Thrones at Play

How about a little mood music?

I know it’s a little late to be jumping on The Game of Thrones hype train. The first season of the HBO series has come and gone, and the recent release of A Dance with Dragons has ended George R.R. Martin’s 5 year publishing drought. The wait wasn’t all that awful for me, seeing how I only started the series this last spring, and I had to fight a bit to finish A Feast for Crows (more on that below). But after having spent literally thousands of pages in the world of Westeros, I feel compelled to share a few observations about the series.

These covers are nice and all, but I prefer the solid colors and 

simple imagery of the paperbacks.

As much as I love meta-level jokes and snarky self-awareness, it is extremely refreshing to read fantasy fiction that plays things straight. Yes, there is something of the post-modern in Martin’s multiple POVs, his willingness to kill off characters permanently, and his recent experiment with concurrent chronologies, but he never feels the need to gloat about how clever he’s being. Even though the plot is ponderous and labyrinthine, he lets his characters carry the tale. The pacing is slow at times. Glacial even, seeing how winter is just now arriving in Westeros even though the series is supposedly more than half over. But the political alliances are intriguing, intelligent and natural.

This is in large part thanks to Martin’s sparing use of magic. Even more than in Middle Earth, magic is a subtle and ugly force whose existence is doubtful and denied by most of the world. There is no established social class of wizards, no ostentatious fire and lightning based combat, and very little in the way of spell-casting rules for fans to analyze and play with. But there is magic. We’ve got an army of walking dead stalking the frozen north; a red sorceress who does some deeply disturbing things with fire, shadows and her vagina; dragons born from petrified eggs through dark and bloody rituals; and people who can psychically inhabit the bodies of animals. There is also the seasonal hook to consider: summers and winters last decades in the world of Westeros. But this later feature isn’t regarded as magick so much as an ugly, hard fact of life. All of Martin’s magick is rooted in physicality however, and even though the fantastic elements of the story escalate with every book, the world still feels credible and medieval.

Much has been made of Martin’s willingness to kill off major characters, but I think the best and cruelest aspect of his writing is his eagerness to maim, damage and otherwise irrevocably change his characters. Spoilers up to Storm of Swords follow, so those who have yet to read the books probably want to skip this paragraph. Still with me? Okay! Bran’s paralysis is the first and most obvious example. As he is presented at the beginning of the story, Bran is kind of bland and boring. He’s likeable enough to pass muster as the hero of a coming of age novel, but you’ve seen all that before elsewhere. After he suffers from a broken back that deprives him of his dreams of knighthood though, he becomes someone completely different. A character you have never encountered before in the epic fantasy tradition. Tyrion is another example. He starts out “damaged” by his dwarfhood and only gets more damaged as the series progresses. But the single most intriguing transformation in the series so far is when Jaime Lannister loses his sword hand. A man who has resolved everything with violence and cruelty is forced to walk a less impulsive, introspective path, and consequently, he goes from being a complete monster into a compelling and at times even likable character.

The series as a whole is superb, but it does have its high and low points. The first book, Game of Thrones, is great, introducing the central conspiracies and characters and moving things forward at a fairly rapid clip. It’s a good enough book to justify at least two sequels, and it establishes Martin as major force in Fantasy fiction. Does he live up to oft-marketed title of “The American Tolkien”? I would say “hell, yes!” but then again, I was never terribly taken with Tolkien. I respect the foundation he has laid, his poetical abilities and his masterful use of folklore, but I also had to struggle a bit to get through Middle Earth. Getting back on track, Clash of Kings, the second book in the Song of Ice and Fire, introduces more magic into Martin’s world, and for that I am willing to forgive it almost anything. That said, it does indulges in lots of plotting, politicking and characterization. Even though castles are sacked and people are displaced, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was mostly a build-up book. Fortunately, all that set-up pays off in A Storm of Swords. It seems to reach it's climax in the middle, but things keep escalating with a string of death, betrayal and salvation.

This is the high point of the series in my opinion. You'll laugh, you'll cringe, 

you'll feel like you're reading a much shorter novel.

