Resonance is a point-and-click adventure game released a couple of months back by Wadjet Eye Games, the makers of Gemini Rue. It’s a solid play for you point-and-click fans: the puzzles are solid (and occasionally frustrating, which, of course, is part of the experience), and the story is cool, with some nice twists and turns. My one complaint is that only a couple of characters feel truly fleshed out in any way, though that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this post.

There’s one twist in Resonance I caught onto just before the big reveal and the devastation that occurs afterward. Even though I caught it before it happened, I thought the twist was well executed; actually, the realization of the twist made me appreciate it all the more because the writers had manipulated the story in just the right way to give the twist the proper impact. Then just before I finished the game, I read an articled retweeted by mefloraine that made me appreciate the build to the twist on a different, more interesting level.

I’ll link the article after the jump, because the nature of the anecdote shared in the article hints rather strongly at the thrust of the twist in Resonance. If you have any interest in playing the game and don’t want to be spoiled, then don’t read any further.

OK, that nonsense is out of the way! Here is the article. It’s a striking anecdote about rape culture and what is termed in the article as The Question. Now, before you leave in droves, I’m not writing to talk down at you or lecture you or whatever. Frankly, although I’m quite sympathetic to many feminist ideas, I don’t have the knowledge to expound on them on many levels beyond the basic ideal of, “Yo, guys, let’s not be shitty to women, OK?”

Anyway, the long and short of the article is that a woman’s husband attends a workshop where they live in a dormitory and do workshoppy things. The man meets a much younger woman, and they spend a lot of time working together. Nothing happens; they’re just colleagues. This woman, however, catches the eye of another dude, and this dude spends much of the workshop trying to talk to this woman, to get to know her. The attention wasn’t really appreciated by the woman, and she let the guy know in a million polite ways that he should promptly buzz off. This guy wasn’t having it, though, and he started making insinuations about the first guy — about how he’s married, and why should he be hanging around so much with a much younger woman if that’s the case?

There’s a lot more to the story, but basically everything comes to a head when the husband and the woman go hiking together one evening. Just a pleasant, harmless activity. When they get back, however, it’s after curfew. The husband went to fill his water bottle, and when he arrived at the dorm, he found the other dude cornering the woman and chatting her up. The husband’s arrival distracted the guy enough that the woman was able to flee to her room. The next day, the husband finally confronted the other guy on how he was making the woman and everyone else in the group uncomfortable with his unwanted advances, and that he should cut that shit out. The dude was embarrassed, and the husband felt bad, but he’d just had enough. Politeness did not work anymore.

The wife, however, interjects by wondering why the husband didn’t do more and sooner. The husband countered by saying that the guy’s only crime was that he was shit at flirting and eventually stepped over the line. The counter to that, though, was that the inept flirting made the woman uncomfortable for the entire workshop. She could never relax and have a good time; she was constantly on guard. Didn’t that matter? The husband agreed, though he felt weird because he thought there was something he was missing. The comes The Question (here I paraphrase): Just what in the fuck was this dude doing waiting for this woman in the dark after curfew? The story set off a million alarms in the wife’s head by the halfway point; the husband clued in when The Question was posed.

The ultimate point is that men (often, but not always) don’t totally make the leap from seeing behavior as sketchy rather than awkward because they (often, but not always) don’t have a reason to do so. It’s the way society trains us — it’s just a dude making romantic advances. Even if he’s clumsy, it’s not as if he means any harm, right? But you never know when those clumsy advances can turn into something worse.

And finally back to Resonance! There are four characters in the game, but these are the two who matter: Ed, who is a scientist’s assistant, and Anna, a doctor who is revealed early on to be the niece of the scientist with whom Ed works, Dr. Morales. Morales researched a concept that could be turned into a weapon in the wrong hands. He’s killed early in the game, and Ed, Anna and the others spend much of Resonance hunting down the location of Morales’ research. They find it eventually, and Anna is the key to unlocking it. Anna is alone after asking Ed to leave and give her space to think. She’s given a choice: destroy the research or keep it in the hopes humanity can do good with it. Ed, on the other side of the door, implores Anna to keep the research. He can’t see the choice she is about to make.

So he opens the door and shoots her.

It’s a rough twist because it’s so sudden and because Anna is the most sympathetic character by far. I called Ed’s turn just before it happened — something just seemed off about the whole exercise. There were so many unanswered questions and so many attempts to deflect attention. And some of Ed’s behavior during the game just seemed . . . off, somehow, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until I figured he wormed his way in with Anna just so that he could get his hands on Dr. Morales’ research.

