May 2015 – Diabolical Plots

Anime Review: Parasyte -the maxim-

written by Laurie Tom

Though I have a lot of affection for Parasyte, my experience is colored by having been a huge fan of the manga for years. I recognize that adaptations need to make changes and that doesn’t bother me. There are some things that I think were improved by having done so, but at the same time, there are others that absolutely did not bother me in the manga that just felt flat when translated into the animated medium.

Parasyte is the story of Shinichi Izumi, a high school senior who is the victim of a failed attempt by a parasyte organism to take over his brain. Instead of burrowing into his brain, the parasyte landed in his hand and matured partially up his arm. The result is that he and Migi, the parasyte, are two sentient beings that share one body, with Migi controlling Shinichi’s right hand and arm while he is awake.

Normally parasytes gain self-awareness when they take over and mature in their host’s brain, and at that time they gain the urge to feed on their host’s species as prey. Needless to say, when the parasytes first appear, it looks like there’s a rabid ax murderer on the loose leaving body parts all over the place, but with time the parasytes learn to clean up their act to avoid drawing attention to themselves and their feeding grounds.

The parasytes are every bit as intelligent as humans without being entirely human themselves. They do not have emotions, relying on what is practical and what is instinct, and they are able to distort the parts of the body they assimilate into a living weapon (so when parasytes fight it looks like the formerly human heads of their hosts turn into bladed tentacles). But despite being powerful predators of humanity, they have a great deal of difficulty in understanding how human behavior works, which is a debilitating weakness for creatures who rely on disguise to avoid attention.

This is the crazy reality that Shinichi finds himself grappling with when everyone else in Japan doesn’t have the slightest idea that there are real monsters going around eating people. The only reason he knows is because of Migi, who is both friend and foil. Though Migi possesses the cold logic of parasytes, he also understands that if he is to survive, he must convince his human host to work alongside him, which results in Migi having a better understanding of how humans tick. At the same time, Shinichi teaches Migi about compassion and how complicated humans are when emotions and practicality intersect.

It’s an interesting play between them, with Migi being willing to give Shinichi possibly false reassurances simply because he knows it will make him feel better, and Shinichi explaining to Migi why using a wall of people as a shield against another parasyte is an unethical tactic. Arguably the relationship between Shinichi and Migi is really what makes the show, as both of them gain the understanding and empathy for each other’s kind.

The themes in parasyte are thoughtful; about humanity’s place in the world, about each species’ right to exist, about the nature of coexistence and who gets to set the rules.

But the pacing is off, and this is where I don’t like the anime so much.

Parasyte follows the manga surprisingly closely, with many shots being drawn from the same angles as the original panels. Its devotion to following the source material even results in episodes where the biggest moment happens in the middle of the episode, or shortly after the beginning, and I can’t help feeling that part of the reason is a lack of desire to trim or expand the original story.

This problem will likely be mitigated for future viewers who can watch as many episodes as they like in one sitting, but waiting a week between simulcasts made the pacing annoying.

I also think that Parasyte loses a bit of its edge from the sanitization needed to get it on TV. The first episode is fairly faithful to the manga and left quite a bit in (though with minimal blood), but after that point most of the gore is off-screen with characters reacting to it.

While I’m rarely a fan of gore, I’d argue that it’s important in Parayste because one of the key points is how much of what makes us human doesn’t make sense, and our sensitivity to what a predator instinctively does in nature is a part of that. The gore isn’t created because the parasytes are sick bastards. The gore is created because the parasytes are going about their business and doing what’s most practical (for them). By not showing this, the anime’s impact is blunted in its ability to widen the gap between what the audience tells itself it believes, and what the audience actually believes.

But there are good parts to the adaptation too.

There weren’t a whole lot of changes made, but when the anime did deviate from the manga, the show was noticeably stronger. Yuko was promoted from a one-off character to an actual member of the supporting cast, which paid off in the Shimada arc since the viewer had additional emotional investment in her survival. And the anime made Kana much more sympathetic, taking a character I really didn’t care for and making her someone worth worrying about.

