Netflix's Bleach: A Lovable Mess

Netflix has a bit of a bad reputation in the anime community, and I feel that it isn't entirely undeserved. Like Crunchyroll and Amazon, Netflix co-funded some great anime such as Aggressive Retsuko, Seven Deadly Sins, and Little Witch Academia in exchange for the exclusive distribution rights of these shows outside of Japan. That's pretty great if you ask me. However, unlike Crunchyroll and Amazon (and also Hi-Dive, but they don't fund anime productions, just stream it), Netflix doesn't stream new episodes as they are airing in Japan. Instead, they choose to wait until after the season has finished airing and release the whole thing all at once, ready for binge-ing. Many in the seasonal anime community don't like this, myself included, since keeping up with seasonal anime can be pretty demanding all on its own and once a completed anime season is released, seasonal anime watchers have moved on to the new shows that are airing. This situation, so the argument goes, actively hurts the chances for shows such as Violet Evergarden and Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan to succeed, since the presumed target audience will either have moved on to new shows that are currently airing or have resorted to pirating the shows instead.

But it can be argued that Netflix isn't trying to market to the hardcore anime community with this strategy. It could very well be possible that Netflix is just trying to buff up their library with shows that they see as worthwhile and are trying to sell them to a more casual audience. And there's value in that. Aiming for mass appeal can lead to the introduction of a whole group of fans, and I'm always okay with more anime fans. But you know what isn't a good way to bring in new anime fans? Live action adaptations that just fail to capture anything that makes the source material great. Fullmetal Alchemist and Death Note have already suffered the wrath of live action Netflix, and recently Bleach has been added to their ranks. So, the question becomes, does Netflix's Bleach break the cycle and actually turn out to be pretty good, or does it fall flat on its face and join the pile of corpses.

First of all, you already know what I think about Netflix's Bleach. It's right up there in the title. I personally like it, but it's a bit of a mess and ultimately, I think it fails to live up to the source material. And honestly, what we got was probably the best possible result. Historically, live action adaptations of anime, whether made in Japan like Mob Psycho 100 and Fullmetal Alchemist or in the west like Dragon Ball Evolution and Netflix's Death Note, have been pretty bad. While there are exceptions, like the western Speed Racer movie and the live action Ace Attorney movie in Japan, live action anime adaptations play out as either an incoherent highlight reel of the anime or a bizarre fanfiction that needlessly changes characterization and ignores the themes that made the source material resonate with audiences in the first place.

Netflix's Bleach (which I will refer to as Bleachflix from now on, because I'm gonna be talking about the original source material a lot in a minute and I want to keep things simple), is more of the incoherent highlight reel variety, but the difference here is that I feel that there is real effort being put in here. Netflix's Death Note and Fullmetal Alchemist were cynical cash grabs that focused more on creating good trailer footage than making a good movie. Fullmetal Alchemist in particular picks up a bunch of random moments from the manga and tries to tell a story with them without any consideration for how those moments connect together or what they mean in the greater thematic sense. Father Cornello's deception, Nina's tragedy, Alphonse's identity crisis, and the undead army are all great moments in the manga, but having them play out one after the other in the anime and skipping over the huge amount of story moments in between just makes no sense. Bleachflix doesn't fall into that trap. Bleachflix focuses on a single story arc at the beginning of the manga and tries to distill eight and a half hours of anime into just under two hours of movie. It has its problems, to be sure, but it doesn't fail because it tries to do too much. Bleachflix shows restraint in its pursuit of trying to make a truly good movie, which is something that can only come from a real appreciation of the source material.

You know what else shows appreciation for the source material? The aesthetics of the movie. The costumes are high quality and are always true to the source material. While extreme hair colors and styles don't always translate (Orihime, Yuzu, and Renji suffer in this regard), outfits are almost always translated perfectly. The overall color palette is a bit different, with realistic muted colors taking place of the poppy, irreverent tone of meshing traditional Japanese costumes and settings with bright colors and strange monsters, but since the film adapts the Substitute Soul Reaper arc, which takes place entirely in the real world before moving into the fantastical settings of the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo, it feels appropriate. What does fail to translate perfectly is a few of the props. Ichigo's sword and Uryu's bow come close to their original designs, but they still are noticeably different-looking to fans of the original like myself. But that's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, and it's worth it since the Hollows look so good.

Bleachflix also tries to do something interesting with its presentation in the beginning scenes of the movie. Instead of presenting itself as a clash between the modern teen culture of the human world, the traditional Japanese culture of the Soul Society, and the strange alien world of Hueco Mundo (which I would argue is the whole appeal of Bleach as a property in the first place), Bleachflix presents itself as a cheesy monster movie that wouldn't feel out of place in an old-school drive-in or on a shelf of low budget direct-to-video movies. Ichigo and Rukia are introduced with big text screens that show their names and their character traits like it's a House of the Dead game. Ichigo's punk personality is played over the top to the point of near hilarity, the Hollows moan like giant zombies and talk about how they're gonna "eat your soul" near constantly, and Orihime fantasizes about Ichigo so much that we get a quick montage of him looking like a glamour model posing for the camera. And battle scenes are set to a hilarious rap that reminds us to drink our milk (I swear I'm not making this up.). The portion of the movie that covers the first episode in the anime sets us up for a fun ride where kids with samurai swords fight giant monsters. 

And then, the rest of the movie happens. And in order to talk about how Bleachflix fails to live up to either its source material or its opening scenes, I have to spoil both the Bleach manga/anime and Bleachflix. You have been warned.

Here's a picture to give you a chance to avoid seeing spoilers.

Bleachflix adapts the first episode of Bleach almost perfectly. Aside from a flashback from a later episode to set up the main Hollow of the movie, it starts with Ichigo beating up some guys as a response to them knocking over an offering left for a child who died on that street. The scene also introduces the idea that Ichigo can see ghosts, and that this instilled a sense of empathy that led him to fight on behalf of them. Bleachflix also takes advantage of this scene to introduce Ichigo's friend Chad early, having him take out a thug that tries to hit Ichigo when his back is turned. This is a good way to set up an important character, but Chad (and later Orihime) just stays in the background and fails to make a real impact in the story. We then see Ichigo go home, learn about his family, and then he runs into Rukia in his bedroom. Rukia is surprised that Ichigo can see a Soul Reaper like her, they chat about ghosts and Soul Reapers, and then a Hollow appears and attacks Ichigo's sisters. Ichigo and Rukia run after the Hollow, Rukia is wounded, and, in desperation, Rukia gives Ichigo her Soul Reaper powers and Ichigo kills the Hollow.

We then cut to the next day and Rukia has erased the memories of Ichigo's father and sisters. Ichigo shrugs it off and heads to school, wondering if he dreamed up Rukia and the Hollow. But then, after interacting with his friends Keigo (who is portrayed perfectly for such a minor character that could have easily been cut), Orihime, and Tatsuki, he sees Rukia in a school uniform, passing herself off as a transfer student. She holds up his textbook, which has a note written in it that says, "Make a scene and you're dead!", and the two head up to the school roof to chat in private. Here, Rukia explains that she cannot return to her home in the Soul Society while Ichigo has her powers. She's hiding out in the human world in a faux human body for the moment and she's at the school so she can get her powers back. Because we need a movie, however, it turns out that Ichigo's body isn't strong enough to handle a transfer of power yet, and thus Rukia decides to train him as a Soul Reaper and have him fight in her stead until such a time that he can give the power back to her. Ichigo isn't interested, though, and blows her off.