But what the above article made me realize — and this is where the writers get really devious — is that it’s possible to call Ed’s turn super early in the game if you’re truly paying attention and thinking in the right way. You first meet Anna during one of the segments introducing the four characters. Ed is on a subway, and Anna gets on along the way. Ed is psyching himself up — he’s seen Anna on the subway before, but he’s never had the courage to speak to her. When Anna sits down, a coin falls out of her pocket; this gives Ed a reason to approach her and strike up a conversation. It’s set up as an awkward, somewhat romantic scene. There’s no reason to suspect any wrongdoing on Ed’s part, and I certainly didn’t pick up on anything major.

Later, when you get all four protagonists together, you start to explore the city. You get a map of the subway system; it’s using this map that you can see what eventually makes the other two in the group suspicious of Ed.

The major areas are marked on the map. Ed takes the subway to the lab, while Anna takes the subway to the hospital. These areas and the routes to them are marked from the moment you get the subway map. Can you see what’s wrong? I’ll give you a moment to figure it out.

And . . . time!

The answer is that Ed’s route to work doesn’t intersect Anna’s route. He has to go out of his way to meet Anna on the subway. That’s what raises all the red flags: Ed mentions early in the game that he met Anna on the subway. But what is he doing out there in the first place? Why is he making such an effort to meet Anna on a subway route so far away from his own? He could be clumsily courting someone he likes . . . but Ed’s behavior tips dangerously far into stalker territory. It’s an easy detail to miss, because it’s obscured by the hunt for Dr. Morales’ research, but it’s always there, waiting, until the writers spring it on the player at the worst moment. Most of Resonance‘s plot is solidly done genre work, but that’s the one twist I’d say is thought out in a genuinely clever way.

Did the writers have rape culture in mind when they drew up this plot point? Maybe not so specifically. I can’t say for sure, because I’m not them, and it doesn’t matter much, anyway. The weirdness of Ed’s behavior is not glossed over, however. When Anna speaks to Ed on the subway, she mentions specifically that she ignored him at first because you meet a lot of “creeps” on the subway. She senses something is off about Ed’s behavior, but Anna is disarmed when Ed returns her coin (it has personal meaning) and when he reacts to her response to his stalker-like behavior in such a charmingly awkward, self-effacing way.

The truly devious part is that Ed’s behavior fooled me because I (and many others) am instinctively sympathetic to a guy awkwardly trying to open up to a woman. I’m not exactly the smoothest, most confident man in the world when it comes to romance. (What, an anime/video game blogger not being great at romance? Pshaw!) My world experience distracted me to what could definitely be seen as sketchy fucking behavior if I had read into the clues with the proper mindset. That’s what’s so great about this twist, whether intentional or not.

Does it count if this blog shut down just shy of three years but I’m still plugging away elsewhere? Maybe we should say I am like one of those Death Row inmates with an eternal stay of execution.

Today is my three-year anniversary doing this nonsense. I would make this announcement at The Cart Driver, except I don’t have anything particularly interesting to go along with it. I’d rather not subject The Readers to me jerking myself off about silly milestones. Why do that when I can subject them to me jerking myself off with stupid anime metafiction? Clearly that is far superior.

So here I am! It’s been fun. Honestly, I’m thankful to Scamp for bringing me aboard his Code Geass worship site (that is secretly loaded with LelouchxSuzaku fanart; you just gotta look in the right places). It takes a peculiar kind of person to keep plugging away all alone for a few years with such small expectations. I mean, let’s face it — Scamp has a big site compared to anime blogs, but compared to actual Big Sites on the Internet? It’s still relatively tiny. So what does that make this joint? I’ll leave that question hanging. Suffice to say, if I kept at it on my own, I probably would have burned out or become indecipherable eventually. Maybe both.

But, yes, it does feel nice working with other people in both Japanimation-related things I do on the good ol’ Interwebs. It’s especially nice when I’m trusted to do whatever and it’s cool. How many people would let their colleague debut with this? It doesn’t really tell the reader anything except that I like to fuck around at their expense. This is what happens when you give me any semblance of power.

