anime: Speed Grapher eps 1-12

[meganbmoore]

In the near future, Tatsumi Saiga is a war photographer who found pleasure in death. Now back in Japan, he’s a photojournalist uncovering corruption. While investigating an illegal nightclub that caters to the most depraved sensibilities of Japan’s upper class, he discovers a ceremony where a young girl called the Goddess kisses men, awakening in them the ability to make their true desires reality. When Saiga is discovered, she kisses him and asks him to save her. Saiga’s desire is to truly kill with his camera, and now anything he takes a picture of explodes. (Best shounen power ever?)

The Goddess is Kagura, a physically and emotionally mistreated girl who thinks the nightclub is a horrible dream. Perhaps the only redeeming quality her mother has is that she doesn’t know her lover, Suitengu, takes Kagura to the nightclub and lets the men there do “horrible things” (according to Kagura) there, and is mad enough when she thinks Kagura only snuck out and learned the club even existed.

After the initial arc of Saiga rescuing Kagura, the series devolved for a bit into random Euphorics who Kagura had given abilities to trying to capture them, but seems to have returned to the main plot with the last few episodes. I both disliked and was bored by the first episode, which featured Saiga’s background and search for the club, but was more interested when we got to the second episode and Kagura’s background. The series literally makes me physically uncomfortable, and the opening credits alone exceed my squick and fanservice levels. It’s ridiculously fanservice-y at times 9and then not at all at others), and parts of it are an endless barrage of bondage, molestation, and “kinks.” Despite this, Kagura and Saiga are engaging leads, and the core plot underneath all the fetishism is interesting, with genetic engineering and secret parents and girls who can awaken secret abilities.

Even more than the molestation of fetishism overkill, though, what bugs me is how, so far, virtually every female character but Kagura is an evil psycho. The only exception so far is the woman who ran a bathhouse they stayed at while they were on the run. The one that seriously burns, though, even more than “mother who abuses her child and is obsessively jealous and paranoid of her,” though, is Ginza, the badass cop who’s in love with Saiga. I can’t help but think that, is Ginza were a man, her unrequited love would still be unhealthy, but the character would be tragic and sympathetic, which fits with the show’s general portrayal of men so far, the creepier Euphorics aside. Instead, Ginza is psychotic, obsessive, pathetic ,and eventually a betrayer and rapist. Which fits the show’s portrayal of women.

Episode12 also has what may be one of the more creepifying plot twists I’ve encountered in anime. [spoilers] As near as I can tell, Suitengu is Kagura’s father, or at least a new being in the body of what used to be Kagura’s father, which was operated on after his death to somehow represent everyone who died in battle. After Kagura’s mother orders Kagura and Suitengu killed for betraying her (Suitengu did, Kagura didn’t) Suitengu kills her, and declares that he can still take over the Tennozu group by marrying 15-year-old Kagura, who is the heir. I pray that I misunderstood the explanation of his origins. And even if I did misunderstand, I pray that there is no marriage, and definitely no wedding night. Saiga can just wake up and break out of wherever Ginza stashed him after raping him while he was unconscious and go blow up walls in the mansion until he finds her.

No spoilers for past episode 12 in comments, please.

Comments

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Ummm. WHUT.

WHUT?

I think I'll be sitting this one out, yikes!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Unlike, say, Melody of Oblivion which started good and then devolved into sheer "WTF DID YOU REALLY DO THAT?" and I couldn't look away, this (A) is actually maintaining the interesting plot and characters and (B) does not endorse the creepifying stuff in any way (and manages to be less skeevy about it "we know it's wrong so it's less bad that we have it" than Dollhouse's human trafficking and rapists of the week)but yes WEIRDEST AND CREEPIEST ANIME I HAVE SEEN!

I got all the DVDs for a few bucks each a while back, having been told that it was weird and creepy but also that it was good.

And since I'm about to go work on tidying up my post about the shoujo manga about alien mermaids who use Earth as a mating ground and the mermaid whose mind is that of a 10-year-old even when she's a beautiful woman must mate with the other mermaid to save the planet, I think we can agree that I should go read and watch light, fluffy things for a bit...

ETA: Also, I MAY BE TOTALLY MISUNDERSTANDING THE SPOILER CODED STUFF!!!

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

I saw this back when it first aired, and remember being amazed at how willing they were to Go There with the stuff they knew was going to make about 90% of their audience freak out, no sneaky hinting around or anything. It was like they'd written up all the real-life fetishes they could think of and went down the list trying to see how many they could turn into extremely creepy superpowers--or even just randomly shove into an episode somewhere.

And yet I couldn't stop watching. Crazy!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It hink it's the ABSOLUTE SHAMELESSNESS in the fetishes that makes it impossible to stop watching.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

I was gonna watch this one, but maybe not. Off to see if the library has the Claymore anime instead.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

WEIRD YET COMPELLING!

I don't think all of the Claymore anime is out yet.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Probably not but I saw the first disc at Best Buy the other day which means that there is a decent chance that I may be able to get in for free from the library.

I may give Speed Grapher a chance then, considering the new found love I have for Samurai Deeper Kyo. Plus, it is free as I got it from the library.

[miyuki-mina.livejournal.com]

That series is DEFINITELY a trainwreck. It's so over the top that one simply CAN'T stop watching. @.@

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It's because of all the little bits of goodness and quality that are buried in it.

[madame-parker.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching after 10 minutes into episode 1, bloody creepy, no thank you!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I would have stsopped, but I have it on DVD. Ep 1 is by far the worst, because it doesn't have anything interesting or likable to go with the creepy.

Not that, halfway through, the creepy has improved.

[enkiae.livejournal.com]

The whole show seemed very anti-class to me, with all the upper class people being shown in their most horrifyingly shameless ways and decadent in their fetishes, with the other people being powerless to stop them (like the scary dancer dude).

The concept was cool, but the show was wayyyy too exploitative, it got kind of pointless :S

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It REALLY bugged me when it was stated that you couldn't hold any sort of important position without being a member.

[ivy-chan.livejournal.com]

I think that series killed my brain. I watched the whole thing with a friend, and the scene in which she raped him was just...disturbing to the max. And handled too lightly, like most female/male rape scenes are. I felt like we were supposed to view that scene as tragic and sympathetic, instead of creepy and psycho. And nothing came of it, either.

The dub blooper reel was pretty funny, though.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it...really bugs me the way those things are done. It's incredibly sexist, IMO, because it's like it's saying that if it's a woman doing it, it's just sad and needy and pathetic. Nothing would ever DREAM of having a man act towards a woman like that (in general, not just that scene) without villifying him somehow because they'd know it was wrong. When it's a man, it's power. When it's a woman, it's being pathetic.