wolfs rain i

dir. Tensai Okamura

writer Keiko Nobumoto

music Yoko Kanno

Ep. 1 "City of Howls"

Ep. 2 "Toboe, Who Doesn't Howl"

Ep. 3 "Bad Fellow"

Characters

Kiba - the white wolf, alpha

Tsume - lone wolf, cross-shaped scar on his chest

Hige - endless appetite, powerful nose, dog collar becomes necklace in human form

Toboe - the naif, youngest, raised by a human woman, silver bangles on wrist

Quent & Blue - seeks to exterminate wolves because he considers them demon spawn

Detective Hubb - Cher's ex-husband, law enforcement in the domed city, Quent initiates him into the secret world of wolves. Not sure if he'll stick around now that the wolves have left the domed city.

Cher - Hubb's ex-wife, lead scientist studying the Flower Maiden Cheza. Not sure if she'll stick around now that the wolves have left the domed city.

Summary

Wolf's Rain has an odd premise. In a diesel-punk world, people assume wolves have been eliminated. Little do they know wolves still walk among them in human clothes. These aren't werewolves; they aren't wolves that can shapeshift into human shape. They "cast a spell" on humans to make them see the wolves in the guise of humans.

The show opens with Kiba, the white wolf, descending from the mountains to the domed city in search of Paradise. He smells Lunar Flowers. However, he is injured on this first leg of his journey. He encounters Tsume, a lone wolf personality, who has been leading a gang of humans in supply raids against the Nobles of the domed city. Tsume warns Kiba to hide his true form from the humans but Kiba refuses because of his wolf pride.

On Kiba's tail is Quent, a sheriff from a mountain town. Quent hates wolves and calls them demons. His companion is Blue, a black, blue-eyed dog. Quent has come to kill Kiba and any other wolves he might find. He scoffs at the old pagan belief that, when the end of the world comes, wolves will find the way to Paradise.

Most of the denizens of the domed city don't recognize Kiba as a wolf, thinking him just a big white dog. But Blue sees him as a wolf, a power possessed by all dogs (perhaps animals in general). Quent shoots Kiba but the police arrive, taking both Kiba and Quent into custody.

Detective Hubb interrogates Quent and gets the story on wolves. Hubb isn't willing to believe wolves survived the culling 200 years ago. Hige, another wolf, helps Kiba escape, convincing the white wolf to set aside his pride and cast the illusion of human form so that they can walk right out of the station.

Meanwhile, Tsume's next raid goes bad and a young boy member of his gang falls. Tsume tries to save him by grabbing his shoulder but because human form is merely a guise, he bites the boy's shoulder. The boy falls to his death.

Tsume's gang abandons him because he "isn't like them." They also blame him for the boy's death. Tsume wanders the domed city and eventually runs into Toboe, a young wolf he has become infatuated with a young girl Lira. Although he rescues Toboe, Tsume refuses to be friendly, adhering to his lone wolf mentality. Toboe accuses him of only befriending humans because they will never be as strong as him.

Kiba and Hige get captured on purpose to re-enter the police fortress to scent out the source of the Lunar Flowers. A Noble arrives, in black with wild black hair and a white mask, and seems to knock out all the humans he encounters rather than hurting him. He confronts Detective Hubb's ex-wife Cher, a scientist studying the Flower Maiden Cheza. The Noble removes his mask, revealing a strange, animalistic golden eye that renders Cher unconscious.

The Noble takes Cheza, who has been stirring ever since wolf blood spilled when Kiba and Tsume briefly scuffled. He is able to see Kiba and Hige for what they are. Cheza awakens and lets out a high-pitched scream that the wolves can all hear. Toboe describes it as "saddening." The Noble says he will meet the wolves in Paradise before leaving.

Kiba and Hige then plan to leave the domed city in search of Paradise now that the smell of Lunar Flowers is gone. Lunar Flowers seem to have some connection with the wolves being able to find Paradise. Toboe joins up with the two wolves with Kiba quickly assuming the alpha role.

