I suppose an introduction is in order here. My Internet alias is bitmapchaos, and I do many things: I watch anime (and tweet about it), create art, and also have several little projects laying around the Internet to amuse myself and anybody who stumbles upon them. Hello there! (This adorable image of Suwako from the Touhou Project game series was created by ぽる.) And sometimes I write. It's usually never painless on my part, and I am much too fickle when it comes to sitting down and taking the time to write anything of great length. Yet I write. I've been trying to bring back a blog (and maintain it regularly) for a while; CCY's yearly "Twelve Days of Anime" activity seemed like the perfect way to both explore my favorite anime-related moments of 2010 and motivate me to write at a greater volume. And so here I am. That should suffice as an introduction for now! The specifics will hopefully reveal themselves, at least partially, in my writing. With that, let us begin my look back at 2010! All of these posts will have plot details/spoilers, although I'll try not to spoil series simply for the sake of spoiling them. XII. Tamayura - The dandelions speech And so we begin with the first show, Tamayura. And, well, Tamayura's inclusion in this list should come as no surprise to the few of you reading who are familiar with my anime watching preferences. After all, iyashi-kei shows like Aria and Sketchbook are mainstays on my list of favorite series, to the point where they are probably #1 and #2 (if I bothered to keep such a neatly-ordered list). There's something about the calming mood of shows like these that really resonates with me. Perhaps it is because of their introspective mood. Or maybe it is simply a reflection of the kind of life I would like to lead. Or, as a third option (of many more), maybe I just enjoy it on an extremely shallow level, watching sweet girls do cute things and not deal with much drama. Of course, the true reason is probably a murky combination of all of these possibilities; things like this always are, I've found. Of course, Tamayura takes the 12th spot on this ranking, which seems fairly low considering that I've just finished waxing poetic about iyashi-kei slice-of-life shows. But think of that as simply a reflection of its status as the most recently aired show on this list. Usually, how much I appreciate a show does not sink in until long after the fact; that is why the subsequent entries I will be writing do not include any currently-airing shows. Perhaps if Tamayura had aired earlier in the year, it would have taken a much higher spot on this list. In writing about Tamayura, comparisons to Aria seem to come naturally. It is not just the fact that the official site bills the OVA as being a reunion of the Aria staff; the indelible impact that Aria has made on me as an anime viewer plays a large part in how I view Tamayura as a whole. And indeed, in many ways Aria is the spiritual predecessor of Tamayura. But more interesting to me is how Tamayura deviates from Aria, distinguishes itself in my mind from its forerunner. The most immediately noticeable difference between the two works is pacing. Aria was written as a 14-volume manga series (including its prequel series, Aqua); the anime in total comes out to just over 50 24-minute episodes, the equivalent of one year's worth of airing anime. Tamayura, on the other hand, totals out to 60 minutes' worth of animated material. Although both works have a similar feel in terms of episodal pacing, the total combined runtime forces director Jun'ichi Satō to take very different approaches to storytelling. This is tied in to the treatment of the protagonist in each work; both Tamayura and Aria focus on main characters who have strong passions, as characters in these kinds of iyashi-kei/slice-of-life works often do. Fū loves photography, and Akari gondoliering. But these are two passions treated fairly differently in their respective works. Akari Mizunashi devotes her life to becoming a undine, leading tourists on guides of her new home, the idyllic Neo-Venezia; it is the reason she has come to Aqua at the beginning of the series, and while Aria progresses at a distinctively leisurely pace, Akari never loses sight of her goal of improving her skills as a gondolier. What we as the viewer get to see from Aria as a whole is the complete journey for Akari: we get a detailed view on her every day life, celebrate milestones in her journey, and, by the end, are treated to one of the most moving, satisfying conclusions I've experienced.  In contrast, Tamayura's Fū Sawatari loves photography, but beyond that, her future ambitions are up in the air. And what we, as the viewer, get to see, is a closely related series of memorable events that influence these ambitions. One of these scenes takes place at the end of episode 2, "The Small, Light Blue Ticket" (水色のちっさな切符、なので mizu-iro no chissana kippu, nano de). Riho Shihomi, the photographer who is the object of Fū's admiration (voiced by Akari's Erino Hazuki, naturally), shows Fū to a small section of her photography exhibit. It turns out to be filled with pictures of dandelions, some of the earliest photographs she has taken. And, as Riho points out, they are... pretty bad photographs. But as she continues explaining, those photographs, while amateurish on a technical level, also have a quality that is both desirable and impossible to replicate as a professional; so do Fū's photographs. And that's the thing: Fū's not a great photographer. She's better than the average person, who's only taken photos on vacation or with his or her cell phone, but her skill level is very much at a hobbyist level. Looking at her photos, we see blurry messes of moving things, a picture of Momoneko's butt, and other failed candid shots. Even her best photo, the one that sits at the entrance of the photo studio, can be seen as poorly lit and taken at a bad angle. And Tamayura asks the viewer: isn't that fine? Of course, the show also celebrates polished skills in the form of Riho's accomplished career. But it also takes the time to make the point that it's okay if your dreams and goals change every day. Tamayura is an anime about transience, and the potential it brings; its short running time helps push the message further. The show leaves off at a point where Fū is still uncertain about how she wants to pursue her passion of photography, or even if she will pursue it in the future. It could very well be that she finds a new interest, which she is more passionate about. The journey begins from here, the possibilities varied. And in that way, I can relate to Tamayura better than I could to Aria. My own interests are more similar in nature to Fū's than Akari's: at the moment, they are still developing. One day, I will have to decide where I am heading. But until that day, my dreams and my ambitions will be like a tamayura: fuzzy, vague. Fuwa fuwa, fuwa fuwa. - bitmap Permalink | Leave a comment  »
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