Anyway, uh, I guess I’ll still keep going since it’s still fun and all. I don’t have any particularly big plans except that I want to hit multiple conventions this year. I was pretty jealous reading about all the good fun time fun people had at Otakon. Don’t know if I’ll make it there, especially since it’s so close to Anime Expo, but I do want to go through with the Sakura Con plans that I had to abort earlier this year. So if you live in the Seattle area, then you might see me next year! Don’t let that scare you away from the convention, please. Maybe I’ll hit up other places, too. All depends on how well I can juggle my vacation days. I think I get a bump since this is my third year at the ol’ place of work. Fingers crossed!

That’s about it. This is the last post here until I have some other stupid announcement to make. See you jerks later.

Curse you, Marika, and your ability to execute basic strategies using a force of pirates against a single ship!

As expected, Quartz Christie is the shittiest pirate. Disrupting communications and positioning a ship to intercept the Grand Cross when it escapes the chaff field?????? That is clearly some Lelouch Lamperouge-level tactics going on there. How could Quartz Christie possibly see any of that coming?! She’s only one of the original pirates jumping around the galaxy.

I’m pretty sure nobody was surprised at how thoroughly Marika and crew beat the everloving piss out of the Grand Cross. When you’re an arrogant villain who takes zero advantage of several opportunities to get one over on the pirates you’re fighting in a series that has become known for resolving its conflicts in the neatest way possible, you’re basically asking to get run over by the Marika Plot Steamroller in the finale. The best part is when Christie says she won’t run and hide, and roughly half a minute later she blasts out of the Grand Cross in an escape pod. I suppose it’s better to learn basic deception late than never.

The ending hints rather loudly that Christie will be back to fight another day. After this insane blunder of a battle, though, who the hell would supply her with a ship to bring the heat to the Bettenmaru? I wouldn’t trust her with the Jenny x Lynn ship at this point, much less an insanely expensive prototype ship like the Grand Cross. To be fair to Christie, though, I’m undecided whether she’s a bigger failure than the dude who angled to eliminate Jenny so that he could take over the company she would inherit. I mean, he left all his incriminating files where they could be easily accessed. Whaaaaaaaaaaaat a dummy!

That said, much like the rest of Pirates, a shitty villain and hilariously easy endgame didn’t keep me from enjoying the finale. I sympathize with the Pirates defenders who think people are being too hard on the series due to the plot. I like the characters, the fun, flighty feel of the series and its sense of humor (which, for me, leaks into how every plot point is resolved with such ease). Pure plot isn’t so important that it alone determines how “good” or “worthy” or whatever a series is.

That said, the way Pirates handles its plot does make for some weirdness. I honestly don’t think the audience is meant to be taking this pirate business all that seriously — how could they be expected to do so? Sure, Marika and friends get into what are supposed to be dangerous situations every so often, but they make it through them with such little trouble that everything is but a trifle. That’s OK for what the show is doing. But the characters clearly do take this shit seriously, and they often comment on Marika’s growth as a pirate . . . but I don’t see much of that.

She is of course better than she was at the start — compare her during her initial training and her at the end of the series, and there is a clear difference. But after that, everything falls into place so well and Marika is so easily able to plan her way through every situation that she is an awesome pirate captain almost from the start rather than growing into the role. I don’t have a huge problem with that, but it does make those in show comments on character growth rather silly. The plot is basically a thin excuse to put characters in crazy situations so that they can be awesome. It’s enjoyable on that level, but not particularly engaging.

Overall opinion on the piratey business: I like the show overall because it’s silly and fun to watch. Despite the characters taking their goofy pirating seriously, I don’t believe the show takes itself that seriously. I feel like a massive tool for breaking out the “Hey, it’s cute girls going on adventures! Just enjoy it!” argument, but that is the level on which I like the series. Also, I can’t help but enjoy any series where the director has the two main characters sing in an old timey radio studio for the lulz.

So there you go! This is the final post on this trashy blog unless I decide to post something random and troll all you losers who are still paying attention for some reason.

See you, Space Pirates!

Later.

OK, I won’t leave you with just that. This is mostly for anyone aside from me who remembers this innocuous pair of tweets. I assume nobody remembers them. If someone did remember them, I’d give that person a gold star and call the cops, because clearly I am being monitored to a frightening degree.

If you are reading this more than a few minutes after the fact, you may know that I am now writing for The Cart Driver. In case you aren’t up on all your precious aniblogging gossip, however, let me inform you that I am in fact now writing for The Cart Driver! Yes, I will be the Kallen to Scamp’s Lelouch. An occasion of this magnitude calls only for the most appropriate music:

Aww yeah.

