecting his direct neural pathways to a different body. Particularly since these are the first soldiers to enter actual live-fire combat in these vehicles, I'm really excited to see them approach that topic with something other than the blase "Yeah, so you connect your brain to the computer and then..." hand-waving that I've seen elsewhere.
Other than this stark winner, I've been pretty disappointed in my anime selection for a while. Now that anime has become so popular, the aspect I most treasured about it is no longer true -- especially since I've moved from Pittsburgh, where I had long-established friendships with other anime fans whose tastes in the genre I knew. I have to sift through the noise myself to find the signal, when my favorite aspect of anime was the forward momentum gained from the underground distribution of hard-to-find titles. I miss the simple pleasure of anticipation that came with someone sliding a boxed series toward me with a knowing smile as they say, "Watch this. It's good." What's it about? "It's just about brilliant, is all I'll tell you."
Not having any idea what I was about to see, except that whatever it was, it was done extremely well. I miss that.
The entire 13-episode series (I'm only up to #4) is told through camera lenses, so right there it has me. Not just through the lens of the photographer on the scene, but also security cameras, webcams, and the camera mounts. As
thewulf put it when he first mentioned them to me, "don't let the transforming robots fool you, this is one of the most sophisticated anime you've ever likely to watch."The story follows a young, idealistic (and don't those two words always seem to go together?) photojournalist as she begins to document a war-ravaged fictional Middle Eastern country that is torn apart by religious jihad. At the end of the first episode, she is chosen by the UN to join up with the first transforming mechanized infantry unit ever deployed.
It is an amazing, subtle, intense integration of the mecha genre with real world politics, and so far has been extremely sensitive to issues of religion and extremism. It even offers tantalizing hints that it will be delving into a topic which I've long contemplated: the psychological effects of a human being connecting his direct neural pathways to a different body. Particularly since these are the first soldiers to enter actual live-fire combat in these vehicles, I'm really excited to see them approach that topic with something other than the blase "Yeah, so you connect your brain to the computer and then..." hand-waving that I've seen elsewhere.
Other than this stark winner, I've been pretty disappointed in my anime selection for a while. Now that anime has become so popular, the aspect I most treasured about it is no longer true -- especially since I've moved from Pittsburgh, where I had long-established friendships with other anime fans whose tastes in the genre I knew. I have to sift through the noise myself to find the signal, when my favorite aspect of anime was the forward momentum gained from the underground distribution of hard-to-find titles. I miss the simple pleasure of anticipation that came with someone sliding a boxed series toward me with a knowing smile as they say, "Watch this. It's good." What's it about? "It's just about brilliant, is all I'll tell you."
Not having any idea what I was about to see, except that whatever it was, it was done extremely well. I miss that.