By “lots of things” I mean war and soldiering; mixed technology; “Amazing Grace,” music, and sound; art and the making thereof; and slice of life group dynamics. Each episode might revolve around the delivery of some sentimental idea — hey, it’s slice of life — but Sora no Woto is shaping up to be something more complex than I would have guessed.
I have to respect the character who willingly shoulders the more burdensome aspects of soldierly existence, the character who understands the tank, as it were. Doubly so, even; as a narrative technique, Noel’s attitude keeps the viewer sober. It’s not that I want a show with a clear “soldiers are bad” message — that’s obtuse, and anyway I don’t think that’s what Sora no Woto is doing. But, as in anything, we’re going to come up with positives and negatives when we size up the military as a pursuit, and I like that Sora no Woto isn’t turning military life into nothing but frivolity and fun. Death is present; death lingers around the Takemikazuchi, and evidence thereof can be found throughout the town of Seize. Here we find the sort of balanced approach that I find most desirable.
I also particularly enjoy Sora no Woto’s technology level, and I think the show gets away with mixed tech fairly well.
Here; I’ll explain something about my evolution as a reader/consumer/nerd. Once upon a time I swore by high fantasy. And I mean swore by it. If there was magic, there could not be technology beyond the level of, say, the crossbow. Halberds were okay, as long as their wielders didn’t march alongside firearms regiments. The point is that I wanted nothing to do with gunpowder, or, really, with anything more complicated than a pointy object (it must be said, too, that I had little grasp of the technological development of Earth). But as I…matured? Developed? As I changed as a reader, anyway, I came to enjoy settings whose state of technology was wildly mixed. Computerized walkers and World War II guns, for example. Or, to reference something a friend of mine wrote recently, early 20th century European technology minus aircraft and plus behemoth land vehicles.
The problem lies in how to justify technological development divergent from that of Earth. It’s certainly not impossible; as genres, science fiction and fantasy bring to bear an inherent degree of improbability anyway, and their readers tend to be okay with this (I hope). But whatever justification exists must make some sort of sense to the reader, in the interest of facilitating the construction of coherent fictive space (or suspension of disbelief, if you prefer). Better no justification than contextually illogical or simply ridiculous justification (we might say that the justification is the context, and that’s why it must be so comprehensible).
Sora no Woto does it right, or at least acceptably, I would say. Without people to maintain knowledge bases, knowledge will be lost. Even assuming this setting had what we’d consider fairly advanced computers at some point, computers require operation and maintenance by skilled workers, and it’s easy to predict what might happen when all the IT people and computer science majors are conscripted. The Takemikazuchi’s computer stores some cultural information, we discover, but probably not much, insofar as it’s devoted to the operation of a tank.
We know that Kanata has perfect pitch. And this is quite an appropriate talent for a character of her general mold, one who sees beyond the surface of things and experiences fleeting moments intensely. She’s able to shut her eyes and see in a very literal way.
But how about that “Amazing Grace?” Bloggers have already scoured the use of the song for meaning; check out Crystal Tokyo and Moe Sucks, for example. What I’m wondering, though, is how “Amazing Grace” localizes Sora no Woto, so to speak, or how it affects which consumer groups interpret the show in what way. For whom is the use of the song powerful? For whom does it fall flat? In the United States, for example, “Amazing Grace” is practically cliche. This isn’t stopping American viewers from finding the song effective, mind you, but I suspect there’s a degree of eye-roll factor at work for some viewers. Has the song penetrated Japanese culture to the point that it’s passe among Sora no Woto’s most immediate audience, as well?
The presence of meta-art goes a long way toward promoting my enjoyment of a thing. Here we get a contentious claim — “talent” has little to do with artistic success, if even it exists at all — but, it must be said, it’s a claim with which I agree implicitly. Art is about learning systems and conventions and applying them; perhaps one whose mind is especially suited to this sort of thing might be called talented, but I tend not to put much stock in mystical notions like “talent” and “inspiration.” Art is work. (Though this may simply be the opinion of an untalented individual, I suppose.)
Let’s reign things in by talking about slice of life protagonist groups — because, in my experience, slice of life anime (that is, anime in which slice of life is a significant functional genre) tends to focus on core groups of recurring characters, even when individual episode plots largely involve meetings with characters who will never appear again. We need to see character development, after all, and I’d imagine that multiple characters developing at length in different ways help hold the viewer’s interest (not that a story with wholly different supporting characters in almost every chapter couldn’t work — Mushishi pulls it off, for example). It seems to follow, in many cases, that the central protagonist or point of view character — usually but not always the character who joins the group most recently, relatively speaking — alters the group dynamic or realigns the group such that everyone can begin to overcome their hangups. Note the symbiosis; it’s as if the protagonist’s inclusion renders the group a complete system, an unbroken circuit. Usually the protagonist doesn’t make the rounds of the group and save everyone singlehanded. Is it simply a strength of group-oriented slice of life — a genre in which the best a tree can do is contribute to the forest, perhaps — that Mary Sue and her derivatives are easy to avoid? Or am I underplaying the role of the individual here?
I think the most fascinating aspect is learning the historical background for how things turned so bad the way it does in this series. It’s fun speculating on how the cultures co-mingled to the point where French is the best-understood written language, why characters have mostly Japanese names, and so forth.
Also, agreed on the talent bit. I think talent is an excuse for those who aren’t willing to put the effort into mastering something. If you put in the requires of diligent practice, (the amount that Gladwell says you need anyway), there’s no reason why you can’t rise to the top of your craft.
Here’s the funny thing, too — given her perfect pitch, we can probably say that Kanata is “talented.” But until she actually learns the right way to do things, her talent doesn’t mean much.
