PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: OH NO, I MUST TURN MY SHIP AROUND!

Music video entirely unrelated to this post, but very pleasant to listen to.

The list of anime I would be blogging about this season has been shot through, strung up and left to hang like an outlaw. I started out with seven series, and now I'm down to five, and only four of them were series I had originally planned to review. Here's the rundown:

Fractale (Status: Suspended)

There isn't a metaphor overblown enough to aptly describe the stupidity of the Fractale Production Committee's recent decision. I expect that Funimation will reach a deal with the FPC before Fractale finishes its run, though, since I just can't see a decision this dense and hypocritical lasting very long. But maybe I'm just being optimistic. Needless to say, I won't be watching or blogging about this series until I can watch it in a legal and timely manner.

Beezlebub (Status: Ongoing)

Wolverine (Status: Canceled)

G4TV holds the rights to airing Madhouse's Marvel adaptations here in the United States, and while it's obtuse of them to sit on their new acquisitions for two years before finally airing them—what, do they think it's still the Nineties?—I've decided that not watching or writing about the series until it's legally available is the right thing to do.

Infinite Stratos (Status: Ongoing)

Star Driver (Status: Ongoing)

Level E (Status: Ongoing)

Kimi no Todoke (Status: Replaced)

When I put myself down for this series, I had only seen the first episode about a year ago when it first aired, but I liked it enough that I had planned to go back and watch more of it. But when I sat down to make good on my plan, I regretted it. I dragged my feet through the first four episodes before calling it quits. It's a pleasant series, but very bland, with a romance that has few roadblocks and thus no suspense. I've replaced it with Bakuman, which I've enjoyed measurably more. Expect more words on it over the weekend.

I promised Geoff I would do six series this season, so this leaves me a slot open. I have several options: pick up a series from our draft's leftovers, write about something older, or do nothing at all. And hey, since this is the Web 2.0, that means I never have to make any decisions that I can't have my readers make for me! I've decided I'll write about an older anime, but there's a twist.

Most of the time anime blogs write about "old" anime, it's usually anime from the eighties or nineties. And while it's lovely of them to carry that torch for as long as they have, I think it's time someone stood up and reviewed forgotten cartoons... that people cared about in the early Aughts. Below is a list of anime people loved about back in the early days of Internet fandom, but are now largely forgotten. I'll revisit whichever one gets the most votes, soon as I figure out how pull the switch on the voting machine here in the backend.

Your choices are:

-Tsukikage Ran

-Pretear

-X: TV

Have at it, folks.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica (Episode 1 - 3)

In the first season of Magical Princess Minky Momo (1982), Momo dies in Episode 46 when she's hit by a truck, twelve episodes before the actual end of the series.

I did intend to spoil the series without actually warning you, but this bizarre twist of fate in a "magical-girl" series is not only well-known by elder otaku out there, but it is a notorious example of the genre embracing darker emotions. Yes, the likes of Pretty Cure and Tokyo Myu Myu did deal with forces of evil and darkness, but it has been a while since a magical-girl show has brought a sincerely dim and apocalyptic point-of-view, let alone even deal with death. The last vivid example off the top of my head may be the deaths of Sailor Senshi in the Sailor Moon shows, but much like Minky Momo the dead were merely revived in future episodes.

This softening and shifting of the "magical-girl" genre in recent years may have been a reason I wasn't convinced by the announcement of Puella Magi Madoka Magica as being anything different. Not to shoot down the industry, but it feels like the "magical-girl" trope has been embraced less by its actual target audience—young girls—and more by the adult fans. Call me an old codger when it comes to these sorts of shows, but I sense the genre has lost its way in trying to appeal to everyone.

The announcement of Madoka Magica was also surprising in two different senses. First of all, the show would be accompanied by manga instead of based off of one, meaning that the production crew would be providing an untested story for the public. Second of all, the show would be chiefly produced by Akiyuki Shinbô, who has produced many of his cleverly-animated shows with SHAFT, the animation studio in charge. This was surprising more from the fact that Shinbô produced the first Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series, which has been one of those shows that seems to have a distinctly adult following.

Madoka Magica actually starts in a rather disturbing fashion with the main character, middle-school student Madoka Kaname, waking up from a dreary nightmare where she witnessed a dark-haired magical girl fighting off an unidentified force of darkness. Dismissing it as a bad dream, Madoka is startled to find that same girl, Homura Akemi, transferred to her class, and the uneasiness doubles when Homura vaguely warns Madoka about the future.

