"Who Asked You?"
A Rhetorical Question
Time to share my opinion on two pieces of animation with those of you who care.
Spoilers may follow in this article for the Harry Potter series or Elfen Lied
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is easily the best movie in its series.
Cutting out the subplots of the movie was nothing to praise, I'll admit. The nuances of the book are lost on the movie. The movie omits house elves entirely. Is this a bad thing? Maybe not. It was certainly an annoyance in the book. However, the Rita Skeeter angle was unfortunately underplayed, because she was absolutely SPIFFIN' AMAZING in the movie. Granted, it doesn't really play into the grand scheme of things, so it's not like we're losing anything big off of the later movies.
The movie required suspension of neutrality several times, which was sort of disappointing but somewhat expected, too. But if you haven't read the book, which I tried to pretend was the case, you will quite likely find yourself entirely lost. The Quidditch World Cup will breeze by you and leave you scratching your ass awkwardly in the theatre seat, trying to figure out what happened. Then you draw upon your knowledge to piece it together. I'm not sure whether or not this was the intent, but it wasn't the best of effects.
One of the major character flaws of this movie was Dumbledore himself. A formerly benign and soothing figure somehow became an aggressive "badass" guy, as if the movie creators had skipped directly to the sixth book from the third and pumped him full of cocaine. Dumbledore angers extremely easily, and he totally loses his calm in places where he should be serene or quietly disturbed
The other butchered character was Hermione. She's a good character in the books - just cute enough to make her bearable. In this movie, Emma Watson pulls out all the stops. She bitches, whines, shrieks without reservation. She doubles up on the patronizing voice with seemingly no redemption. And she looks like Legolas. What the hell.
But enough of this negatives. We KNOW that the movie can't stay loyal to the book, and we're pretty convinced that it can't be as GOOD as the book. But who cares? There were many great scenes, and it was loaded with innuendo. Neville had his moment too with "I KILLED HARRY POTTER!?" The maze, while partially abandoning canon, was pretty damn awesome. The atmosphere was impeccable. I can't be sure if that's how I imagined it in the book, but remember: keep your neutrality unless asked to suspend it.
One more note.
It may seem like a paradox, and indeed it is... but even in a movie, words are sometimes much more dramatic than actions. In the end of the book Goblet of Fire, there are SEVERAL long strings of dialogue. There is a perfectly tense monologue which Voldemort delivers to his not-so-faithful servants and to Harry. There is the agonizing confession of Bartemius Crouch. The fight between Dumbledore and Crouch. Any of these could arguably have been the climax of the book. And yet the movie omits all of them. Instead of playing around any one piece of courtroom-like drama, the film breezes through them, focusing on the bangs and the action - Dumbledore using Kungfu, anyone? - and basically compressing a highly dramatic ending into what feels like deus ex machina squared.
When I lay it out objectively, the movie had a TON of flaws. Yet I liked it, a lot. It somehow had the appeal that was lacking in the first and second movies, and despite pacing issues, it was indeed more satisfying than the brief flick that was the third movie. Bring on the next...
My project for the last few weeks was Elfen Lied. I knew that it was highly, HIGHLY esteemed before I even knew what it was. I came in with mid-high expectations, hoping for something enjoyable if not god-like.
Similar to the above story, actually, in my expectations. But while I came out of Harry Potter with a grin on my face if a full bladder, I have much more mixed feelings for Elfen Lied.
A few confessions/disclaimers so that you won't start calling me the devil: I don't watch a lot of anime. Elfen Lied is probably the first anime of its type that I've watched. And I do not pretend to be an intellectual heavyweight, ESPECIALLY in something like anime or manga.
What IS Elfen Lied? A good place to start.
Elfen Lied is a horror anime. It's thirteen episodes long, and there are no official dubs for it. My source: The Internet. Surprise!
The anime is set in the future. It involves a topless woman for much of its early episodes. I really don't understand why she's topless, though. She isn't attractive enough to draw attention for her attributes, anyway.
Blood galore. We discover soon that Lucy, our protagonist, is a master of the bloody kill. She floats eerily, deflecting futuristic gunshots and ripping people apart ... seemingly with her mind. The chaos and death is meaningless, aimless, tastless, and rampant. Excess is the word here, as it was for Louis XIV. You are so conditioned that it becomes almost utterly meaningless to see heads rolling, limbs severed.
Lucy is adopted by a boy and his cousin, one of whom has great dark past significance, the other being a total loser. Her split personality forms, with a Pokemon-like mono-syllabic happy side and a sadistic, man-killing, kickass side. Neither side is particularly interesting, but she develops an attachment for the boy. She demonstrates her might a few more times, providing dramatic irony for us, and other tales begin to form.
A side story forms deep in the futuristic world. Vice and corruption are the name of the game as the sinister "director general" reveals the world of dicloniuses, a special way of putting catgirls in anime without calling them such. Trouble is always brewing as people try to find ways of subduing Lucy. Eventually this involves introducing another catgirl who is thankfully much less obnoxious and far cuter than Lucy.
To make a long story short, the past unravels itself. Flashbacks reveal a long-lost relationship between the boy and Lucy, explaining their affinity for one another. One catgirl chases another; troops from the lab use the catgirls to find their prey.
Elfen Lied has an open ending, no doubt. Lucy's fate remains undecided at the end of the series in a rare instance of beauty with the chiming grandfather clock. The lab remains open: Do any more diclonius beings remain? What will the lab do to Nana, the little survivor diclonius? What the hell WAS the story behind the corrupt Director General?
Along with the virtue of an open ending, however, the anime suffers from misrepresented potential. The Director General's grand efforts result in... nothing, really. The adoptive child Mayu comes into slight prominence for a few episodes and falls back, totally unimportant for the next five episodes. The survivor of Lucy, Bandou, results in nothing of significance in the end but a few cool scenes. The alliance between Bandou and Nana never comes to true fruition, despite it having most excellent implications.
I'm not an intellectual, and I believe that Elfen Lied is not your typical shounen fighting anime, but rather a psychological horror anime. Fair enough. It does a decent enough job of creating tension and atmosphere - but to me, in all the wrong ways. I don't really care WHEN a person is going to die, and for much of the time, the anime gave me little to care whether IF a person will die at all. A large portion of the slaughtered characters did not evoke any sympathy with their deaths. The scientists seem like drones with faces; all of them seem to think the same way and have the same predictable patterns.
There are good things about Elfen Lied. Some of the characters were awesome. I'm thinking of Nana and Bandou when I say "some of the characters", though neither lived up to the potential the anime led me to expect or desire. Some of the character interactions are cute, and there are actually some scenes that drew my my emotion or pity. Nana's "death" in the third episode did sadden me, and I actually sympathized with Lucy a great deal by the end, perhaps more than my joking nature would have indicated. It did redeem her for me, but not quite enough. In the end it was a mixed bag - sympathy, anger, pity, in small doses - but mostly idle disgust.
Perhaps Elfen Lied is good on a level of which I am totally unaware, far beyond what I've listed. That's fine. If you find out, and if you care, do tell me, and I'll probably revisit it. Otherwise, I'll stick with Kenshin... and Bleach.
SD
Nov. 23, '05
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