One of the things that anime is surprisingly not very good at is creating a fully-realized fictional ‘world.’ When you open up a fantasy book (and fantasy is of course the best genre for fictional worlds) you are often confronted with a ‘world map’ right off the bat. You will be given details about all sorts of countries and locations and customs, etc., to bring this world to life as you read. The reason that this doesn’t really happen in anime is for the same reason it does happen a whole lot in JRPGs – time.
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Genres are always a tough subject to discuss because they are based on the decisive reasoning of a group in an attempt to classify something and thereby give it a place in the greater database of human thought. Genre debates are a pain in the ass because many people seek to diversify the definitions of a genre, which doesn’t make any sense because the entire point of a genre title is to be absolute and objective. On the surface (no pun intended) Umi Monogatari looked like an Aria spin-off almost. For obvious starters, it’s directed by Junichi Sato (Aria), has some focus on beautiful background art (Shichiro Kobayashi is art director and he’s definitely one of the best), has quiet, soulful piano songs by composer Ken Muramatsu, and some extremely familiar character personalities. However, Umi Monogatari seems to be hiding a slightly darker card up it’s sleeve. Ouran’s school newspaper, the licensing of Clannad, Romeo X juliet, Sword of the Stranger, Gunslinger Girl Il Teano, Hayate the Combat Butler, and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and fanboying over Tama the Cat, all in the newest Anime Insider volume. After watching episode 8 of Aria the Natural which had a lot of focus on some key points of Akari’s design, I decided to post about her. Smiles that move mountains. Aria the Natural 2 appealed to my sense of beauty and adventure of locations. Episode 5, though, was something much more specific – an episode about The Spot. |
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