This is a major departure from the manga. There, Rukia knew that her old power would naturally return to her over time and that she needed the faux human body to survive in the meantime. Since passing on Soul Reaper powers to humans is a crime punishable by death in the Soul Society (which also applies in Bleachflix, but we'll get to that later), she asks Ichigo to fight Hollows in her stead so that she can pretend like nothing has changed and not arouse the suspicions of her superiors. Ichigo refuses at first like in Bleachflix, but he changes his mind pretty quickly due to a combination of his desire to protect his family and his feeling of obligation after Rukia saved his life the night beforehand. But I can still understand the motivation behind making this change. Rukia's powers do not return to her fully until several arcs later in the manga due to the interference of characters that do not appear in Bleachflix proper, so changing the situation to Ichigo accidentally taking away her powers permanently can prevent the sense that the story has a plot hole to anyone watching without any knowledge of the source material.

From this point on, Bleachflix completely abandons the idea of presenting itself as a trashy direct-to-video type monster movie and plays everything straight and serious, often leaving scenes sterile and without personality. We continue with the back and forth between Ichigo and Rukia arguing about training for some time until fellow Soul Reaper Renji appears and ambushes Ichigo in the middle of the night. Renji asks Ichigo where Rukia is, explaining that she was sent to battle a Hollow named Grand Fisher that had evaded the Soul Society for over fifty years but that her spiritual energy disappeared after battling a different Hollow. Soon afterward, the Soul Society detected Ichigo's newfound power, and concluded that he might have somehow taken her powers, and Renji had been sent to investigate. Ichigo plays dumb and denies knowing anything about the situation, and Renji then attacks him, only to be driven off by a mysterious archer.

Renji, what did they do to your hair?

This scene is wholly original to Bleachflix. Renji (and Byakuya, who comes in later) doesn't arrive in the manga until the very end of this arc, and introducing him this early only serves the purpose of introducing what will become this movie's central conflict: Rukia's conflicting loyalties between the Soul Society and her newly-forming bond with Ichigo. But that conflict comes in later, so we'll address it then. What is worth noting, though, is that because Ichigo hasn't agreed to become a substitute Soul Reaper in Bleachflix, we skip over his early adventures that develop his skills as a combatant, his bond with Rukia, and his relationship with supporting characters and future allies Chad and Orihime. This scene is a microcosm of Bleachflix's biggest flaw. In an admirable effort to condense a full story arc into a feature length film that still flows as a coherent story while still covering the important plot points (Ichigo becomes a Soul Reaper, Ichigo fights Hollows, Ichigo fights Soul Reapers, Rukia sacrifices herself for him), Ichigo loses his personality and his character development is skipped. Instead of growing over the course of the story, Ichigo becomes a blank slate that exists just to fight monsters and push the story forward.

Moving on, after Ichigo tries and fails to get the truth out of Rukia, he gets approached at school the next day by a classmate who claims to know that he is a Soul Reaper. The two boys go to the roof and the classmate introduces himself as Uryu, a member of a the Quincy tribe of humans who fight Hollows with spirit infused arrows. Ichigo realizes that Uryu was the archer who saved him from Renji, but Uryu denies this, explaining that he was trying to kill Renji out of a desire for revenge, because Soul Reapers massacred his tribe. Uryu challenges Ichigo to a challenge to prove the Quincy's superiority over Soul Reapers. By releasing special Hollow bait, Uryu summons a horde of Hollows and declares that whoever kills the most Hollows wins.

Aside from Uryu rescuing Ichigo from Renji, which we already established as original to Bleachflix, Uryu's introduction is mostly the same in both the film and the manga. All that is missing from this scene is the context as to why the Soul Reapers massacred the Quincies in the first place. As it turns out, Soul Reapers use their special swords to purify the darkness in Hollows' souls and give the spirits peace while Quincies use their special bows to utterly destroy the Hollows, as if they've never existed. The Quincy method, it turns out, throws the balance in the spirit world into disarray and threatens to have unspecified, world-shattering consequences. Failing to convince the Quincies that their method is dangerous, the Soul Reapers are forced to kill all the Quincies instead, leaving Uryu to feel hatred and want to declare revenge. Leaving out this context doesn't matter much in terms of this film, but if Bleachflix plans to release sequels covering later arcs can create narrative problems further down the line.

In fairness to Uryu, he doesn't relay this information about the conflict between the Quincies and the Soul Reapers to Ichigo. Rukia does instead. And, as it turns out, Rukia's own second-hand account of the events isn't entirely accurate, and the true story presented WAY later in the manga shows that both sides are at fault.

After Uryu releases the Hollow bait in Bleachflix, Rukia runs up to Ichigo and shouts that Hollows are on the move. Ignoring Ichigo's protests, she drags him to a park where a Hollow is chasing the child ghost from the beginning of the movie. Spurred on by his compassion for a child that he already had a connection with, Ichigo springs into action and fights the Hollow. The Hollow gains the upper hand and is about to kill Ichigo, only for Renji and his superior Byakuya (who is Rukia's strict older brother) to arrive and dispatch the Hollow with ease. After a quick clash with Ichigo, Renji asks Rukia why she hasn't just taken her powers back from Ichigo and save herself the trouble of getting executed. Rukia explains that Ichigo would die if she does so, and Byakuya essentially shrugs and says that it doesn't matter, since the law is absolute. Only by taking her powers back can Rukia be spared. Rukia refuses and the two Soul Reapers give her an ultimatum to either kill Ichigo or accept her execution, giving her only a few days to think it over. Then, leaving Ichigo lying on the ground, barely alive, Renji and Byakuya walk off to eliminate the Hollow horde, implying that it would be a matter of ease to them.

This is probably the most infuriating scene in all of Bleachflix. The horde of Hollows summoned by Uryu sets up a series of episodes as Ichigo and his friends deal with them. As Ichigo and Uryu each fight Hollows, Chad and Orihime, who have both had episodes where they were targeted by Hollows and rescued by Ichigo earlier that Bleachflix skips over, have their own inner powers awaken as they battle against Hollows that threaten others around them. These powers only manifest because of their close proximity to Ichigo, whose overwhelming power is so strong that it spills out of his body and into theirs. Eventually, this mini-arc culminates with the arrival of a Hollow, known as a Menos Grande, too powerful for either Ichigo or Uryu to handle on their own. The two boys are forced to put their differences aside and work together to defeat the Menos Grande. This event is what gets the attention of the Soul Society in the first place and what leads Renji and Byakuya to come to the human world to look for Rukia. The Hollow horde competition is a culmination of Ichigo's introductory arc, the beginning of new arcs for his human friends (Chad, Orihime, and Uryu), and a natural transitional point for the series to move from the Substitute Soul Reaper arc to the Soul Society arc. It's an important turning point in the early Bleach manga, and Bleachflix completely fumbles it in its admirable attempt to streamline the story and keep Renji and Byakuya from coming out of nowhere at the end of the film.

