Shigurui: Death Frenzy

In the early Edo period, a cruel lord stages a tournament of eleven death matches between twenty-two samurai.  One of his vassals begs him to let the samurai fight with wooden swords to show their worth, as otherwise the only thing they will get is eleven dead samurai and a floor covered with intestines, but the lord refuses and begins the tournament.  The first two combatants are a blind ronin and a one-armed samurai.  It turns out that they have a history together, and the rest of the show fills in some of that history.

Technical details: the show looks gorgeous, with photorealistic characters, chiaroscuro galore, and a very limited color palette (mostly black, white, grey, and red) to complement the bleak story.  It's by Studio Madhouse, the same one that brought us the also gorgeous Death Note, Paranoia Agent, Claymore, Boogiepop Phantom, and Texhnolyze, so that should give you an idea of the art you'll see.  Since this is a very Japanese show about sword technique, I recommend the Japanese dub, since the actors in English are going to bandy around a lot of Japanese terms anyway.

Shigurui: Death Frenzy is a deconstruction of the romantic samurai film.  The show deals with the darker side of the samurai way, bringing up the harsher side of things like honor, proving your strength with the sword, succession, marriage, betrayal, apprenticeship, and the consequences of your actions.  The hallmark of the Kogan style showcased in the series is giving the opponent a new look, like cutting off an ear or nose.  Hardly the type of idyllic lifestyle depicted in Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, or even the also deconstructive, but much more fun to watch, Rurouni Kenshin, where warriors strive to protect the weak (and keep those dojos clean).  Shigurui makes you think, "Why would anyone want to become a samurai at all?"  The lifestyle is completely devoted to sword fighting, innocent people may die so that the samurai can show the world they got revenge for the death of an apprentice while they look for the real killer, and the Kogan master, who does unseemly things to his daughter, is demented for most of the year and looks like he's a corpse in the third stage of decay.  Oh, and then there's the inherent violence.

This show is violent.  Violent violent violent violent violent violent violent violent.  Perhaps the most violent animation you'll ever see.  Or maybe just the most violent thing you'll ever see.  In twelve episodes, you'll see a lot of things that you never wanted to see, thing you never realised someone thought up, and things you never realised were even possible.  The show doesn't trivialise its excessive gore, however--the violence looks real and has plenty of consequences for all involved.  Like Texhnolyze, when someone is sliced with a sword, it matters.  The characters feel it, get bloody, and go into shock.  The wounds may even alter their lives.  The sword fights resemble actual sword fights, which are often over after a few slashes.  It's refreshing to see gore actually mean something instead of being there to excite the audience on a base level.  While unpleasant to watch, the violence is necessary to fully appreciate the darker side of the samurai.  Only watch this show if you've got an iron stomach.  You know, the kind of person who can watch Goodfellas while eating spaghetti.  Warning: don't eat Cherrios while watching episode 6.  Or anything else small and crunchy.

With harshness like this, a story better have some interesting, sympathetic characters so that you'll care when bad things happen to them.  But Shigurui doesn't.  There is nothing pleasant about any of these people.  You know you're in trouble when the only person you can pick out as the "hero" is the person who won't rape a girl when offered the chance.  Having only wicked, despicable characters can work--gangster films do it all the time because the characters are fun to be around in some way.  That doesn't happen here.  There's no one to root for, no one likeable, no one whom you'd invite to a party.  Though the show's only twelve episodes long, this lack of sympathetic characters poses a real challenge to sitting all the way through it.

The series also never comes back to its framing device of the death matches, which is odd, considering that the original manga does.  Nor do we see how one of the samurai lost his arm.  I've read the manga summary, and it looks interesting and quite tragic.  Too bad it didn't appear in the series, which could easily have been longer.

Shigurui is worth watching if you want to see the samurai period film broken into tiny pieces, but it does have a few serious flaws that keep it from being the masterpiece it really could have been.  I recommend watching these episodes alternating with season one or two of Rurouni Kenshin--Shigurui will be an antidote to Kenshin's shonen-style violence where you can take hit after deadly hit and never even pass out, and Kenshin will cheer you up after Shigurui's bleak bleakness.

Book Review: "Ashfall"

Ashfall by Mike Mullin depicts the Earth after the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone erupts and turns the world into a dead wasteland.  This book is so frightening because it presents an entirely realistic, plausible scenario that could happen at any time and there'd be nothing we could do about it.  The book's epigraph says as much.  Our civilisation--computers, civilised medicine, clean running water, all of our art, even our species--could vanish instantly, and possibly never return, because of a natural event.

Ashfall never goes into lots of detail about the catastrophe, but the fewer details work in its favor.  We never forget that the sun no longer rises or that it is nigh impossible to do something as simple as walking because the ashen rain has the consistency of cement, making each footstep exhausting and time-consuming.  Even the action of breathing is deadly, requiring characters to take precautions when venturing outside.

The characters are entirely believable--they make near-deadly mistakes, they have great resourcefulness, they don't give up even when they know the world may never return to what they know as normal.  Alex and Darla, the leads, are so well-done that when the obligated love develops between them, it doesn't feel forced.  They are careful about their intimacy because Darla can't afford to get pregnant at this time and they can't find pills or condoms.  As well, when they say they sleep together, they mean they sleep together--they want to wake up able to reach out and touch the other person to know they both are safe.  Another character doesn't understand it, showing how much a euphemism can come to be the only meaning we understand for something.  Sleeping together doesn't always mean sex--it can mean "sleeping together."  It was a nice variation on the typical teen love story.

The only major pitfall I see in Ashfall is the inclusion of a villain.  In stories like these, the protagonists often come across hostile people, but in the capacity of one-shot obstructions, not long-running antagonists, which this book has in the first half.  The environment is the "enemy" in this story: the cold, ash, and lack of food.  No human can match that intensity.  A story like this doesn't need a villain, especially one that does something so incredibly stupid as what he does as his last act in the book.  Nobody would do something that idiotic for the sake of vengeance in this new, harsh world.  He would want to use everything he came upon and destroy nothing that could be of use to him.  Though the one question I always have about some of these apocalyptic scenarios: would people really turn to violent theft and cannibalism so quickly after a wide-spread devastating event?

If you like apocalyptic fiction in the vein of Threads and Swan Song, you should check out Ashfall. It's a quick but painful read.  I look forward to the sequel, Ashen Winter.