Couchbound/Continued #368 - Ore Monogatari/My Love Story, Episode 4, "Through the Fire and Flames!"

I'm going to get this out of the way right now... not all anime is deep. In fact, the grand majority of anime is LCD fluff. Everything from Naruto to GoLion to Fate/stay night is pretty shallow fare. Sure, there might be some feels and pseudo-philosophical ranting at some point, but for the most part, it's all about the widest spread of merchandising appeal.

Ore Monogatari/My Love Story isn't really an exception. Where OM/MLS stands out from the crowd is that it's telling an atypical story using a familiar rubric... or, rather, it's telling the same old anime love story with an atypical lead.

Most romance anime which focus on a boy falling in love usually fall into one of two sub-genres, a harem anime where one less-than-ideal guy (an otaku or loner of some stripe) somehow inexplicably garners the attention of a bevy of beautiful ladies... or a sappy coming of age romance where a seemingly unobtrusive but unique character leads a rose-colored life. OM/MLS is the latter.

A big, brutish, somewhat dim guy with a heart of gold constantly gets crushes on girls who are only interested in his handsome but standoffish friend... until one day he saves a cute girl who goes to a neighboring all girls school from a molester on the train. She falls for him, he can't believe it, cue  a plethora of moe feels.

It should be boring. It should be a one and done affair, but I can't stop watching. There's no complexity, the message is hammy and the delivery is predictable as all get out, but it has just the right amount of schmaltz to reel me in. It's manga was the same way... and I can't help but wondering if I'm biased towards the anime because I enjoyed its print version, because I honestly can't say if there's enough to the anime to justify a recommendation.

Ninety percent of the time, the art is cheap and shoddy. To pad their shots, MADHOUSE makes use of gratuitous pans every chance they get. Instead of being an homage to the framing of the comic panels, most of the time it looks like a budget piece from the 90's. Only a few shots really shine when it comes to dynamic movement, framing, and color... and one of those shots is the climax moment of this episode, where Takeo makes an insane leap from a burning building. Very reminiscent of the buff guy action archetype that he's a send-up to. Additionally, MADHOUSE skimps on detail at key moments while overcompensating on background art at the wrong times. Very distracting.

Still... watching Takeo waffle between falling in love with a cute girl and trying to do what he thinks is the right thing (Takeo encouraging his love interest to go after his friend since he cannot fathom her liking an ogre like him) is oddly endearing. Sure, it's not a series I'm going to return to all that often. It doesn't have the graphical excellence or emotional resonance of top shelf productions like Hyouka or the like, but it also isn't necessarily a guilty pleasure anime either.

In this episode, we get to watch two young (and innocent) lovers be cutesy, suffer backlash from friends, and weather the very real (but so conveniently staged) threat of possible tragedy. It's predictable, it's corny, it's... okay. I'd say stay for the sappiness and put it in the back of your mind never to need visiting again.

Until later, Potatoes~

Day Two Hundred and Nineteen - Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 1, Episode 2, "That was a bit, um, British, wasn't it?"

When last we saw Buffy, back in the middle of June, she was about to be bitten by Luke (Brian Thompson) and thus end the series on the very first episode: Heroine slain, Evil triumphant, and the World destroyed.

Of course, that didn't happen... the cliffhanger carrying over immediately into the second episode where, luckily, Luke tries to cop a feel (I mean, it's Sarah Michelle Gellar... who wouldn't?) and grabs a handful of demon-burning crucifix. The same crucifix given to her by the startlingly young looking Angel (David Boreanaz).

Anyway, life spared, she and two of the potential Scoobies manage to get away and live to Slay another day.

I love how entirely silly the vampires' plans both to trap Buffy and initiate the Harvest are. It kind of is just like they're in an episode of Scooby Doo and that's really the charm of it all.

Sure, if you want to get real (and forget all the vampires and mystical nya-nya), an evil organization that has been in existence for hundreds of years probably would've planned better than, "let's plant our least experienced member in her group and have him fumble around" or "let's go to the one place in town teenagers (which our mortal enemy is) hang out and start a massacre."

I mean, honestly... Luke should've just gone to a nursing home or something. Tons of docile fleshbags just waiting to kick it. No direct connection to the Slayer and her Scoobies. Easy, simple.

But, that's melodrama for you, and it's hilariously bad and awesome at the same time!

I love Buffy for so many reasons: its camp horror, its archetypal characters, its 90's wit and sarcasm. I even love how dated all the technology is... I mean, just look at the computers that Harmony and Cordelia are "programming" on in the second act.

High-larious!

Sure, a few of the trappings don't hold up, but the series as a whole is still brilliantly silly fun. There's a reason that Joss Whedon is a geek god and I can easily recommend the series... you just have to look at it with an open mind and childlike (or, at least, a teenager's) whimsey.