Anyway, because I am but one crude vessel of meat and bone, I do not have the time or energy to write for three blogs. I accepted Five Camp’s proposal to write for his silly Code Geass fan wank site with the knowledge that doing so would mean shutting down UNMEI KAIHEN Forever. Well, not Forever, at least not yet. There’s one episode left of Mouretsu Pirates, and because Anime Expo will take up most of my time this weekend, I probably won’t finish that off until Tuesday at the earliest. That means the final post on this dumb blog will be about moe space pirates. That finale had better be good, damn it!

I’ll continue writing about Hunter x Hunter on The Cart Driver, along with whatever dumb shit I decide to pick up for this upcoming awful season. I am also continuing my work on the Terribad List of Terrible Terribad Terribleness, because it’s obviously the most important work anyone is doing in the anime blogomabob, or, indeed, the Internet itself. Everything under those categories will be imported onto The Cart Driver. I apologize in advance if the site takes a big, fat shit on your RSS feeds. I’m not totally sure how the importing process works.

It’s been fun running my own dumb show here for nearly three years. One of the great joys of this business is the ability to be goofy as fuck without anyone caring at all. I’m not planning on changing much in the move to The Cart Driver; as I hope my intro post shows, I’ll still hold myself to the same rigorous intellectual standards as always. Maybe the one change is that there will be less sprawling, pointless, ultraviolent Sister Princess fanfiction. But you never know.

So, uh, that’s about it. Bye!

(P.S. This is basically why I did fuck all to advertise myself in the Aniblog Tourney a couple of rounds back. It would have been slightly awkward to be like, “Hey, tourney voters, welcome to my blog! By the way, go fuck yourselves, I quit.” Wait, what am I saying? That would have been hilarious! Why did I do such a lousy job of advertising myself, again??)

Good, sweet Christ, that camera angle. Hisoka is such a fucking pedophile.

I’ve finally become used to Daisuke Namikawa’s performance as Hisoka. At first it didn’t seem like the right fit because Namikawa’s is so cool, deep and smooth. It’s a good villain voice, but the traits that make Hisoka a good villain are a bit different than the normal villainous traits. Doesn’t help that the man who voiced Hisoka in the ’99 series, Hiroki Takahashi, made such a distinct mark on the demented clown. (Fun fact: Takahashi also voices Harima in School Rumble, which is such a different voice that it’s almost creepy.)

Describing Takahashi’s Hisoka is . . . difficult. It’s probably better to listen: Here’s a sample from the ’99 version of this episode. It’ll probably sound weird to those used to Namikawa’s Hisoka. I love this voice, though. Right when you hear it, you know there’s something off about Hisoka. The goofy clown look is funny, but the voice makes one thing, “Wow, what the hell is up with this guy?” It’s such an unexpected approach to a big shonen villain; the contrast between voice and appearance works perfectly.

Namikawa’s voice is more standard. It’s steely and strong, but also with a slickness that suggests deception and danger. Definitely villainous, but not so much what makes Hisoka so god damn creepy. But the show has gone so far with the pedophilia angle that it seems less a suggestion and more a booming exclamation. (This is present in the ’99 series, as well, but not to as quite a loud degree. Actually, I think it’s more accurate to say Hisoka gets off on beating the powerful, and the fact that it’s children he’s going after is just to make it creepier.) The relentless flirting and clowngasmic thoughts as Gon beats the shit out of Hisoka are just . . . out there. And Namikawa is totally game for it. I can only imagine how awkward it must have been in the recording studio the day they kicked this out.

God damn it, Hisoka.

Anyway, the episode itself is good. The rest of the fight doesn’t meet the gloriously animated heights as the last five minutes of the previous episode, but only a fool would have expected that. It’s a great moment when Gon defiantly gives Hisoka back the badge that Hisoka disdainfully gave him during the Hunter Exam. That pride, man. That pride. Rest of the battle is just Hisoka being an asshole to Gon and toying with him for the hell of it. Even with the beating Hisoka gives Gon here, you can be sure he still isn’t going 100 percent. If he did, well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Next episode features Gon and Killua going back to Whale Island for good fun time fun. That should probably be done with in an episode or two at most. I figure then we’ll see what Kurapika has been up to since it’s really important for the upcoming arc. I’m beyond hyped for this shit, because it’s by far the best part of Hunter x Hunter I’ve seen animated.

It’s not a party without Strider, yo. Also, bonus points for the vampirate who shows up during the montage at the end. He might have appeared earlier in the episode, but I wasn’t paying close enough attention . . .

