Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon © Kodansha, Random House

Artist/Writer: Naoko Takeuchi

Published in: 1991–1997 (Japan), 2011-present (America)

American Publisher: Kodansha/Random House

Genres: Magical girl

Premise: A ditzy schoolgirl, Usagi, gains the power to transform into a magical girl. Oh, come on; it’s Sailor Moon. Next you’ll be asking me for the premise of Star Wars.

Volumes: 18

Is it dumb? Nope. It’s carefully structured, pulling the girls together one by one, introducing their personalities and hinting at the big plot.

How’s the art? Heavily stylized. The girls have very long legs, and the panels tend towards extreme zooms on faces. Some faces are actually too big for their panels.

So, should I read it?

I’ve been debating that question ever since I read this volume.

On the one hand, the story is carefully structured, pulling the girls together one by one, introducing their personalities and hinting at the big plot. Novice writers would do well to study the information revelation used here.

Besides, Sailor Moon is a classic. It inspired an untold number of shoujo series, so if you want to understand them, Sailor Moon will help.

On the other hand, the art is heavily stylized. The girls have very long legs, and there are very few backgrounds. The panels tend towards extreme zooms on faces; in fact, faces are often too big for their panels. The pages felt over-crowded to me, like an over-energetic children’s cartoon.

I also had a tough time with Usagi’s personality. She’s as much of a ditz as she is in the anime series, and while she at least seriously acknowledges this defect near the end of the volume, her energetic cluelessness has all the charm of a clumsy puppy: cute in short doses, but a real pain in long stretches.

Overall, the first volume of Sailor Moon is a good example of contrasts. It’s gathered legions of fans, and stands as a true classic of its genre, but its appeal remains limited to that genre. It showcases the best and worst of the shoujo style.

Volume 1, pages 16–17 © Viz

Moving on to page 16, Miyazaki surprises us. The first panel shows just a column of light, a diagonal slash of some kind, and a ”SHOOM” sound effect. What’s going on?

Thanks to the slightly angled gutter, we’re drawn to the panel below, which reveals Nausicaä’s Mehve ascending vertically from a jet beneath it, startling the insects.

This is a bold move: showing us an action in isolation, followed by context.

Contrast this with the smooth action of the upper-right panel on page 17: the powerful explosion pushing Nausicaä forward, followed by Nausicaä on the right-hand side of the panel, the stress lines implying g-forces as we are pulled in the same direction as the Mehve.

Later in that page, Miyazaki half-fills a panel with an Ohmu’s black eye. Right next to it, Nausicaä murmurs, “His eyes are burning ruby-red with anger…” This telegraphs to the reader an important fact: a black eye means an angry Ohmu.

(Also note that the Ohmu is a ”him,” not an ”it.”)

Nausicaä’s mood then lightens to a surprising degree. Here is where our protagonist becomes a little moe, as she says: “That cry I heard…could it have been this Ohmu? Tee-hee…surely not! I’ll have to play a little rough, I’m afraid…”

She drops several strobe grenades, and we’re treated to Miyazaki’s masterful use of space: the flash highlights our heroine in the upper-left, and below her (literally under her wing) are the mysterious fleeing stranger. The Ohmu is just visible over the top of the flash, orienting the viewer in space.

The Ohmu screeches to a halt, its eyes white now, and Nausicaä uses a flute to draw the Ohmu back to the forest.

Volume 1, page 20 © Viz

We then cut to the fascinating page 20, which rewards panel-by-panel analysis.

The first panel is a sweeping vista, showing a dune that stands before a large crevasse. The stranger from before is a tiny smudge, and Nausicaä is nowhere to be seen. It’s a foreboding and lonely image.

Below, we see Nausicaä gliding towards the stranger. She’s hanging off the bottom of the Mehve (telling us that the Mehve can be used this way as a glider). Miyazaki orients us to the two to show us that Nausicaä is coming to meet the stranger.

The following panel shows her feet hitting the ground, then the next is a very dynamic image of her braking in the sand and letting go of the Mehve, presumably letting it drift to the ground. This is confirmed in the following panel, where she runs towards the viewer, hands over her face, with the Mehve settling downwards near her.

