Cinnamon Ass

Please excuse the random black and green blobs on the screencap. My laptop, barely 2 years old, appears to be dying a slow, video card related death at present.

I’m not sure why I’ve assumed that GONZO is deliberately trying to invoke memories of Last Exile by engaging Range Murata as character designer for Shangri-La. The man’s worked with them on other projects (notably Blue Sub 6 way back in the day), but for some reason I (and perhaps others) have assumed they want to remind us of a relatively insignificant show from 2003 or so. The comparison is unfortunate, as Shangri-La doesn’t come off as well immediately in the first episode; but that’s not to say it’s ALL bad.

Set in a futuristic Tokyo deliberately overrun by vegetation in order to try and control global warming, Shangri-La follows Kuniko Hojo, a spirited 18 year old girl who has just been released from a women’s detention facility. Kuniko lives in the slums outside of Atlas, the standard city-where-the-evil-rich-live genre fiction cliche, where she is becoming the leader of Metal Age, an anti-government resistance force. This first episode mostly focuses on making sure every character is introduced in some format, before introducing some conflict when Takehiko, one of the resistance members, decides to run the coal power stations in the slums to celebrate Kuniko’s release. Instead of the usual Carbon Police enforcement that cracks down on carbon emissions like this, Atlas sends out the military in anticipation of an uprising by Metal Age. A fight ensures, a potential love interest is introduced, mysterious knives start making noises and stuff blows up; the end.

Shangri La, despite its environmental themes, doesn’t feel like a very organically produced show. Not having read the original story I can’t presume to comment on how much of this is original to the anime, but despite the potentially interesting premise of the show it feels like it’s been “anime-d up”. Kuniko wears a ridiculously short skirt that teases the possibility of fanservice at every opportunity whilst running around being impossibly happy and beloved by all; one of the minor characters is a ten year old sadistic computer genius with parent issues who talks to her teddy bear when she’s not controlling the global carbon markets; Kuniko’s foster mother is a pre-operative transsexual (who is actually a pretty decent character most of the time) who kisses his enemies into submission, etc. The over-the-top elements are quite jarring in the first half of the episode given the intriguing concept, although I do think these settle down in the second half when the show doesn’t have to throw all the characters at us at once and we get a half-decent action sequence thrown in.

The background art is lovely, which probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise; it makes sense for a show like this to go all out on evoking the proper mood. The character designs and animation aren’t quite so great, frankly. The character designs have a flat look to them, and the facial shapes frequently end up like something out of Welcome to the NHK or Speed Grapher rather than hewing closer to the rounded look of Murata’s usual designs. Movement is generally uninteresting, aside from the action sequence at the end; I’m sure this show has a half-decent budget but I don’t think we’re going to see it in the animation itself.

Music is fine, but doesn’t really deserve much comment. Acting is also okay, and I’m glad that one of the transvestites isn’t voiced with the usual hideous “screaming queen” stereotype that anime indulges in so often (this IS the same transvestite who kisses guys into submission, though).

It’s safe to say I’m a little disappointed with Shangri-La. I’d have liked it to have been a bit less…well, anime, I guess. I’m a sucker for an ending like the one we get here with the mysterious knives and so forth, so I’ll probably watch a few more episodes to see where this goes - it’s not all bad, after all, just not as good as I’d have liked it to have been, and it lacks any of the subtlety or finesse that characterised Last Exile at least (although, as I’ve suggested, there’s really no point in comparing the two series - just because they share a character designer doesn’t mean there’s any reason they should be similar).

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Currently Watching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.