A Feast for Crows deserves its own paragraph, because it fails in an interesting way. On the one hand, it features consistently good writing like the rest of the series. But after the excitement and revelations of Storm, it is an absolute chore to get through. Instead of writing about the characters you have come to loathe and love, Martin introduces a whole menagerie of asshats that have only been mentioned in passing, if at all. Meanwhile, many of the best-loved characters are left on the cutting room floor. The justification for this is that those better loved characters will be covered in A Dance of Dragons, which is supposed to occur semi-concurrently with Feast. I was vaguely offended that my favorite characters had been replaced by obscure and frankly, boring newcomers, and while there is something to be said for Martin’s willingness to take risks this late in an established series, the divide contributes little to the over-all story. Re-reading chapters that we experienced through Sam through Jon contributes very little to the overall story. Then again, I haven’t finished reading Dance yet, so maybe I should withhold judgment until I have.

As far as the TV series is concerned, it is the best adaptation of a long running fantasy series I have seen. Admittedly, that’s not saying much, seeing how the only thing I have to measure it against is Syfy’s awful adaptation of The Dresden Files, but for the most part, the series seems to be in the hands of people who actually care about it. Yes, the extra sex scenes are a bit ridiculous, seeing how the books have their fair share to begin with and the ramped up violence seems equally unnecessary. I imagine there is some sinister committee that has worked out a specific boobs and decapitation quota for each season to snag as many viewers as possible, but considering the books have their fair share of exploitive violence and sexuality already it leaves something of a foul aftertaste in the mouth. I’m willing to forgive them however because the quality of the plotting and dialog is preserved handsomely, and more importantly, 99% of the characters have been cast perfectly. My only complaints are superficial and ultimately sexist: Caitlyn seems a decade older than I imagined her, Cersei isn’t a jaw-dropping Helen of Troy-esque beauty, and Shay is less of a flirt than she is written in the books. So I guess I’m not much better than the sinister committee who is trying to shoehorn in as much extra sex as possible.

My only other gripe, and this is really picking nits, is that the armor and weaponry of the series do not live up to their printed counterparts. Martin’s descriptions of lamented plate mail, valyrian steel and sculpted pauldrons made me think of the ridiculously ostentatious armor sets in World of Warcraft. Admittedly, such things work better on pen and paper, (or in cartoonish polygons) than they do on screen, where actors actually have to wear the stuff and make themselves seem remotely credible while delivering their lines.

So is Game of Thrones for you? If you’re into dark fantasy, conniving politics and compelling characters, the answer is an emphatic yes. If not, I honestly don’t know what you’re doing with your life. As to whether you should read the books or watch the show, I would say both are worth your time, providing you have time enough to spare. If not however, this is one of those rare occasions where HBO’s offerings won’t lead you too far astray from the printed word. So watch the show or the buy the books, but don’t let yourself miss out on Martin’s masterpiece.

Off the Record, On the QT and Very Hush Hush

If I had to pick a quote to sum up the present state of hardcore gaming, I’d have to go with an old Philip Marlowe line: “Seems there are so many guns around town lately and so few brains.” Don’t get me wrong sweetheart, I enjoy a good cross-hair simulator as much as the next Tom, Dick or Harry, but it’s nice to see a game take on problems that can’t be solved with bullets for a change. Bioware’s branching narratives flirt with that sort of thing through dialog trees that feature options for intimidation and diplomacy, but at the end of the day, you’re picking lines from a list. There’s not much game there.

Funny that the box art's pallet is so vibrant and high-contrast when the game actually features a very muted color scheme. You can even play it in black and white.

Enter Rockstar and Team Bondi's LA Noire. In addition to snooping around crime scenes through a dolled-up point and click adventure interface, you must also interview a menagerie of shady suspects, shaken victims, and snarky witnesses. Almost everybody you meet will lie to you at least once, forcing you to read their facial expressions and leverage the evidence you’ve gathered to call them out on their bullshit. At the same time, they’ll tell you the truth when it suits their interests, and doubting them when they are on the level can be as damaging to your case as believing every little detail they feed you. The system isn’t perfect. The characters’ mo-capped facial expressions are impressively detailed, but they are also fairly bombastic. Excessive blinking. Shifty glances from side to side. Long pauses. Yet, despite these obvious tells,  it is very difficult to strike a distinction between a vague, untrustworthy answer (which you should “Doubt”) and an out-and-out lie (which you must contradict with the right evidence).