There's one more problem with this scene as well. Ichigo is pathetic now. Instead of being strong enough to defeat basic Hollows, now he needs to be rescued constantly. The only Hollow encounter he survives without outside interference in the entire movie is the very first one at the beginning of the movie. Instead of growing as a character, he regresses and appears to be weaker even when the movie insists that he's stronger, until the very end where he suddenly becomes Renji's equal (who is stronger than Rukia in both the movie and the manga) in combat.

And Byakuya doesn't even look threatening or slightly angry at Rukia. He looks bored. But that's an acting issue.

Rukia then vanishes from Ichigo's life completely. Realizing that the Soul Reapers might have gotten to her, Ichigo runs to Uryu, the only other person he knows who has a connection to the supernatural world, and asks him how to get to the Soul Society. Uryu points him in the direction of Kisuke Urahara, the antique merchant who supplies the Soul Reapers with artifacts and takes on a mentorship role for Ichigo and company in the manga. Bleachflix Urahara only gets a handful of scenes, though. Earlier, he gives Rukia a vague warning about the Soul Society that I skipped over because it's essentially pointless, and now he tells Ichigo that Rukia was probably going to surrender herself to Byakuya in order to bargain for Ichigo's life. Ichigo then runs over to them and interrupts their negotiations (apparently Ichigo is the fastest runner ever, able to move from his home to the restaurant where he talks to Uryu to Urahara's shop to wherever the hell the Soul Reapers are talking in what appears to be just five minutes total). Ichigo strikes a deal with Byakuya: if he can defeat Grand Fisher, the Hollow that Rukia was sent to eliminate in the first place, then he will spare them both. Byakuya gives them a time limit of like a week or so, and a training montage begins.

Remember Grand Fisher? I almost forgot about him when watching this movie, and Bleachflix was trying to hype him up at first, too. There was a flashback to Ichigo's childhood at the beginning of the film that shows the moment where Grand Fisher killed his mother and Renji had mentioned that Grand Fisher was Rukia's original target and that he had evaded the Soul Society for over fifty years at this point. If that's the case, why does the Soul Society even send Rukia to fight Grand Fisher in the first place? Rukia isn't a major badass in the Soul Society rank and file. She's a regular Soul Reaper who graduated in the middle of her class at the Soul Reaper Academy and, unlike her friend Renji, she hasn't moved on to become an officer in her squad. Why would the Soul Society send a mid-tier fighter at best to fight a supposedly top-tier threat like Grand Fisher? If it weren't for her connection to the noble Kuchiki family, I would conclude that they were purposely sending her to die. 

The fact that Ichigo would stand even less of a chance at surviving is part of Byakuya's plan. Since Bleachflix Byakuya tells Renji to kill Grand Fisher in private after Ichigo and Rukia leave, it's implied that Ichigo's death would send Rukia's powers back into her body and thus her sister can be spared from execution. But this goes against Byakuya's character in the manga. In the manga, Byakuya doesn't pay any heed to the circumstances behind Rukia's crimes, nor does he care about Grand Fisher. In Byakuya's eyes, because he is the head of an important noble family, he has to hold himself and his family accountable to the law. Even though he privately opposes Rukia's execution, he goes along with it because he believes that if he bends the law to suit his own ends, then it would be hypocritical for him to try to enforce the law on others. It's even implied that he regrets hurting Ichigo in the Soul Society arc when Ichigo arrives to stop the execution. But in Bleachflix, Byakuya loses his inner conflict and is just a selfish, emotionless dick who tries to find a loophole for Rukia and doesn't care if Ichigo lives or dies. He acts more like another Renji more often than he acts like his manga counterpart.

But the question about why anyone would expect Rukia (and later Ichigo) to be able to stand up to Grand Fisher at all is only a problem because of the nature of Bleachflix as an adaptation. In the manga, Grand Fisher isn't a particularly powerful Hollow compared to the other Hollows Ichigo faces in the Substitute Soul Reaper arc. He only stands out because of his status as the Hollow who killed Ichigo's mother and escaping from Ichigo in their first and only encounter. Grand Fisher is actually killed by a completely different character in the manga at the beginning of the Arrancar arc, and Ichigo just sort of forgets Grand Fisher because he doesn't even really matter. While it makes sense for Bleachflix to try to use Grand Fisher as a final opponent for Ichigo, since they have shared history, the attempt to hype him up as a final boss leads to him appearing to be way too powerful for Ichigo or Rukia to realistically defeat, and the Soul Society are portrayed as even more incompetent and backward than they turn out to be in the manga.

But, my God, does Grand Fisher look awesome.

So, after a bit of buildup, the final confrontation between Ichigo and Grand Fisher begins. Just like in the manga, Grand Fisher makes his appearance during Ichigo and his family's annual visit to his mother's grave. Unlike the manga, Ichigo's battle with Grand Fisher isn't confined to the graveyard, turning into a grand chase into the city center and nearly killing Ichigo's classmates. Chad catches a piece of rubble, saving the other teenagers, and both he and Orihime can suddenly see Ichigo battling Grand Fisher because the movie says so. Uryu fights alongside Ichigo and, working together, the two of them defeat Grand Fisher with what appears to be very little effort, reducing Grand Fisher's role to a minor subplot in a story where he was set up to be the main antagonist, all because Bleachflix was in too much of a hurry to introduce Renji and Byakuya.

So, Ichigo, Rukia, and Uryu celebrate their victory and exchange some banter, foolishly thinking that the story is over. But then, Renji stabs Uryu in the back, seemingly killing him, and demands that Rukia take her powers back and kill Ichigo. Rukia refuses and Renji attacks Ichigo. The pair exchange some truly epic taunts before they have a fight that is easily the highlight of the film.

I can't believe that these lines were approved...

As I've said before, Renji and Byakuya don't appear in the manga until the end of the arc, several days after Ichigo's battle with Grand Fisher, which actually takes place before Uryu's introduction in the manga. In the aftermath of Uryu and Ichigo working together to defeat the Menos Grande, Rukia realizes that the Soul Society is bound to take notice and secretly leaves Ichigo behind to surrender herself to Renji and Byakuya. Her departure is interrupted, first by Uryu and then by Ichigo, both of whom battle Renji. Renji still defeats Uryu, but at least Uryu gets a chance to fight back instead of getting stabbed in the back. In both Bleachflix and the manga, Ichigo fights evenly with Renji and even damages Renji's sword before Byakuya steps in and easily beats the crap out of Ichigo and almost kills him. Barely able to move, Ichigo desperately grabs onto Byakuya's robe in order to stop him from reaching Rukia. Rukia then fakes being outraged that a "puny human" would dare to touch her brother's robes in such a way and claims to have seen the error of her ways. Bleachflix Rukia then takes her powers back from Ichigo, who by this point has grown strong enough to withstand the power transfer, and erases his memories of her before returning to the Soul Society with Renji and Byakuya, where it is implied that she will not be executed after all.

Wait, what?

