BIRDY THE MIGHTY: DECODE (SEASON 1) - An In-Depth Review

A solid 3 stars out of 5.

One aspect of Birdy to appreciate is its straight-forward narrative. This first season effortlessly introduces us to a comical central cast that make for interesting on-screen chemistry. And along with such hilarious antics, an imminent but elusive threat to humanity gradually comes to the fore. There are no obvious metaphors or social commentaries to muddle the story. This first installment of Birdy the Mighty: Decode is beautifully simple. Its a sci-fi/teenage romance/gender bender/save-the-world scenario that offers one thing only: entertainment with no strings attached.

Tsutomu and Birdy.

                                                           

 Synopsis
    

     Birdy, an extra-planetary policewoman, is in pursuit of Basiliss and Geega, two thieves who've made off with an enigmatic but unfathomably powerful parasite called the Ryunka. They manage to escape to Earth and Birdy follows them there, but she loses their trail upon arrival, as they do a good job of disguising themselves amidst the human population. She spends the next six months in disguise so that she can continue the investigation unnoticed. And one day, she finally receives intel as to the whereabouts of the suspects...

Tsutomu Senkawa, a modest high-school teen, is supposed to explore an abandoned building with a couple of his friends. At the last minute they ditch him, and Senkawa instead continues in the company of a fellow female classmate, Hayamiya. They discover that the building isn't abandoned at all; Birdy has managed to lure Geega to the site and a battle ensues. As Senkawa and Hayamiya try escaping, he is apprehended by Geega and used as a human shield. Birdy, in the midst of the hectic brawl, accidentally kills Senkawa. With her suspect having escaped and a death on her hands, Birdy resorts to the unthinkable: Senkawa's consciousness is preserved in her own body while Birdy's police force repairs his physical body. The show revolves around Birdy and Tsutomu's attempts to coexist peacefully within the same body, while at the same time continuing the search for the Ryunka before it becomes a threat.

Tsutomu suffering the wrath of Hayamiya.

                                               

 Accolades

     Tsutomu differs from the typical male lead in an anime: he's not hopelessly ambitious and driven by unwavering principles like Ichigo from Bleach, or Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto, or even Kamina from Gurren Lagann. He's also not a complete wimp and a loser like Sekirei's Minato Sahashi. Tsutomu is balanced and level-headed, and without a tragic backstory to ruin his everyday living. He's a good counter to “Berserker Killer Birdy,” who wants to do good but uses methods that always result in collateral damage.

The early interactions between Birdy and Tsutomu are hilarious. They share a single body which can change to look like whoever is in control at the time; this allows for Tsutomu and Birdy to continue their lives as they normally would. But the only way they can communicate is through verbal speech, which results in Tsutomu usually shouting or mumbling to Birdy in public. People often stare and react to his comments because they assume Tsutomu is talking to them. We've all met strange people like that, usually in the subway or on a public bus. It definitely makes for more interesting journeys...

Hayamiya and the rest of Tsutomu's classmates are also a very good supporting cast. Hayamiya is an old friend of Tsutomu's, and with an assertive yet caring attitude she often motivates him to take action and prevents him from becoming an otherwise simple – and therefore boring – character. She and the other characters occupy a large amount of screen time, and do so without seeming too intrusive.

Sayaka, Tsutomu's love interest.

                                                   

On another note, the animation was decent and provided adequate visuals for the story. The artwork was loose and didn't rely heavily on shadows for spatial effects. On occasion the art vacillated between tighter linework and looser linework; sometimes it did so arbitrarily, and these moments were conspicuous enough to be distracting. But overall the art was okay.

During action scenes, character details are lost in favor of very loose drawings that almost blur figures and allow them to become fluid. It's a style not too far removed from the work of Kazuto Nakazawa, who animated The Animatrix's “Kid's Story,” and designed the characters for Samurai Champloo. It works beautifully for action and I appreciate the appropriation for Birdy.

