Well, I finished Utena.
Yes, including the movie. I'd been told about the car thing, of course, but uh... I was kind of expecting it to be an odd little throwaway that would take three minutes, tops, not a sequence that would occupy the entire final act. Really, I'm trying to think of good things to say about the movie and not coming up with much; it looks fantastic of course, but that's de rigeur for long-playing animes, and neither the occasional setpieces nor even naked girls everywhere (and occasionally kissing) counteract the ever-present sense that the whole thing completely lacks a center. Even as a mindfuck it just doesn't do very well - the weirdness at the end of the series (baseball during council meetings, Akio as a yaoi photographer) worked far better in that respect than even the infamous car chase. I think they set out to make a spectacle, and a spectacle is what they got - but as a follow-up to the series, I'm pretty let down.
The series itself continued to be a mess, well, pretty much the entire way through (if only other animes were as good at being messes as Utena!). It's definitely one of the greats, anyways. In the end, though, I'm a little unsure of how to think about it. It's a very charming and seductive show: it intends to play with you a bit. This works well to a point, but the cost is that much of it feels a bit artificial, as if it's there for my benefit rather than the series. Even the last two episodes, as nicely as they tie together all of the show's motifs, come across as a bit contrived (in the sense that conflicts are introduced in order to resolve them). The Jury arc, as much as I enjoyed it, is another prime example: it's a perfectly wonderful bit of storytelling, one of the best in the series, but the fact remains that they had to pluck a new character out of thin air in order to get it running. In a sense, I feel a bit manipulated, albeit not to the same degree that you get in far lesser series (I'm looking at you, Mai Hime). Utena is moving, extremely original, and pushes the sex envelope about as far as it can go (the "making lunch for tomorrow" scene at the end of 33 may be the most sexually charged moment in anime history), but I think it's trying to seduce me a bit too much. Its make-up is a bit too thick, its dress slightly too excessive, its whispers a little bit forced. As consistently weird and edgy as Utena is, I can't drop the feeling that something like Rose of Versailles finally goes deeper in the end.
MOVING ON. The weekend before last, I drove up to Toronto for Anime North. There I got to hang out with some friends of mine for a good four days, drive around a lot of Ontario, gain an appreciation for Canadian currency (some of you would now be dubious about retiring the one dollar bill and replacing it with one and two dollar coins, but they work brilliantly; you need to use them for a few days before you're convinced, but trust me on this), and most importantly see Halko Fucking Momoi live.
You already know about Halko, even if you don't recognize the name - the voice is pretty much unmistakeable (wikipedia it). It also happens to be the case that she's one of the best live acts in the world right now. First, a qualification: for the Anime North show Halko didn't bring her whole band, nor even her keytar. Furthermore, it seemed very much like they expected the show to be something of a bomb, much like the Honolulu shows from last year (you can find the videos on the 'tube, and the crowd is pretty dead), so you get the sense that resources were saved wherever they could be. That said: she easily put on one of the best live shows I have ever seen. When the show actually started the crowd was about as genki could be, and Halko definitely responded. The woman is like a ball of enthusiasm radiating everywhere; the crowd, if it's a good one, magnifies the energy it and sends it right back at her. I've been at a few shows where something like this happened, but only with Halko was it so positive. The whole room just oozed a kind of goofy, naive, all-encompassing good will, with all of it focused through the seifuku-clad singer bounding around on the stage. It was just incredible. When I found out about the phenomenon of calls I was a bit worried that they would ruin the effect, but the opposite was the case: down in the crowd, you actually connect with the show better while trying to wave your glowstick in unison with everyone else (Halko egging you on the whole time). So there I was: a 20-something, overweight beardo in grad school, jumping like crazy and cheering my lungs out. I was expecting the show to be good, but not that good. Rock and Roll, thy name is Halko Momoi.
The whole ideology behind Halko's shows is a kind of otaku universalism: we're all hopeless geeks, we share a kinship with every other otaku in the world, we like what we like despite a complete inability to justify any of it, and goddammit we have faith in the basic goodness of mankind to help things turn out for the best. It's a way of thinking that would be a complete nonstarter here in the US (reliant as we are on the twin selling points of sex and world-weariness), but works beautifully once you get a crowd going with it. Halko herself is an otaku among otakus, the queen of Akihabara, and she demonstrated this in her Q&A sessions and the signings (I asked that she sing Konya Wa Hurricane for her next cover album - if it happens, you have me to thank). That, of course, is the key to it all: she herself exemplifies what she tries to draw out from her fans. As an American, I can't help but feel a sense of loss. We don't really have idols here, not anymore. Jay-Z may put asses in seats, but he won't make you a good person - Halko, in contrast, just might.
Oh also, I bought myself a Domo-kun. It's very cute, and still watches over my bed while I write this.