If Rukia could just take her powers back from Ichigo with no consequence at this point, why is there even a conflict between her and the other Soul Reapers in the first place? The whole reason that Rukia was in danger in the first place was because she refused to sacrifice Ichigo's life to save herself. That was the whole reason Renji was attacking Ichigo in the first place was because it was apparently the only way to restore Rukia's powers and prevent the execution from happening. But then, Rukia, in order to save Ichigo's life, decides to take her powers back, which she should have no reason to believe will not end in Ichigo's death like it was stated that it would do so up to this point. If being strong enough to defeat Grand Fisher means that Ichigo is strong enough to withstand the energy transfer now, shouldn't Byakuya, the elite Soul Reaper captain, know this? Why wouldn't he say anything? If his only goal is to get Rukia's powers back and prevent her execution, why wouldn't he say, "Oh, sis, the human should be strong enough to handle the energy transfer now. You don't have to put yourself at risk in order to protect him anymore. Let's go get ice cream!"? There's nothing in the movie at all that would justify him sacrificing Ichigo anyway, and doing so would only hinder his plans, since Rukia would only get in the way if she thinks that Ichigo is in danger.

This is only a problem because of how Bleachflix deviates from the manga in explaining why Rukia has no powers. In the manga, it's revealed in the Soul Society arc that her powers wouldn't return to her because Urahara used her faux human body as a vessel to hide a powerful artifact from secret future villains, which interfered with her own internal spiritual energy flow. Because of this, the question of Ichigo losing his life if Rukia regains her powers isn't even a question, Byakuya cannot find a loophole for her, and the execution is inevitable. Thus, the scene where Rukia fakes disdain for Ichigo and leaves for the Soul Society actually has weight, since it implies that it would be the last time Ichigo ever sees her.

Anyway, Bleachflix moves into an epilogue where Ichigo returns to school. Neither he nor anyone else remembers Rukia or anything that has happened over the course of the movie. It is implied that Uryu might remember what happens, since he hesitates when Ichigo acts as if he's never spoken to him before, but I was too surprised that Uryu was still alive since it had appeared earlier that Renji had killed him. Ichigo then flips through his textbook to start class, only to see the message Rukia wrote in the book way back when she first arrived in his school.

As I've said before, I don't hate Bleachflix. Overall, I like it quite a bit. It might have serious structural problems and its attempts to tell a coherent story leads to several mistakes in characterization and internal logic, but it clearly comes from a place of love. Several smaller scenes really captures the identity of early Bleach and does enough to make it a worthwhile adaptation for Bleach fans at the very least. I'm especially a fan of the scene where Ichigo and his father talk about how Ichigo blames himself for his mother's death. But an adaptation should not limit itself to an already established fanbase that is already more inclined to give it a pass, and I really do think that Bleachflix would fail to entice any new fans with its inherently nonsensical story structure. Not that the Bleach manga was a masterpiece of storytelling in the first place, but adaptations should strive to be better than the source material. And whenever I see something that I like or see potential in but I know fails to follow through, I look to see how it could hypothetically be better. So, just like Comic Girls and Hanebado before it, here's how I think Bleachflix should have been structured.

First of all, I would have kept a consistent tone with the early scenes. A trashy monster movie is more fun than a serious attempt to elevate a cheesy shounen manga into a serious action drama, and those trashy early scenes were easily more engaging than the serious later scenes. Instead of just Ichigo and Rukia, I'd give introductory text screens to everyone who matters; Chad, Orihime, Uryu, Renji, Byakuya, Grand Fisher, EVERYONE! Instead of Ichigo's dad talking to a framed picture of his dead wife, bring back the giant blown up poster of her from the anime! Encourage everyone to overact instead of just Ichigo so that it plays out as the fun goofy romp that it should be. Then, have Renji and Byakuya play everything straight in order to increase the suspense from their sudden appearance at the end of the series and highlight the shift into more dramatic territory more effectively.

Now, let's move on to the actual plot. We open on Ichigo's flashback where he's walking home with his mother in a rainstorm. Little Ichigo sees a small girl standing by herself with no protection from the rain and runs off to give her his umbrella. Ichigo's mother runs after him, confused, then screams and there's a brief cut to black before we see her dead body lying on top of him, the girl nowhere to be seen. We then cut to the title card before showing the events of the first episode, which I would not change at all. Ichigo fights the thugs at the ghost-child's shrine, interacts with his family, meets Rukia, and then takes her power and fights the Hollow to save his sister. 

The next day, Ichigo goes to school and interacts with his friends for a while before Rukia appears. Rukia drags him to the roof and explains that she needs some time before she can regain her powers and insists that Ichigo fight Hollows in her stead in the meantime. Ichigo refuses at first, but their argument is interrupted when Rukia gets a Hollow alert (Side note, why is Rukia's orders coming in on a magic stone now instead of a cell phone like in the manga? That's a dumb change). Rukia drags Ichigo to the park, where they see a Hollow attacking the ghost-child from earlier. Ichigo jumps in to save the child, but Rukia stops him, saying that he has to swear to fight Hollows wherever they appear, not just when they're right in front of him. Then Ichigo gives his famous rebuttal just like in both the manga and Bleachflix proper, only this time he defeats the Hollow without Renji stealing his thunder.

From here, we have a montage of Ichigo training with Rukia and dispatching Hollows. During this montage, we see Ichigo rescuing Chad and the bird from the serial killer Hollow and him rescuing Orihime from her dead brother-turned-Hollow. These scenes will be given the bulk of focus in the montage, as it is important to establish Chad and Orihime as important characters, since I'm operating from the assumption that later arcs will be adapted as sequels to this movie. We then have a scene where Rukia overhears Ichigo and his family planning their annual memorial service for their dead mom. She asks Ichigo about it, and Ichigo talks about how he blames himself for his mom's death, though his memory of the details of what killed her is fuzzy. 

Then we cut right to Ichigo and his family at the grave. Ichigo and his father have a heart to heart about how much his mother means to both of them. Ichigo apologizes for failing to protect his mother, and his father cuts in and says that his mother made her own choices and that Ichigo could not be held responsible one way or another. As they're having this moment, we see that Rukia is watching them, and she muses to herself that a Hollow might have killed Ichigo's mother.

Ichigo really has some great lines in this.

One key difference between the manga and my new version of Bleachflix is that Grand Fisher will not appear here. This is because I want to set up Grand Fisher as a final boss for Ichigo, but I can't have Renji give lip service because, as I've shown before, it undermines the Soul Society's credibility in this universe. So, for once, the memorial actually goes by uninterrupted and develops Ichigo's character.

We then move on to Uryu's challenge. In our version, Rukia follows the boys to the roof and interrupts Uryu after he says that the Soul Reapers massacred his people. Rukia gives her version of events, that the Soul Reapers were forced to kill the Quincies because the Quincies refused to listen to reason (Gee, the more I say it the more it sounds like victim-blaming, doesn't it?). The two of them argue before Ichigo loses his cool and tells them to shut up. He tries to walk away before Uryu calls him weak and challenges him to the Hollow hunting contest. Ichigo refuses and calls Uryu a nutjob, but Uryu releases the bait and summons the horde anyway before hinting that those with high spirit energy might become targets for the newly summoned Hollows. Ichigo immediately realizes that this means that his sisters are in danger and runs off to protect hem, leaving Rukia and Uryu behind. Rukia cryptically says that there are others who have become targets as well before Uryu brushes it off as not his problem and leaves to go kill Hollows.