A Motley Crew of Villains

     Birdy the Mighty: Decode has an eclectic cast of villains, which makes it hard to distinguish who the viewer should be wary of. There's Basiliss and Geega, who initially came to Earth with the Ryunka in posession. They had dealings with a man named Gomez, of the same race as Birdy, who works for a mysterious client named Revi. Geega and Basiliss also worked for an entertainment mogul named Shyamalan, who caused the most trouble as far as awakening the Ryunka's powers. But Shyamalan seemed to be a pawn of Gomez and Revi. There is also a pink-haired Federation agent from Birdy's planet who ensured that the Ryunka found a suitable host in Tsutomu's girlfriend, Sayaka. But this agent's relation to the other villains was left as a mystery entirely. To be fair, Birdy the Mighty is an established manga franchise, first emerging in the 1980's and then remade in 2003. Characters such as Gomez and Revi were in both versions of the manga. When it comes to manga being adapted into anime, I don't believe the viewer should be responsible for researching any background information for clarity. It's a common occurence among anime and it's a habit I'm not fond of.

Sayaka controlled by the Ryunka.

                                              

Shyamalan, the central villain for this season, is something of a mystery himself. As the sole survivor of a terrorist bombing long ago, Shyamalan developed the notion that there are elite persons in this world, a select few destined to rule above the rest and rain judgment. The Ryunka would separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I didn't realize how ordinary a villain he was until I saw Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, whose villain similarly wanted to nuke the planet and eliminate the weak through a modern – albeit man-made – natural selection process. Shyamalan's motivations are pretty simple if not one-dimensional. But if this first season of Birdy is to serve as an entertaining intro to the Birdy narrative at large, then Shyamalan satisfies such goals.

Radical Notions

     At the end of the day, there isn't too much that needs to be explained about Birdy the Mighty: Decode. It's a show one has to see for themselves before any judgments are made. There's no especially mind-blowing plot twist at the end a la Inception style. One watches it because it calls attention to itself. I rhizomatically compared Birdy to Mission Impossible, a Hollywood blockbuster, because Birdy similarly seeks to cut to the chase, throwing away any preachy notions and tangental metaphors in exchange for, well, a spectacle. And it does this very well.

Birdy Cehpon Altera, our titular character.

                                               

*I watched Birdy the Mighty: Decode for free at Hulu.com. Birdy was animated by A-1 Pictures and produced by Aniplex.

- Elijah Lee

CANAAN: An In-Depth Review

3.5 stars out of 5.

Haunting memories and lingering hatred pervade this anime, so much so that the notion of "despair" is almost what comes to define Canaan. There is certainly a light at the end of the tunnel for this anime, and the show is not without its laughs, but it takes a long time for us to finish the journey and be left with a satisfying semblance of hope. Canaan's characters are real and visceral; the antagonist is as haunted as everyone else in the show. It's not very often that an anime is able to pull that off with as much finesse as Canaan.

                                                    Alphard (left) and Canaan (right).

Synopsis
     Years ago Alphard, the show's antagonist, was trained by the mercenary Siam in the art of assasination. She earned the name "Canaan," as if it were a marker of her potential. Siam went on to train another young girl, the Canaan for whom the show is named, after her village is destroyed in war and she manages to survive. Canaan, because of her abnormally powerful form of synesthesia, shows the potential to be better than either Alphard or Siam. This does not sit well with Alphard.  After spending many years together, Canaan and Siam are attacked by Alphard, who succeeds in killing her master. Canaan has held onto her hatred of Alphard since then...

In the present day, Maria and Mr. Mino have traveled to Shanghai in order to do some investigative reporting. Maria runs into Canaan, whom she originally met some time ago in the Middle East. Canaan is currently working for an NGO that seeks to uncover the CIA's involvement with a village whose inhabitants mysteriously vanished several years ago. It is slowly revealed that the CIA worked with a terrorist organization called Snake in order to test a deadly virus on the village people. The hope was to create powerful beings who could be used in combat, beings who could be as powerful as Canaan. And this goal makes sense: Alphard is the leader of Snake, and her reasons for researching the Ua virus might be motivated by both the desire to satisfy her long dead master Siam and her distain for Canaan. The rest of the series devotes itself to uncovering the details of what occured in the "Ghost Village" while simultaneously resolving the vendetta between Alphard and Canaan.

                                            Canaan as she uses her full synesthetic abilities.

Accolades
     I give this show a lot of credit for being so ambitious. I have seen enough anime to instantly recognize when a show is going to live up to what people normally expect of anime: lengthy dialogue, absurd violence and fanservice. This show managed to keep all of that to a minimum and instead privilege viewers with a surprisingly deep story.