All the same, seeing gameplay that relies on communication and deception is fresh and gratifying. This is a system that rewards situational awareness, logical analysis, and purposeful, involved play. The feedback system is also unobtrusive and subtle; you get a intriguing jazz flourish when you make the right call, and a melancholy jazz flourish when you screw up. On paper that sounds kind of dumb, but in practice its amazing. Imagine if Zelda's "item get" music went through puberty, dialed things down a couple notches and became all suave and sexy. The satisfaction and frustration of cracking a tough case is intrinsically rewarding and rewarding to the narrative. Developers take note: I'd like to see more stuff like this, please.

Admittedly, every case in the game involves more familiar Rockstar staples as well; car chases, fisticuffs and shootouts. The systems for these mechanics are all solid enough, but they feel somewhat simplified compared to their presence in GTA, Bully, and RDR, respectively. But the balance between nuanced, narrative-rich puzzle-solving and hardboiled action makes for a well-rounded, satisfying experience,

I have to point out, you've seen most of LA Noire's ideas elsewhere. Phoenix Wright features dialog-driven puzzles where you have to consult evidence to catch liars. Assassin’s Creed features a similar eavesdropping mechanic. Heavy Rain did the crime scene investigation thing (and the CSI games too I imagine, but has anybody actually played those?). But LA Noire blends each of these little features in a way that makes you feel like you’re acting out an episode of Dragnet if it were done up with modern-day Hollywood production values. One stand-out moment in the early part of the game has you eavesdropping on a suspect’s phone conversation by sitting in a booth and pretending to read a newspaper. It’s a scene you’ve seen in dozens of movies and shows, but its implementation in the game is wonderfully organic. It is an experience I would describe as “cinematic,” but not in the over-scripted (COD), non-interactive (MGS) sense; you do stuff that makes you feel like Joe Friday or Philip Marlowe.

In many senses, Noire delivers on the lofty (some might say pretentious) “Interactive Narrative” promises that Heavy Rain presented and promptly failed to deliver on. The writing is sharper and more sophisticated with a complicated frame narrative, a number of self-contained episodic missions, and an over-arching plot in the vein of LA Confidential; the film which was clearly Rockstar and Team Bondi's most prominent influence in crafting their dark 40’s take on the City of Angels. Just as the Uncharted series tries its hardest to make players feel like Indiana Jones, Noire wants you to step into the shoes of Ed Exley, and it partners you up with characters cut from the same cloth as Bud White and Jack Vincennes to boot. I might be outing myself as a James Elroy fanboy, but it was a role I was thrilled to inhabit.

My biggest criticism against the game is sort of false importance of interrogations. Even if you misread multiple key witnesses multiple times, the game will let you limp through the case to completion. You will receive lower rankings, but your character will still be rapidly promoted to move the story along. If you lose a firefight, or fail to tail a suspect successfully though, it’s game over. The former is understandable, seeing how your character would be dead or crippled if you lose, but if I can fuck up an interrogation without serious repercussion, I ought to be able to botch tailing somebody and try again later. The ideal solution of course, would be if the course of your investigation accurately reflected your performance. What happens if you fail to catch the bad guys repeatedly? Maybe you get stuck stopping street crimes until the force takes you seriously again. I don't really mean to advocate reputation grinding in a very focused and engaging experience, but it would be interesting if you could not only be a crooked cop, but an honestly bad one as well, and have to deal with the consequences that entails.

If you are a big Grand Theft Auto fan, this game may not necessarily scratch your itch. You can drive like an asshole (god knows I do), but you can't go around picking up hookers and knee-capping people with a shotgun. It's a lot more restrained than Red Dead Redemption, or even Bully. But it's also more different and exciting. A popular criticism of RDR was that it was essentially "Grand Theft Horse." It's an assessment that strikes me as a little unfair, since the natural setting (complete with wild flowers and demonic cougars and wild horses that can be broken in) contributed a hell of a lot to the mood and tone of the title. That same brilliant world-building is on display here, but there is more legitimately new stuff to do thanks to interrogations and investigations. So yeah. Five stars, A+, and all that jazz. Give it a try.

Gunpowder Dragons

Once again, I must apologize for the long drought of posts. The leisure time I used to devote to Sarcasmancy has gone towards weekly entertainment reviews for The Technique. There is also less leisure time to go around. Graduate school is hard work, but it is unlike a job in that you are never off the clock. There is this implicit pressure to be constantly refining your bullshit, or researching for your thesis, or practicing the skills that you have supposedly mastered after two one-hour lab sessions. At least that’s been my experience of it.  But you didn’t come here for whining and excuses. No, I imagine you want commentary, witticisms and what passes for insight on nerd-friendly fiction. I’m rusty, but I will do my best to satisfy.