Note the pacing of these panels. We’re watching Nausicaä in quick beats, without dialogue.

This is contrasted with the following panel, in which Nausicaä throws off her mask (the Mehve now in the sand behind her), revealing a pretty girl. She’s quite moe at this point, her mouth wide open in a delighted shout of ”Master Yupa!”

From here, we’re introduced to the two characters: Master Yupa is an old friend, judging from his reply “I’ve been saved by the little girl I used to carry!” Note how much is revealed here: he last saw Nausicaä when she was quite small, so he’s been gone for quite a few years.

We then learn more about Nausicaä, as she first encounters a jumpy foxsquirrel that we will soon know as Teto. The use of black and white here is masterful. Teto’s bite is accompanied by quite a lot of speed lines, on an otherwise calm and conventionally-drawn page. Our eyes are drawn to that particular panel, because of the dynamism of those lines, like a bull’s eye on a target.

Miyazaki uses black backgrounds for Master Yupa’s surprise and Nausicaä’s calm reaction. This harkens back to the psychic conversation between Nausicaä and the inhuman voice on page 11. While the moment clearly occurs in the physical world, the use of black emphasizes the personal, internal qualities of each character’s reaction. Nausicaä’s calm is intentional, coming from her character, and her thoughts are directed towards the foxsquirrel.

At the bottom of page 22, we get a dramatic moment, and our first divergence from the film. The ”Vai Emperor” has ordered the Valley to war, and Nausicaä herself will go. This is a dramatic contrast: all we’ve seen so far of Nausicaä paints her as a kind, nature-loving girl, a scientist who calms animals and lets herself be hurt by them. Now, she is being sent into a war.

Miyazaki must now resort to infodumps to explain a few facts about the world, particularly the Sea of Corruption and the Valley of Wind. Even so, he’s done an admirable job of not needing to up to this point.

Volume 1, page 24 © Viz

Nausicaä and Yupa return to the Valley, and here Miyazaki’s art shifts again. As the villagers celebrate Yupa’s return, note how the panels are crowded with characters. These are very busy pages, suggesting several facts: the people here get along well, and they have little living space.

We get a few more hints about the population. Yupa asks for ”all the young maidens who had their hair put up while I was away.” This implies a coming-of-age ceremony. Nausicaä replies: “Very well. Nekari…Tocto…come forward!”

In all the time Yupa’s been away, only two girls have come of age. This is even made a joke: as they’re given wedding accoutrements, Uncle Mito remarks, “Hahaha…Now, then…for whom will you wear them?” And Nausicaä grows serious (accompanied by an internal black background) as laughter reverberates around the room.

This is reinforced in the following page, where we enter Lord Yupa’s thoughts. The cramped, busy pages full of people contrast with Yupa’s dark thoughts of the Valley’s decreasing population.

Volume 1, page 26 top panel © Viz

Page 26 cuts to a dramatic shot of a gunship. Note the viewing angle: near the ground, pointing up at the ship and the revolver-like nose, emphasizing its nature as a weapon. The dramatic lighting highlights this ship from below, throwing the surrounding equipment into darkness.

Let’s take a moment to look at that equipment. Nothing looks familiar; the unfamiliar shapes look like mushrooms, echoing the fungal plants of the Sea of Corruption. It’s a reminder of how far in the future we’ve come, that even technology mimics the alien plant life without.

On page 27, Nausicaä launches in the gunship, and we see an interesting transition in the middle of the page. We see the gunship flying towards the viewer with the castle in the background. The next panel reverses the perspective, viewing the gunship from King Jhil’s room as he and Lord Yupa discuss Nausicaä. Here, Miyazaki must resort to an infodump to explain Nausicaä’s position as next chieftain, and that she must pilot the gunship for the Torumekian empire. The infodump is presented by simply throwing speech bubbles next to a shadowed image of the castle. (Note that the castle, like the equipment in the gunship hangar, is a lumpy, fungoid structure.) The bottom few panels continues the conversation, with close-ups on Jhil and Yupa. This humanizes the conversation, so that we see the lowered-brow seriousness of both characters.