Tsume's gang, who have been captured, turn on him and lead the police to him. Quent's dog Blue attacks Tsume but he gets away, dropping his human guise for his wolf form to escape police looking for the man leading the gang.

Kiba leads the wolves to Tsume and convinces him to join them in leaving the domed city. Tsume is reluctant but recognizes that, as a wanted man and without a gang, he cannot remain in the city. Toboe stumbles and falls but Tsume saves him by biting his shoulder. This scene imitates the earlier death of the young boy in his gang, indicating Tsume's appropriate place among the wolves as those who are strong enough to be handled (and helped) by other wolves. Hubb, still not quite willing to believe the evidence, seeks out Quent for more information and learns about the Book of the Moon, a pagan text that contains the mythology of wolves. Humans, for instance, were made from wolves and to be their messengers.

As the four wolves leap from a wall into the arctic harshness outside the domed city, Hubb and Quent arrive. Quent fires at Tsume but Hubb intercedes. He says he still only sees a human. After the wolves are gone, Quent takes the detective to where the wolves left and shows him the paw prints leading away. Hubb struggles to believe the incontrovertible evidence of his eyes.

Speculation

The Nobles are possibly fallen angels. Given their high social  place (Hubb notes "only the nobles are still allowed to fly") and their awareness of Paradise, this seems plausible. Plus, there is the repetition of the feather motif. The Noble who takes Cheza has hair that faintly resembles feathers. When he removes his mask to ensorcel Cher, there briefly appears what look to be black feathers. And as the wolves are leaving and the Nobles have Cheza in their flying ship, feathers continuously rain down on Hubb and the police.

tiger & bunny: redux

About two months ago, I commented on the first episode of an anime I was watching on Hulu called Tiger and Bunny. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to keep up with it on Hulu because apparently Hulu doesn't carry the right license to stream the show to the UK.[1] Thankfully, I've managed to find a number of UK sites that carry it.

A word about the broadcast. It looks like Viz Media has a license to re-broadcast the show in the States right after it's shown in Japan. What that means, practically, is that most websites the newest episode of Tiger & Bunny available for streaming on Saturday with subtitles. It's an interesting experiment in bringing current anime to the rest of the world quickly. Tiger & Bunny, a show about the super heroes of Bild Stern who competed for points to be crowned King of Heroes, seems both an odd choice and yet timely, what with the huge popularity of movies based on American comic book licenses in recent years (Spider-Man, Batman, X-Men, Thor...)

FYI... there are tons of anime as well as movie and tv shows available to stream for free through youtube. Tiger & Bunny, however, is not one of them.

I've made it up to episode 14. If it's going to be a one season and done series, that means I'm just over half-way through (26 episodes total). But the show has just cleared it's first major story arc so now seems as good a time as any to revisit and review it.

Before, I said the team-up of Tiger and Bunny as the first NEXT crime-fighting duo presented elements of the buddy cop genre. That's not entirely true. Whereas the veteran cop is usually by the books and perhaps a little bit surly, both Wild Tiger (Kotetsu, the veteran) and his rookie parter Barnaby Brooks, Jr. (Bunny) have moments of the recklessness element that usually defines the rookie partner trope of this genre. Wild Tiger is generally reckless, always sticking his neck out to save people, which he sees as the one and only purpose of being a hero, disregarding the property damage he inflicts or the toes of his fellow heroes he may step on. Barnaby is more reserved, focused and the number two point getter behind King of Heroes Sky High as the next season of Hero TV progresses.

Barnaby can be set off, however, by his single-minded drive to hunt down the man who killed his parents. This drive is the reason he alone among the heroes has chosen to publicly reveal his face and identity to the public. He has taken his father's name so that when he finds the murdered, his father will symbolically be there extracting justice.

Barnaby witnessed the fiery murder of his parents when he was a child but cannot remember the face of the killer. However, the image of a tattoo has been seared into his memory. A super rich billionaire loner (Batman, anybody) with only his nanny to look after him (::kaff, kaff:: Alfred), Barnaby has taken it upon himself to sift through information to find a lead. A man with a similar tattoo turns up, revealing the name Ouroboros, which Barnaby takes to be the name of the organization behind his parents' murder.