The characters of Maria and Canaan have a rather ambiguous relationship. It can be compared to the bond Achilles and Patroclus share in The Illiad, or even David and Jonathan in the Old Testament. In both cases there is a powerful love of companion that at times borders on homoeroticism. Indeed, Maria seems to rely heavily on Canaan for strength; Canaan can perceive Maria's kindness and love even when temporarily losing her synesthetic ability.

Maria often feels that she is a burden to Canaan, who frequently rescues her from danger and feels responsible for her safety. In a very powerful gesture of self-sacrifice, Maria is held hostage by Alphard and agrees to risk her own life in an attempt to make Canaan awaken her full potential. Maria wishes to not to rely on Canaan as the moon relies on the Sun for light, but to shine brightly beside Canaan on her own strength.

                                             Canaan, Maria (middle), and YunYun (right).

This show had the potential to be absurdly tragic. Fortunately, it did not take such a turn. There is certainly a difference between suitable, almost inevitable deaths, and deaths that are perpetrated for the sake of wanton violence, the latter being embraced by some anime. A couple of central characters die in Canaan, but death seems to have been the only natural conclusion for them. One of the victims of the Ghost Village experiments, Hakko, accidentally kills the man she loves with her voice, which emits sounds that damage the brain. She chooses to stay with his corpse as the facility the Ua victims reside in is destroyed. The woman Hakko was really trying to kill, the psychotic Liang Qi, eventually meets her own demise as she swallows pills that induce synesthesia, trying to please an Alphard who is obsessed with Canaan. Upon viewing a mirror and observing that the pills granted her white hair and grey eyes, she asks her loyal servant Cummings to kill her, mistaking her own reflection to be that of Canaan's.



Why Not 5 Stars out of 5?
     The first review on this blog was of FLCL (Fooly Cooly). I realized going into Canaan that in many respects it was nothing like FLCL. The difference between the two shows creates a perfect opportunity for me to understand how inadequate standards of "good show/bad show" truly are. Even implementing a rating system on the blog isn't something I'm crazy about, but it is certainly a practical convention for letting people know what they should expect out of any given anime. That being said, Canaan's choice to be a semi-realistic anime subjects it to particular criticisms within that genre.

Canaan's status as a synesthete was a condition I originally associated with the show's obsession with the Ua virus. But Canaan lacks the flower-shaped body mark all other Ua victims possess. The decision to make her synesthesia as powerful as it was without viral augmentation was something I could not take for granted; at some point she hacks into a guided bomb's navigation software and sends it off course by simply staring at a computer monitor long enough. As much as I'm sure the producers might want me to believe her assasination training developed her powers to that degree, I find the lack of connection between the show's main conflict (the virus) and Canaan's superhuman abilities a bit odd.

 Alphard's decision to run a terrorist organization also seems arbitrary. While she has the training to manage a group of terrorists, one has to wonder why she would bother.  In a rather hilarious rant during the Anti-Terrorist Conference in Shanghai, the U.S. president gives a speech about ending global terrorism and beginning a new era of "love and peace", a phrase he screams over and over again. It is after the speech that Alphard and Liang Qi threaten to infect the visiting international representatives with the Ua virus. The U.S. vice-president and his cabinet hastily decide to bomb the conference in order to stop Ua from being spread, but Canaan sends the bomb off course just in time. After the incident, Alphard calls the vice president and congratulates him on showing the world "the rebirth of American neoconservatism." Alphard doesn't seem to be a fan of capitalism and America's "being a menace abroad in the name of protecting third-world countries," but such concerns seem more like interesting side-stories rather than substance that contributes to the show's objectives. The CIA's involvement with the Ghost Village and Snake's Ua experiments are the only links between the U.S. and Snake that are explicitly mentioned in the show. Any other connections are not expounded upon enough to warrant attention.

                                                            Alphard and Liang Qi.

I suppose that both of the complaints above point to the larger issue Canaan's story faces; Canaan doesn't do the best job of relating the history of the characters to the present day. I will praise the show's refusal to offer a long, expositional explanation of its back story. But the fact that there is so much back story as to suggest there was an anime (or video game, in this case) before this one is rather upsetting. It alienates the viewer. For Canaan to serve as an anime sequel to a video game mitigates the effectiveness and coherence the show might have if it were a stand-alone work. Many of the reviews I've read on the show have similar complaints. At the end of the series there are a good deal of questions left unanswered.