We cut, dramatically, to the gunship flying straight across the page. Nausicaä’s speed is contrasted with Jhil’s sedentary stillness. In fact, Nausicaä pushes the gunship’s engines to maximum and flies through a wreck (note how Miyazaki reinforces the constant presence of past civilizations’ wreckage). This flight is accomplished with a beautiful use of comic motion: Nausicaä staring forward in one panel, then speed lines fly through the wreckage and up, pulling the eyes into the same trajectory, up towards the top of the panel.

On the bottom of page 29 Nausicaä ruminates about the gunship, “Still, what an ugly ship it is. I prefer my Mehve. The gunship cuts through the wind, but the Mehve rides upon it.” This is an important element of Nausicaüa’s philosophy: rather than push ballistically through a problem, she prefers to ride naturally above it, Buddha-like.

Volume 1, page 29 © Viz

The final panel uses an interesting bit of imagery. Nausicaä is clearly visible in the left-hand side of the panel, saying “That cry! Again!” The back half of hear head is thrown into shadow, along with the psychic exclamation “We will kill! We will kill them!” Moreover, her eyes are glancing behind her, at the words. It’s as though her body is divided in half, part receiving the message and part still pure.

Her reaction is interesting: she pulls the thought in on herself, holding it over her heart protectively as shafts of light burst all around her. This nearly costs her her life, as she is awoken by Teto screaming in her face; she has lost control of her Mehve.

She reacts by heading straight to the Sea of Corruption…wanting to save the person who must have angered the Ohmu.

Volume 1, page 32 © Viz

Note how, on page 32, Nausicaä sees the troubled brig. Miyazaki gives us a huge vista, shafts of light shining down on the jungle below (reminscent of the light from the mental communication earlier). The brig is a smudge on the horizon, barely visible. In fact, my eye didn’t pick it out; it wasn’t until I saw the insect-covered brig in the lower panel that I connected it with the image above. We’re shown how much better Nausicaä’s eyes are than our own, with no dialogue needed.

The next few pages develop an action-adventure tone, as Miyazaki must provide world details (signal flags), share Nausicaä’s and Uncle Mito’s knowledge and experiences, and push the intensity of the brig’s danger. More on that in the next installment of this series.

Combustible Campus Guardress © Production I.G.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Kazumi is a high school girl tasked with protecting her brother Takumi from evil. Both are re-incarnations of ancient folk who lived through an apocalypse. There’s a prophecy about the boy. The girl has powers, which she uses to fend off a never-ending stream of hellspawn.

Sound familiar? Well, that’s the fun of the 1993 OVA Combustible Campus Guardress, which spends much of its 2-hour runtime parodying these clichés. Not only is Kazumi secretly protecting Takumi with her magical powers, so is her mother. And her friends. And everyone else at the school. Each protector has been secretly developing their own unique powers, from their mothers’ frying pan attacks to the cheerleaders’ baton attacks.

Kazumi uses a sword. A really big sword. With enough power, it can split buildings in half.

Worse, she has a temper.

Moreover, much fun is had with Kazumi’s infatuation with her Takumi. In a previous life, she was his attendant–and madly in love with him–which has bubbled over into her modern Japanese teen life. She’s very protective of him, to the point that their friends tease them about being lovers.

Fortunately, the show’s staff keep this from being creepy, and instead focus on actual melodrama as the main plot unfolds: hideous demonic creatures attack the characters’ school, precipitating some kind of apocalypse undoubtedly involving the oblivious Takumi. But will he have to be sacrificed to put off the apocalypse?

This is the real emotional meat of the show, as Kazumi wrestles with her strong feelings for her brother. She’s pledged to protect him no matter what happens, but is that really what’s best?

Hilarity actually ensues, as does some emotional angst. Sadly, Guardress explores little more of its characters, focusing almost entirely on Kazumi and Takumi. Granted, its limited running time prevents much depth, but I felt like I knew more characters in Akira than I did here.

