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Uta~Kata
This series bugs me. Not because it's stupid, or bigoted, or flawed. But because I just can't make heads or tails of its symbolism.
I've been thinking of making this an IJBM Anime Club showing, but considering how slowly we're getting through Time of Eve...
Anyway, it's a story about a middle-school girl named Ichika who meets another girl (of the same age) named Manatsu who comes out of a mirror, on the last day of school before summer. Manatsu gives Ichika a yin-yang trinket for her cell phone. Said trinket has twelve stones. It turns out that that trinket can be used to activate the power of supernatural beings called "djinn". They grant their powers to Ichika, who gets to use them to do, well, whatever. There's also this mysterious lady named Saya who seems to live next door, apparently having moved into the house that stood empty and for sale.
SPOILERS FOLLOW (basically the entire damn plot) - read only if you don't plan on watching the show
(and yes, the show is incredibly moving sometimes...yet also incredibly confusing as to exactly how you should feel about what's going on...so if you don't want to be spoiled...yeah.)
Each time she activates a new power, it seems things get worse for her--she further loses control and causes disasters of greater scope.
Finally, her last power is activated, revealing itself to be the djinni of the mirror...who turns out to be Saya herself. It turns out that Saya was apparently testing her with some sort of strange test of character. She is called to face the following question: having seen the world through the eyes of the djinn, and knowing all the bad things that come with it, would she kill herself, or would she kill everyone else?
It turns out that one of her close friends--a high-school male student named Sei who is her tutor--was subjected to this same test six (I think) years ago. It also turns out that Manatsu, as well as Sei's best friend Kai--are beings created by the mirror. Six years ago, Sei couldn't choose an answer, and failed to answer the question. Saya would have killed him if not for the intervention of Kai in some way that made Saya willing to postpone her final judgement of humanity. Instead (in an act destined since Ichika's birth), Saya delayed this judgement by six years to wait for the next young person to whom to reveal the evil of the world (or something like that) through the eyes of the djinn.
Faced with this question, Ichika finally works up the courage to choose neither option presented--but instead of avoiding an answer out of fear, she refuses to answer out of conviction. Saya considers the answer, but still considers said answer to be against the "rules" (she has a set of rules wherein the companion mirror-spirits are not allowed to reveal this process until the bitter end, among other things). She proceeds to kill Ichika (in a weird not-quite-real way), but Manatsu intervenes and saves Ichika, sacrificing herself instead. Ichika and Sei then wake up in the empty for-sale house, with but two shards of the mirror left to them.
There's an extra OVA episode, but I don't count it as I think it messes up the power of the symbolism/allegory.
What is this supposed to mean?
But then, how does Saya fit into this? Why is she somewhat openly malicious at times? Why does she have a strange bunch of rules?
We could instead try a classical good-guy/bad-guy model, but then again, Saya doesn't quite fit that either, nor do the djinn powers. Additionally, are Manatsu and Kai good guys or bad guys for most of the show? I don't think this is the right model.
Going back to the coming-of-age model...that seems most likely.
But it just leaves me with a very strange aftertaste. It leaves me feeling very unsettled and uneasy about...something, and I'm not exactly sure what, either. What does it mean that an innocent little girl like Ichika had to witness all this pain and suffering created through her own hands? Why did this have to happen? And what does it all mean?
Comments
I feel like there's something here that I'm missing that should make it obvious, but I've never seen the show itself so maybe there are a whole lot of other ques that I'm missing...
Maybe it's to show that sometimes the rules can be unfair but even so you can come out unscathed whether you did the right thing or not? Maybe it's supposed to recreate the moral dilemmas that are so common when one becomes an adult (But in this case they're forced on a child)?
Maybe the entire thing is pseudo-anarchic in a "This is what happens when rules are set and you're all lucky they're not magical or we'd end up like her, but learn the lesson" sense but they couldn't go through with killing the protagonist?
Or is it just "Magic is bad and you should feel bad for wishing for any sort of escapism in which it exists."?
How did you actually remember all of that?
I watched the show, and I sure didn't remember much of anything about it... >.>
I'll probably respond to this more seriously soon, but I'm not really sure how good an answer I could give.
Probably because if I feel I care about a show I tend to think and rethink about it, and turn it over and over in my head.
It's a transforming magical girl show (albeit not a shoujo one, though in this case it doesn't really matter). So basically, it's pretty likely that this:
is a lot of it.
