Manga review: Koharu no Hibi

(WARNING:  This review/analysis contains spoilers.  You have been warned)

Koharu no Hibi

Created by: OOSHIRO Youkou

Completed: 2012

Boredom can sometimes sprout into a pleasant serendipity.  I discovered this little gem over the weekend when my life raised objections to my desires to see, well, any movie I wanted, really.  Errands, car troubles, family visits, and general burnout put a beating on me for just about three weeks straight.  So in response, I hit the Internet, not searching for anything in particular - perhaps just my next review - when somehow, someway, I landed before this: Koharu no Hibi, what promised to be a highly unconventional romance.

Plot Synopsis

Torii Akira (your typical Ordinary High School Student protagonist) was heading home on the subway when he suddenly catches a young underclassman as she tripped.  He helped her with her books - to her profuse gratitude - and promptly went home, thinking nothing more of it.  The next day, said underclassman - a small, impossibly adorable girl named Mutsuki Koharu - was waiting for him by the school gate.  She continues to lavish praise and attention on him, to which he’s initially quite pleased...until he catches her after school having an intimate, spit-swapping make-out session - with his flute.  While he’s understandably freaked out, his abnormal admirer seems fully unperturbed; in fact, she uses this awkward moment as an opportunity to confess her feelings...all while Akira’s backed against the class wall with the look of a bleeding seal facing down a Great White.  Unfortunately, what should be an easy “No Deal!” for any normal guy gets complicated by Akira’s confusion/curiosity, and the meddling of Natsuki, a childhood friend who is hell bent on hooking the two of them up.  And so begins Akira’s long and troubling courtship with a most unusual - and enthusiastic - devotee.

Story

This manga is quite the strange egg, I must admit; much like its leading lady, you’re never quite sure how you’re supposed to feel, and often find yourself surprised even when you know, deep down, you shouldn’t be.  While in the end  there’s nothing exceptionally groundbreaking going on here, you get the feeling very early on that you’re reading something quite unlike both your typical rom-com manga, and your typical “crazy-stalker-girl-with-obsessive-crush” manga.  (Don’t believe that’s an expansive genre?  Scour the backwaters of the anime/manga torrent - trust me, it’ll leave you enlightened and terrified.)  The first half is mainly devoted to building on this odd couple’s “relationship,” which relies heavily on the likability of its two leads and the masochistic push and pull that binds them.  Akira is fairly typical as your romantic “hero” in this setting - not much in the way of back story, and his personality pretty much surmounts to “spastic reaction” to Koharu’s craziness.  Still, he’s likable enough, and has a bit more fire than you’d expect; I got a sick little thrill seeing him doll out the physical punishment to other characters, rather than the other way around as is the usual case.  But honestly, we’re not here for him; his purpose is to serve as audience proxy for the antics of the titular character, who is the real star of the show.  Koharu blends sweetness and an unshakable devotion to Akira, with a bizarre and downright creepy thought process that’s eerily close to how stalkers actually think.  She seems so oblivious to how her actions come across to others that it makes you wonder if there’s a real-life psychological condition underlying her obsessive behavior, which ranges from the mildly strange to beyond creepy.  This whole setup works because, unlike most protagonists in similar manga, Akira is aware of how totally not alright any of this is.  Whenever Koharu does something over the top - like making a bento lunch and informing him that she stuffed it full of her “love,” or trying to glue their hands together so as to make a special moment during a date last forever - Akira freaks out as any normal person would, and his fear is played completely straight.  Yet he, like us, keeps getting back up for another round - drawn in, perhaps, by curiosity, but more so (I suspect) by a sense of social duty; you get the feeling he’s doing society at large a favor by being the lightning rod for this wacko’s affections.  It’s all so hilariously creepy that you immediately feel bad the moment you catch yourself laughing out loud - which, for me at least, was more often than I’d care to admit.

Of course, the story does have its weaknesses; the rest of the cast, for instance, had little more than wire-frame personalities at best.  And while the second half of the series starts off with a bang by introducing Mika, another childhood friend of Akira’s/rival for his affection who eventually kicks Koharu’s previously mild displays of insanity into truly troubling depths, this particular storyline ends up going nowhere special.  While Mika herself is a fun, pleasant little addition, almost immediately deconstructing Koharu’s inane thinking behind her “love” at first sight, and steering the story towards what appeared to be a tense and nail-biting climax, the arc in which she appeared came to an astoundingly lame conclusion, one that smacked of an oddly enforced status quo.  It’s almost as if the mangaka ran out of steam or ideas towards the end, and while the last 5 or so chapters were no less enjoyable than, say, the ones in the first half, after the tense high point just a few chapters earlier, the manga ended in a tragically anticlimactic fashion.  Rating: 8/10