The action/comedy vibe is bolstered by the animation: fluid and frame-heavy, never afraid to throw the viewer into an impromptu action sequence. The series’ animation director, Kazuchika Kise, served the same role in Blood: The Last Vampire, and Guardress has a similarly kinetic action feel. The animation and direction hew closely to anime clichés of exaggerated poses and movement, but that’s central to its parody.

The classic 1990′s art style features all the standard elements of its time: angular eyes, lots of dark colors, and highly expressive facial expressions. The art does much of the acting.

The voice acting falls below the quality average, though this is partly due to most characters’ one-dimensional personalities. Kazumi was a particular problem, as she spends most of the final two episodes screeching her brothers’ name in reaction to just about everything. Again, that’s part of the parody, but the raspy pitch of her voice grated on my ears after a while.

But that’s a quibble. Combustible Campus Guardress is one of those strange discoveries that make anime fandom so enjoyable. On one hand, it’s a wacky parody of anime clichés. On the other, I found myself emotionally drawn in to the protagonist’s dilemma. It’s not often that happens.

It’s not for everyone. You play a naked savage in a primitive world, who has to spill blood to create magic. That said, I promised I’d post it for everyone to see, so you can now download Blood Rites for free. It’s a 19-page PDF.

The GIrl Who Leapt Through Space © Sunrise

The Girl Who Leapt Through Space is Sunrise’s parody of pretty much everything: Gundam, Tenchi Muyo!, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Nanoha, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Gunbuster, even Code Geass. One of the main characters is a talking, neurotic colony laser.

As such, it should be goofy, sugary fun. But Sunrise didn’t do that, for two reasons:

1) To accurately parody franchises like Gundam and Code Geass, you have to parody their sprawling plots. The Girl Who Leapt quickly introduces a large cast, a big back story, and an oft-confusing plot.

2) Sunrise is almost incapable of making a sugary, plot-less show. The only ones I can think of are Gintama and Sgt. Frog, which (from what I’ve seen) spends most of its time on parody. Even their version of Idolm@ster introduced giant robots and a big back story.

Look at Sunrise’s output: Gundam, Votoms, Aura Battler Dunbine, Cowboy Bebop, City Hunter, Heavy Metal L-Gaim, Infinite Ryvius, Ronin Warriors, Escaflowne; all serious shows. Even Cowboy Bebop, Tiger & Bunny, and My-HiME have their serious story sides.

What is it about Sunrise’s staff that pushes them to tell a serious story in almost every one of their works? I’m not complaining; I’m just wondering if this is intentional.

Limited Animation

Astro Boy © Tezuka Productions

This is born of the first anime series, Astro Boy, which was produced on an extremely short schedule. It had to limit its animation.

To understand limited animation, imagine a movie as comprised of 30 still images every second (which, of course, is exactly what a movie is). Imagine a drawn character standing still in the first frame. In each subsequent frame, how much of the character must be re-drawn, and how much can be re-used?

In full animation, a character’s entire body is re-drawn every time the character moves. Imagine a character talking: In full animation, the character will also duck her head, make hand gestures, and otherwise move her entire body. In limited animation, only the lips need to move. Other parts of the body may move as well, but the animation is localized to the necessary movements. In fact, localized animation is a more accurate term for limited animation.

This allowed Astro Boy and the anime that followed it to be made cheaply, which led to the proliferation of anime series produced in the past few generations. The scale of anime production staggers the mind: For the past decade, over 100 new anime series were released on TV in Japan every year. Scale Japan’s population to the size of America’s, then scale the anime industry proportionally, and they’d be launching a new anime TV series every day.

The benefits of a large ecosystem are well-documented, but this approach also opens the door for experimental works, since studios can risk a little money on unusual, sophisticated concepts.

Focus on Individual Drawings

Astro Boy‘s low animation budget combined with the high standards of its director, to push the animators into making each drawing memorable. Since some shots contained only a single, immobile drawing, the artists worked hard to make individual expressions dramatic and dynamic.

It can be a subtle difference, but American cartoon faces stick to normal, tried-and-true camera angles and facial expressions. Anime tends towards a much more dynamic visual range, even in non-experimental series like Dragon Ball Z and K-ON!