The manga was written in the late 80s/early 90s in the pre-cell phone era, but Parasyte for the most part makes the transition to modern day well. School uniforms and hair styles are updated and a scene where camera film needed to be destroyed was easily revised to where the camera itself was taken apart. The only part that really didn’t work and too easily telegraphed that something bad was going to happen was when a character forgot her cell phone, whereas there was no cell phone to worry about in the original.

I think the anime has less to offer those already familiar with the manga, but for those who have never experienced the manga in the first place, it’s a good entry point with substantially less gore for those sensitive about on screen violence. There really isn’t anything else quite like it, particularly if one does not mind mulling over the nature of existence in the same series as human-chomping monsters.

Number of Episodes: 24

Pluses: faithful to the original award-winning manga, poses interesting questions about the nature of human morality, Shinichi/Migi dynamic owns the series

Minuses: strange episode pacing with oddly chosen cliffhangers, in a couple cases the update from the 80s to present day results in characters being stupid in order for plot to happen, music score is uneven with some scenes have emotionally jarring musical selections

Parasyte -the maxim- is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

laurietom Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and Crossed Genres.

Anime Review: Death Parade

written by Laurie Tom

deathparade

The concept of Death Parade is nothing new. Stories of people being judged after death goes back to the earliest religions. But what makes it special is watching the various souls who pass through for judgment and how the judgment process itself is potentially unfair.

Death Parade has some manic customers, but the series itself is understated, letting peoples’ lives, and deaths, unfold for the audience at the same time as it does for the mysterious woman who is Decim’s assistant; Decim being the arbiter who decides the fate of the people being judged.

The woman without a name has no memories and serves as the audience’s surrogate because she does not know what she is doing in this purgatory world where the staff look like elevator attendants and barkeeps, and the souls of the deceased come to be judged.

All the inhabitants there are neither alive nor dead, having been created specifically for the purposes they carry out. Decim is an arbiter who works in a bar called Quindecim (Latin for “fifteen”) where he periodically receives two souls that died at the same time, which means they will be judged together.

While this sometimes means they died in the same event, other times it’s just coincidence and they do not know each other at all.

The memories of the dead are partially suppressed, leaving them unaware of being dead and how they died. Once in the bar, they are convinced to play a game with their freedom and their lives at stake. The game is typically competitive, designed to bring out the worst in the players as all their regrets return and they come to realize that their lives are already over.

But still, people are complicated. Death doesn’t change that, and even after death there are surprises.

The first episode is a whopper of plot twists and revelations, focusing on a married couple, their history together, and how they ended up dying. But the real stinger comes in the second episode, which shows the same story from the perspective of Decim’s assistant and turns everything on its head once more.

Though there is a certain episodic-ness to the story, with new characters constantly coming and going for judgment, there is an larger overarching storyline. I don’t really care for the higher level scheming, because I think it raises too many questions about how the whole afterlife system works and who put it there in the first place, but I do like the friendship between Decim and his unnamed assistant.

It takes some time to grow during the early episodes, but it becomes clear that the inhuman Decim is being changed by his amnesiac companion, who clearly wasn’t created in the same fashion he was. Her history and her beliefs become the emotional core around which the rest of the series revolves as she becomes increasingly disillusioned with the idea that it’s possible to judge a person without having really known them.

Death Parade surprised me, largely because the woman’s progression is so gradual I didn’t think too much about it until the last few episodes. When I started this show, I did not think I would end up needing a tissue in the end, but I think anyone’s who has experienced the loss of a loved one will be able to relate.