Busy as I’ve been, I managed to read a lot quality modern fantasy throughout the past two semesters. After wrapping up Strange & Norrell and The Road, I devoured Naomi Novak’s Temeraire series (up to Tongues of Serpents). Like all good alternate-history fiction, the series centers on a simple but potent hypothetical: What if the Napoleonic Wars were fought with dragons? More specifically, what if the French and the Brits had aerial corps where soldiers rode dragons like bombers, with nothing but courage and leather straps keeping them on board?

An admirable cover, though Temeraire looks a little more spindly than I suspected.

Dragon is a tricky meat to prepare. It is the chicken of fantasy writing. There are a billion and one different ways to cook and serve it, but everyone has had it so often that they think they’ve had them all before. You have got to serve it up with something savory and exotic for it to really sink in and stand out. Primitive gun powder is just such a seasoning. It obliterates the familiar dynamic of knights in shining armor and maidens fair, and gives mankind a weapon that can match—but not yet easily over-power— flying fire-breathing serpents with armored scales.

“Yes, yes,” you say, haughty and impatient “but what of the writing?!” Naomi Novak is a strong author. Her language is faithful to the period, but much plainer and more readily readable than Strange and Norrell. Her main strength is making these big, fanciful creatures feel plausible and conceptually tangible. Usually dragons are beings of incredible, ludicrous power, or fairly straightforward monsters in need of a good slaying, and in either case they are loosely defined creatures filled-in with amorphous magic. Novak presents readers with several discrete classes of dragons with several different yet distinctive abilities. Yes, some of them can breathe fire or spit acid, but they can also bleed and tire and get sick and hungry. In fact, Novak’s dragons’ most fanciful ability is their capacity for human speech.

The implications of an animal that can coherently speak a human language are huge, and fortunately, they are not lost on Novak. While the intelligence of dragons varies greatly from breed to breed, they are generally quite intelligent and the series seriously grapples with issues of draconic rights. The series’ titular dragon is particularly bright and extremely passionate about bettering the social station of his race. The captains and admiralty often jokingly refer to Temeraire as “that Jacobin dragon,” and accuse him of fomenting radical sentiments amongst the British Aerial Corps.

Then again, the Corps is quite radical for the time itself. Certain breeds of dragons conveniently demand female captains, giving Novak an excellent pretense to include strong-willed independent women in her Napoleonic period piece. Much of the first book deals with Captain William Lawrence’s uneasy transition from the stiff regulations of the Navy to the atypical informality of the Corps.

The high point of the series.

Even though the series is primarily focused on the Napoleonic wars, it spends a surprisingly small proportion of time in England and Fance. The second book sees Lawrence and Temeraire off to China, and the third book details their return through West Asia and Eastern Europe, only for the fourth book to pack them off to Africa. The fifth book is a something of a treat as it brings the series back home and features battles fought in occupied Britain, but then book six takes place in Australia. The globe-trot is a mixed bag. I think Throne of Jade’s trip to China was brilliant and perhaps the high point of the series, using the radically different dynamic between humans and dragons to emphasize the real-world cultural differences between Britain and the east. Black Powder War’s whirlwind tour of Turkey and Prussia felt rushed and ill-defined however. Empire of Ivory is even worse as it manages to make Africa seem blandly primitive by focusing on the evils of slavery, and introducing a number of characters who simply die off without making any kind of significant impact. These grievances aired, I have to give Novak props for finding a formula that makes each book different and shows off her world-building talents in the process.

The books lend themselves to quick reading, so you may want to pick up 

the Omnibus like I did.

If you are a fantasy fan who also enjoys action packed period pieces like Horatio Hornblower and Master & Commander, this series was written for you. I also suspect that my fellow gamers will get a lot of mileage out of this series. Naomi Novak worked on Neverwinter Nights, and her fight sequences and varied classes of dragons are clearly informed by RPG conventions. Long story short, if you like the sorts of things I write about on this blog, you’ll want to give His Majesty’s Dragon a try.

Walking The Road

I'm sad to admit The Road is the only book I've read by Cormac McCarthy as of yet, so I don't know what to make of the claim that it is his most accessible book. The words come easily from the page without being overly simple, and the story will hold you until you finish it, even though the situation is bleak and the image is dark. If I had to boil it's Pulitzer winning tale down to a  trite, writerly bullet point, it is that you only need one strong relationship to carry a book; you only need one strong relationship to carry humanity.