The Hollow horde is the big climax of my version of Bleachflix. As Ichigo battles Hollows and searches for his sisters, we have scenes of Hollows attacking Chad and Orihime. Here, their powers awaken and they both manage to use their powers to protect innocents nearby; in this case, Chad protects Keigo and Orihime protects Tatsuki. These scenes are interspersed with Uryu casually killing Hollows and keeping a running count, focusing only on the competition. Eventually, Ichigo finds his sisters outside their school, walking over to a very familiar crying little girl. Recognizing her from all those years ago, Ichigo realizes that the girl is an illusion employed by a Hollow to lure its prey into danger and was the one that killed his mother. Ichigo challenges the Hollow, who is revealed to be Grand Fisher. Grand Fisher proves to be too much for Ichigo to handle, since he can't go all out against it while he has to protect his sisters. If he moves in for the kill, Grand Fisher can attack his sisters. If he focuses on protecting his sisters, he risks being killed himself because he can't fight properly. 

There's no reason for this picture being here. I just like this face.

This disadvantage leads to Ichigo being knocked down and lying at Grand Fisher's feet. Ichigo's sisters run in and place their bodies in between Ichigo and the Hollow, showing that the desire to protect others is in the blood for Ichigo and his family. Grand Fisher laughs and taunts Ichigo for failing to protect his family again. Ichigo screams in horror before Orihime comes in out of nowhere and forms a shield between Grand Fisher and the humans. Chad then shows up and sucker-punches Grand Fisher with his new giant fist. Ichigo struggles to his feet as Rukia leads his sisters to safety, asking how his seemingly normal friends can do these things. Both of them say that they don't know how they got their powers but they want to help. Rukia explains her theory that Ichigo's surplus spirit power has seeped into their bodies. In the manga, Ichigo doesn't learn about Chad and Orihime's new powers until after Rukia leaves for the Soul Society, but putting it here adds thematic weight to the idea that Ichigo protecting others is a good thing. By doing the right thing and helping others, he empowers them to help others in turn and makes the world a better place.

Anyway, with help from his friends, Ichigo is able to gain the upper hand against Grand Fisher. However, Grand Fisher is still way too clever for the heroes. He creates a smokescreen through environmental destruction to separate the heroes and uses his lure power to lead Chad and Orihime into a surprise attack by posing as Ichigo. Before he could kill either of them, however, Uryu arrives on the scene and fires an arrow at them. The energy from the arrow causes the smoke to dissipate and Ichigo seizes the chance and finally lands the finishing blow on Grand Fisher. Ichigo thanks Uryu for the help, but Uryu plays it off and claims that he intervened to protect Chad and Orihime. But as the heroes celebrate their victory, none of them notice that Rukia has vanished.

Later that night, Ichigo returns to his bedroom and then notices that Rukia isn't living in his closet anymore. He finds a note explaining how she committed a crime by giving him her power and how the whole Hollow hunt fiasco is sure to gain the attention of the Soul Society, so she planned to protect Ichigo and the others by contacting Byakuya and admitting to her crime, taking the fall for Ichigo. Ichigo runs out to try to stop her, and then he fights Renji to a standstill just like in the original Bleachflix. Byakuya steps in and nearly kills Ichigo, Ichigo calls out to Rukia and grabs Byakuya's robe, and then Rukia pretends to hate Ichigo and tells him he was never anything more than a means to an end to her. She tells Ichigo they will never meet again and walks through the portal to the Soul Society, with Renji and Byakuya close behind. We then cut to Ichigo lying on the ground, and the very last thing he says before he passes out is, "You liar."

Suddenly, Ichigo wakes up in an unfamiliar location. He is greeted by Urahara, who introduces himself as a simple businessman and explains that he was the one who gave Rukia her faux human body. Urahara confirms that Rukia has resigned herself to her own execution for the sake of keeping her new human friends alive. Ichigo insists that he has to rescue her and Urahara agrees to help him and reveals that he has already recruited Chad and Orihime to help with the rescue mission. And then, credits.

Because even though he doesn't really fit in the narrative for this retelling, I can't leave out Urahara's amazing costume.

Hanebado - What the Hell Happened?

Way back in the very first post on this blog, I gave my first impressions on the currently airing anime of the Summer 2018 season. In that post, I mentioned that the sports anime Hanebado was an early frontrunner for anime of the season. In the time since then, it fell from grace in my eyes in such a dramatic manner it went from my favorite anime of the season to my least favorite summer anime that wasn't named Island.

But why? How could something implode so spectacularly? Well, to get there, we need to talk about what made me like Hanebado so much in the first place. First of all, I love sports anime. Sports anime is a bit of a niche genre in the greater anime community at large, with only a handful of shows like Free! Iwatobi Swim Club and Kuroko's Basketball breaking through to the mainstream. But these shows are pretty different from each other, and other sports anime I've talked about on the blog before like Hanebado and Major 2nd are also nothing like them either. Free! is a melodramatic, love-flow-chart type of soap opera that uses swim meets as a metaphor for sexual relationships between the pretty boys of the cast. Kuroko's Basketball is a hype driven battle series that uses basketball rivalries to explore the story of a group of friends drifting apart as they grow up. Major 2nd is a drama aimed at children that explores the idea of failing to live up to expectations and dedicating yourself to a pursuit on your own terms. I can go on and on with examples like this, but I think I've made my point here. Sports anime are never exclusively about the sport in question. Instead, the best sports series  use their sports as metaphor for character dynamics and underlying themes.

And Hanebado had a good theme set up in its first few episodes. And I'm not talking about the talent vs hard work thing they talked up so much. That's a lazy theme that sports anime (and anime in general) keep falling back on when they need something that sounds deep to talk about, and honestly, I think that the over reliance on this theme is a factor in Hanebado's decline in quality. No, Hanebado's hidden strength in the early episodes was its focus on the idea that these talented athletes had lost sight of why they started playing the game and had gotten so caught up in their moment to moment goals and felt burned out and lost as a result. And the one character who embodied this so well, better than the rest of the cast, was Nagisa Aragaki.

I am convinced that if Nagisa was the protagonist of Hanebado instead of Ayano, that the series would have been so much better all on its own. I enjoy almost every scene where she is the focus, and her storyline is easily the best plot thread in the story. As a rising star who fought her way to the national tournament in her second year of high school, only to be smacked down by an upstart kid, too young for high school, a prodigy who effortlessly defeated her without even celebrating when she won. Everything Nagisa worked for imploded at the hands of this girl, and she didn't even have the dignity to acknowledge her as a rival afterward. Nagisa was broken by this match, and she wanted revenge. This next year was going to be her last chance to win a title, and nothing was going to stop her. So for the first two episodes of Hanebado, Nagisa's existence revolved around nothing more than training and pushing herself and her teammates farther than they've ever gone. 

"But Patrick," I hear you say. "I thought you said that Nagisa was defined by burnout? She sounds like she's more determined than ever." But unlike every other anime ever, Nagisa's determination isn't helping her. It's toxic and self destructive. The way she pushes her teammates isn't just by stepping up the intensity of their training or giving them motivational speeches. No, her training regimen pushes her teammates to the point that it wouldn't surprise me if some of them passed out from dehydration or simple exhaustion. And then when anyone pushes back against her, she uses manipulative and abusive language to imply that they don't even care about badminton in the first place. She pushes people away to the point that the badminton club is on its last legs, with only a handful of members left. Nagisa has lost sight of what makes badminton meaningful for her in her quest for revenge: fun, camaraderie, and the pursuit of self-improvement. And with the introduction of Ayano Hanesaki, the girl who defeated Nagisa in the first place, as a new member of her club, who clearly has her own emotional baggage, Nagisa is put on a path of introspection and redemption that can easily fuel an entire season's worth of narrative.