I highly recommend this series. It does get a little lost in the middle, but it’s short and packs a powerful punch.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: judgment games are interesting to watch, facial animations are top notch and really drive home the emotions spilling out of the characters

Minuses: meanders a bit in the middle, worldbuilding outside of Decim’s bar isn’t really that interesting and not well addressed

Death Parade is currently streaming at Funimation and Hulu and is available both subtitled and dubbed (though dub requires a Funimation subscription). Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

Anime Review: Magic Kaito 1412

written by Laurie Tom

magickaito Magic Kaito 1412 is a largely episodic series centered around the adventures of Kaito Kuroba, a high school junior who moonlights as a gentleman thief to thwart the people responsible for the death of his father, the original Kid the Phantom Thief.

The source manga was started in the 1980s and only went three volumes before Gosho Aoyama launched the much more successful Detective Conan (known in the US as Case Closed), and despite efforts to modernize the setting, there are still plot sensibilities that feel much more at home in the 80s than modern day, such how easily and quickly Kaito becomes the new Kid the Phantom Thief. In a play on words, Kaito the protagonist’s name and “kaitou” the word for “phantom thief” are pronounced almost the same. It’s that kind of show.

Magic Kaito 1412 quickly runs through the origin story of the second Kid the Phantom Thief and from there mostly follows a stand-alone format, featuring a new heist or personal adventure of Kaito’s each episode (barring multi-parters). Sometimes characters are introduced and come back in a later episode. Sometimes they are never seen again. But this isn’t a particularly deep show, or a realistic one. It’s all about having a good time as Kaito tries to deal with the thefts and his double life.

As a gentleman thief, Kid always sends advance warning that he’s going to steal something, and then proceeds to do. Nothing stops him; not traps, not guards, not even a date with his not-really-girlfriend (though he does have to get creative with the last one). And because he’s the son of both a magician and a thief, many of his thefts involve a high degree of showmanship, making use of misdirects, disguises, props, and other tricks to help him set up the theft and get away.

A lot of what he does is not humanly possible, but are the kinds of things that the kid in us wishes we could do. Kaito is cocky, hyper-competent, and gets away with almost everything.

Then, because Kaito is only stealing things to stay one step ahead of the crime organization that killed his father, he returns the stolen gems afterwards when they turn out to be different from the one he and his enemies are looking for. (I guess it’s understood that if Kid gives it back, it’s obviously not the right gem, because we don’t hear about those gems being stolen again later.)

Despite the fact the premise is structured around his father’s death and thwarting a crime organization in search of immortality, Magic Kaito is generally a light-hearted show that’s eager to please. Most times, the reason why Kaito is constantly stealing things isn’t even brought up, and he doesn’t wallow in the negative emotions behind his motivation (though the two-part finale does raise the question about how he really feels about what he’s doing). And while Kaito’s double life is not a new topic in storytelling, I love that it’s more often a source of comedy than the drama it could have been.

The episodic nature of Magic Kaito also makes this series lovely when time commitment is a problem, since there’s little need to remember storylines from one episode to the next, but it does have a flaw that has nothing to do with how individual stories are presented.

Detective Conan and Magic Kaito are conveniently set in the same world, and Aoyama never forgot his earlier creation. Kaito in his Kid persona has made several appearances in Detective Conan, which is a franchise juggernaut with more TV episodes than The Simpsons. By the time this review is posted, the 19th Detective Conan movie will have released in theaters featuring a face off between Detective Conan and Kid, who takes up as much space on the movie poster as Detective Conan himself. Awareness of Kid is huge among the Japanese fanbase.

This leads to the problem where Magic Kaito 1412 just can’t cut the apron strings to its more famous brother. The first time Shinichi Kudo shows up in Magic Kaito (before his transformation into Conan) it’s a fun nod to the genius teen detective and a real pain in the butt for Kaito, when he realizes just what he’s up against. It’s definitely one of the better episodes because Kaito has to work so much harder for his win.

But someone must have decided that the show needed more Conan, so there are subsequent crossovers which directly correlate to episodes of Detective Conan that were never licensed in the US. While it’s nice seeing Kid match wits with Conan, the handling could have been a lot better, leaving me feeling like I had missed something because there was a Conan version of the story that the episode assumes I’ve already seen.

