new (to us) anime

[cellio]

Dani now appears to be hooked on The Twelve Kingdoms, a Japanese anime series. I'll call that a successful birthday present. :-) (I started with anime that I already know he likes and then looked to see what people who like those also like. There is always risk in this approach.)

(Is "Japanese anime" redundant? I don't know if there are other sources, which is why I specified.)

I bought the first two discs (chapters? seasons? each disc has five half-hour episodes, which is unusual by US standards). I learned only later that the first three discs complete the first arc of the story; oh well. (I wonder how many episodes there are in total. It's anime, so probably a bazillion.)

I do not know a lot about anime, so I don't know what's standard and what's innovative. The story begins with three Japanese teenagers being sucked into another world (the twelve kingdoms); they experienced it as someone coming from the other side and bringing them over, and what the other side experinced was a destructive storm. This apparently happens from time to time; the outsiders to that world are seen as responsible for the damage, so they're generally shunned or worse. In this case, the king of one of the twelve kingdoms wants them dead. (Or maybe only some of them.)

During the first ten episodes we learn that it wasn't an accident that these particular people were brought over; one in particular has a destiny to fulfill in this world. She, however, is your typical teenager who has some growing up to do. We start to see that in the second batch of episodes, which is good -- in the first she spent a lot of time whining and snivelling, and it was starting to wear thin.

I like some of the secondary characters we meet, particularly the rat-man we meet in the second batch. (ralphmelton, I thought of Tobin in our D&D game.) These half-humans/half-animals ("hochi"?) are only a couple steps above out-worlders to most people.

It's a fairy tale of sorts, so at some level we know that the hero is going to end up ok in the end. But it'll be interesting to see how it develops. I think Dani's going to order the next disc soon. (Maybe I should nudge him to get the next disc of Infinite Ryvius at the same time.)

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Ahh, Juuni Kokki. Good series, what I saw of it. Its arcs are very atypical of anime--the normal season is 24-26 episodes, but Twelve Kingdoms is based loosely on a set of books, and some things got reworked in odd ways that cause it not to fit well.

Japanese teenagers, especially girls, being sucked into another world is actually pretty cliché. Fushigi Yuugi, Escaflowne, El Hazard, and Inu Yasha are/were all popular series based on that premise, and I'm sure there are more.

Rakushun's not a rat, he's a mouse. :) Also, watch the other girl of the trio--she gets to be a more interesting character at the end of the arc and into the next one.

OTOH, just about when I stopped watching was the point when I developed an urge to smack around almost all the characters, sometime during the third arc. I can't tell you if it gets better after that. I hear that they ran out of money sometime in the fourth arc and had to cancel, so the ending may be a little sudden. :)

[cellio]

Thanks for the information.

Rakushun's not a rat, he's a mouse. :)

He looked more like a mouse to me; Yuko (and others) referred to him as a rat and he didn't correct them.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

The word in Japanese is the same. I'm just guessing mouse from the ears and the fact that rats are culturally dirty or something. That might have been the point, though.