Speaking of being confused, all my blather about the Kanedroid last week was a result of being confused about just what the hell went on last week with all the robots and sneaking around and whatnot. This episode shows what a dope I am for speaking out of confusion and making assumptions.

Obviously we have only the vaguest of hints that the other Kane we see aboard the Bettenmaru and peeping down at folks later on in the episode is Kane’s younger twin brother. However, that is clearly a likelier scenario than the convoluted nonsense I conjured with the Kanedroid. This plot point is still a bit convoluted, though . . . some weird strings have to be pulled to get Kane off the Bettenmaru and reporting to Ironbeard, while younger twin has to scramble onboard the ship and pretend as if he actually knows everyone. (Maybe he does. At least Misa seemed familiar with the guy when they called out double Kane on this silliness.) But, hey, yet again our show about a teenage pirate who commands the respect of adult pirates has pulled silly plot stuff, so whatevs.

I like Luca’s tan. I also like the hilariously flippant way the show deals with her disappearance. Hey, who needs to let the workplace know you’re going on vacation elsewhere? Let ‘em deal with that shit themselves. That said, it does seem like a thing Luca would do. And her story does connect back with the main story in an OK way as we see in the short flashback showing Ririka blasting those fools from the space race a few episodes back. At least some people know what’s going on and aren’t totally in the dark.

Then there’s Ironbeard, whose motivations are still slightly murky. Clearly he wants to see pirates be Pirates and not fucking sideshows who rob space cruise ships so that the 1 percent can jerk themselves off as they blabber to everyone they know that they met Real Pirates and survived to tell the tale. (Slightly ironic since Ironbeard dresses like a god damn sideshow himself.) But he’s also on semi-friendly (?) terms with Blue Rose Quartz Christie, or at least friendly enough that she’ll willingly be escorted by Ironbeard to wherever he wishes to take her. Maybe she has some relation to the queen, perhaps a rebellious daughter or niece or whatever, which might explain where she gets all this ridiculous tech. Or maybe she’s just some person who got lucky enough to participate in this Pirate Hunting experiment, I dunno.

Also, I guess Ironbeard’s job from the Queen is vague enough to allow Quartz Christie to fight Marika in a laser light show space pirate battle before hauling her in. Better get that stuff out of the way and not let silly stuff like “following orders” impede pirate battles. Note that I am not objecting to this. I like laser light shows. I also like spotlights shining on Marika and Quartz for no reason at all. It’s kind of like in pro wrestling when “Stone Cold” Steve Austin comes to the ring out of nowhere to beat up Vince McMahon, but the guy in the back running the technical side of the show is always ready to have Austin’s music going within a split second of his appearing onscreen. It’s almost as if it’s planned, or something!

How many parfaits did Marika have to stuff into Chiaki to get her to agree to this? And why did they record a song at roughly the quality of a World War II-era radio show? Pirate propaganda!

If you didn’t think I would lead off with this image, then you definitely have not been reading this blog long enough.

The points where the Hunter x Hunter remake has outdone the original have been few and far between, even though the remake is a solid show in its own right. This week’s episode, however, is a clear case of the remake utterly destroying the original. It’s not even close, actually. In wrestling terms, think of it as Hulk Hogan (the remake) against the Brooklyn Brawler (the original). That’s the gulf between the two depictions of the battle between Hisoka and Gon.

The first large difference is the sheer amount of animation power put into the two versions of the fight. Obviously this is a pivotal part of the story for Gon, and Madhouse goes absolutely batshit with the fluidity and kinetic energy of Gon’s fighting style. You can feel Gon exerting every ounce of energy and power in his limbs in the attempt to penetrate Hisoka’s defenses. Every movement is impressively detailed; every strike has a proper sense of heft to it. Where the remake brute forces its way through the fight with awesome animation and sweeping camera movements, the original employs far more (and far more noticeable) directing and editing tricks to simulate the speed and movement of the battle. It’s not badly animated, mind, but the shortcuts are obvious after seeing the superior battle.

The comparison highlights the massive degree of difficulty in animating this particular part of the fight. The whole point is that Hisoka is so arrogant that he’s not bothering to move while Gon peppers him with punches. Hisoka is so confident in his superiority to Gon that he’s forcing Gon to prove himself before he’ll give enough of a shit to do anything. So you have Gon moving around a stationary target. It’s difficult to make this appear dynamic because Gon has to pull all the animation weight in this skirmish. If Madhouse doesn’t make Gon’s movement as springy and energetic as it is, then this fight would look quite boring.

