Category: Shangri-La

Whoa.

I must say, I totally didn’t see this coming. This was without a doubt the best episode of Shangri-La yet. The thing with Gonzo is that they’ve got so much flaws, that I at times forget that these guys make damn good anime. No other animation studio has surprised me more times than they did. Blassreiter looked like a simple action-show, but what terrific action it became. Gad Guard from the outside looked like yet another boy meets robot show, and yet it developed into a very likable series. The same goes for the likes as Solty Rei, Welcome to the NHK, Seto no Hanayome, they’re all shows that turned out to be excellent even though you wouldn’t suspect it at first glance.

After the previous episodes’ disaster in the animation department, I was seriously surprised to see the animation quality this much improved. The inconsistencies are totally gone. Characters aren’t conveniently placed in the background to save money on drawing close-ups, and especially the virtual reality animation rocked beyond belief. Now, if only the rest of this series can keep this same quality.

But also in the storyline department this show got some new dimensions. Like above, the virtual reality turns out to play a much more important role than suspected, as even some of the guys at Akihabara make use of the same technology that our little genius uses to manipulate companies. At the same time, the military has also been working on an invisibility device, and Kuniko makes use of one of the naive guys of the military and finally gets a bit of an idea of what’s going on inside Atlas. I personally loved that scene between them, because you could really tell that the two of them were living in totally different worlds and tried to justify their own actions.

Oh, and I had to laugh at the subtle otaku-jokes. Usually in anime these sorts of jokes are dumbed down a bit too much, but I loved how Kuniko’s grandmother used to be a popular idol when she was young. I definitely understand why she’s trying to hide that. ^^;

In any case, overall this episode made this series even more intriguing than it already was. I really had some doubts whether this series would turn out okay or not in the end, but this episode surely removed a lot of them.

Rating: ** (Excellent)

Short Synopsis: Kuniko and Momoko head to Akihabara. Or what’s left of it.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
At first I thought that it would be best for me to simply follow the subs from this series, but after last week’s disaster with Tranquil Fansubs I’m just going to continue with the raws like I’m doing for most of the other shows I’m blogging. I’d rather miss a few details here and there than to sit through their “It’s so huge! It’s so huge!” It’s of course one thing to make slight translation errors, but it becomes a problem when a subtitle creates an extra flaw for a series. Shangri-la has its own problems, and it doesn’t need any more.

In any case, the animation of this series is a strange beast: during the first half of this episode, it actually looked quite capable… only to descend into the previous inconsistent quality in the second half. It’s the clear sign of a badly managed animation budget and outsourcing. I can’t seem to find anywhere who is supposed to be the chief animation director, but I think that this is the guy we need to blame for this.

Still, I’m not ready to give up on this show yet by far. While the show indeed isn’t anything amazing yet, it’s doing exactly what it should be doing right now: flesh out the setting and characters. This episode was a great way to show a bit more of the setting by showing how Akihabara has turned into some sort of black market paradise, and how these vastly different cities emerged when Tokyo got turned into a jungle. This series is in no way like Dragonaut, which even in its first episodes was one big heap of dullness, stock characters and predictability. I mean, who cares if it’s not amazing right now: there’s enough chance left for that. It’s clear that this isn’t a show that can be awesome right from the first minute, but there have been plenty of series with an average first half and an amazing second half. That’s what I’m hoping Shangri-la will turn into.

On a more negative side, there have been quite a few coincidences in this episode. The most unlikely ones:
– Kuniko’s mother is most likely confirmed to be Sayoko
– Miiko becomes instantly liked by Mikuni
– Momoko is Mikuni’s mother (?!?)
– Someone Kuniko knows lives in Akihabara. My guess would be either her father or brother.
– For some reason Karin can’t find any data about Kuniko.

Standalone those coincidences are obviously too much, but when you think about the causality between them, things start to get interesting. If Momoko indeed is Mikuni’s mother or father (depending on when exactly she got her sex change), it would make sense of Mikuni to like transvestites like Miiko. We now see that Kinuko is someone special, and perhaps the reason why Momoko left her ‘daughter’ had something to do with Kinuko, and somewhere along the way Miiko got involved. Now the question remains who that guy at the end of the episode was. There are still a few too coincidences, but provided that they’re well handled they shouldn’t prove to be that much of an annoyance. And besides, it’s good that these revelations come this early in the series. It’s much better than the alternative: a “LUKE I AM YOUR FATHER”-moment near the end.

Short Synopsis: Kuniko sneaks into Atlas.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
A solid episode for Shangri-La, and I must say that I’m still intrigued by this show. It may not be the best thing out of all the currently airing shows, but there is potential if the creators manage to push the right buttons. So far, they’ve already done a pretty good job in this, despite the predictability of some points. I mean, in this episode for example we learn that Kuniko’s mother is in Atlas as well…

Gee, I wonder where she could be… [/sarcasm]

What I liked about this episode was the extra bit of depth it gave to the setting. It was a nice touch for that woman of the last episode that yelled at Kuniko to make another appearance in this episode. Atlas was like expected nothing like ‘the promised land’, but looks more like something akin to an anthill.

Right now, Atlas really looks like your average totalitarian empire who oppresses all outsiders, but we’re only three episodes in. I’m interested to see whether the creators can give it a unique touch. Right now the creators seem to be moving in the direction of the huge contrasts between rich and poor, and while this is forming a good base there still seems to be something missing. It also poses an interesting array of questions, though: the Metal-Age are indeed a double-edged sword, but their actions do provide security for the sick and elder who have trouble taking care of themselves. That also begs the question: how are these people coming by in cities that don’t have the Metal-Age?

I also liked the development from Kuniko. This episode establishes her as flawed, rather than the perfect army-commander that the first two episode made her look like. Her big flaw is that she easily gets distracted, even though she probably doesn’t mean any harm. Because she’s lived in the comfort of the detention centre in which she was surrounded by certainty, returning to the uncertain world outside of Atlas has turned her a little insecure.

Short Synopsis: The metal-age and Atlas get attacked by a mysterious party.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so I’m obviously not going to blog the beyond ridiculous Hanasakeru Seishonen, but I’m pretty excited about Gonzo’s new series of Shangri-La.It may not be the most solid series, but it’s got enough of one thing: creativity. It now is the job of the creators to fit this creativity properly into only 24 episodes, but with the guy behind Noein and Birdy the Mighty’s series composition, I think that we can expect some great things from this show. The director himself doesn’t really strike me as anything special or unique, but he has potential, having worked at many different staff position for many different series in the past, and I’m trusting on the experience of these guys to make this series work.

My only complaints about this show so far is just a bit of nit-pickery: in this episode Kuniko and Momoko for example are discovered by the enemy and have to run away for their lives, and while doing so they casually start to talk about golden balls. That doesn’t exactly feel appropriate in that situation, does it?

Nevertheless, there’s lots of nice stuff in this series. I like how when a building gets destroyed, it remains destroyed. The music also rocks, and I also really like the different and varied character-designs. There’s some definite chemistry between the characters, which promises a lot of potential for this series’ second half. All in all, it’s a very fun episode to watch, and yet the darker themes of the show regarding the carbon emissions, military oppression and the dystopian-esque setting don’t lose their impact.