It’s particularly egregious that the episode where Kid and Conan first meet face to face is not in Magic Kaito 1412, leaving newcomers to assume they had met at some point before. Fortunately, in this case, interested Americans can watch episodes 78-79 of Case Closed streaming on Funimation to get up to speed (they fit in right after episode 6 of Magic Kaito 1412).

All said and done, I really liked Magic Kaito 1412 to the point I can safely say it’s my favorite show to have come out of 2014. It’s not perfect, but it’s the sort of thing where you know exactly what you’re going to get and it delivers. Watching Kaito steal things as Kid and parade around friends and enemies rarely fails to put a smile on my face. He really sells the show and everything that comes along with it.

I can see why Kid is a perennial favorite among Conan fans, and the show seems to have done well in the TV ratings, so I’m hoping that it will return sometime in the future, though there is very little manga material left to work with.

But if there is next time, please, more Kid and less Conan.

Number of Episodes: 24

Pluses: doesn’t take itself too seriously without being completely preposterous, Kaito in his Kid persona is really fun to watch, almost as much focus on Kaito’s life out of costume as in it

Minuses: no definitive ending since the manga is unfinished, Kaito is so skilled a protagonist he’s rarely in substantial danger, crossover episodes with Detective Conan/Case Closed are not newcomer friendly

Magic Kaito 1412 is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled.

Anime Review: Aldnoah.Zero

written by Laurie Tom

Aldnoah.Zero got off to a spectacular start, being the only show of 2014 that left me completely mindblown by the end of the first episode, and for its first half it was my favorite thing that year. But it takes an unexpected direction after the halfway point and I don’t think it was for the better.

In an alternate present day, Mars has been colonized thanks to the 1972 discovery of a warp gate on the moon by the Apollo 17 mission. But Mars was still an inhospitable world and one of its early settlers discovered the remnants of an alien technology called Aldnoah. Aldnoah bound itself to his genetic material so that no one other than him and his descendants could activate it and he declared himself emperor of the new Vers Empire on Mars. Those who served him became known as knights.

In 1999, war broke out between Earth and Mars over sharing resources which resulted in the shattering of the moon’s warp gate, much of the moon itself, and stranding large chunks of the Martian military in the resulting satellite belt. Though the war ended with the breaking of the moon, it was not a decisive win for either side. Now in 2014, the Martian princess, Asseylum, granddaughter of the man who was first bound to Aldnoah, wishes to visit Earth in an overture of peace.

The story in Aldnoah.Zero really needs to be spoken about in two halves, partially because there is a time skip at the halfway point. The first half centers around the apparent assassination of Princess Asseylum by Terran terrorists (actually Martian terrorists who want to overthrow the royals, but when Martians and Terrans are both humans it’s not easy to tell them apart). Technologically superior Mars declares war and underequipped Earth is quickly invaded.

We see the war largely through the eyes of two characters; Inaho Kaizuka and Slaine Troyard. Though both are Terrans, Inaho has always lived on Earth and Slaine crash landed on Mars as a child and grew up as a servant of the Martian royal family.

The first half of the series is stuffed with fantastic underdog battles where Inaho takes out enemy pilots in superior mecha by outthinking them. Each Martian mecha is different, with unique powers and weaknesses due to the Aldnoah technology, making their defeat a puzzle to be solved. As a result, no two battles are the same.

As Inaho is trying to protect the princess, who didn’t actually die in the terrorist attack, Slaine is trying to rescue her and foil the plans of those who would have her killed. The two teenagers repeatedly come into contact with each other on opposite sides of the battlefield. Even though both of them fear for the princess’s safety and want her returned to stop the war, Slaine is afraid the Terrans will manipulate her and Inaho fears the same about the Martians, especially knowing that it was other Martians who originally tried to kill her.

This conflict comes to a head in the mid-series finale, which was amazing… except then the time skip happened.

How well the time skip is received likely depends on which male protagonist the viewer related to the most and how much they care about Slaine, who has proven to be a divisive character.