Several episodes were devoted to exploring the backstories of some of the other heroes. For instance, in "Fear is Often Greater than the Danger," the beautiful ice queen Blue Rose decides to quit being a hero to pursue her desire to be a singer full time. She has been performing secretly out of costume in a lounge. But a lecture by Kotetsu brings her back to heroing and she swoops in at the last minute to save the heroes from an inferno.

In "Fire is a Good Servant but a Bad Master," Tiger and Bunny team-up with Fire Emblem to clear him of murder charges. Another NEXT has been killing criminals with fire powers that point to Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is unique among the heroes not only because he doesn't have a corporate sponsor, he is actually the CEO of the company behind Fire Emblem, but he is openly and flamboyantly gay. Yes, the flamer character is flaming. But this doesn't seem to be mean-spirited, just the source of some rather silly humor. In a later episode when he is dispatched with Blue Rose and Dragon Kid to save the city, he talks about "girl power" and seems confused when Blue Rose responds that only two of them are girls.

Gay and ambiguously gendered characters are quite popular in anime and manga. No, I'm not just talking about the long-haired pretty boys, either. Because of the lack of religious sin and other cultural forces, homosexuality is not condemned like it is in the West. Notice I didn't say it's more accepted. But this topic is fodder for another entire blog post. If you're interested in the topic, let me know in the comments.

Investigating the fiery murders with Fire Emblem introduces the anti-hero Lunatic, a masked vigilante who shoots fiery bolts from a crossbow. He criticizes the justice delivered by the point-collecting stars of Hero TV. Certain hints seem to indicate that he is a certain long-haired judge Yuri Petrov seen hanging around the offices but as of episode 14, Lunatic's identity has not been positively revealed.

Lunatic figures into a few episodes as he murders various criminals, leading Barnaby, Kotetsu, and others to believe he works for Ouroboros and is eliminating loose ends, possibly people who could lead Barnaby to his parents' killer.

"There is Always a Next Time" delves into the past of Origami Cyclone, a sort of ninja-esque NEXT whose powers have never been shown. He is mostly known for just showing up in the background at most TV encounters and working very hard to make an appearance on Hero TV. Notably, he is the only NEXT to collect fewer points than Kotetsu.

Kotetsu, Barnaby, and the Origami Cyclone have been dispatched to a training academy for NEXT to prepare them to be the next generation of heroes of Bild Stern and the next generation of stars for Hero TV. When Kotetsu's class wants him to judge their abilities and let them know if they have what it takes to be heroes, he manages to politely encourage them even though most of them have powers more useless than Cypher, Skin, and Beak.[2] Origami Cyclone then asks Kotetsu to judge his power, which is the very Mystique-like power to copy appearances. Kotetsu encourages him by saying that he was chosen to become a Hero because there is something only he can do (starting to catch a theme yet).

In "Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child," the mayor of Bild Stern assigns Kotetsu the job of babysitting his child while he and his wife go out of the city. Even though Kotetsu has a daughter, Kaede, and thus has experience with children unlike any of the other heroes, the baby takes a liking to Dragon Kid, a tomboyish Chinese girl with lightning powers. Her parents sent her to Bild Stern to be a hero. The baby and Dragon Kid are kidnapped, and one of the kidnappers states that their parents (she mistakes the baby and Dragon Kid to be siblings) will pay a good ransom because they obviously love their children as revealed by what the flower on the baby's hat means. Dragon Kid takes this language of flowers idea home after she defeats the kidnappers and finds out the flower hair clip her parents gave her means "thinking about you." Going against her tomboyish nature, she finally decides to wear the pin, garnering a compliment from Kotetsu.

The next four episodes are the culmination of the plot. Barnaby finally remembers the face of his parents' killer and tracks him down to a prison in Bild Stern. Before I discuss those episodes, a few brief, overarching comments.