Art

While Koharu no Hibi’s story is fresh and interesting, its artwork is really nothing to write home about.  Much of the generic manga flare and techniques are on full display here, which to its credit grants it no disservice, but the only thing of note really is Koharu herself, whose huge, round eyes blotted with crystalline detail raise her a notch above the "generic cuteness" scale.  It’s a wonder what OOSHIRO Youkou accomplished with just her eyes alone; while her expressions generally don’t vary much over the course of the manga, watching her eyes lose their prismatic sheen and either dull out of unhappiness, or sharpen to monochromic intensity in the presence of Mika, opened a clear window to her disturbed psyche, and can be quite unsettling at the right moments.  Unfortunately, the remaining cast (skeletal as it is) share Koharu’s muted emotions, but possessed no vehicle to express them with; Akira, Natsuki, and even Mika are all generic and plain-looking, like they were pulled from a big list of manga visual archetypes with little or no embellishment, and in all honesty, Koharu sticks out like a sore, psychotic thumb whenever she's with them as a result.   Rather, OOSHIRO Youkou’s strength is in his reactions and emotion shots.  As mentioned above, most of this manga’s unsettling humor draws from Akira’s responses to Koharu’s craziness, and if the fear wasn’t written so vividly on his face whenever she had him cornered, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective.  Mika really takes the cake and runs with it, though; she’s the only one besides Akira who sees Koharu for the disturbing nutcase she is, and the culmination of their conflict - which to me is the climax of the story, rest of the manga be damned - leaves Mika believably horrified when Koharu...well, you just have to read it to really understand.  Still, much like the story itself, the artwork slides into decay for the last few chapters, which is a sure sign yet again that the creator really let things go towards the end.  Rating: 6/10

Despite some last minute laziness, this short little series was fun, funny, and leaves you with quite a bit food for thought, if you’re willing to “go there” with its uncommon interpretation of a wacky yandere plot.  Total: 14/20 = C+

April 2015 Releases

April Releases 

You know what time it is.  April promises to be an exciting month with a ton of great stuff coming out all across the board, though as expected the TV side of things is a little dry:

Movies

http://www.movieinsider.com/movies/april/2015/

Games

http://www.ign.com/games/upcoming?time=1m

Books

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/books-coming-soon/379003626/

Television

http://www.tvguide.com/special/winter-preview/calendar/

See you all at the movies!

Criticism Concepts: Part 1: Emotion and Reaction

(This is the first part in a planned series on the constriction of a critique, and the criticism enterprise in general)

Critics get a bad rap, which is a little odd when you consider how we all place ourselves in the critic’s booth at one time or another. Amazon, Youtube, and just about every video game site is loaded with reviews of all kinds and of varying quality - from short, one-sentence diatribes, to extended essays damning or eulogizing a particular work in question.  What, if anything, does this constant stream of amateur expression have in common with the supposedly refined and impartial writings of a professional critic?  What ties reviews of all sorts under the single heading of “critique”?  Or does such a unity in fact even exist?

Let’s try to put these questions to a process, shall we?  Imagine this: you are sitting at home after a long day of work, trying to unwind while clicking through a seemingly endless series of cable channels. Suddenly, your eyes light up as you land on a movie some friend of a friend of a coworker mentioned a while back.  Curious and with nothing else pressing, you decide to have a looksie.  An hour and a half flies by, and the movie closes, leaving you feeling...

Now here is the critical point.  How, exactly, do you feel by the end of it?   Elated for the good fortune to have stumbled across such a masterpiece?  Angry for the 90 minutes now lost that can never be recovered?  Or, perhaps, simply bored, neither hot nor cold, and ready to embark on yet another quest for a moment’s distraction?  The specific emotion matters less than the act of feeling itself, for this is the initial spark, the impetus that could propel you towards crafting a developed critique, should you prove willing.

Unfortunately, this is where the process usually ends for many would-be critics. One has only to scan a few web comments to notice that most “reviews” amount to little more than a base emotional reaction thrown around with little forethought or reflection.  This can sometimes be harder to spot than you’d think, since so much of it is cloaked in flowery or rigorous-sounding words. In fact, for the more cynical among us, this may be all that criticism amounts to - high-falutin words meant to conceal a single and simple binary: “This rocks!” or “This sucks!”

So how do we move beyond that?  Or are the cynics right in declaring that there is no point beyond where our personal feelings of like or dislike take us?