The second half takes time to get going with some strange plot concessions that range from improbable to head-scratching that ends up undoing much of the shock that happened in the mid-series finale and the plot is clearly restructured as a fight between Inaho and Slaine and what kind of future they want to bring about. Despite the fact they both love the princess doesn’t mean that they’re on the same page about protecting her.

The puzzle battles largely disappear, replaced by political intrigue and more general skirmishes as if to remind the viewers there’s still a war going on. The rest of the cast is still here, but largely fade into the background, leaving several of their personal stories unresolved.

As for the princess herself, while she is active and trying to stop the war in the first half, she is sadly fridged for a good portion of the second (almost literally) because otherwise things wouldn’t have gotten out of hand to the degree they did. She’s not a bad character, and once she’s active again she makes it clear that she is not a prize to be won and chooses her own path, but it would have been nice if she hadn’t spent so much of the second half as a figurehead.

I have mixed feelings about the second half largely because it wasn’t what I expected after the first, and I don’t think enough was done to explain the change in Slaine over the timeskip. While he doesn’t come across as a drastically different person, it’s clear that something about him is off and doesn’t entirely jive with who he was before.

And that’s the problem. The second half rides almost entirely on Slaine, whether or not the viewer buys his actions and the motivations behind them, and it’s a bit strange considering how powerless he was in the first.

Aldnoah.Zero could easily have run into another season if a different decision in the final episode had been made, but it manages to wrap up all the major plot threads in a satisfactory manner, as well as the fates of the three main characters of Inaho, Slaine, and Asseylum.

Overall, I would still recommend Aldnoah.Zero to people who aren’t otherwise inclined to watch mecha shows, because it focuses so much on interpersonal relationships and how communication (or lack there of) drives so much of what happens between people. There may be giant robots, but they are hardly the focus. The battles are well thought out, particularly in the first half, and I never felt like someone pulled an instant-win card to get them out of a tough strait.

But if one finds that they cannot stand Slaine in the first half of the show, it’s probably not a good idea to continue as it’s unlikely any opinion on him will improve.

Though I rarely comment on music, composer Hiroyuki Sawano has done a fantastic job with Aldnoah.Zero, creating memorable tracks such as “No Differences,” an anti-war theme that only plays during combat scenes, as if Princess Asseylum herself is there to remind the soldiers of Earth and Mars of why she had come in peace in the first place.

Number of Episodes: 24

Pluses: mecha combat where tactics matter, first half is full of unexpected and awesome plot twists, distinctive and memorable music score

Minuses: Slaine’s murky change in morality in the second half, second half is substantially weaker as a whole than the first, Martian side of war isn’t as fleshed out as its Terran counterpart making them harder to sympathize with

Aldnoah.Zero is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, Daisuki, and Hulu and is available subtitled.

Kickstarter for Long List Anthology Launched!

Today is the first day for the Kickstarter of the Long List anthology. The purpose of the Long List anthology is to celebrate more of the short fiction chosen by the Hugo voters. This will be done by soliciting the short fiction works on the Hugo “long list” that the Hugo administration publish every year after giving the award. See the Kickstarter for more details

Thank you!

DP Fiction #3: “In Memoriam” by Rachel Reddick

I go by the cemetery every day on the way to work.

It’s not really a cemetery so much as a memorial. We don’t have the space for old-school burials like they did back on Earth. We don’t have the dirt to spare. We can’t spare the organs or nutrients left in the bodies, either. Anything that can be kept for later medical needs is preserved, and the rest is returned to the hydroponics and organics cycle.

We just have the memorial, which is between the main engineering section and my place in the habitation level. It’s a major intersection of corridors, and one of the largest open spaces that’s pressurized. It’s also the one small area where a few ornamental plants are grown, roses cared for inside their own boxes. The patch with plastic strands of grass always seemed strange to me, but perhaps they comforted those who came before. Their names are listed, starting in one corner and working their way down and across in steady columns. Names and dates, names and dates. People proceeding from life, into space, and into death.