Catharsis
     Siam was very important to both Canaan and Alphard. Indeed, he provided the foundations on which his two pupils based their future relationships upon. He was their 'light', as the show often put it, their source of hope and in some sense their reason for being. Alphard felt betrayed by him and saw Canaan as a threat, as someone that would ultimately cause her to feel despair. Canaan found a new light in Maria, while Alphard had died inside long ago because she couldn't get over Siam. Memories of a perfect past are strong motivators for a character; growth as an individual is either stunted because of hatred towards the person who destroyed such idyllic origins, or growth is achieved through forgiveness and catharsis. The protagonist in Claymore, Claire, faced despair in the form of a monster that killed her caretaker Teresa. Naruto's Sasuke longed for revenge due to the fact that his brother, Itachi, slaughtered his entire clan. Hell, Batman's motivation for crime-fighting stems from his desire to purge Gotham of the scum that killed his parents while he helplessly watched.

Behind every great hero must be a great villain, but equally so, both the hero and villain are impotent without a great motivation. Canaan is not a perfect show. But in creating characters who can feel pain and seek catharsis, Canaan certainly shines brightly among the best anime has to offer.

                                                         Most of the cast of Canaan.


*I watched Canaan on Netflix. It is also available for viewing at Hulu.com. Canaan was produced by P.A. Works.

- Elijah Lee

Musings of the Editor-in-Chief

Hello readers! This is Elijah Lee, Editor-in-Chief of The Anime Guardians. I say that with a smile on my face; for now I am the only one working on the blog. At some point it would be nice to have other friends helping me out, but for now this is something I do not mind doing on my own. It takes time to watch a series, no matter how long that series may be, and to analyze it until you feel that a decent assessment can be typed. In any case, I felt the need to notify readers of how the blog is running.

FLCL: An In-Depth Review

A solid 5 stars out of 5.

To say that Fooly Cooly is completely coherent would be a lie. To say that it's completely incoherent and nonsensical is also a lie. It's a tale about adolescence told through fantastic and metaphorical means, where girls are literally as alien as most boys believe them to be, and preteen sexual tensions are realized through phallic giant robots. But this is no psychoanalytical show by any means. If there are any surreal, dream-like interpretations to be made, then they need to be made with this in mind: dreams don't always make sense. And neither does FLCL. But it's one helluva ride.

                                                     Haruko and her trademark Vespa.

 A Summary?

     Naota, our 12 year old protagonist, is trying to grow up in a town where he believes everything is ordinary and nothing special ever happens. His older brother, Tasuku, has left the little suburb of Mabase for the United States, fulfilling his baseball ambitions and leaving Naota with a huge authority vacuum. Naota's father and grandfather are clearly incompetent authority figures, a common issue in many anime, and so Naota seemingly runs his own affairs, albeit with a persistent mood of defeat and depression. He hangs out with Mamimi, a high school girl and Tasuku's former girlfriend. She latches onto Naota as if he's supposed to replace Tasuku; she soon realizes that he is a poor substitute. Naota has a group of friends he sees at school, and when not at school he spends time with the smothering Mamimi. His life is pretty ordinary.

When Haruko dramatically enters Naota's life by slamming him in the head with her guitar while riding her trademark yellow Vespa, his life is transformed. By hitting his head, Haruko created a portal for giant machine robots to exit through. These monstrosities are creations of Medical Meccanica, a mysterious corporation housed within a building shaped like a massive iron. Their plan, from what I can gather of the rather confusing explanation the show offers, is conquer the galaxy by flattening planets so that their citizens can no longer think, much like how humans need the wrinkles and folds in their brains in order to think. The iron-shaped building, then, is apropos. In one of the monsters that is released resides Atmosk, king of the space pirates, who Medical Meccanica has imprisoned and Haruko wishes to capture so that she can take his powers. Each of the six episodes is devoted to the unveiling of Haruko's secret agenda and how Naota fits in it. Naota's adolescent concerns, in the meantime, are compounded by the emergence of these monsters from his head; he constantly covers up the mysterious acne-like lumps on his head, which eventually turn into monsters when he is incredibly stressed.

