Make-Believe

Sit alone somewhere dark with a view of the sky, and preferably with good acoustics, and listen to this. I don't know what it says, but it still means something to me. What magic is this?

*

I have to say that Last Exile is the best anime series that I've seen so far. It redefined the medium for me; for the first time, what had seemed only to be a medium designed to showcase drawing techniques actually seems to me to be capable of being more than just pretty. Through rewatching this series, I am beginning to see how anime can be used to tell stories, to transmit meanings of the most complex and profound order.

The thing about anime, I think, is that the techniques that are employed are so precise. To a certain extent, they are profoundly simple; that helps to account for why the medium tends to succeed more at portraying either youth or timeless ideas. But that being said, it is not simplistic at all, and it takes skill to wield such precise tools adeptly. If anime can be seen as a language, then it's as if the vocabulary of the language has been cleansed, so that words do not have shades of meaning. The shades of meaning then come from the combination of words; and so, you get the clarity of precision in the vocabulary that is used, while none of the complexity of the meaning is compromised. Put another way...it's like having only emoticons with which to communicate, and then discovering to your great surprise that there are people who can use these very exact and simple symbols to portray philosophical ideas and viewpoints.

And especially for this series, that tension comes out clearly, the tension between the simplicity of the devices and the complexity of the message. The resulting construct strikes me in the way that a brilliant architectural project can inspire wonder and admiration. Some people may say that the worlds of anime are idealised, and are more like exercises in fantasy rather than commentaries on the real world. And they would be right; but the idealisation of the real world is not a defect: it is merely a characteristic. If one knows already that anime does not realistically portray the world, then one should not fault it for being fanciful, in the same way that one does not fault a cake for being made out of chocolate rather than cream. And for me, especially in this anime series, the fanciful parts clarify, rather than simplify, the inherent meanings. Seen through the eyes of the young characters, the meanings seem purified rather than falsified.

I come away from it feeling a surprisingly strong measure of nostalgia and wistfulness, wondering how delightful it would be if somehow, the real world could be run along the straightforward lines of the imagined world. The guilelessness of the characters, the lack of duplicity on the part of the people, lets everyone focus so much better on the underlying impersonal complexities of life. After all, life is already complicated; should we really be trying to make it even more complicated by obfuscating our meanings with each other?

And on a more superficial level, then, I am also quite taken by the artwork and the musical score. Insofar as anime is good at being pretty, then Last Exile excells at being both visually and acoustically stunning. The details in the drawings, the distinct themes that set the various civilisations and social classes apart from one another, the music that carries the mind along with the story...this series is a sensory treat, and even if one does not appreciate the artistry in the meanings that are expressed, one will appreciate the artistry in the expressions.

For me, anything that is Japanese seems to come with a certain aloofness that tends to amplify emotional responses to the work. It's the haiku effect: either you understand the symbols and the poem speaks to you profoundly, or the symbolism is lost on you, and you are locked out of the secret heart of the poem, left only to appreciate its technical aspects. For this anime, somehow I seemed to understand the symbols better than any other series. The symbolism speaks clearly to me, and it draws out a response from me.

*

Spent the last two days rather indulgently, reading, watching anime and searching out information on New York. Already, I am trying to anticipate what it can be like to live there. Some of the videos are enticing; others are off-putting. The bottom line is that it will be exciting. But one wonders, to what extent the bad-ass image of New York is the character of the place, rather than a marketing gimmick. I daresay for a place like New York, they certainly do not need marketing gimmicks to make it an attractive place. But still, it seems inconceivable to me that a place can be so sustainably unpleasant. Maybe it is naivete on my part - but it seems awfully tiring to continually present an unwelcoming face to outsiders. The only other place that I've even encountered anything remotely like this is in Paris; so maybe it's a world-city thing. Civic elitism, perhaps.

Am also aware that the summer is really getting a move-on, with the second departure about to take place over the weekend. This year, summer is truncated by my own imminent departure, and it makes it even more urgent to get the most out of all these days. The days go by, and very soon, I will be left with less than a month. But there is also value, I think, in restraint; there comes a point when one can let loose, when one can refrain from reading too much significance into lost time, and one can trust the other person to do the same. Meeting up more is a stand against the dying out of old relationships; but maybe it is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, and the edge of desperation in the urgency may be more destructive to old familiarity than the lack of reunions.