I find this line of thinking completely unacceptable.  

I'll admit that there is a certain appeal in saying “Everything is relative, so think what you want!”  But most of us don’t buy that line when it comes to a deeply held conviction, like religion or politics.  Even a commitment to the belief that “you shouldn't judge the beliefs of others” requires...well, a commitment, and if you won’t commit to something you think is The Truth, than what’s the point?  And I have encountered very few good arguments that in any way spell out how the Arts differ from any other topic of note.  Aesthetics - the branch of philosophy dealing with the the nature of beauty and artistic taste - has many thousands of years of dedicated pursuit of an objective criterion of “art” under its belt, and the insight from its many champions are well worth a gander if you have the interest.  That said, most people - critics or not - have neither the time nor the patience to digest dense tomes tackling (or attempting to, anyway) the definition of art, the gendered hierarchy of criticism, or the applicability of “sublime” to any piece worthy of critiquing.  Furthermore, the pronouncements of these great minds, profound as they are, feel as though they are missing something very basic - namely, feeling itself.  Emotion was always something of a blind spot at the heart of philosophy, even aesthetics, and to many looking in from the outside, philosophers lose sight of the basic joy of experience in the process of formulating their arcane theories.  I’ll have a lot more to say on the great range and enormous depth of aesthetics later, but suffice it to say that the public perception that most philosophy is “all head and no heart” isn't far off the mark.

So it seems that we have come full circle.  While I don’t believe that emotional reactions are the be-all and end-all of a good critique, they shouldn't be completely cut from the process either.  So where does that leave us?  If emotion is the “spark” of the critiquing process, where lies the tinder?  While your gut feelings and immediate emotional reactions should not - indeed, cannot - be stifled, one should still hold them at a comfortable distance, letting them settle to the bottom while you sift through the sediments with a relatively clear mind.  Once the initially tight wad of charged emotions unwinds into something beyond “It sucked” and “It rocked,” an intelligible reader response forms: “outrage” becomes “disappointed at the unresolved plot threads in the ending”; “joy” becomes “good chemistry between the two lead that end on a high note”; and so on.  It isn't quite a critique, not yet, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.  With a little clarity towards why you responded the way you did, you can move beyond crude rocks/sucks binaries and embrace a more complex - and dare I say, more accurate - picture of your 90-minute distraction.

If anyone has anything else to share, feel free to post below.

See you at the movies!

Movie Review: Focus

Movie: Focus

Directed By: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa

Starring: Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Rodrigo Santora

Verdict:

While Smith is hardly breaking new ground with this latest performance, the easy likability of the main cast and cheeky self-awareness shines through in a film otherwise bogged down by a bizarre romantic plot, an unfortunate love affair with too many so-called “twists,” and a complete lack of “focus” on what it wants to be.

In-depth:

I must admit that  I was looking forward to seeing Focus when I first heard about it - not only because I had already made up my mind to make it my inaugural viewing at the wonderful Starlight Drive In, but because I was giddy with anticipation on seeing Will Smith depart from the generic "nice guy with silly quirk” hole that has more or less defined his movie career since Men In Black.  The story seemed promising: Smith plays con artist extraordinaire Nicky Spurgeon, whose latest “job” gets complicated when Jess Barrett (Margot Robbie), a former pupil-turned-lover, steps back into the picture after he left her cold three years earlier.  On paper, this sounded intriguing; while con/caper movies are a dime a dozen, and I still cringe at the mention of Now You See Me even after two years, it struck me as so contrary to what I’d expect from the Will Smith Toolbox that I was more than willing to give it a go.  

I’ve only seen a few TV spots, and none of the trailers, though I figured that it wouldn’t affect my perception of what I was going to see.  Boy was I wrong, for no sooner had the first 20 minutes passed that the movie pulled its biggest (and best) plot twist: it was actually a romantic comedy disguised as a heist thriller.  Granted, those first 20 minutes gave me a good ride, brief as they were.  Say what you want about Smith’s lack of movie diversity, but he certainly plays “disarming charm” with the best of them, and Robbie approaches her role with a sincere and refreshing geekiness quite unlike the now-standard Too-Hip Chick personas in most modern caper flicks. Of course, this was also the first sign that I was watching something very unlike what I was initially expecting.  The pair’s first sustained dialogue scene, in which the experienced con gives his would-be apprentice a crash course on misdirection, was cute - so cute, in fact, that you knew almost immediately where their relationship was heading, even if you came into it with very little prior knowledge like me.  And, like me, this realization in all likelihood induced a gag reflex on first blush, considering the 22-year difference in age between the two actors.  Still, their chemistry as student and pupil, and then boss and employee after she officially joins his den of thieves, was convincing and genuine, and would have kept me happy had it remained at that level throughout the entire production.