Also, even wings-over-my-hammy Angel is better than Edward-freaking-Cullen.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Seventy-four - Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 1, Episode 1, "Oh, Sunnydale... how I've missed you."

It's an almost inevitable constant of every television (or, perhaps, any media) generation that there are shows which encompass the zeitgeist of what it is to be a teen.

In the 80's, the argument could be made in favor of Family Ties, Growing Pains, Family Matters. For the 90's, you would almost certainly throw 90210, Dawson's Creek, and Saved By The Bell into the arena. For the Millenium, you'd be hard pressed to argue against The O.C., Gilmore Girls, and Friday Night Lights.

My favorite started in '97 and carried through seven seasons and a network switch, spawning a spinoff and continuing off the air in the form of Season 8 and 9 comic book series.

Of course, you know already that I'm referring to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy came out at the perfect time in my life as I was the exact same age as all the characters involved. It mixed elements of horror, scifi, and teen dramedy... what could be more perfect for an ubergeek like myself?

This particular episode started it all (on television anyway)... picking up where Kristy Swanson left off with the movie, Buffy (now played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) is starting her sophomore year in a new town hoping to divest herself of her Slayer identity and reboot her life.

Unfortunately for her intentions, Destiny has other ideas and has lured her to The Hellmouth, Sunnydale's ancient name, where all the various big bads and evils of the world tend to gravitate.

In the first episode we're introduced to the majority of those who would become the Scooby Gang: Xander, Willow, Giles, and an oftentimes reluctant Cordelia. They're all staple archetypes that include the stuffy librarian, the shy brain, the goofy sidekick, and the scene girl. We're also treated to brief scenes with her first love interest, the brooding Angel (David Boreanaz of BONES fame), and her first season long mortal enemy, The Master, who is trapped beneath the city in a ruined church, straining to escape and wreak havoc on the world.

The episode (and the series, as a whole) is a mashup of your prototypical teen drama and the supernatural horror films it loves to emulate. Both of its constituent genres are often fraught with cheesiness and there's no difference here. If anything, they're both amped to extreme levels, the vampire makeup and fight scenes eliciting, at the very least, serious eyerolls to newcomers.

That said, I love every second of said cheese.

It's just so over the top that is bounces right off terrible and firmly in the land of completely entertaining. The bad lines, the awkward social interactions, the silly villains... mixed together as they are, they make all the terrible elements into a relatively thrilling teen dramedy that's much more compelling than anything the networks were throwing at us before, during, and pretty much since.

I highly doubt my seventeen year old self would look anything but askance at today's Vampire Diaries which, thanks to the Twi-hard crowd, is all doom and gloom and none of the glib that made Buffy so great. And my thirty-two year old self can still safely enjoy the uber-cheese from the distance of well over a decade, cringing only here and there at obviously dated fashions, catch-phrases, and pick up lines.

Fair warning, this first episode is a two-parter, ending on a "to be continued" moment as the mid-boss of the pilot, The Master's right hand vamp Luke (Brian Thompson), closes in for the kill (you know he'll get dusted and Buffy will prevail)... but I certainly recommend a series watch.

While the cheese remains the same, the characters developed startlingly well over the arc of the series, shifting from uncertain teens to dedicated adults who suffer loss, love daringly, and find their passions... even if a lot of said passion is kicking evil's butt!

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Sixty-nine - The Wonder Years: Pilot, "Young, awkward, petulant love. It's beautiful."

I have to confess that Danica McKellar was my TV crush when I was a kid.

The girl next door who blossomed into a beautiful young woman who not only liked you, but forgave you when you were acting like an idiot (which, at that age, was all the time), Winnie was the ideal adolescent love match that I never actually got to participate in.

On top of that, Danica has made a name for herself as a mathematician after she finished her tenure on the show... brains and beauty! I might as well just melt in my chair simply from thinking about her.

In any case, The Wonder Years was one of those witty, coming of age family dramas posed as the narrator (voiced by Daniel Stern) flashes back to his heady days as a youth growing up in the suburban 60's and 70's. What the Wonder Years did for their era is fairly similar to what the Apatow crew did ten years later at the turn of the decade into the 80's with a fresh generation. Both shows focused on the true problems of kids going through puberty and trying to find direction in the world.

A struggle for pretty much everyone involved.

In addition to my crush on Danica McKellar, this was also the show that kept Fred Savage in the limelight after his endearing role as the sick boy in The Princess Bride as the show's main character Kevin Arnold. The kind of everykid for my generation, he was only supplanted when the wider appeal of a different Kevin... Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin)... stole his thunder in the Home Alone series.

Personally, I think Fred was the better actor (Kieran being the stronger of the Culkin brothers at the craft, IMHO), but the market spoke and there you have it.