Accessible as it is, the book is challenging. At least, I was challenged by it. I am used to more superficiality in my fiction. More lighthearted relationships and more artificial situations, especially where Science Fiction is concerned. I crave it like high fructose corn-syrup. Getting a story that is as real and as raw as The Road is jarring. The utter lack of adornment, down to the absence of punctuation, makes for a powerful presentation, and it emphasizes McCarthy's greatest strength: the gravity of his details. Each word has a weight that grounds you by reminding you of the mortality of the situation, or of the relationship at stake. His descriptions are poetic at times, but never florid and rarely excessive. He allows each event of the narrative to speak for itself. The necessity of self-defense, of mercy, of recovering from sickness and showing kindness to a stranger.

This is a cover that does its book justice. You can't even see the black background against the site. If you squint, you can make out McCarthy's faded name above the title though.

The core of the book is the father's love for his son. The concept of "carrying the fire," keeping humanity alive in a world that can longer sustain it, is almost incidental. Most popular post-apocalyptic fiction romanticizes the setting and uses it as an excuse for an almost fanciful feudalism. The world is too lean for governments, but somehow civilization endures. Pockets of people cultivate things, while others scavenge and others still cannibalize and pillage. There is no hope of cultivation in McCarthy's world. The ground is barren, the sun is blotted by ash, and all the animals are dead. The father is not grooming his son to be a hero, he is teaching him to remain a person, so he can die as a person. There is an important hope here, but it's a sad kind of hope. The hope of dying human as opposed to leaving the world a better place.

As you might expect, the book is not about happy endings. The fact that the book ends hopefully at all feels a little like an obligation. After such a horrifying journey, readers are desperate for some redemptive truth, and I imagine McCarthy was, too. If the father died and left the boy alone, the journey would seem meaningless, or worse yet punitive. At the same time, the father has to die to make the story complete. If the father and the son settled down somewhere, if they remained at the safe-house they found for instance, their growth would stop. If the book has a message, it is that we all have to keep moving, regardless of how difficult it is, despite the fact that we all reach a common destination. It isn't didactic. It isn't preachy. But it does have a lesson to be learned.

And here's the cover of my copy. It loses a lot with the laudatory quotes.

 The story is incredibly simple, and it is simply told, and the message too is simple. If you can write as well as McCarthy, you don't need to get complicated. Even if I could write as well as McCarthy, I will never be able to tell a story like this, though. I would be too concerned with who the man was before the world died. I would need to address the apocalypse. I could not resist the urge to build cardboard civilizations, to cast the shadows of whatever war caused the catastrophe, and to anthropomorphize this ashen world. These things don't belong in McCarthy's tale though. They aren't real enough.

The Dark Side of the Barre

This is an expanded edition of the review of Black Swan I wrote for The Technique, though the original never got published on account of school being cancelled for the first week due to 8 inches of snow and ice. I'm actually glad I get to post it here, because I have more to say about this movie than most. Actually, it did get published on the Technique's website, which you should totally visit so I don't get in trouble for posting this extended edition here. Have mercy editorial powers that be!

A simple enough poster, but it does a good job of balancing between pretty and scary.

Black Swan is modern day re-telling of Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet, Swan Lake.  Rather than a tragically beautiful, tale of lost true love however, the film offers a frightening and at times hideous look at the obsessive, self-destructive side of ballet.

For those who don’t know the fairy tale, a princess named Odette is cursed by the evil magician Von Rothbart to spend her days as a swan and regain her human form at night. The enchantment can only be undone by true love, and while she successfully wins the heart of the handsome Prince Siegfried, he is seduced away by Rothbart’s daughter, a black swan princess named Odile. Deprived of the true love that gave Odette her life back, she kills herself.  When the ballet is performed, it is traditional for the same ballerina to dance both the roles of Odette and Odile. Thus, the dancer must be able to convey both a demure, pure-hearted maiden and an aggressive, lusty temptress.