It was when the relationship turned romantic that everything went downhill.  The bitter aftertaste of this hookup was not, as in other romantic comedies, solely a function of the compatibility (or lack there of) of the leading pair; in fact, the continued chemistry and playful back-and-forth between Smith and Robbie was the only consistently enjoyable thread throughout the first half of the film.  Rather, the problem lies in just how out-of-place it seems in a movie still trying to masquerade as a caper flick, even after its true colors are revealed.  Despite the massive set up for their relationship, Focus had trouble keeping, well, focus, on Smith and Robbie, and frequently digressed into the long and honestly inconsequential flashback sequences/voice over expositions so commonplace in most modern heist movies.  One especially glaring example happened not long after Nicky and Jess’ initial hook up; I’ll spare the details since that would ruin the “surprise” factor, but it occupied a good ten minutes of screen time and ultimately served no purpose for either the development of their romance or the advancement of the plot.  It didn’t even have the courtesy to show up later ala Chekhov's Gun to explain on overlooked piece of the story cleverly concealed until that very moment.  I can’t pin down why Ficarra and Requa bothered to add it in the first place, since while it was fun to watch - and was the only point in the movie Smith deviated ever-so-slightly away from the “Nice Guy” mold - it was so unnecessary that I couldn't help but feel a little cheated at the end of it.

Despite that, most of the standard heist tropes and devices following this scene were more tolerable, since they highlighted the film’s playful self-awareness.  It was as if the directors knew that the jig was up, so throughout the movie’s second half  - set three years later in Argentina - the con caper aspects were played with as the romantic comedy core unfurled.  Whereas before the exposition scenes were played horribly straight, now there is a slight sense of mocking, putting a stamp on how ridiculous the whole thing was is.  There was one point when Nicky, after dropping what seemed like  the mother of all flashbacks, is left reeling when Jess reveals that nearly everything she told me about herself and why she was in Argentina was comically off the mark.  This was a refreshing contrast to Now You See Me, which had a similar obsession with verbose exposition but possessed neither Focus’ delightful cast, not its ability to treat its accumulated film baggage with a sense of humor.  Adding to the near parody was the timely inclusion of Gerald McRaney to the roster as Owens, the uptight head of security for Rafael Garriga, billionaire motor team owner and Nicky’s latest contract.  McRaney brings a colorful interpretation to a tired old stock, as likely to lecture Nicky on his work ethic and the quality of his acting as he is to threaten him into keeping up his end of the bargain with Garriga.  He’s a walking reminder that we’re not supposed to take the caper elements of the movie too seriously, and it’s all the better for it.

Unfortunately, not even McRaney could save the movie’s tired romantic plot, which by the end was a vestigial appendage bloated near the point of bursting.  Despite being what the movie is supposedly “about,” the romantic subplot had long lost what little potency and charm it had, even though, paradoxically, Smith and Robbie in and of themselves did not.  I blame the stockpile of contrivances and “turns” accumulated by the end, for despite the welcomed switch to gentle parody, they still muddled the movie’s genre, and hence, its focus.  As I mentioned in my review of The Interview, it is crucial that a movie commits to one particular representation of its own making; while the ability to wear multiple genre hats is admirable if pulled off successfully, you're much more likely to stumble over yourself and fall short in delivery in any direction, and that’s exactly what happened in Focus.  By the end, the natural chemistry between Smith and Robbie that somehow persisted despite the disturbing age difference came to nothing memorable, and even the amusement provided by the playful plot twists and flashback scenes had run dry.  When the end launched one last “shocking” salvo at the audience, I was past the point of caring, ready to drive off from what I knew would prove to be yet another cute, but completely forgettable film.

Grade C

March 2015 Releases and Premieres

March Releases 

 

Well, it's that time again, and March is underway with some impressive debuts.  Here's what's going on this month:

 Movies

http://www.movieinsider.com/movies/march/2015/ 

Games

http://www.ign.com/games/upcoming?time=1m 

Books

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/books-coming-soon/379003626/ 

Television

http://www.tvguide.com/special/winter-preview/calendar/ 

See you all at the movies!