The pacing and physical impact of this battle are far superior in the remake, as well. The part where Gon pulls his tricks to get that one big punch against Hisoka is where the original fight slips up. Everything happens so quickly and in such an understated manner that it doesn’t do justice to how momentous this is for Gon. Hisoka is a man whom Gon has feared and also wanted to fight more than anything since they first crossed paths. The gulf in power between the two is massive, such that even getting one punch in is a huge victory for Gon. Slow motion has long been a cliche in action shows, but here it serves well to highlight how huge the moment is in Gon’s mind. Time slows down, and the sheer “oomph” of the hit is perfectly executed.

And the sound direction! I’ve been such a nitpicky bastard with this, but I have no complaints here. The eerie, droning track in the beginning of the fight underscores what a dangerous person Hisoka is without butting in and overwhelming the action. The adventury “fuck yeah!” music kicks in at just the right time when Gon gets his plan going. Then the silence at the right moment. All we need is that punch, and that’s all we get. Fantastic. I’m so proud of my baby! ;_;

Man, what an awesome fight. Just some other random thoughts before I close out this post . . .

• I love the atmosphere before the battle. The only way it could have possibly been better is if Gon and Hisoka got entrance music. Come on, they’ve got the strobe lights and smoke machine already! Pump in some crazy music!

• More explanation of the Nen system and more examples of how much thought has been put into everyone’s abilities. This will become more important once the next arc rolls around.

And something too important to limit to a bullet point . . .

Hisoka’s bare ass! I needed something good with which to end this post since I used Crotch Shot Mk. II at the beginning.

This Pirate Hunter is Blue Rose from Tiger and Bunny. Prove me wrong.

So lots of stuff happening in this episode! Let’s start with Blue Rose up here since her screenshot is up there and everything. In the grand tradition of Mouretsu Pirates villains, she’s an arrogant fucking idiot. She’s basically toying with the Bettenmaru, because she has so many advantages that she could crush the ship any time she wants. What we know: 1) Her ship can zig zag like a mofo, although Marika has apparently figured out some sort of trick to avoiding bombardment. Maybe this is one of those dumb ships that can fire only from the bottom. 2) She has stealth and is skilled enough to sneak wherever she wants. She proceeds to use this power for taunting. Very imaginative. And 3) She has a stupid name (Quartz Christie).

I love a good, arrogant villain as much as anyone else, but we all know this lady is going to get curb stomped by the Bettenmaru, and she isn’t even doing anything to stop it aside from that half-hearted attack. Quartz can take out groups of seasoned pirates like nothing, but a ship led by a teenage girl? Why, that’s just too much, sir! She deserves to be owned in the most humiliating way possible at this point.

The only monkey wrench is the existence of these newfangled androids. I assume Blue Rose planted them on the ship, but you never know. Anyway, maybe it’s a smart plan. The Lucandroid could have been a red herring to disguise the presence of the Kanedroid. Still, there are some things that are confusing me about this. First, how the fuck is Kanedroid supposed to disguise its presence on the ship? Kane’s still out and about, as we can see, but there’s no point to making this stupid robot look like Kane if it never interacts with the Bettenmaru crew. Is it just hoping to get lucky and never run into Kane? What a dumbass robot.

The other thing confusing me is what the hell happened to Luca. Has she been kidnapped? Was she on the ship the whole time like Kane but never out front for whatever reason? Misa doesn’t seem to be too stressed out about what’s going on with Luca. Maybe they’ll get around to being worried in the next episode, but it strikes me as strange that they wouldn’t worry about that sort of thing right away.

But who cares about all that bullshit when you have another Chiaki Face?! This is why I watch anime.

I suppose the other major thing is the show moving one step closer to officially unveiling Ironbeard as Papa Katou. It is inevitable. It would also be kind of hilarious if he revealed himself as Marika’s father, gave some big speech and then he died. Or maybe he never reveals himself to Marika at all, and everyone but her knows that Ironbeard is her pops, because the disguise is so shitty. Of the two scenarios, I think I prefer the first because it would be much funnier.

Oh yeah, I guess there is one more thing . . .

Coorie, as played by Rachel Leigh Cook! I probably would have rolled my eyes at this a bit more if Coorie weren’t like “lol fuck off” at Kanedroid’s suggestion that she dress all sexxxay all the time.

