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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.)
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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?
Filed under: Anime Tagged: music, slice of life, sora no woto Image may be NSFW.
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