 

Review: Alliegiance Premiere

Show Name: Allegiance

Genre: Spy thriller/drama

Network: NBC

Premiered:  February 5, 2015

Synopsis

Following in the footsteps of the FX hit The Americans, NBC offers up Allegiance, a show that, once you scratch past the sexy spy surface, reveals an altogether different from the usual sleeper cell drama.  Hope Davis and Scott Cohen star as Katya and Mark O'Connor, two Russians spies who have recently be “reactivated” by their SVR handler Victor (Morgan Spector) for a very special mission: to bring their son Alex (Galvin Stenhouse), a brilliant CIA analyst, under their umbrella.  There’s just one problem - Alex has been recruited to a joint FBI-CIA investigation into an alleged SVR plot to bring the United States infrastructure to its knees.  As he delves deeper into his mission, the lines between family and  enemy begin to blur, and with his parents trying to keep one step ahead of both him and their handler, betrayals and secrets are bound to pile up.

…

I was surprised to discover that this show was actually a remake of an Israeli drama called The Gordin Cell, and is just one of several others adaptations, including an intriguing localization from South Korea centered around the conflict with its northern neighbor.  But how does the one stateside fair?  Is it a must watch?

The Good:  Stenhouse’s performance is definitely the highlight here.  Had he played Alex as a straight-forward ace, or even the more acceptable but cliched “brilliant-but-bad-with-people” trope,  I probably would have pulled all of my hair out by the end of the episode.  Instead, he’s depicted as sort of ambiguously on the Spectrum: awkward, innocently insensitive, and scarily focused on the current moment’s preoccupation. This adds a certain charm to an otherwise overplayed template, and though I can’t know whether or not this was part of the original characterization in The Gordin Cell, it certainly leaves me wondering how a person of his particular mentality will respond to the various layers of deceit and betrayal threatening to close in on him.  Alex’s shenanigans are also the prime vehicle of the shows subtle and self-aware humor.  I couldn’t help but chuckle as Alex suffered the “new guy wringer” under his obviously fed-up station chief, played by Kenneth Choi, whose performance is at times drowsy but still deadpan enough to be enjoyable.  The various quips about when to wear or not wear your sunglasses, or how to turn into a secret room without looking obvious, were all well-deserved stabs at the baggage carried by every single spy thriller since the year dot, and with thoughts of The Americans and Salt in my mind during this premiere, it was nice to see a show that didn’t take itself too seriously.

The Bad:  Unfortunately, the rest of it doesn’t quite make the cut.  The acting of nearly everyone besides Alex was so perfunctory and cookie-cutter that they might as well have been sleepwalking. It was as if there was some kind of spy drama master script everyone was reading off, but they all somehow failed the spot check to put any sort nuance, emotion, or humanity into their roles.  Davis and Cohen have all the chemistry of a helium balloon, and I was almost begging for their lukewarm scenes to end so that we can switch the focus back to Alex.  Also, despite the tongue-in-cheek self-depreciation, the show still plays the spy angle to a painfully straight extreme; I felt like I should have had a clipboard at hand, ticking off every spy stereotype and cliche as they popped up.

The Ugly:  I’m really not sure what to make of the plot and premise themselves.  On the one hand, this show seems ripe to explore the layers of loyalty and...well, allegiances, that can make or break family bonds under such a dubious environment.  While this angle has, obviously, been explored to some degree in the usual sleeper cell fair, it has never been the focus in any of those shows or movies, and adding in Alex’s intriguing personality quirks and commitment to the American government, quite a few surprises could be lurking around the corner.  On the other hand, Allegiance is just capable of and probably more likely to waste all of that potential.  The first episode concluded in a rather rushed manner, with Alex already confronting his parents about their potential involvement in his first case.  This could be a way of getting the spy fluff out of the way so as to explore the dynamics of a family on the verge of breaking at the seams...or it could just be sloppy writing for a show that promises diminishing returns for its viewers. I lean towards the lattter, but you be the judge.

Tune In or Tune Out?  Tune out.  While it’s likely to be a nice Thursday evening distraction, not even the subtle humor in the continuing adventures of an autistic(?) analyst is enough to make this a must-add to my TV block, and the snoozy acting and too-quick pacing doesn’t seem like it’ll lead to anything particularly groundbreaking.

February 2015 Releases and Premieres

February Releases 

 

Well, Super Bowl has come and gone, so I'm here with the upcoming releases for your next big distraction.  Here are the entertainment premieres for the month of February:

Movies

http://www.movieinsider.com/movies/february/2015/ 

Games

http://www.ign.com/games/upcoming?time=1m

Books

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/books-coming-soon/379003626/ 

Television

http://www.tvguide.com/special/winter-preview/calendar/ 

See you all at the movies!