Because, you know, the mahou shoujo genre is basically a giant puberty metaphor.
I thought that that was the exclusive realm of the M. John Harrisons and Gen Urobuchis of the world...
Nah, Gen is just bad at writing happy stories. He admitted it himself.
> Because, you know, the mahou shoujo genre is basically a giant puberty metaphor.
Wait, really?
Well, not all the time. Stuff like Nanoha is just about girls with super powers because girls with super powers are cool. But for the most part, yes.
I'm bad at explaining things, but other people have written about it before. Basically the idea is that a young girl has to deal with having two separate identities (that of a normal schoolgirl and that of a magical girl) as a metaphor for her being in a time of her life where she's still a child, but is also forced to see herself (and be seen by other people) as a woman. In fact, in a few older magical girl shows (Creamy Mami, Magical Emi, etc.) the heroine actually transforms into a teenager, as opposed to just a more fancily-dressed version of their self.
^^^ Of course. But that doesn't mean that Madoka Magica isn't an excellent example of that particular strain of fantasy genre subversion. Heck, I would argue that the most persuasive arguments for why magic is scary as a concept have come from people with a genuine love for fantasy rather than any philosophical resentment of it.
^ In other words, the roots of the genre are in coming-of-age metaphors sprinkled with a degree of empowering escapism.
So the magical powers are a metaphor for the cool (and possibly dangerous) things one can do when one grows up?
Partly. It's about inner strength and maturity, learning to understand oneself on physical and emotional terms and so forth.
^^ More like, the challenges that they have to solve with magic are metaphors for the challenges that they'll face when they grow up and (more relevantly) the challenges that they have to face in the present, as a person who is currently growing up.
^ And also that.
So what does it mean when Ichika gets to use these powers, and is brought to the edge of despair by them?
It's not like she ever "gets drunk on power" or something. She realizes that these things are really big deals and not to be taken lightly; she's even hesitant to use them sometimes, increasingly so as the story progresses.
It's just, like, these things run out of her control and take over her will.
What does this mean?
Sometimes you grow into an amazing adult who does amazing things and is happy but sometimes you grow into an adult whose control over their life is limited and causes pain to all around them yet you have to go on even so because the other option is suicide/financial ruin/social isolation/etc?
How have I never heard of it before now?
It's a level 5 obscurity show. :P
It's not recent or particularly noteworthy, so nobody ever talks about it.
There are obscurity levels now?
^ But it's a magical girl show, I live for these things!
I pretty much know of it through Kiddy Grade, seeing as it's like KG's artistic successor.
Oh, and that obscurity stat comes from this page, which I created but has since grown vastly.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SlidingScaleOfAnimeObscurity
Same director, I really need to see this now...
Oh, and I don't know if you know this, but each episode's magical costume has a different designer.
That's not to say I particularly like any of them, but, whatever.
One of them was done by the character designer for Brigadoon: Marin and Melan. That's the only one I remember, due to watching both shows at around the same time. I think.
Hey, Glenn, what obscurity levels do you think Kemonozume and The Tatami Galaxy would be at?
I don't know those shows at all, and I don't have a good pulse of the anime fandom at large to say what level they would be.
Most anime fans that I bring them up to have the same response, so... probably 5-ish. More the former than the latter, though.
The director also did Kaiba, which as far as I can tell is just marginally less esoteric, and still pretty obscure.
Tatami is definetly a five, but Kemonozume is either a 6 or 900.
Kaiba is obsure? I thought it was at least at Utena levels of recognition...
But everyone has heard of Tatami Galaxy and everyone always brings up Kemonozume as an example of a show nobody has ever seen, which leads me to conclude that everybody has seen it and they just never talk to each other about it.
Okay then, what about Kieli?
I've only seen like, four minutes of Kemonozume though. It is that show which is basically Hagure Yuusha no Estetica WITH ANIMAL PEOPLE? Right?
^^^ Utena levels?! Dear gods, no. Utena was huge in Japan and is at least vaguely recognisable to all but the most clueless of fans; Kaiba, on the other hand, is more like Mononoke, being one of those cult shows with good press and fairly little exposure.
^^ I doubt that.
^ Not exactly. Read this.
I didn't know it was actually decent... still not my type of show though.
No they didn't. Reviewer-kun, stop hating fun.