It isn't until Madoka and her friend Sayaka rescue a small white creature called Kyubey (whose unmoving mouth and vacant eyes will disturb me in my own dreams) that we realize that Homura's warning was not to be taken lightly. During a struggle to defend Kyubey from Homura herself, Madoka and Sayaka suddenly find themselves trapped in a dimensional void full of butterfly-winged monsters and shapeless witches. Their own rescuer, Mami Tomoe, is a capable magical girl who can defeat these ghouls with oversized Flintlock rifles, and Madoka and Sayaka are presented with their own opportunity to become magical girls like Homura and Mami, as long as they have a wish they would like granted first.

There is no doubt that Shinbô and SHAFT have done this sort of presentation before, as their trademarks are splashed all over the show. The architectural styles of Madoka's school and home are as angular and monochrome as those in Bakemonogatari, while the characters themselves, complete with pastel hair colors and boxy faces, are patterned after character designs from Ume Aoki, the mangaka for Hidamari Sketch (another SHAFT-spun anime). There's not that much to that seems to scream individuality from the story itself, as the "nightmare-scenario" depiction of the future has the traits of a Sailor Moon S episode. Seems like it's all been done before, eh?

However, when Mami leads Madoka and Sayaka on witch hunts to seek out "Grief Seeds", Shinbô is finally able to open a Pandora's box of surrealism that he likely didn't have the freedom to explore in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. If you have ever seen the opening sequences to the Zan: Sayonara Zetsubô-Sensei series, you've come across Shinbô's use of two-dimensional paper collages to shock the senses. By themselves, the images of random oversized doughnuts, Lego pieces, and puffy dandelions sporting handlebar mustaches seem obtuse and incoherent, but scattered about the fights between magical girls and witches, they become an eclectic wonderland that Alice herself never imagined. Combine these flights of visual fancy with the grandiose musical works of Yuki Kajiura (.hack//SIGN, Tsubasa Chronicle), and you have chaotic perfection.

I also remind the viewer that this isn't some cream-puff Magical DoReMi for the kids. This story, despite the characters and faceless villains involved, is darker than first imagined. It's as if Shinbô knew that adults would be drawn to the show like moths to flame and intentionally threw a curveball so wild that it may rival the non-sequitur truck accident that claimed Minky Momo's life. Let's just say that the first lessons taught by Mami to Madoka and Sayaka about witch hunts in Episode 3 end up disastrous.

It's this unspoiled disaster that makes the next three episodes so much more fun to anticipate. Puella Magi Madoka Magica could be the one show that saves the winter anime season from uncertainty and "magical-girl" fandom from itself.

UPDATE (9:38 PM): An additional link from @kransomwastaken providing an excellent read at Ani no Miyako on the "cut-out style animation" used in some of Shinbô and SHAFT's other shows (Sayonara Zetsubô-sensei, Maria Holic). Thanks!

Rio: Rainbow Gate! (Episodes 1 - 3)

Japan's fixation on gambling, particularly pachinko which developed from the American version of "Corinthian Bagatelle", has a pretty large overlap with its anime and manga industry. If a series does well (Lupan the 3rd, Hokuto no Ken) or produces characters that people go bonkers over (Lucky Star, Evangelion), you can guarantee that there is a pachinko machine that has taken advantage of its popularity. Heck, you don't even need those tiny metal balls; "pachislo", a similar game with the central slot machine dissected from the banging metal sounds, has been a booming diversion as well.

While "moe-slo" has managed to do well with the use of moe characters in these slot machines, it usually borrows the characters for the machine, not the other way around. Very rarely will you have a pachinko or pachislo machine series so popular that it spawns its own animated show, and such examples haven't necessarily translated into successes (such examples are Umi Monogatari and Kaitô Tenshi Twin Angel...wait, it's coming back?!)

Our heroine Rio in work mode.

Okay, maybe the industry is just big enough for another venture into animation. Rio: Rainbow Gate! is an odd attempt at glamorizing the gambling industry through the conversion of a pachislo game series to anime. Realistically in Japan, pachinko and pachislo are about as close to diversionary gambling as you might get, but the gambling racket is mostly dominated by horse racing circuits. Casinos, in the Vegas sense of the word, are a relative unknown and are almost nonexistent in Japan.