Dramatic poses

Building off the previous point: according to Rintaro, at one point during the production of Astro Boy, the animation team blew off steam by going to see a kabuki play. Actors move and pose in overly-dramatic ways in kabuki, and Tezuka saw in this a set of useful physical poses for his animation work. The artists went back and incorporated those poses into Astro Boy, and many of those dramatic poses exist in anime today.

Haruhi Suzumiya © Kyoto Animation

But this didn’t lead just to a use of kabuki poses; it led to the use of dramatic poses in general. It became normal for characters to strike dramatic poses, and for the camera to use exaggerated “lenses” (particularly after the success of Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s hyper-cinematic style in 1995).

Large, expressive eyes

People used to make fun of anime’s big eyes, until Pokémon took over the world.

Why are anime eyes so big? Imagine you’re a shoujo manga artist (in other words, you draw girls’ comics). You have to portray all the emotions of adolescent girls. How do you draw the expression on a girl’s face when she sees the boy for which she has a crush–but that she’s never worked up the courage to approach–speaking quietly to her best friend?

To over-simplify: shoujo manga artists discovered that large eyes portray subtle emotion better than smaller eyes.

Several studies have shown that even infants recognize and respond to faces (making facial interpretation one of the first things humans learn).

So, yes, the eyes are big…and this is allows for a broader range of facial expression than you’ll see in a typical Western cartoon. Heck, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny have far larger eyes than any human (or mouse or rabbit), partly for that reason.

Look at these characters. I’ve seen an impressive range of expression in Warner Bros superhero cartoons, but which do you think can portray the most subtle gradations of emotion?

The simpler faces of Justice League © Warner Bros.

The more expressive eyes of anime, here demonstrated in Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler) © A-1 Pictures, Funimation

Long-form plots

This is one element we can’t lay at the feet of Astro Boy. While Astro has the glimmer of a story arc in the rogue personality of Dr. Tenma, the sports and sci-fi anime of the 1970′s introduced long-form plots.

This became one of the most unusual elements of anime works. While Western TV cartoons stuck doggedly to the episodic format, anime series developed long, complicated plots that built to conclusive finales. Main characters died. I saw a sci-fi anime series aimed at preteens that involved suicide bombers and the death of nearly every human being, including several preteen main characters who deliberately sacrificed themselves so the hero could live. This was released in 1978.

Even American live-action television wouldn’t see this approach until Babylon 5 legitimized it in the mid-1990′s.

Those are the five big traits common to anime that I can think of. Do you think I’ve missed anything? Let me know in the comments.

Nasu ~ Summer in Andalusia © Madhouse

Nasu ~ Summer in Andalusia is an independent anime film conceived and directed by an ex-Studio Ghibli staff member, and tells the story of a bicycle race in Spain.

Let me be clear: this movie tells the story of the final hours in a professional bicycle race that’s happening in Spain. There are no fantastical powers, no moe girls, no fanservice, and no holes into other dimensions. The lead character, a professional bike racer, isn’t even a special bicycle racer.

But Nasu is about far more than that. Without spoiling the plot–and much of Nasu‘s pleasure comes in understanding its themes and philosophies as they’re slowly revealed to the viewer–the story touches on family, determination, courage, and loss. Take a Satoshi Kon film, remove the mind-bending questions about the nature of reality, keep his films’ meditations on human nature, and you’d get something like Nasu.

But Nasu sports the budget of a Mamoru Hosoda film. It’s not quite a Ghibli budget, since only Ghibli can guarantee the kind of success that warrants its budgets, but Nasu abounds with movement and carefully-crafted detail. Bicycles have weight, characters lean heavily, and the air shimmers with afternoon heat.

The film moves at the same relatively unhurried pace as the race; the competitors are experts in the conservation and application of energy. That ebb and flow is central to the film, as the racers must think not only about their effort this moment, but the effort required at each stage of the course and through the entire day. Is it worth pushing yourself to win this race and be too exhausted for next week’s?