Haha, OK, I have to hand it to the show for the silly handwaving this week regarding the Parabellum and its silly, theatrical technology. First off we find out that the image of the captain, who goes by Ironbeard, is actually a hologram. The thing that perplexes me is why the episode went out of its way to hide that at the end. Obviously if you think about it, Ironbeard isn’t actually standing on top of his ship in the middle of space and shouting. The image at the end of the previous episode is clearly different than the image we see here, however. I suppose it’s to make Ironbeard seem even more larger than life; really, though, it made me realize more how silly this show is that I actually thought for a moment it would have a pirate standing on his ship exposed to space and shouting.

It also turns out that Ironbeard isn’t shouting in space, since, you know, there’s no air in space. Instead, the Parabellum is pumping its sound into the Bettenmaru because, ummmmmmmmmmmmm, for the lulz? Seems like a silly use of whatever technology they’re employing. I’d be too busy laughing to be intimidated by their ship after learning of that. Ah well. It’s definitely silly, but I enjoyed it purely on the basis of the writers actually going through the effort of coming up with a dumb explanation for this stuff. It’s necessary because more than a few people, including myself, were like, “Huh? What?” after Ironbeard’s initial appearance.

Whatever the case, Ironbeard is definitely being built up a lot. I’m still leaning toward the theory that he’s Marika’s father, but even if he isn’t, he’s someone with whom both Misa and Kane are familiar. There’s always the chance that Ironbeard will be some invented character from the past, but I dunno, the dad makes the most sense. But with that in mind, why would Misa and Kane be the only ones to react? Surely the rest of the Bettenmaru crew would recognize him? Maybe that will be handwaved in some silly fashion, as well.

This is probably the most exciting event of the rest of the episode.

Most of the rest of the episode is spent alternately talking about getting the pirate crew together and PARRRRRRTAAAAAAAAAAY because Chiaki isn’t being underutilized is returning to school. The main bit from the talking is that perhaps the Grand Cross, the crazy pirate ship attacking our lucky ducky heroes, is part of an experimental force the biggest, baddest government is working on, and they’re throwing them at pirates to gather the precious battle data that always seems to be the motivation for antagonists in Japanese video games. Maybe they’re just planning on beefing up the military, or perhaps some galactic domination is on the horizon, but either scenario (and probably most others) is bad for the pirates, who will be wiped out regardless.

Even banding together doesn’t seem as if it will help much, especially if they have to face multiple ships capable of dismantling a pirate ship in second flat, but they have the sheer, plot-altering power of the Bettenmaru on their side, and perhaps the holographic powers of the Parabellum, which I am sure will help. The important thing is that by uniting with a common goal, the pirates will be able to employ The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love (of pirating), and surely an army of pirates will be bursting at the seams with hot blood, hard work and guts, so these new ships are pretty much fucked even before they begin battle.

But I do like that the plan for bringing the pirates together involves an awesome cook. That’s probably the most realistic part of the episode. I know I would be much more likely to meet with people if I knew awesome food would be there. Pirates are hearty people. They like to eat, right? Actually, there’s also another thing I liked about the episode: that the Yacht Club has its own password system now. I don’t think they adopted it to protect themselves; rather, they adopted it because they’re all good friends and have known each other for a while, and it’s a silly thing they decided to do for no real reason. It’s a cute touch.

There exists a clown who plays with knives and swords. So dexterous and fearless is he that he can swallow these tools of death with nary an injury. But one day the clown becomes too cocky. He tosses a claymore skyward and swallows it whole. The massive blade runs through the clown, emerging from his backside. He is stuck to the ground.

The clown’s friend, a wolf, panics. He sees the fear in the clown’s eyes. The music in the background swells beautifully, highly appropriate for the harrowing situation. No matter how hard the wolf tugs on the sword, he cannot pull it from the clown’s body. Clearly there is only one solution: tie the clown’s legs to poles hammered into the ground, tie the sword to a truck’s bumper and rip it out with sheer horsepower. Unfortunately, this brilliant plot goes awry. The clown is dragged all around the circus until finally the truck crashes. The sword is magically loosened from the clown’s body, but he is furious.

The clown must have vengeance.

He chases the wolf around the circus grounds, fretfully hacking away, hoping to lop off a limb or two. The wolf desperately leaps into the air, hoping to get away, but it is then that the clown sees his opportunity. He opens his mouth wide and positions himself under the wolf, who tries to flail out of the way but is sucked into the clown’s gaping maw. Inside the clown’s stomach is a lonely pit of despair. The clown’s mouth is the only source of light, the tiniest sliver of salvation.

