October 2003 Archives

I returned from California, only to find my poor Sox out of the playoffs. There's no buzzkill as potent as the Sox falling to the Yankees in the post season. The only thing that I could think off that would take the edge off was to see Uma Thurman weilding a samurai sword. Since that would be impossible to arrange I decided to go for the most available alternative: Quentin Tarentino's latest film Kill Bill.

How impressive is Kill Bill? I had to send my pants out to be dry cleaned afterwards. Uma's the Bride (who's real name is rumored to be Beatrix) is one of the best badasses, standing shoulder to shoulder with Solid Snake and Jack Bauer. It says something when even the immortal Sonny Chiba thinks you're a badass.

And not only was she a kickass lady, we got to see her fight other sexy and dangerous ladies such as Vivica Fox and Lucy Liu. Never before has such female ass kicking taken place on one screen (and don't bring up Charlie's Angels which was too crap to count). Jesus, the fight between Uma and Fox alone is hardcore enough to be its own short film. While the final battle between Uma and Liu (and a horde of Yakuza thug) is everything that the second Matrix wanted to be and wasn't.

How can Kill Bill: Volume 2 top this one? Well, a Uma-Darryl Hannah fight will go a long way, also a fight with David Carradine (I mean good goddamn, this is Caine from Kung Fu!).

But a surefire way would be to have more Sonny Chiba.

Tarentino's one of the best kinds of comic geeks. He reads them and loves them but he'll never let them take over his life (Kevin Smith once talked to him to get him to write a comic book but unfortunately they don't pay their writers enough to warrent his time). The filmmaker's comic references, like many of his references, are deeply ingrained into the story. For example in Resevoir Dogs, Mr. Orange's line, when describing, Joe Cabot as "the Thing. [He] looks just like the Thing." or in True Romance the fact that Clarence Worley is a comic book clerk.

Tarentino's biggest influence for his post modern masterpiece (for those who actually went to a real school, post modernism is the concept of examining past trends in new contexts, of creating intertextual relationships where two seperate pieces of work speak to each other) was the kung fu films of the sixties and seventies. Another influence was anime and manga (which were influenced by the same films). I'm not going to go too far into this because I believe that Whitney's article covered it well enough.

The angle that I'll take is that Kill Bill gives comics and cartoons a real chance to bust on onto the bigger scene. From the anime adventures of Kenshin or Ninja Scroll but also the manga like Lone Wolf and Cub (as was Road to Perdition). In this era, a filmmaker or songwriter or author or anyone can really can produce something that is reflective of other material. Now is a time when we can work our comic lexicon into the mainstream pop culture.

So go out, and slip little comic references into your conversations. People will think you're edgy and cool.

Like many other cool kids, I went to go see Kill Bill the weekend that it came out. Like many other cool kids and several respected movie critics, I thought it - in simple words - kicked ass. But my reasoning for this opinion of ass kickage comes from a different viewpoint than Roger Ebert's. He loves it because it's an explosion of postmodern filmmaking (which I love it for, too. One of my quotes upon leaving the theater was "That was the moviest movie I've ever seen"), and I love it because I'm an anime fan.

Part of me almost wants to be mad at Quentin Tarantino. This is manipulation! Of course I'll enjoy a movie that evokes the same reaction from me as my favorite anime! Of course I'll be entertained by blood and violence that has never existed outside the world of ink and paint before. That bastard! He's done nothing new, innovated on little, he... he... God, Uma Thurman is hot with a katana.

The anime fan who watches Kill Bill will get a different sort of appreciation than the average moviegoer. Joe Q. Never-Seen-Ninja-Scroll will simply be startled and probably laugh a little when Thurman's Bride slices a man clean in half down the middle, but I - and no doubt others - could only think of Vampire Hunter D. Kill Bill uses some of the most classic elements of anime violence, like the delayed reaction. Blood only spouts from a decapitated man's neck after a few seconds have passed for dramatic effect; I can't even begin to name how many anime have used this blood-spurting device.

Kill Bill resembles anime in more than just the flavors of its violence, but in its overall structure and makeup. I've been watching anime for around ten years, so I've become desensitized to two-dimensional characters, people whose only defining characteristic is their costume and the type of weapon they use, and disjointed, abstract, occasionally incoherent storytelling. But seeing it in an actual real life movie is strange and refreshing. And also soaked in blood.

Oddly enough, one of the only sequences in the film that didn't really evoke the feeling of anime was the sequence actually done in anime. The style was different from standard anime, or any animation I've seen, for that matter. There was something more visceral, more violent, more real in the sequence that gave me goosebumps.

I recommend Kill Bill to just about anyone with a taste for chicks with swords, and especially those who like them animated.

Tagged with: Kill Bill

Last week I talked to you about the negative effects of fanservice on the artistic integrity (I feel like such a tool when I use phrases like "artistic integrity", but that's what it is, darn it) of a work. This week I come to you with tales of a more positive form of fanservice, but one not without its negative effects. No, I'm not talking about boobies this time. I'm talking, at long last, about Solid Snake.