As unpopular with the public as he is, Kotetsu is the heart and soul of the Heroes. Barnaby and Blue Rose don't show him much respect and even Dragon Kid has some unkind things to say about his words and deeds sometimes. However, Rock Bison and Fire Emblem always stick up for him, often pointing out that what Kotetsu says isn't always exactly the truth because he is protecting somebody else or trying to do the right thing.

He is often the one with the right words of encouragement for the other heroes, serving as a mentor to them. He may not earn the points but he lends moral support and often the insight that allows the others to succeed.

And he's much brighter than almost everybody gives him credit for. It's his memory for faces that produces a lead in the Ouroboros subplot. And his ability to connect various bits of information to uncovers Jake Martinez's second power... Now, the close of the story arc.

The heart of Ouroboros leads to Jake Martinez, a mercenary currently in prison. Barnaby is on his way to see him when trouble breaks out in Bild Stern. This trouble also prevents Kotetsu from going home to see his daugher for the first time in an undisclosed length of time. He never takes vacation and every time he tries to make it home, a super-hero crisis happens. How inconvenient!

Mecha have appeared all over the city and starting blowing things up. The heroes are all called in to action and dispatched to various parts of the city to deal with multiple incursions. Kotetsu tells Barnaby to go ahead and go to the prison because he has been waiting his whole life for that confrontation.

The mecha attack, however, is just the opening move and a distraction from the real aim. Ouroboros villain Kriem has sent them out so that she can break her boyfriend Jake Martinez out of prison. Threatening to destroy the city if the mayor doesn't comply with her demands, Bild Stern releases Jake Martinez. The city complies but Origami Cyclone has used his shapeshifting powers to infiltrate the group as a human henchmen.

As villains as wont to do villainy, Jake backs out of the deal and threatens to destroy Bild Stern if the 7 heroes of Hero TV don't battle him in a one-on-one tournament. Origami Cyclone is discovered and injured. With his force field powers, Jake manages to defeat the King of Heroes Sky High, Rock Bison, and Kotetsu easily. Agnes, the producer of Hero TV, hatches a plot to delay the tournament by telling Jake they can get more viewers if he waits until the next day to fight Barnaby rather than doing it late at night. Jake agrees.

In reality, the ploy is meant to buy time so that signal jammers can be placed around the city to block Kriem's control over the stuffed animal bears that pilot the mecha. The next day, Barnaby fights Jake while Fire Emblem, Blue Rose, and Dragon Kid move into position to destroy the disabled mecha when the signal jammers are turned on.

Barnaby can't land a blow and Jake taunts him that it's because he has a second power, something unheard for NEXT. Kotetsu figures out that his power is reading minds and rushes out to tell Barnaby even though Kotetsu is severely injured. Meanwhile, the plot to disable the mecha doesn't work because they have auto-defense instructions and the three heroes have a difficult battle on their hands.

Kotetsu hatches a brilliant scheme that relies on deceiving Barnaby about the true nature of Jake's power so that Jake can't simply read his mind and avoid the attack. Barnaby believes Kotetsu and he manages to defeat the much more powerful Jake Martinez thank's to Kotetsu's plan. Kriem demands the heroes hand the defeated Jake over, believing she still holds the city hostage. In fact, Fire Emblem, Blue Rose, and Dragon Kid have defeated all the mecha.

Jake tries to escape but Kotetsu stops him. Trying to get free, Jake shoots down the helicopter Kriem is flying. She escapes, probably into Hero custody. However, it looks like the copter crashes on Jake. But I'm no sucker. I know how comic books go. Jake is not dead even though all indicators say otherwise. I fully expect him to figure into the endgame of this season or series. Maybe not as the major villain but somehow working for it. And Agnes will probably be involved somehow, too. But I'm starting to have second thoughts about her. She may have just been a red herring.

And that, briefly, is the first 14 episodes of Tiger & Bunny.