I'll never have another chance to say this, but Hanebado is gorgeous. As many problems as I have with the storytelling, I cannot find much to complain about visually.

But the series isn't about Nagisa. It only cares about Nagisa as a foil to the real protagonist Ayano Hanesaki. Ayano is a cute prodigy who decided to hang up her racket after her match with Nagisa at the beginning of the series because of some mysterious tragic backstory. She is clearly a sad, broken person who has suffered greatly in an incident related to the sport and her mother (that's all we can infer in episode 1.) that she used to love to the point that she decided that she'd rather just drop everything and walk away. She's letting her trauma break her down and give up the one thing that she was passionate about. And it's only at the insistence of her childhood friend Elena who sees how miserable she is without passion but is unaware of the incident that made her break in the first place that Ayano even bothers to try to give badminton another shot, even though she cannot even fathom why it would be a good idea in the first place. 

This is good stuff, and sets up Ayano as a good foil for Nagisa. Both have their own intertwined history that has made them lose sight of what made them love the sport that they built their own personal identities around, both have gone down dark, melodramatic paths that only teenagers can, and both are going to respond to it in different ways. I'm even okay with the eventual idea that takes shape where Nagisa learns her lesson and commits to becoming a more considerate team captain while still pursuing a victory over Ayano, not as an endgame goal, but as a milestone for her ultimate pursuit of self improvement while Ayano doubles down on making the wrong decisions and becomes the same detached, condescending girl that Nagisa lost to in the first place, only even worse this time around, where she only cares about victory and revels in emotionally breaking her opponents while she toys with them during matches, all in the name of getting back at her mom (we'll get to her in a second) and keeping herself from getting bored, to the point where she becomes verbally abusive toward her teammates as well.

But the anime makes a fatal misstep. Instead of making the character going through an honest redemption arc and growing into a likable character the protagonist and the one turning into the high school sports equivalent of the Joker the final rival, Hanebado goes the other way around. And Ayano is not a good protagonist. She'd make an amazing sympathetic antagonist, but I cannot bring myself to root for her. While her dark side is born of the combination of real trauma and being forced back into badminton a bit too fast for her (and no, I don't blame Elena at all. Ayano needed this and it was working to rehabilitate her before drama got in the way), and the so-called Dark Ayano one-liners are genuinely funny at times, she becomes impossible to root for when she takes aim at her own goddamn teammates and makes light of the struggles of those who will never reach her level of play no matter how hard they try. And yes, it's in character, but Ayano's character development does not fit the tone that Hanebado seems to be going for. Hanebado presents itself as a melodramatic character study in how two characters respond to failure and trauma, with a down to earth tone and realistic motivations and developments being expressed in an over the top manner. And Ayano's backstory and the character development that is borne from it is so cartoonishly ridiculous that it just sticks out as a sore thumb and is fundamentally unfit to be the central pillar of this story. Which means that it's time to talk about Uchika Shindo.

Uchika is the worst mother in anime since Ragyo Kiryuin of Kill la Kill. A legendary professional badminton player, she left the game after giving birth to Ayano and starts training her at the tender young age of like 4. However, the flashbacks to this time make it clear that Ayano isn't training out of love for the game and instead is pursuing the sport because it is literally the only way she can bond with her distant mother, who seems to be resentful of Ayano for forcing her out of the game simply by virtue of existing. When Ayano loses a match at around age 9 or so, Uchika lets her resentment get the better of her and abandons her daughter with her parents and picks up a random Danish girl named Connie as her new protege and surrogate daughter, apparently without ever contacting Ayano again since then. And no matter how much Ayano won since then, Uchika never returned, to the point where Ayano lost all hope and became the emotionless monster that crushed Nagisa so carelessly before giving up and becoming a broken shell of a person, forced to come to the realization that her mother cast her aside and replaced her for the crime of not measuring up to her lofty expectations. And even though Elena, Nagisa, and the badminton club start to repair her emotional trauma, Ayano regresses into her dark persona when Connie and eventually Uchika herself show up. 

And all of this should work, except it doesn't. First of all, that match Ayano lost that drove her mother away? She lost because her opponent deliberately infected her with a cold mere days before the scheduled match and essentially sabotaged her, and either Ayano didn't explain this and Uchika failed to notice that her daughter was sick OR Ayano did explain this and Uchika didn't care and found her loss unforgivable to the point where child abandonment seemed like a good idea. I'm not saying that Uchika giving up on Ayano and replacing her with another prospect is out of character or a bad idea for setting up the trauma that pushes Ayano's entire story, but with the inciting incident coming from a pink haired anime girl (the only character in the series with an unnatural hair color) who looks like she walked in from a completely different anime weaponizing the powers of a D-List Kids Next Door villain, it becomes impossible to take this seriously. And when the scene that is a central moment in the history of three major characters and goes on to influence nearly every other major character in the series is so ridiculous, it becomes impossible to take Ayano's arc, which is meant to be a tragedy, seriously. I don't mind a bit of silliness in my entertainment, but this is supposed to be the emotional heart of the series. This is the equivalent of Uncle Ben's murder in Spider-man or All Might telling Deku that he can be a hero. And instead of tugging at my heartstrings, making me feel sympathy for Ayano, or even giving a satisfying payoff to the mystery of Ayano's past, it just leaves me laughing.

And then there are the characters of Uchika and Connie themselves. These two are so important to Ayano's arc, and let me remind you, Ayano is the protagonist, so her arc is the one you have to get right here, that if they fail to work then the entire thing falls apart. And they do work in theory. In practice, well, the entire thing falls apart. Uchika making a token attempt to reconnect with Ayano upon learning of her eventual success is a good idea, especially with Ayano rejecting her and using her newfound dark persona as a means to get revenge by completely ignoring her mother and forging her own identity, unaware the entire time that she is becoming basically the same person. That's the perfect end to a tragic arc that would work best if she were an antagonistic rival and not the designated hero of the piece. But when the script, shot composition, and score are trying their damnedest to make you feel bad for Uchika for being shot down by the little girl she abused instead of feeling bad for Ayano in how far she has fallen and how much she's become like her monster of a mother, it really gives me the impression that the series doesn't understand its own themes. And Connie is just a mess. 

Apparently, Connie left Denmark for Japan in order to find Ayano and meet up with her, as she sees her as an adopted sister and she wants the two of them to live with Uchika in dysfunctional harmony. I say apparently, because Connie's introductory scene completely contradicts this stated motive that comes to light later in the series. In that scene, Connie and Ayano run into each other completely by chance in a convenience store, each on a water bottle run at a convenience store nearby the gymnasium where their two respective schools are holding a joint practice, and start to bond when they get lost on their way back. Once the two girls learn each other's identity and their shared connection to Uchika, however, Connie turns on Ayano and declares her intention to crush her and cement her place as Uchika's true daughter once and for all. And then she returns later in the series to go on a girls' night out with Ayano to the arcade and try to build a positive relationship with her, claiming to have wanted a proper sisterly relationship all along. And Ayano's rejection of this gesture is supposed to be another affirmation that she has turned into the very thing she hates. But why should I feel bad for Connie when her declaration of war is what started this whole mess in the first place and doesn't fit with her stated motivations of connecting with her long lost sister, and any claim of character development from evil rival to concerned family member is completely laughable due to never actually happening on screen? It's as if the show wants you to forget this crucial scene, the one that sends Ayano on this fall from grace that is the entire central conceit of the show, and just get a do-over on Connie as a character. You can't have it both ways, Hanebado!