The pilot is a little rough in places... with the play punches from Kevin Arnold's older brother, Wayne (Jason Hervey) being obviously too soft and fake, a mistake that was not repeated over a decade later in Malcolm in the Middle. Still, the combination of realistic behavior and perfectly timed inner monologue/narration made for a much stronger adolescent drama than ABC's other teen coming of age drama of the era, Doogie Howser, MD.

I love you, NPH, but Fred and Daniel did it better.

The Wonder Years always reminds me of a more wholesome take of the era than Steven King's Stand By Me. Both feature wise, older men looking back on their adolescence wistfully and portraying those childhoods realistically, it's just that The Wonder Years seems a bit more tame in comparison. Granted, it makes sense, considering one was a rated-R film and the other a primetime family drama on ABC.

I think, if I were looking to bond with my children, I'd have this and Freaks and Geeks primed and in the queue in the hopes that some of the wisdom would rub off. It probably wouldn't as, now that I think about it, when I watched it back then I was more concerned with how cute Winnie was than anything else, but still... osmosis occasional works.

And who knows... maybe the narration style would enamor them to Neil Simon plays and we'd have that, too.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~

Day One Hundred and Eleven - Career Opportunities, "Proof positive that an era can end."

If there is one truth about movies in the 80's, it's that John Hughes was the master of the coming of age teen dramedy.

Be it Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller... Hughes was gold when it came to tapping into the zeitgeist that was adolescent ennui in the age of Cyndi Lauper, INXS, and Bananarama. So much so that I doubt anyone who grew up in that era would argue any different and anyone who was born too late would be instantly beat down in any internet fight if they said otherwise.

But there's a flipside to the argument, because once he left the zaniness of the 80's, the market changed rapidly and, where Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson were once the gods of the Brat Pack, the 90's demanded a more real and gritty take on growing up, preferring Reality Bytes and Empire Records to Baby's Day Out and Home Alone.

I sort of weep for Career Opportunities. Not only did it come at the wrong time, but it was trying to bridge the gap between the old and the new, straddling the stylistic canyon between checkered suits and grungy flannel shirts.

The story is very much a slant on what Hughes did a year before with Home Alone, just with a pair of teenagers in a department store instead of a precocious kid in his own house. Essentially, Jim Dodge (played by Frank Whaley, who really isn't leading man material) IS Kevin McAllister, just older and a brunette... but the endless tirade of lies and manipulations that come out of an eight year old's mouth are cheap and really rather pathetic from a young adult.

Jim is the Town Liar. It's obvious from the start when Hughes has him almost playing to the audience and breaking the fourth wall till we see he's regaling the dogs of an animal shelter with his fantasies. He spins his tales to a trio of pre-teens, who believe and revere him, while the rest of the town is wise to his tricks. He's a born loser.

Josie (Jennifer Connelly) is the spoiled rich girl whose idea of "doing anything" to get her father's attention consists of attempting to shoplift but chickening out. There's also a seedy undercurrent of physical abuse that you never see but is hinted at without any real drama, very much to the detriment of the movie. Instead of Judd Nelson's "carton of cigarettes" monologue from The Breakfast Club, we get Josie in monotone to Jim confessing her dad "beats her ass." No drama, no impact, just bleh.

Together, the two of them get locked into the local Target (the Big Red Dot being a new and weird thing back then) and proceed to spend the night goofing off and bonding until a pair of murderers and thieves somehow manage to break inside in a way that is never actually explained. This is especially disconcerting considering the movie expends several scenes on the notion that Jim and Josie can't get out.

The entire premise and all its little sundries are laughable. Where I could get behind Ferris and his trip across Chicago, even crashing a parade float... I cannot for one second believe in Jim and Josie, either their separate issues or their instant concrete bonding. This is especially true when Josie goes Stockholm Syndrome with one of the robbers and the last fifteen minutes of the film becomes a version of Die Hard.

I feel really bad for Jennifer Connelly in this film. She's obviously too beautiful for the room and there definitely isn't much to chew on in the script. Anyone with a brain can see she's just being used for her ample rack here. Sure, she was pretty much just starting out at this point, but OH MY GOD am I thankful her agent got her in Dark City, Requiem for a Dream, and A Beautiful Mind instead of more crapfests like this.

Her, I can forgive. Hughes? Not so much.

Plot holes, superfluous scenes, useless melodrama away from the action (Josie and Jim's respective fathers and their sleepless nights)... you can definitely see why this particular entry into Hughes' catalog never comes up on anyone's lists. I most certainly recommend that everyone stay away unless they're feeling masochistic and want to go through his entire film repertoire... all the way up through Drillbit Taylor.

*shudder*

Though, I will admit that it was fun to see racks and racks of cassette tapes again in their annoying white plastic security cases to keep folks from slipping them in their pockets. Freaking hilarious. It did beg the question, though, of how exactly Josie and Jim pried them out to play in the various HiFi's of the store.

Until tomorrow, Potatoes~