One thing I find particularly weird is how much the mayor of Bild Stern resembles a cross between Barack Obama and Tom Dubois from The Boondocks. Not because anime characters that resemble real, famous people is unusual. I just didn't expect the personality of Bild Stern's mayor to be linked to a Barack Obama-esque image by Japanese animators. The mayor, quite simply, is a huge, indecisive coward who cares more about how the public will perceive the outcome of any decision than how it will actually effect the citizens of Bild Stern. I thought Barack Obama was perceived a lot more positively abroad. It's just a little strange but still pretty funny.

So far, no backstory episodes have been devoted to Sky High or Rock Bison. Rock Bison has been revealed to be one of Kotetsu's friends, a drinking buddy, and somebody who knows about his personal life. He is also one of Kotestu's strongest supporters to the other Heroes. Sky High's history will probably be revealed in one of the later episodes since he is the King of Heroes. Seeing what drives him and why he works so hard to be the best will most likely come out as the heroes are pushed to their very limits as the series wraps up and heroes (and main characters) are killed. But that's just my prediction on how things will go. It's based on watching many, many anime series. I wonder what the Vegas odds would say.

So far, I'm really enjoying Tiger & Bunny. It fits in somewhere between the very serious and heavy-handedness of Evangelion or dark like Gunslinger Girl and something much more light-hearted like Case Closed (aka Detective Conan). It's anime super-heroes, a genre I can't think of any other series belonging to. Though it borrows some tropes from other genres (like buddy cop), it still has a lot of anime tropes (ice queen, tomboy, power suits, mecha) and structure as well. I'm looking forward to what next Saturday's episode will bring.

Episode 14 is titled "Love is Blind."

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[1] Apparently a VPN would allow me to deceive Hulu as well as network sites like CBS into thinking my IP address was American. I have not opted to do that even though I'm American and dagnabbit I have a right to watch these shows.
[2] Yes, I did just make an X-Men reference.

a primer on anime female "types"

This is an article about the wussy JRPG girl but the historical background is also useful for understanding the female archetypes in anime. After finals I'll get around to writing up those anime reviews and exploring those archetypes. And then: Wonder Woman.

Here's a few archetypes to get you started. I won't list examples. Yet.

• busty, sweet, but stupid
• vixen-ish rogue
• tough, loud, and obnoxious - usually short
• geeky lesbo
• the quiet warrior

Enjoy Chun Li Baby in the meantime. She's so adorable. And if you want to generate more, go here.

some mixed media to mediate your monday melancholy

Frank Ocean, the lead singer of L.A. based R&B group Odd Future has just put out a new mixtape called "Nostalgia, Ultra" for your digital consumption. It's available HERE.

And here's a video that True Blood's Kristin Bauer recorded for the Animal Legal Defense Fund to help free Tony the tiger. Keep your Frosted Flakes in the bowl. Tony is a Siberian-Bengal tiger who has been kept in a cage at a truck stop in Gross Tete, Louisiana for the past decade as a "tourist attraction."



The ALDF is currently litigating in the state to set Tony free. For more information and to sign a petition letting Louisiana know you think it's wrong to keep Tony locked up at a gas station, please visit www.aldf.org/tony.

And finally, to leave you on an up beat, here's some comments Orson Scott Card recently made in praise of Cowboy Bebop and Firely, two of my favorite cowboys in space sci-fi properties and tv series in general. He was writing in the 6 April 2011 issue of the Greensboro Rhino Times.

What can I say, except that to my vast surprise, I found this series brilliant. It's often funny, sexy in a mostly chaste kind of way – these are drawings, after all – and the action is gripping.

But what held me was a combination of strong relationship-based storytelling, a moody visual style that never got old and really smart dialogue.

I'd compare this to the great TV series Firefly, except that since Firefly came out in 2002, and resembles Cowboy Bebop in many ways (including quality), I can't guess whether Firefly creator Joss Whedon was influenced by Cowboy Bebop, was deliberately doing an hommage, or created such a similar series by sheer coincidence.

You can read the full text here.

Hmmmm... maybe I should do a review of Cowboy Bebop one day. It would be an excuse to watch the series all the way through. Again. I've literally seen it through at least a dozen times and the first 5 episodes probably 30 or 40 times. It's a property I always recommend to friends with good taste.

