James recently asked me to help out with content on the OB World, and because I have no life I enjoy writing about anime so much, I readily agreed. So about once or twice a week -- depending on how energized/insane I feel in a given week -- I'll be posting here. Good times!
I already do mini write-ups/reviews of sorts on my World, and more in-depth posts on my outside blog, so I want to do something slightly different here. Basically I'll be doing quick highlights of series -- what makes them unique in comparison to other series, with the occasional tidbit of history thrown in for good measure. I'll definitely highlight more obscure and/or older series, but I won't be biased toward them -- more well-known series will be written about here, as well. And I swear I'll try to keep these posts as lean as possible; I'm not knowledgeable enough on many series to do tl;dr posts on them, anyway.
With that said, the subject of my first post is 1998's Kare Kano!
(By the way, it took me a half hour to settle on "The Hybrid Rainbow" as the official title of these posts. The lesson, clearly, is that I am a loser.)
Kare Kano is the most avant garde romantic comedy (is there a bigger oxymoron?) this side of Annie Hall, which is probably the last thing one would expect from a story about a high school girl who proclaims herself the "Queen of Vanity" and her relationship with a boy who is perfect on the outside and fragile on the inside. In fact, it probably gets more unbelievable by the year that not only did Gainax adapt the manga, but also Hideaki Anno, of all people, directed the series.
In retrospect, though, who else could have directed Kare Kano? I've read only a small portion of the manga, so I cannot give any major insight as to whether Anno shifted the focus of the story in any significant way, but he doesn't alter any of the energy, comedy or fun in the story (the pure energy of the story, particularly in the beginning, is crucial). What he does do, however, is intensify the focus on his interests -- the examination of Yukino Miyazawa and Souichirou Arima's romance as it develops from innocent love to a full-fledged, complex human relationship.
Every aspect of their relationship -- physical, social, emotional -- is explored. (And, mind, this is nowhere near as dour as this makes it sound; Kare Kano is by no means Evangelion 2.0.) There are plenty of other characters in the series, and they get their fair share of attention (the arc involving Tsubasa Shibahime, a youthful-looking girl who is close with Arima, is particularly fun), but the series is about Miyazawa and Arima, plain and simple. Anno and Gainax are not interested in providing a cheap romance with the courtesy happy ending; instead, under the guise of a fun story, they want to track the development of a relationship between two intelligent, good kids.
How many series do that? How much of any popular entertainment -- TV, movies, etc. -- will go down that route? Most anime don't give a second thought to what happens after the main characters confess their love and get together. They could break up after a week for all we know. Kare Kano barely gives a crap about any of that. Miyazawa and Arima get that confessing business out of the way in the second episode, and they move full speed ahead from there, sometimes insanely in love, sometimes clashing, sometimes jealous but always supportive and growing. Their relationship is almost always interesting, with Miyazawa in particular -- who may be the best female lead in any anime romantic comedy -- holds up her end of things.
Possibly just as famous as the series itself, if not more famous, which is a shame, is the way Kare Kano crashes and burns near the end. Masami Tsuda, Kare Kano's author, was infamously displeased with the direction in which Anno took the series, which led to Anno's removal from the director's seat. Kazuya Tsurumaki, who would later go on to direct FLCL, took over for Anno, but the series was well on its way to trainwreck status by then, a mess of recap episodes, random side stories and episodes with radically different animation styles (some work, and some don't -- I actually like the paper cutout episode).
Kare Kano starts off with the potential to be anime's greatest romantic comedy (and some would say it achieves that despite how it ends), but hell, even if it falls short of that, fans should be glad to take two-thirds of a special series that flirts with greatness over any number of solid series that are released today.
