Mononoke

(minus the Hime)

I ran across this anime while wiki-walking 'round TVTropes. Twelve episodes, subdivided into five stories, with all but the fourth playing up damsels in distress for cheap pathos, cheaper moralism and feminist bonus points. After a glance at its Wikipedia page I was about to dismiss it... until hitting upon Chiaki J. Konaka's name. Sure enough, plot-wise, the two stories credited to him move less predictably, with characters displaying more diverse motivations beyond crimes against the ovary, and the old animist angle of Japanese folklore played more poignantly. Still, this ain't Lain, Paranoia Agent or Bebop. Don't expect much else than young adult ghost stories.

The series' main claim to fame is of course its visual style mainly suggesting 19th-century prints, and I will admit quite a few scenes come across as striking. But were I to call the animation "stylized" or "minimalist" you would be on solid ground to read that in its all too common usage as code for "cheap" despite the occasional fancy layering effect. Between the usual anime 0.5 FPS routine and single-frame panning shots, gawping reaction shots, etc., plus slow credits and other filler like reiterating the hero's shape/truth/reason gimmick and redefining mononoke every single time, each 23-minute episode has maybe 10mins of actual content.

They're good enough minutes at that. Worth a gander. Particularly interesting to note the use of distortion and smash cuts to emphasize the magical realist coextension of the supernatural athwart the mundane, to mystify the viewer between the seen and unseen worlds. Most often it's unclear until the end of the episode (if even then) whether events happen in order, happen in reality, or whether ontology is being rewritten as you watch. A bit forced, but rare's the show where such confusion works at all instead of merely being aggravating.

Supposedly a movie follow-up's coming out soon, and I have to wonder why this wasn't cut down to one or two long-form adventures in the first place. Over the years I've repeatedly been struck by the sheer amount of padding in the movie/TV industry (regardless of continent) especially in 2007 when games had not yet overtaken film in profitability and you'd think air time would be at a premium. I've remarked before that for example Netflix' best offerings come in the form of short sub-season miniseries, with longer shows that should've been allowed to die after their first season degenerating into trite pandering. Granted I watch little TV these days, but it's hard to think of a modern show like MASH or ST:TNG running season after season and still having something to say, much less improving. Isn't it odd that as on-demand binge-watching became more common, the length of our most noteworthy serials appears to be shortening instead of lengthening? Long-runners tend more and more toward the "Fast and Furious" or superhero movie intellectual level, with soap operas still going strong. Is this just market dilution no longer supporting ambitious long-term projects, "reality" TV taking over longer formats, is it another symptom of our short attention span, or are more of the better of us less motivated to veg out every single evening in front of the same endlessly reiterated setting, endlessly reiterated cast, endlessly reiterated running gags? Is the middle class (young or old, east or west) now more or less prone to let itself be passively inundated by the laugh track, night after night, in that comforting place where everybody knows your name?

Anyway, do watch at least episodes eight and nine of Mononoke. Apropos of nothing, it has a lovely example of a wampeter and granfalloonery.