As you may or may not know, the original groundbreaking Metal Gear Solid is getting a high-tech remake for the Nintendo GameCube as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (this, combined with the Cube's recent $50 price cut, is all part of a Nintendo plot to steal my money, but that's another article for another day). The first trailers were released recently (okay, maybe not recently, but I just saw them, and it's my column and I'm the Resident Metal Gear Solid Historian, so if I say it's recent, it's recent), displaying what can be done when fanservice is used for good. This is a case where a good game can only be made better, and deserves to benefit from the advanced in technology that have come since its initial release. We're not talking crap like George Lucas gave us with the "special editions" of Star Wars (although the addition of a musical number by Otacon would make the game the most perfect thing ever. Make a note of it for Snake Eater, Hideo.) The Twin Snakes remake is done with care, with complete re-recording of the massive amount of dialogue (Snake is more Snake-y! Otacon is more geeky! Naomi is no longer British! But Liquid is Liquid, but I wouldn't want him any other way. BROTHER! But I digress), and the expansion of scenes to make them more dramatic or just plain cooler (I reference the Meryl sniper scene for the first category, and the ninja for the second. The ninja. ...I use too many parenthetical comments). I'm frothing at the mouth just from brief glimpses of cutscenes; if the gameplay is even half of what Metal Gear Solid 2 provided, it may possibly be the best game ever created. But, I'm a Metal Gear fan.

Nintendo has made quite a business out of remaking popular games from older platforms. Several Resident Evil remakes have been released, with just as mouth-froth-inducing improvements. Companies do this because, obviously, these are games that sold massive amounts the first time through; releasing them again only shinier and cooler can only make more money. Now, I have nothing against making money; I quite support it. In fact, give me money. Now. I'll wait.

...

Okay, nevermind.

The problem that comes with these remakes (and their cousin, the never-ending series of sequels, of which the Resident Evil series is possibly the worst offender) is that it makes for creative stagnation. Why bother to think of a new game just as cool as Metal Gear Solid when you can just slap a new coat of delicious, delicious paint on it? Why come up with anything new when you can just make another Mario game?

Hard questions to answer when you're busy rolling on piles of money. Also, a hard practice for me to object to when I know that in a few short months, I'll get to see Solid Snake and Otacon ride off into the sunset together with super high-quality graphics. Love blooms on a battlefield with real-time rendering. I'm the happiest girl on earth.

I come to you today to talk to you about fanservice. You may think fanservice comes only in forms that involve boobies, but this isn't true. Sometimes it comes in a more insidious form, one that refuses to let the series its serving die. It keeps it walking the earth, roaming soulless and empty, and sometimes also doing this with big boobies.

Exhibit one for fanservice gone awry is an obvious choice: Final Fantasy X-2. Now, I will be honest; I'm excited about this game, I want to play it, I'm totally into the idea of changing clothes in the middle of combat. But when I first saw the image, that image of Yuna in her hotpants with guns, I was horrified to the depths of my soul. Final Fantasy X had what was, in my opinion, the best and most artistically satisfying ending of any Final Fantasy game, and one of the best for any RPG, period. How could they continue it? And moreover, how could they continue it with something that obviously didn't want to carry on the same theme and tones from the original? By bowing to the altar of fanservice, of course. Sacrifices at that altar will get you lower cut shirts and big sexy guns. While now I have some sort of vague hope that FFX-2 will not be a desecration of the original story line, it's not much... and what is there is very, very influenced by hotpants. Damnable hot pants.

The second fanservice crime is also being committed by Square. Now, I'm perhaps in a minority; I didn't like FF7. It had a weak and convoluted plot made even worse by a poor English translation, and an incoherent college art film ending. But, it was the first Final Fantasy for the Playstation, and was the first RPG for many gamers, so it lives on shining and bright in the memories of many. Square knows that shiny memories can make for shiny money, so they've recently announced a continuation of Final Fantasy 7 in the form of a DVD-release movie. (Square is also bitter that the Final Fantasy movie tanked, so they keep making beautiful CG short films to say, "See? See what we could do if you'd given us money? Chumps.") Information on this film so far says that it will take place two years after the ending (didn't everyone die in the ending? Was that all a dream? I still don't understand) and matches together Cloud and Sephiroth to battle again. Ignoring that part where Sephiroth died in the end. Because he's obviously too pretty to die when he could come back in full realistic CG looking like an androgynous J-rock star.

Call me cynical. No, I'm serious, do it right now. I'll wait. ... Okay, now that that's done with, I have to say that I do not expect anything good from this continuation. It'll make money, it'll make fans happy, but it won't clarify the story; if anything, it'll make it worse. But fanservice isn't about artistic integrity.

I plead for game, television (Three 'final seasons' of Friends? That's fanservice), movie, and comic companies to take a look at the other side of the globe, my old friend Japan and their anime and manga industries. That is the beautiful world of the finite storyline, encapsulated into twenty-six episodes, or twenty books of manga. That's the world of a beginning, a middle, and an end, and when they say end, they mean it.

Let good media die before it gets bad, and let bad media stay dead.