Yeah, this one allows for a lot of speculation. In fact, I think I’ll be perfectly satisfied if the show doesn’t clarify much, and leaves the setting and its history largely to the imagination.
Re: Slice of Life genre
I think one important reason that SoL (slice of life) tends to feature a recurring group of characters is that most of us experience life as interactions with pretty much the same group of people day after day. This could be family, friends, or school or work mates.
Another important part of SoL genre is often seasonality (in Sora no Woto we have already seen the celebration of a festival, for instance). Seasonality is often linked to gatherings of people who know each other well (as opposed to meeting new people).
A third reason would be that constantly introducing new characters can inject too much event into the narrative (whereas the hallmark of SoL is really the emphasis on quiet observation).
~JJbees
What I’m inclined to wonder, given your first two points, is why slice of life protagonists aren’t more mobile than they tend to be. That is, besides “that one group” we always see, with which other groups do they associate? In may cases we just see the one. Of course, SnW isn’t very far along yet, and Kanata may well find herself another circle or two.
The third point, though — often the introduction of new characters in virtually every episode drives the plot. I’m thinking of Aria, Kino’s Journey, and Mushishi, among other things. Perhaps the focus on the central group actually dampens the jarring effect of all these minor characters, or perhaps the development of the central group parallel to characters who appear and disappear suddenly helps the viewer tie together all those isolated plots.
First a caveat: most anime blend a number of styles or genres, so few shows are exclusively SoL, and, therefore can pose contradictory examples. In fact, I would say that Kino’s journey is a blend (with some SoL). The new characters (and all of the traveling) plays into an “episodic” plot structure – that is the plots are generally contained by episode boundaries (and typically have no impact on subsequent episodes). This type of storytelling used to be the norm on American TV; in fact, Kino’s journey is not that dissimilar from Star Trek:TOS. My point here is that the introduction and disappearance of characters that you describe isn’t necessarily a feature of the SoL genre, but rather that these shows are drawing upon other storytelling conventions as well.
With respect to your first question, one show that did show a lot more than the central group was Haibane Renmei, which showed where each of them worked, as well as the place where they shopped.
I’m not trying to elevate slice of life above its station, so to speak. There’s no such thing as a story with one genre. What I’ve observed, though, is that shows in which slice of life is a significant genre at play often have an episodic structure. Not that such a structure came to be with slice of life anime, but that slice of life anime employ it often. I’m comfortable calling it a feature of the genre, or a genre marker, as it were, even if it’s neither a new nor an exclusive feature.
Haibane Renmei is a good example. As far as I remember, it shows us enough of the “non-core” groups that we get a feel for Glie’s human dynamics, but not so much that point of view is broken. It’s been a while, though; I really should watch it again.
Re: Haibane Renmei. I love that show. It freaked me out the first time I watched it, because I was expecting endless easy days eating pancakes with the gang, then it started hitting some real emotions. One of my favorite things about it is that it really shows what you can do in only 13 episodes.
Yeah, it’s pretty surprising. I like what it pulls with its POV character/”main” character setup. Ahh, I really want to watch it now…
It’s very easy to accept mixed technologies in speculative fiction if you just think about the various levels of technological “ability” different countries around the world possess today. Just because a nation builds super tanks doesn’t mean these technological advances benefit all small town civilians, even within that same nation. I would be pretty annoyed if I was fed some bogus rationalization in lieu of depicting the conditions these people live in. SoL is very much about showing>>>telling, moreso than just anime in general IMO.
Yeah, this is what it comes down to. I don’t really care if the show goes out of its way to justify it. I’d rather it not bend over backwards.
I was thinking, though: I wonder if the average American fan lacks that real-world context of technological variation. I mean, we don’t exactly have tremendous technological disparity here between cities and small towns, relatively speaking. And while there are poor areas that may vary more widely than average, I figure an anime fan, simply in order to have access to anime, is most probably middle class.
We probably have more technological variation then you realize. Compare some town in Appalachia to Wall Street. Even though they have some specific kinds of advanced stuff down in the holler (fancy tv and a new pickup truck, maybe), the folks there do not have a clue about the kind of futuristic tech the big money uses every day (artificial intelligence to detect trading patterns, etc.).
Hahaha…well, as it turns out, I live in Appalachia for most of the year. In a college town, granted, but I’ve had an opportunity to get to know the townies and the natives. And while these people may be banjo players, they play electric banjos, and trade stocks, and have cable internet and so on. I mean, I’m not sure the average citizen of some Blue Ridge Mountains town could tell you about Wall Street AI — hell, I couldn’t — but I guarantee that people here pretty much have access to the same resources as the average American when they do their trading. Instant communication and e-commerce are pretty serious equalizers.
I did see a guy wearing nothing but overalls, once. But only once!
I’d assume the technological disparity would come in when we compare the general populace to the government and military, and to the computer industry, whose employees would have access to things that the majority wouldn’t.
I’d assume the technological disparity would come in when we compare the general populace to the government and military, and to the computer industry, whose employees would have access to things that the majority wouldn’t.
And to big corporations. That is why I mentioned Wall Street. I don’t want to overstate things because there is a considerable technological divide that separates anywhere in USA from, say, Somalia. But my point was that the guy stocking the milk case at Walmart doesn’t realize the extent of the discrepancy between his use of technology and that used by the more powerful interests in society.
Wall Street AI is a perfect example because they have been big users for at least 10 years. This technology could be used by educational organizations or consumer protection groups, and so on, but they don’t even know about these mature technologies.
Not as extreme as Sora no Woto, but it does make me think SnW is not as far fetched as it might at first seem.