The wolf tries to climb out, but this serves only to infuriate the clown. He tosses the sword into the air once again and drives it through his mouth and into his stomach, piercing it through the wolf as well. The clown is stuck in place again, but he is satisfied with his bloody revenge.

The preceding scenario is from the 11th episode of Popee the Performer, “Swallower.” If it sounds terrifying, bleak and violent, well, that’s because it is. But it is also ludicrous and darkly hilarious if one has the stomach for gruesome CG characters going to any length to destroy each other in the name of fun.

What is Popee? It is a 39-episode series of CG shorts directed and written by Ryuji Masuda that aired from 2001 to 2006. However this was approved, I have no idea, but bless those who gave Masuda the money and time to create this wonderful work. It truly is a sight to behold.

The idea behind Popee is the titular clown and his friend, Kedamono, bumming around a circus, wasting time. Popee is a demented creature who whiles his days away with violent activities like chopping people in two with chainsaws, flinging knives at people and tossing bombs all willy-nilly. Kedamono is often the unfortunate victim of Popee’s violent fun. The real fun, however, doesn’t begin until the 14th episode, “Great Magic,” when the owner of the circus, Papi, joins in. That’s when Popee takes the lunatic moments of the earlier episodes and pushes them to the next level.

Pictured: The Devil himself.

Papi makes an entrance befitting his dark, evil nature. He finds Popee practicing the “chainsaw Kedamono in half” trick when he is stopped by Papi. “No,” Papi’s body language indicates. “There is a better way to do this trick.” (Nobody actually speaks in Popee the Performer until the final episode, by the way. Everything is communicated through body language and facial gestures, which makes everything all the more disturbing.) Papi proceeds to run the chainsaw through his torso — even Popee is horrified by this turn of events — and afterward, his lifeless body parts crumble to the ground. The camera then switches to a box, out of which Papi emerges. The camera then switches back to where Papi was, but now it is Kedamono who is cleaved in two.

The rest of the episode concerns Popee’s quest to violently murder Papi, just to know he can do it, with Papi always finding some magical way to insert Kedamono into the situation. I won’t reveal the climax, except suffice to say it is fucking ludicrous.

There’s one important rule to Popee that governs why the series is so great: there are no consequences. No matter what happens to Popee, his friends or indeed the world itself, everything will be fine the next episode. That frees the show to not just be as violent as it desires, but also to express that violence in absurd, impossible ways. If the show were simply Popee being a violent, evil douchebag, then it would get stale in a hurry. Wanton violence for its own sake eventually becomes dull. What keeps Popee fresh, however, is the strange level of logic in which it operates.

It’s straight up Looney Tunes, pure and simple, maybe the best example of that particular brand of lunacy I’ve seen in Japanese animation. Popee is all about taking an already weird scenario and working that to its logical conclusion. For instance, in episode 29, “Dark Side,” Popee and Papi engage in a game of one-upsmanship centered around chopping watermelons in half. To show how awesome he is, Papi tosses a watermelon in the air and chops it in half with some sort of energy attack he learned from Goku or something. But it doesn’t stop there: the episode plays with the audience’s perspective in that shot, and thus Papi’s attack not only cleaves the melon in two but also the sun itself, which bathes half the world in darkness while the other half is still alight. I won’t spoil the rest of the episode, except to say the scenario goes to very funny places and the ending is quite silly and unexpected.

That type of lunacy is what kept me watching Popee the Performer and what has me now wishing I could meet Ryuji Masuda and tell him how much I adore this brilliant show. There’s a violent, mean-spirited streak running through the series, but the core of the show is silly, clever and imaginative. It’s easy to look at the ugly CG and dismiss the series as hack crap, but there is legitimate brilliance and thought put into the show and its lighthearted brutality. The show has a knack for delving into the weirdest, most unexpected places and getting huge laughs while it simultaneously terrifies. There’s one episode, “In the Mind,” that comes off like something Charlie Kaufman would write if he suddenly became interested in violent circus folk.

Popee doesn’t attempt to mimic reality; in fact, it rejects reality and substitutes its own. The whole world is the stage upon which Popee and pals operate, and anything goes. And when even the world they have cultivated does not suffice, they can always pluck from an alternate universe, such as in the 33rd episode, “Mirror.” There are no rules. Only the imagination and twisted logic of the creators limit Popee the Performer, and honestly, that is a refreshing thing to see. Cartoons are a space where anything should be possible. Popee is a series that takes full advantage of that fact, and that is why it is worthwhile.