Nasu has some of the strange “plotless wonder” of a Ghibli film. A movie about a bicycle race should be dull, but somehow the director manages to pile on sub-plot and tension without creating feelings of uncomfortable tension in the viewer. On one level, it’s simple, on another level, it’s amazingly complex.

I’m reminded of a moment near the end of the film, when the protagonist bikes alone to a rocky outcropping that overlooks a town below. He stops, gets off his bike, and looks down at the town. It’s a quiet moment of reflection that we’d never have in a Hollywood film–nothing’s happening!–but which sums up many of the film’s themes.

It’s the simple things that are usually the best.

I certainly understand why fans like new shows. There are plenty of interesting shows this year.

I don’t understand the assumption that every anime fan is watching the latest shows being released in Japan. Fans frequently ask for my thoughts on the latest shows, and I have to explain that I rarely watch them. I’ll watch recent shows eventually, but I want to catch up on all sorts of older shows.

Moreover, I think fans shortchange themselves when they focus on the new.

Anime is incestuous (and not just in the Yosuga no Sora sense). Most anime creators were otaku in their youths, so their works (consciously or unconsciously) reference previous anime works, especially those a decade or two old. Some of these references are simple cameos, but many are far more subtle. For example, I didn’t fully understand the origin of Evangelion‘s infamous 1995 Instrumentality ending’s abstract imamgery until I saw the many metaphor-rich and visually experimentational sequences of 1978′s Space Pirate Captain Harlock.

Also, the staff of earlier shows approached their material differently. Much as I love the postmodernism of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and the plotless comedy of Lucky Star, I get different satisfaction from the aggresive story focus of 1980′s anime, from Armored Trooper VOTOMS to Gundam and Macross. The 1990′s introduced wild premises, from Ranma 1/2 to Tenchi Muyo!. You may find that the anime of a different time suits your tastes better than that of today’s series.

There’s nothing wrong with the new, but there are far larger worlds to explore.

Redline © Madhouse

There’s a thin skeleton of a story underneath the beautifully-animated skin of Madhouse’s 2009 anime film Redline. This is not a complaint.

Redline‘s A plot focuses on a ridiculous, over-the-top futuristic racing circuit. Imagine Car Wars combined with Star Wars podracing: vehicles out of Syd Mead‘s wet dreams drive insane speeds, firing heavy weapons and enhancements worthy of Gamma World. (If you like realism, put that preference aside while watching Redline.) The final race of the season is scheduled for a planet whose military dictatorship that doesn’t want the race, and so deploys the planet’s military against the drivers. Of course, the race goes on anyway.

The B plot is about a guy and a girl. They kinda like each other. Oh, and the guy’s right-hand-man is dodgy. That’s it.

There are absolutely zero surprises in any of these plots, but Redline is all about energy and presentation. Like the makers of any good action movie, the staff of Redline seemed to care most about pacing and visual flair. On those, Redline certainly delivers. The racing sequences have possibly the highest sheet count I’ve ever seen; the screen is absolutely jammed with movement. Many shots are full-frame animation, almost never seen in anime.

The movie’s hyperactive style results in tepid dialogue. There are many quiet moments, but since most of the characters are either rival racers or over-the-top gonzo military clichés, there’s little of substance for them to talk about. The guy and the girl verbally dance around each other. A few quiet scenes do provide a couple of lovely moments of character development, but that’s about all the complexity you get.

The Japanese voice actors fit their characters well, including the over-the-top ones. This can be a problem, as several characters basically scream their dialogue the whole time. It’s appropriate, but I found myself wincing a few times as my ears were assaulted by exclamations worthy of Dragon Ball Z‘s worst antics.

Overall, Redline is a visual feast that must be appreciated as a high-energy action story. It’s a bit more than that, but only a bit. Fortunately, the beautifully-crafted animation and unflagging pace remains entertaining for its entire run time.

Wandering Son © 2011–2012 Takako Shimura, AIC

There is a philosophical sense to the word “perfect,” in which a ”perfect object” is one that fully and correctly manifests its potential. So, there may be many perfect trees; the perfect tree is not without flaw, but its flaws are unimportant and its strengths are completely manifest.