Here's a teaser, the actual pitch that was used to sell the show.

Once upon a time, in New York City in 1941... at this club open to all comers to play, night after night, at a club named "Minston's Play House" in Harlem, they play jazz sessions competing with each other. Young jazz men with a new sense are gathering. At last they created a new genre itself. They are sick and tired of the conventional fixed style jazz. They're eager to play jazz more freely as they wish then... in 2071 in the universe...

The bounty hunters, who are gathering in the spaceship "BEBOP," will play freely without fear of risky things, they must create new dreams and films by breaking traditional styles. The work, which becomes a new genre itself, will be called... "COWBOY BEBOP."

See you space cowboy...

tiger & bunny wasn't what i expected

Some time ago I think I promised you I would revisit the topic of Wonder Woman and more generally the female figure in (American) comics. Well here's a bassackwards way to get there. I have a couple of incomplete anime series reviews lying around. So instead of tackling women in American comics, I'm going to take a detour through some of the female tropes in anime via those reviews to get the ball rolling.

The series to be reviewed in future installments are: Aquarion, Claymore, and Shigurui. Rest assured I will talk about quite a few more series in the course of this explication.

But before we go there, I'd like to return to a topic just recently addressed in this here very blog, namely gamification. I just watched the first episode of Tiger & Bunny and, well, here, see for yourself...



The basic premise, at least so far, is that super heroes in this world are employed by major corporations as billboards slash publicity stunts. This answers that age logistics question of who pays for damage caused by heroes in the course of saving the city - the corporate sponsor does.

In addition, the city's heroes compete on a TV show called Hero TV to be crowned the King of Heroes of the season. Here's where the gameification element comes in. Each hero is awarded points for various activities they perform while responding to the crime featured on that episode. First on the scene, second on the scene, made an arrest, and saved a civilian have showed up so far. For the TV audience at home, as the hero earn these points, a little message pops up on the screen naming the reward and the points earned for unlocking it. The season winner is determined, as one might reasonably suspect, by who has the most points at the end of the season.

Let me make a guess as to one of the main villains after just one episode. The series is produced by a woman who says at the awards ceremony wrap party that she expects next season to be much more intense. My suspicion is that she will somehow be involved with villains to help ramp up the danger for the heroes. But this bit of foreshadowing may just be a red herring.

The tiger and bunny of the title seems to refer to the first super hero team up. Wild Tiger, the veteran of the so called NEXT, or people with superpower mutations, isn't doing so well in the rankings. Similar to Hour Man, he can gain huge increases to his speed, strength, agility and such but for only 1/12th the time of the DC Comics hero. During the final episode of the season, he is rescued by a newcomer in new power armor who is later introduced as the newest hero of the city.

Wild Tiger is quite unpopular with the audience. He isn't the reigning champion like Sky High or scantily clad vixen Blue Rose, much to his chagrin. But he seems very much dedicated to doing the right thing for its own sake rather that to become King of Heroes or gain popularity. Still, he wouldn't mind a little recognition.

His corporate sponsor is bought out or goes out of business or something and so he is transferred to a new company. His new boss explains he and Barnaby Brooks, Jr., the man who rescued him before, have the same mutant power but that Barnaby will be more successful because of his youth. Then Wild Tiger is put into a suit of power armor and sent out to do the heroic thing.

Even though the episode closes with the arrival of a bull-themed hero Rock Bison we've seen before, the clear implication is that Wild Tiger and Brooks will team up to be the tiger and bunny of the series title. This veteran / reckless rookie buddy cop dynamic harkens back to popular American movies such as 48 Hours and Lethal Weapon. Like Murtaugh of Lethal Weapon, Wild Tiger has a family, his mother and young daughter, to care for, giving his pause from engaging in cavalier stunts such as revealing his secret identity on TV.

The pilot presented an interesting premise of a world in which people with superpowers have been wedded to corporations and entertainment, participating in a game of stopping crime. I'll definitely keep an eye out for subsequent episodes.