                                                     Our very confused protagonist.
Accolades

     In comparing this show to other anime, I have to say that when I originally saw this on Adult Swim many years ago, I was instantly amazed by its uniquely loose and free animation style. To date, the only other anime I've seen with similar animation and bold storytelling is Gurren Lagann (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann). Both shows were produced by Gainax.

FLCL won awards for “Best Anime Comedy” and “Best Anime Short Series” at the First American Anime Awards . And it has won many other accolades. The show is definitely one of a kind and set the stage for anime that would later feature exaggerated character expressions and explicit references to world culture. Naota's father comments on a green jacket he wore similar to what Lupin the 3^rd wears in the Miyazaki film, Return to Cagliostro. There is a whole scene where Haruko mentions Jimi Hendrix and Elvis and Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers. And Mamimi's cell phone is manufactured by Cyber Dyine, a play on the Cyberdyne Systems defense network that exists in the Terminator franchise.

                                                          The ever-mysterious Canti.     

This isn't a show for people who want complete coherence in narrative. This isn't a show for people who cannot stand action sequences that stretch the limitations of animation to their breaking points. There's a short fight in episode five where Haruko is dueling agents who are after her and Medical Meccanica. They fight in an absurd John Woo, Matrix-style shootout where bullets fly and dozens of suited men emerge from windows and air ducts, shooting before they even have their target in sight. Haruko meanwhile has been blowing them up with her guitar, which has been outfitted with a gun attachment and lets her blow up agents like Scarface. It's zany and enjoyable for those willing to reconstruct what they think animation is allowed to do.

“Older women can have a strong effect..."

     Earlier I mentioned the show's attempts to show adolescent angst through stress-induced monsters coming from Naota's head. They always show up at awkward times, like when Naota tries to kiss Mamimi and is rejected. The monster then emerges from his forehead and shoots up into the sky, resembling a giant penis in the distance. The agents after Haruko observe this; one of them has hearts coming out of her eyes as she admires it. And most of the women in the show are like that whenever Naota's monsters emerge.

Indeed, one of Naota's challenges is understanding his relationship to the two central women in his life, who seem to be seeking something through him. They want things that a teenage kid would not understand, but is suitable enough to provide a semblance of. Could be true love and comfort, could be an outlet for sexual tensions, like how Mamimi leaves hickeys on Naota's neck when she's really in love with his older brother. Or in the case of Haruko, it could simply be that she needed Naota in order to reach Atmosk. Poor Naota! He's got a long way to go before he scratches the surface of how love works.

                                                        Mamimi and her 'boy-toy'.

Plausability

     FLCL takes us on a fantastical journey into a town where “nothing amazing happens”. Of course, Mamimi circulates an iconic photo of Naota atop ruined buildings, holding a guitar, just before she leaves to become a photographer; the guitar is sitting in Naota's room at the end of the series. Canti, the robotic vessel for Atmosk, is still in Naota's home, cleaning and cooking. But Naota has moved on with his life, wearing a new school uniform and hanging with his same crowd of friends.

      At some point in the series Naota asks Haruko, “Who are you, really?”, to which she replies, “I'm an illusion of your youth, a manifestation of the feelings in your adolescent heart.” In a similar manner, films such as Inception and even Cowboy Bebop: The Movie question the “reality” of unfolding events through self-reference. Did anything occur in real-time consciousness, or was everything contained within a dream? There's enough unresolved questions at the end of FLCL to convince me that Haruko was indeed a real person in the context of the show. But I suppose every trippy story must leave open-ended questions, as if paying tribute to The Twilight Zone. At the end of the day, does it really matter? Haruko was real enough to provide me with one entertaining show.

                                                            Most of the cast and crew.

* I did not mention the show's music, which prominently features songs by The Pillows, a Japanese rock band. I don't see how I could describe the music adequately, so I suggest watching the show to understand. It certainly adds to the zany flavors of the show's themes and animation. Check it out!

I watched FLCL on Netflix. It is also available through Hulu.com, and the DVDs are available on Amazon.com. FLCL was produced by Gainax, Production I.G., and Starchild Records.

- Elijah Lee