I wish I could have met some of them. These were people who had known life on a living planet, and had chosen to leave it all behind. They committed themselves and their descendants to life as travelers through an empty desert, unto the seventh generation. Did they ever dream of finding a shortcut, and breathing the fresh air of the green world that we are chasing?

We never found a shortcut. If someone else found one, they have long since passed us by. The speed of light still stands as the ultimate limit, and we can only travel at a fraction of it. There isn’t even the option of sleeping through the long trip. We can store seeds and germ cells for centuries, but safely freezing a human brain and body has proven impossible. There are no non-toxic chemicals to prevent ice crystals from forming and shredding every tissue, severing the connections between neurons. Destroying what we sought to preserve. Thus, we end up taking the trip the long way.

For the most part, it’s a pleasant enough life. But I find myself wondering what it would be like, to live on a planet, where the gravity doesn’t vary so much from one level to another. Where the Coriolis effect from our spinning ship doesn’t send every thrown object a little bit sideways. Where we don’t have to keep track of just about every molecule and waste nothing. Where the sky outside the windows could be blue or cloudy, not always black with pinpricks of light. Where the arts of geology and meteorology are actually practiced, and not merely passed down from one generation to the next so that the knowledge is not lost. Where I am not a tech, and poetry can be something more than a frivolous hobby in between repair jobs.

Something different from here, where the dead are nothing more than names etched on a metal plate, and records stored in computer memory.

But then, ultimately, that is also true on a planet. Buried bones join the earth, only more slowly than our recycled ones do. After a few generations, all the personal details are lost. There is no one left who knows the stories behind the names and numbers.

The computers remember what people bothered to record. There are images of the celebrations of departure, and fewer of the settling into routine thereafter. We receive transmissions from Earth, too, but the increasingly distant news about cousins many times removed provides little comfort.

So I write when all the ship’s systems are running smoothly. I want to make sure that at least some stories are not forgotten. Not the grand stories, the sweeping tales of courageous repair of the hull or rescue from an engineering test gone awry. The little ones, about watching a child learning to walk at 0.5 g or the jokes told while on plumbing duty.

Nonetheless, I can’t help but wonder what it will be like when we arrive. I have seen all the simulations of the sails unfurling. I have done some of the work on them myself, ensuring that they will be ready at the proper time. But the schematic of what it will do is less than what it is. The great sail will be a wing glittering ever brighter as the ship approaches its place of rest.

I will never see the sails open, or the blue-green oasis at our destination. There is a large blank space on the memorial, and one day, my name will be added to it.

I will never see the sails, but perhaps my children will. And I want them to know how much I longed for this, and remember our lost generations spent waiting in the desert.

So I walk by the cemetery every day. I read the names etched into the wall and try to imagine what the people must have been like. I try to remember the stories I hear about them and what is recorded of what they did. I spend a little more time on the more recent names. These were people I knew. My grandfather, who could make anything you want out of tofu and some mysterious secret ingredient. My grandmother, who could tell you where the stars were without even looking so long as she knew the time. My old friend, who died young in an awkward fall while goofing off like we all did. Now they are nothing but names and memories, and each of them is a small part of what sustains those of us who remain. I hold on to that hope, knowing that I will always be a part of those who follow after me.

The visit to the cemetery doesn’t last long. If I take a small detour, it’s on the way to work.

Author’s Note: The main idea behind the story was to answer one question: what would the passengers on a generation ship think in the middle of the journey? They have never lived on a planet, and never will. How do they keep going?

Rachel Reddick followed a passion for space through an astrophysics PhD at Stanford University. She is currently participating in the Insight Data Science program, to work on more down-to-Earth problems. Nonetheless, she enjoys Star Trek, as well as speculative fiction of all flavors.

If you enjoyed the story you might also want to visit our Support Page, back the Kickstarter for the Long List anthology, or read the first two story offerings:
DP Fiction #1: “Taste the Whip” by Andy Dudak
DP Fiction #2: “Virtual Blues” by Lee Budar-Danoff