Perhaps this mystique about the casino has drawn people to the popular pachislo game and the title character Rio Rollins Tachibana, the game's buxom dealer. To some, she may be vaguely familiar, as she made cameos on the gaming disaster Dead or Alive Paradise, but Rio: Rainbow Gate! is her big debut on the anime scene. On the fictional island casino known as Howard Resort, Rio is known as the "Goddess of Victory" to its gambling patrons, as she is able to bring good luck to gamblers with her very presence. She's become such a big name at the resort that she's constantly being used as an advertisement by her employer, the nutcracker-like Tom Howard.

Mint following Rio's pet ferret Chip into the rabbit hole (ferret hole?)

It is Rio's popularity that has brought a variety of people to her inner circle of friends. One of Rio's sudden admirers in the show, the cherubic Mint, is left in Rio's care for the most part, developing a "big-sister" crush on her new guardian. In the first episode, we meet the rest of Howard Resort's main employees through Mint's wandering flight of fancy through the casino—the Hollywood starlet Rosa Canyon, buoyant bunny-girl waitress Tiffany, and twin sisters Elle and Ille.

Of course, Rio's charm and success rate as a "Gate Holder"—a dealer who possesses one of 13 special "Gate" cards—also brings a variety of ruffians to the casino. While her matches with the sparkly-eyed gambler Orlin and a ghost known only as "Misery" are for other wagers, Rio must accept gambling duels from other Gate Holders. The arrival of Elvis, a ladykiller of a dealer with an uncanny knack of mathematics and probability, puts Rio on the hotseat in a bizarre game of roulette bowling for her Gate, even though she never won her own card in the first place. Each opponent challenges Rio in a display of gallant hallucinations, where the game is animated in something bigger than it actually is (and with Rio in a multitude of costume changes).

This is NOT a commercial for Segram's 7 whiskey.

If you were to watch Rio: Rainbow Gate! with the presupposition of seeing a sincere story unfold, Lady Luck isn't on your side. There is very little coherence in the show's actual plot, as dull one-on-one card games and roulette spins turn into nonsensical scenes of mazes composed of playing cards and volleyball games with oversized numbers. The epic Orlin-Rio poker game is over Mint's teddy bear, of all things. While the stakes for the match between Rio and the ghoulish Misery are much higher (Misery wants the casino for herself), the scene of Rio fending off flying ghost chicken wings while trying to keep Mr. Howard from being sliced in half by Elle and Ille is so amazingly ridiculous that...

...it's actually fun to watch.

Yes, this is how we first meet Rio. (Eyes up here, pal!)

Seriously. In the same way that Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was hilarious to the MST3K crew, Rio: Rainbow Gate! is such a bizarre mishmash of unrelated imagery and inept characters (you'll love to hate the klutz Anya) that the unintentional comedy is off the scale. Fan service is sold at high premiums that rival gold, as revealing outfits are the norm and skin is buffed to such a shine that you'd be able to see Rio's breasts from orbit. The absurd characterization of Mr. Howard, in comparison to the other characters, is so over-the-top that the chain-smoking owner (voiced by the thunderous Kôji Ishii, Garterbelt from Panty & Stocking) rescues the show's cast from being bland.

Considering the expectations of Rio: Rainbow Gate! were basically in negative-number territory, the show's shipwreck of a plot unbelievably keeps it from submerging. Granted, the introduction of a particular character in Episode 3 does establish some sense of plot in the upcoming chapters, so the story may still be taking up water and sinking a slow death, but so far the show has a reason to exist, if only to make us wonder just how absurd it could end up getting. Perhaps Rio loses her top in a game of human Plinko?

No, Rio darling, dealer is showing 17.

Perhaps the best thing Rio: Rainbow Gate! has going for it is its self-awareness. Those who know Rio already will probably be her biggest fans, and much of them are have probably already lost ten thousand yen to a pachislo machine since the beginning of this review. Those who are left have to be snagged in the only way the show knows how—through the theater of the absurd.

Yes, Rio: Rainbow Gate! may be a slug compared to a shiny gold coin, but even a whole barrel of slugs has got to be worth something.

(Rio: Rainbow Gate! is simulcast on Crunchyroll every Tuesday at 10:30 AM EST.)