Hanebado still has two episodes left in its run, so maybe some of my issues can be addressed. Ayano and Nagisa are having a rematch as the final match of the qualifying tournament, where it's been hinted that Ayano might actually lose this final match, thus giving Nagisa's arc the catharsis I think it deserves,  and the most recent episode at time of writing ended on the tease that Elena was going to confront Uchika for being such a horrible parent. But there are still some fundamental problems with the way the story is structured, the construction of central characters, and fluctuations in tone that undermine the very themes that the entire series is based on. So, I'm going to give it the Comic Girls treatment and explain how I would fix it, because I do think that there was real potential here. Only, I'm not going to do anything drastic like remove the protagonist and rewrite the entire series from the ground up this time. I don't hate Ayano on a conceptual level like Kaos, I just think that she is horribly mishandled. And the plot of Hanebado isn't a bunch of horrible ideas either; it's just poorly put together and can be made good with a few little adjustments.

First adjustment, make Nagisa the main character. She is the one that goes on a journey of redemption here from the heartbroken and toxic brat to a mature, levelheaded leader who goes on to save the girl who broke her in the first place. That's a character arc similar to Soya of Planet With (which, by the way, has lived up to its potential and is undoubtedly my anime of the season), where the once revenge driven protagonist realizes that their hatred is unsatisfying and self-destructive, lets go of their aggression, and then reaches out to the one that hurt them in order to heal their pain and break the cycle of hatred. With badminton. That could be amazing. And instead of being resolved in three episodes, Nagisa takes a long time to get used to having to work alongside Ayano in the badminton club, though seeing how Connie affects Ayano does push her to see Ayano as a person instead of an obstacle or an endgame. But once Ayano starts treating her opponents and her teammates with contempt and condescension, Nagisa will see a mirror of how she used to act, recognize that Ayano is acting from a place of sadness and trauma, and resolves to beat her in the final match in order to get her to realize that her way is wrong and put her on the path of acting like a decent human being.

Secondly, we need to fix up Ayano's character arc. Because while it has taken too much attention away from Nagisa's arc, it is still vital to the themes of being broken and earning redemption. Nagisa's story will not work unless Ayano can act as a foil to her, and thus, both stories need to be given equal weight. Think of how Inuyashiki managed to balance both the titular Inuyashiki and the antagonistic Hiro's stories in order to explore how men react to receiving absolute power in different, diametrically opposed ways. Step one in fixing Ayano's story: getting rid of the whole cold thing. Our Ayano will still lose a match due to sabotage, but this time it's because Kaoruko surreptitiously cuts a few strings on Ayano's racket or something less stupid. Step two: fixing Connie's introduction. We'll have the same scene of them meeting by chance and getting to know each other before learning that they have a shared connection to Uchika. But instead of turning on Ayano and declaring war, Connie is now ecstatic and tries to have a friendly match because they can communicate better with rackets than words. And Connie wins easily. This will cause Ayano to break down and run out on the joint practice, and sets her up as a symbolic rival in Ayano's mind. If she can defeat Connie, she can then symbolically defeat Uchika and get revenge. Connie will feel regret about this and reaches out one more time later in the series with their little trip to the arcade. Only this time, when Ayano rejects Connie's sincere attempts to forge a familial bond, it actually means something. This becomes the "Oh, shit" moment where you realize that Ayano has become her mother. When Ayano gets revenge on Kaoruko in the tournament, it'll be framed as a cathartic moment where you want to cheer and the dead eyed look is treated as a super mode. But when that same dead eyed look is used against Connie, who just wants to be Ayano's sister, we see the horror of Ayano's development for what it really is. And now, instead of feeling forced and contrived, the final match between Ayano and Nagisa has real dramatic weight, as Ayano has changed from a likable sidekick to a tragic figure and the long-hyped rematch changes from a chance for Nagisa to redeem herself to a chance for Nagisa to let go of her resentment and help redeem Ayano instead.

And then, this shot from the opening can actually mean something.

And there you have it. With just a handful of adjustments, Hanebado can come from a confused mess to a semi-decent sports story that explores the themes of failure, frustration, revenge, and redemption in a satisfying way. And who knows? Maybe the next sports anime I watch won't fail to live up to its potential in such a frustrating manner. What sports anime is coming next season?

Huh. That just might work. See you next week!

Shirobako is What I Wanted Comic Girls to Be

Two months ago, I talked at length about Comic Girls, and how it fell short of my expectations. Comic Girls was a step outside my comfort zone when it came to anime, as the main reason I chose to watch it was part of a larger effort to expand my horizons and better understand the slice of life genre. However, the reason I chose to watch Comic Girls specifically as opposed to other slice of life series was because of my interest in the subject matter. The idea of watching characters make art appealed to me then, and it still does today.

When I finished the final episode of Comic Girls, I started doing background research on the series to prepare for my blog post about it. As I did so, I happened across the existence of a show from 2014 about the trials and tribulations of a struggling anime studio as we followed them throughout the production of an in-universe anime. I was intrigued, but I felt a bit too burned by my disappointment with Comic Girls, so I resolved to just watch it later. Well, my friends, later came. And I loved it.

This promotional image was the first thing about Shirobako that I saw when I cued up the series on VRV. And I already felt better looking at this than I did when checking out Comic Girls. The characters of Comic Girls had soft, round features and a strange, pseudo-chibi quality to their proportions, infantilizing them to an absurd degree. For Comic Girls, the selling point was not that the characters were making comics, but that the characters were cute while they did so. The characters in Shirobako, meanwhile, have realistic proportions and slightly angular (but still soft) features. They might be easy on the eyes, but these are real people living in a real world. And you know what else I see on this image that is conspicuously absent from Comic Girls? Male characters. Hallelujah!

I'm not saying that I can't relate to a story about female characters because I am a man. That's ridiculous. But when Comic Girls only has four main characters and four recurring support characters, and all of them are female, the world feels artificial. Do I need realism in my anime all the time? Hell no. My favorite anime is One Piece, realism isn't a factor in my enjoyment of an anime. But in a slice of life anime that takes place in the real world, the story needs to be grounded in reality, otherwise it hurts my ability to get invested in the story. And you know what else in this image helps sell me on this show? Behind our five main girls being cute, there's an air of chaos. You got the goth girl scribbling madly with papers flying around her, the big guy talking on the phone and looking at his watch with a distressed expression, and the two in the back running like mad. This might be a nostalgic look at the world of anime production, but the chaos hiding on the promotional image here tells me that it's going to be an honest look at production. It's not going to be all romantic all the time; it's going to be messy and chaotic and ugly sometimes. And that will make the happy moments resonate all the more. Compared to that, there's no way that the overly sappy and sweet to the point of tooth decay Comic Girls can possibly compete.