The film translates the tail to the modern day, following a young ballerina named Nina, played by Portman, who is a dancer in New York City Ballet (NYCB). After spending years in the corpse de ballet, she is given the opportunity to dance the swan princess, though the director of NYCB feels that Nina is only capable of dancing the vulnerable and innocent White Swan. She is a technical perfectionist, but her movements are repressed and inexpressive. Vincent Cassell does an admirably creepy performance as Thomas, the creative director of NYCB who tries to draw out Nina’s inner-Black-Swan and serves as the film’s Von Rothbart. While there is no obvious equivalent to Siegfried, there is a another ballerina named Lily, played by Mila Kunis, who is both a bitter rival and an object of desire to Nina. As Nina struggles to get in touch with her dark side, she begins to suffer from strange rashes and dreams, and things take a turn for the surreal. 

As a former ballet dancer I loved the movie, mainly because it is does a brilliant job of showing off the ugly, and downright scary side of an otherwise beautiful art-form in a compelling fashion. All the major psychoses of classical dance are touched upon, if only superficially, from bulimia, to nervous itches and nail-biting, to the terror that is a “stage mom.” Barbara Hershey gives a strong performance as Nina’s possessive, domineering mother, who was once a ballerina herself and now lives vicariously through her daughter. This is a real, and all-too-common phenomena in the world of dance that lay audiences may not appreciate. Indeed, deprived of the context of experience, Nina's exaggerated mommy issues can seem ham-handed and excessive.

Nina's turbulent relationship with Lily may seem equally absurd, though it is again very accurate when taken as a broad symbol of relationships in the ballet world.  Lily offers care and concern for Nina in a way that deliberately damages her. She presents herself as a friend who Nina can confide in, when really she is only trying to draw out and exacerbate the stresses Nina is trying to fight. She tells the director that she is worried about Nina's health under the pretense of concern, only to erode the director's faith in Nina's ability to handle the role. Nina is intimidated by her strong personality and enraged by her machinations, but as evidenced by her attraction to the director, she is also drawn to people that try to control her, and as a result, Lily becomes an object of lust as well as scorn.

The film touches on the horrible fickleness and ephemerality of success in ballet by means of Beth McIntyre, played by Winona Ryder. Beth is the former prima ballerina whose pointe shoes Nina is stepping into. Nina idolizes Beth to the point of obsession manifested through kleptomania. Admittedly, this is the most tenuously developed thread of the film, but the horrible accident that Beth suffers parallels the catastrophic career ending injuries that are a constant danger in ballet. The fact that Beth's career ends before her accident, which may or may not have been self-inflicted, drives home the message of the movie: ballerinas live and die by their opportunities to dance.

For the most part, the film is paced quite well and keeps the tension high by jumping between Nina’s interactions with this damaged cast of characters. Black Swan is not flawless however, and there are a few moments toward the end where the film goes off the rails and scenes that should be horrifying come across as silly instead, like Nina's final confrontation with Beth. A few clichés abound as well. Sex and drugs are invoked as obvious symbols of Nina’s descent into black-swandom. In fact, things don't really go to hell until Nina has an orgasm. Yes, it's an ancient, anachronistic trope, but seeing how this is the retelling of a cautionary fairy tale about innocence and sexuality, it is not merely appropriate but essential for the story.

Those seeking a romantic story with beautiful dancing would be better served by saving money to see a live ballet performance. Much has been made of the training Portman had to endure to prepare herself for her role, and while it’s clear she knows her way around a barre, the scenes she dances herself are not technically impressive or terribly difficult, which is amusing because Nina is supposed to have flawless technique.

Speaking from personal experience and the other dancers I have talked to, those who have a background in ballet seem to enjoy the film more than those who don’t; provided that they go in looking for a gripping story rather than impressive footwork. That having been said, the film is titillating, surreal and tense enough to entertain audiences with little interest in dance. I also have to stress that this movie is by no means a chick-flick. If anything, it is more akin to a supernatural horror film. To all guys who balk at the thought of watching a ballet movie, there is racy lesbian encounter between Portman and Kunis to consider.

All in all, Black Swan is a compelling film that explores the dualities that exist between dancers and the roles they suffer for, and the ramifications of pursuing perfection.

Darkness > Black

It's been a good long while since I wrote about anime, and I think it's high time to break the dry-spell. Enter Darker Than Black: Kuro No Keiyakusha; a series that is strange, stylish, and surprising, brought to you by Bones. Admittedly, this is old news for the torrent hunting, fan-subbing anime aficionados of today's youth; the series came out in Japan in 2007 which makes it positively ancient by internet reckoning, but I happened to encounter the series via Netflix instant viewing. So if you too enjoy the manifold benefits of Netflix, you could be watching  the entire series right now instead of reading this. But would you want to?