In that sense, Horou Musukou ~ Wandering Son is perfect.

Wandering Son explores gender through its characters, children just entering adolescence during their first year in middle school. The story focuses on Shu, a boy who has developed an interest in girls’ clothes. His best friend is a boy-ish girl who wears shorts and shirts, and grows frustrated by her developing body.

From there, the story grows complicated. Nearly every character reflects some aspect of gender, from stereotypical “boy behavior” to homosexuality to transsexuality. Characters develop crushes on each other, which throws the idea of gender into even stronger relief — what does it mean when one boy seems to fall for a boy who likes to cross-dress? Does he like the boy that he sees, or the girl that he sees?

These issues are beautifully counter-pointed by the character’s inevitable physical maturation; boys’ voices break and they have wet dreams; girls begin to fill out physically. The tomboy cannot stop developing breasts. Is that fair? What does “fair” mean?

The cast’s plight is further complicated by Japanese social mores. Japanese society preaches conformity (though less so than in the past, and less than the popular stereotype of the conservative Japanese). This is doubly true in the pressure cooker of middle school, where kids seem eager to torture each other.

Which brings me to a remarkable element of Wandering Son: the social pressure to conform comes almost entirely from other kids, not adults. In contrast to the vast majority of kids’ stories, the adults in Wandering Son are not enemies; they are gentle assistants. Shu’s parents react to his “confession” about liking girls’ clothes with mild surprise, followed by complete acceptance. The teachers at his school are merely surprised and curious when various kids show up in the opposite gender’s school uniforms.

The only indication that adults disapprove of Shu’s interest comes near the end of the series, but I won’t spoil that fascinating plot point. However, it’s worth noting that no adults appear in that sequence; we’re simply told that it happens. Adults are consistently portrayed as source of information and helpful advice, not condemnation.

Which gets to the show’s approach to its theme: the writers present characters with problems, and the world’s reactions to those characters. While the writers are clearly sympathetic to Shu and present him as a hero, they does not portray society’s reactions as stupid or evil.

More importantly, the writers make plain that behaving against society norms is painful. Full stop. No apologies for society’s “failings.” This is the cross you must bear for swimming against society’s flow.

It’s a refreshingly mature approach. The writers don’t show Shu solving his problems and living happily ever after, with everyone accepting him. There are no big speeches in which all his peers accept him, Evangelion-style. He decides on a course of action and pursues it, and that’s it. That’s heroism. And that’s enough.

That’s why I feel ambivalent about labeling Wandering Son as non-conformist. On the one hand, its story positions gender as mostly a social construct, which undoubtedly turns some heads in Japan. However, Wandering Son is fundamentally a hero’s journey, and in that sense Shu is little different than Naruto, Ichigo, or Kenshin Himura. He’s pursuing his own path, an exhortation repeated ad nauseum in anime.

No matter. Wandering Son makes strong, clear points, with a deep and complex story that left me pacing my living room, my mind racing to collate its messages.

The animation is remarkable in its subtlety. There are no action sequences in Wandering Son; there’s never even a physical fight. Instead, the animators focus on subtle emotion; kids express annoyance, regret, confusion, and a whole range of subtle feelings that are often unaccompanied by dialogue. I’m amazed at how much I felt I understood of these kids’ inner lives without the support of dialogue.

The show can be difficult to follow. We jump from one conversation to another, from two characters in one bedroom to two similar character in a practically identical bedroom.

This is actually accurate to the original manga, which executes similar jumps in the middle of a page. As jarring as this is, it heightens the ambiguity of the characters’ views, and juxtaposes their statements in ways that highlight each characters’ different beliefs.

I listened to Wandering Son in Japanese with English subtitles, and I don’t know Japanese well enough to be able to truly judge the subtlety of the acting. The characters did feel admirably quiet and restrained, though.

However, that has more to do with the show’s direction than the actors. This is not a show about characters shouting at each other; it’s about a bunch of friendly kids. They rarely tell each other off, in fact. Because that’s a TV trope; we rarely do that to our friends in real life. And if anything, Wandering Son is realistic.