But I'm not going to compare these two shows anymore. It's not really fair to Comic Girls. As much as I prefer Shirobako over Comic Girls, they're really not comparable outside of the similarities in their premises. Comic Girls is a 12 episode adaptation of a four panel gag manga. Shirobako is a 24 episode original series that focuses more on light drama than comedy (though there are still plenty of jokes). I just wanted to explain my thoughts when I started this up and lay my biases bare so I can just gush about Shirobako for the rest of this post while I talk about the show on its own merits.

The best "Go team!" moment I've seen in a while.

Shirobako is about a group of high school friends who made a short anime together for their school cultural festival. After vowing to make this project into a professional anime as adults, we cut to two years later and follow their efforts to break into the industry. Shizuka is a voice actor who is going from audition to audition just trying to find her big break. Midori is a college student studying writing and working to become a scriptwriter. Misa is a 3D modeler who gets a cushy job with a big name studio, but feels creatively burnt out as the studio only renders vehicles for video games and she doesn't get to work on any project with a story and leave her artistic stamp on her work. And Ema and Aoi, the two we see the most often, join a struggling anime studio called Musashino Animation (or Musani for short) as an animator and a production assistant, respectively. The story predominantly follows Aoi as our point of view character as we follow her from department to department as she tries to do her part to bring the studio together to produce a hit anime to save their studio.

While promotional materials paint these five girls as our main characters, it's actually not true. The story is about them, absolutely, but this is an ensemble piece. Several recurring characters at Musani get a great deal of attention and development, to the point where poor Misa feels left out a majority of the time. The production staff, the animators, and the director are just as much protagonists in their own right as the main five are. And this is a very well-balanced cast. As the story focuses on one character, we see the other characters progress their own arcs in the background, always choosing to show their stories whenever they could instead of keeping it out of sight until it's relevant. This makes plot turns still surprising but not out of nowhere if you're paying attention. The best example of this would be Sugie.

Warning: There will be spoilers ahead.

Sugie Shigeru is a key animator for Musani who had been shown since episode 1. However, he never took the spotlight and was only ever shown drawing in silence and occasionally saying good-bye to his coworkers when he went home for the night. A typical background character that would be easy to forget about if it weren't for the fact that other characters still occasionally mentioned him when it came time to assign key frames. Anytime his name came up, however, it would quickly be dismissed as he was supposedly not used to drawing the cute modern aesthetic that their current project demanded. His most prominent role up to this point is giving Ema some advice on animating a scene featuring a cat. Without spelling it out for the audience and presenting it entirely in in-character dialogue, the viewer is given enough information to infer that Sugie is a veteran animator (I mean, he's the only major character aside from the company president that is significantly older than the average age at this company) who isn't considered to be an asset to this project and is instead working on other projects to help other studios, something that the show has already shown us is commonplace in the industry with Aoi contacting other studios and freelance animators to help them with their current project Exodus. Still, Sugie is kept in view just often enough to keep him recognizable and in the back of the viewer's head. At the end of episode 9, the director of Exodus announces a grand finale that he has planned that involves a herd of stampeding horses, which is an incredibly difficult set piece to animate. So Aoi is left scrambling for two episodes trying to find a key animator who is up to the task, quickly concluding that nobody at her studio can take on any more work. Eventually, she ends up at the doorstep of Mitsuaki Kanno (a cute little nod to Hideaki Anno of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame) in episode 12, who does decline her offer but points out that there is an animator at Musani who is up to the task. It turns out that Sugie is indeed a 40 year veteran of the industry who has a particular talent for animating animals and even worked on Aoi's favorite anime back in the 70s. 

Everything about this reveal is well done and foreshadowed perfectly. Sugie's age foreshadows his status as a veteran animator and his scene giving advice about animation while Ema is working on animating a cat hints at his expertise in animating animal characters. And the way that he is repeatedly shown without giving an overly abundant amount of focus makes his relevance feel earned and believable without necessarily being too predictable for those fans who might not be focusing on background details.

Also, look at that picture. That's the anime that Sugie used to work on, as we see much later in the series. That is the same old-school cel animation that would have been used at the time this series would have been made. And it's clearly inspired by the World Masterpiece Theater classic Rocky Chuck the Mountain Rat, which was released in 1973 by Mushi Productions. 

Wait...Mushi Productions sounds suspiciously similar to Musashi Animation, doesn't it? Well, yes, and this is another part of how Shirobako appeals to me. The creators are clearly longtime members of the anime industry, and there are tons of references and in-jokes about real people and studios in anime history. In addition to the references I've mentioned above, there are references to studios like Kyoto Animation, Production IG (or maybe it's JC Staff), Sunrise, Studio Bones, and even Pixar and Ghibli! The director of Exodus, Seiichi Kinoshita, is visually based on Seiji Mizushima (of Gundam 00 and Fullmetal Alchemist fame) and his character arc of using Exodus to make up for his past failures on a series he really cared about is based on the actual series director Tsutomu Mizushima, who had a similar meltdown on the series Girls und Panzer (a show I have never watched and I only learned about the parallels in the research I have done after watching Shirobako). This is a story beat that is honest and true to the life of a creator, and it's not the only one.

Shirobako's greatest strength in its plot is how every conflict is unique to the struggles that creative professionals face. A traditional animator feels threatened by the ever-growing ubiquity of 3D animation. A huge anime fan turned professional quickly loses his enthusiasm for the work and becomes a jaded cynic. Misa is forced to choose between a safe and stable job or a chance to find a creatively fulfilling and stimulating career. Aoi is forced to struggle with high expectations as a great deal of responsibility is thrust upon her with little to no warning or guidance. The studio is forced to work with difficult publishers who obstruct their progress at every turn. Anime production is portrayed as messy, chaotic, and sometimes just plain disheartening.

And that makes it all the more wonderful when things come together and characters succeed. And that final shot of the series makes you realize just how much these characters have been through, and how happy you are that they finally pull it off.

Don't worry, not all of these characters are important. Just most of them.

Shirobako is a beautiful story of a group of well-written and well-realized characters that comes together to be something greater than the sum of its parts. But it isn't perfect. While I love the characters and their stories, there is one aspect of the show that I haven't touched on yet, because it is the one complaint I have in an otherwise excellent show.

These two dolls are Roro and Mimuji. They are Aoi's childhood toys and they act as a window into her thoughts. Their banter is used to explain Aoi's current situation and different aspects of the anime production process. And while they have pleasant designs and their antics can be amusing on occasion, I object to their very presence in this otherwise very grounded character piece. The fantastical nature of their existence is clearly shown to be entirely in Aoi's head, with her talking to herself without either of them in the shot whenever she is framed from another character's point of view, so they clearly aren't going to directly contradict the realism the show is trying to establish. But Aoi is very clearly not insane; in fact, she's frequently portrayed as a lone pillar of stability in the chaotic office. And the writing is too smart for that sort of thing. So, I can only conclude is that these characters exist to explain things to the audience. But if that's the case, why do they wait until episode 14 or so to start explaining things? The show was doing a great job of presenting the ins and outs of production in an organic way. It trusted the audience to figure things out just by presenting these characters naturally.  Why change it halfway through? The only reason I can come up with is that someone higher up the chain thought that the story was too complicated for the stupid viewers. And that's just insulting. 

But ultimately, while Roro and Mimuji are annoying to me, they don't take away from the many many ways Shirobako succeeds on a narrative and technical level. It is an excellent show and I highly recommend it to any anime fan.