I would love to see a serious graphic designer's response to the show's title font.

Contrary to what the title implies, the show isn't terribly dark. I mean, yes, it is about emotionless, super-powered hitmen (hit people?), so there's lots of killing and blood, but there's a surprising amount of levity as well, and all of the main characters are presented sympathetically. If you are a general fan of anime, or of Studio Bones' work in particular, you'll find plenty to love here. If you're on the fence, maybe a more detailed synopsis is in order.

The series is set in the near future or an alternate present where the world is recovering from a strange catastrophe that occurred ten years ago. Two massive structures have appeared on the Earth's surface:  Heaven's Gate in South America, (which has subsequently vanished), and Hell's Gate just outside of Tokyo. During this time, the stars in the night sky have winked out, and been replaced by new, "false stars." Each of these stars corresponds to a person with a supernatural ability; though unlike your usual super heroes, these individuals have to pay a price to use their power. This price can range from consuming certain foods or drinks, to obsessive compulsive quirks like stacking stones or composing awful poetry, to raw self-mutilation. These individuals, dubbed Contractors, have completely rational and logical minds. So, free from the burdens of conscience, these individuals frequently turn to a life of crime, or sell their services as wet-work men for a number of shadowy organizations. And because these super-powered individuals would undoubtedly upset the natural order of things paranoid governmental types and scheming scientists strive to keep Contractors' existence a secret.

Admittedly, the premise is extremely complicated and convoluted, but the show does a good job of pacing its exposition and keeping you rooted in the present moment. Each of the four main characters have episodes that develop their individual histories and personalities which are interspersed with episodes developing the over-arching plot. There are even a few comic relief episodes starring an idiot detective and his otaku teenage secretary thrown in, that are genuinely and disarmingly funny. The closest referent I can think of is Cowboy Bebop, even though the narrative tone and visual style are completely different, and the soundtrack, save for the show's openings, are terribly forgettable.

I think the thing I like most about Darker than Black is that it manages to take many familiar manga tropes (people with super-powers, talking cats, a brooding hero wearing a clumsy facade) and make something original out of them. I'm also a sucker for shows that display intense, complex world-building. The contractors each correspond to number star in a messier catalog, and their activity is tracked by their contracts. Nothing ever really comes of this, short of giving the police a heads up as to when stuff is going down, but it's a neat concept. And the contracts themselves are a stroke of genius. They afford single episode villains personality, which is delightfully ironic considering Contractors are supposed to be unfeeling tools of war.

Another refreshing thing about Darker Than Black is that it doesn't preach at it's audience, or rely on endless "shipping" and churning to carry the plot. At first the characters are cold and without personality, but relationships do eventually arise in the series and their poignancy is pleasantly startling. There is a little bit of hackneyed philosophizing pertaining to the nature of rational thought versus emotional attachment and sentimentality, but for the most part the show just gives you interesting fights, conspiratorial intrigue and amusing characters.

To give you a brief rundown of the main cast, we have Hei, the titular Black Contractor, who makes bipolar swings between being an impossible bad-ass who can control lightning, and an unassuming dweeb named Lee Shinshun. Next up is Yin, who is remarkably similar to Rei Ayanami, and capable of sensing other Contractors. We also have Huang, an ugly, hard-bitten man with a heart of gold, (or maybe pyrite?) who can't stand the Contractors he works with. And last but not least, we have my favorite character: Mao. An acerbic computer hacker trapped in a cat's body.

Front and center we have Hei, off to the right is Mao, and to the left is Yin and Haung.

Like many other anime, the show's greatest flaw is it's artificiality. We have an overly complex premise that waxes fanciful and science-fictional, characters who are defined either by their lack of emotion or their broadly drawn personalities, and sin of all sins, the whole thing wraps up with a "WTF Anime!?" endings that flirts with apotheosis only to end up in bed with the absurd. Still, I can't help but wonder how a show a like this would fair if it was given a wider audience and a bigger advertising budget. Considering the huge following for shows like Lost and Heroes (just pretend they stopped after season 1), I think shows with more speculative premises have a lot of promise.

Long story short, if you dislike other anime, you may not find much to like here. If you are a fan of anime and you haven't seen Darker than Black, you're in for a good time.