Japan FTW! Tokko!

Much Japanese anime and manga that dwells in the fictional world requires a certain "suspension of disbelief" to enjoy.  I mean, it's easy to get into something like Star Wars, where the lines between good and evil are easily drawn, and it becomes second nature to learn to quickly dislike the "bad guys" of the piece.  Though more complex, it's also easy to enjoy Star Trek, because of the overarching themes of freedom, exploration, learning, and the betterment of mankind.  Japanese animated features and series, however, often blur those lines, drawing from a more "Hollywood from the 1970's" sort of melange, eschewing the traditional good vs evil sort of mentality for something more intertwined.  That's not to say there aren't defined "good" and defined "evil" sort of characters, but this medium explores a more layered approach, showing that while the "good guys" are indeed good, they often have their own demons to fight, along with those they may have to slay in the physical realm.

So why is it, then, that we in America tend to want to drag story and plot lines out as far as we can for the sake of character development, when in Japan, anime series can be as short as a half-season (12 or 13 episodes, sometimes less) to tell complex, convoluted, and intertwining tales like Tokko?  I'm not sure I'll ever understand that, especially when most anime adaptations of manga are usually re-interpretations of the manga, rather than an accurate retelling of events.  It's odd that many of these manga series would be so shortened in order to make them into anime series, when lengthening the series by a few episodes would usually be enough to make the anime more faithful to the manga.  Chobits is one example of an anime that is mostly faithful to the source manga, despite a few liberties here and there.  But other than excluding some plot elements, the essentials of the story remain the same, and the story is finished out without too many changes being made in translation.

In any event, Tokko is the story of a young cop, Inspector Ronmaru Shindo.  Shindo and his younger sister Saya just go from the police academy/training to actually getting assigned duties.  We find out very quickly that the Shindo siblings suffered a great tragedy when their entire apartment complex in Machida was massacred by an unknown murderous fiend, or possibly several of them.  As the plot unfolds, we learn that these murderers are actually monsters known as "phantoms", and that guns can't kill them.  They can only be killed by members of an elite special police force known as Tokko.  Tokko is the "2nd division" of the "Special Mobile Investigation Section", and Ronmaru is assigned as an Investigator in the 1st division.  It is later revealed that the phantoms came to earth from across the dimensions due to the actions of ages-old alchemists who summoned devils for the purpose of gaining power, only to have the "Box of Dirge" they used to summon them shattered into 108 pieces, each of which became a part of one of the 108 greater phantoms (who can summon lesser phantoms for the purpose of killing and eating humans).  Confused yet?

I'm just a lowly phantom, spare me!

So this story line isn't quite as confusing as my short description has made it out to be, but it definitely takes some time to wrap your head around it as you're watching.  In many ways, the plot of the phantoms serves to provide the horror and gore elements for the series.  As you can imagine, with members of Tokko slashing away at phantoms with their swords, phantom bodies are sliced in half and blood sprays everywhere, ala OneChanbara or other live-action Japanese gore films.  In addition to the main storyline, there are several character-based subplots that bring you to the knowledge that all Tokko members are survivors of the Machida massacre, and have phantoms contained within themselves.  These people have had their phantoms "activated" but have been able to maintain control of their humanity and harness the power of the phantoms in order to be able to kill them.  With the death of each greater phantom brings a piece of the Box of Dirge, and Tokko works to try and dispatch all the phantoms and re-assemble this box so the gateway to the other dimension can be closed and things be put back to normal.

Again, I'm probably not doing a very good job of explaining the story, and it's better when you see it yourself anyway.  It's an interesting story, if somewhat disjointed, and it helps propel the somewhat rushed character development.  With all the subplots going on alongside the main theme, as well as the bits of fanservice here and there, you'd think this thing would be a mess and fall apart, but somehow it all works in a weird sort of way.  That is, right up until the very end.  Not to spoil the fun, but just know that the end of the anime leaves a lot of questions unanswered.  Keep in mind as well, here in the US this is rated as TV-MA and they mean it.  The police officers are all pretty "colorful" with their dialogue, and there's plenty enough gore and violence to warrant an R rating if it had been in the theater.  Add some of the adult themes, and you have an animated short series that is definitely not for children.  But then if you're familiar with popular anime films and series at all, you probably already know that previewing anime prior to sharing it with your children.  That said, it's an enjoyable enough sci-fi yarn that will be a good weekend diversion, if a bit of a letdown at the end.  If you're into anime and you have a Netflix Instant subscription, you can do worse than Tokko.

TV Time - Star Trek: Voyager

Who would have thought after mid-1969 that Star Trek, then just a freshly cancelled TV series, would have grown steadily to become a juggernaut of a franchise, spawning 11 movies (across 3 iterations of the franchise), 5 follow-up series (including an animated continuation of the live-action original), and a multi-billion dollar industry including toys, props, costumes, novels, comic books, video games and conventions worldwide?  I suspect if Gene Roddenberry were alive today, he would even be surprised at the level the Star Trek saga has become ingrained in the cultural lexicon.  Despite the long-running popularity of Star Trek in some form or another, some iterations of the franchise have been regardless as "lesser" in the Trek canon, often unfairly.  One of the more slighted portions of the Trek universe has been the unfairly maligned Star Trek: Voyager series.


Voyager comprised many firsts for the Trek universe.  It is the first show to feature a female captain, the first to feature a ship designed for scientific exploration (versus diplomatic missions like the Enterprise), the first ship to incorporate bio-electric circuitry (the "gelpacks"), and the first to put the crew in a long-term situation where zero Federation support is available during the course of the show's run.  After the ratings for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were less than what Paramount was probably expecting, Rick Berman and company were probably looking for ways to recapture much of the finge "Trek audience" that weren't rabid fans, per se, but were fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation because of it's emphasis on exploration and "bottle episode" plots, while still weaving in drawn-out plotlines, character development, and a general underlying theme.  Personally, I feel they accomplished this with Voyager.


In case you, the reader, are one of the folks who never saw Voyager, here's the synopsis.  Captain Catherine Janeway has been given command of Voyager, a starship from the new "Intrepid class" whose chief mission will be scientific exploration.  However, their initial mission will be to thwart the Maquis, a group of cessationists who were protesting (and fighting against) the Cardassian occupation of the Bajoran system.  The Maquis vessel had gone missing in an area of space known as The Badlands.  During the course of the mission, both the Maquis ship and Voyager got caught up in a subspace phenomenon that pulled the ships over 70,000 light years into a region of space yet explored or charted by the Federation known as the Delta Quadrant.  The area of space where the Federation is based (on Earth) is known as the Alpha Quadrant, for comparison's sake.  Once they were thrown into the Delta Quadrant, they encountered several new races, one of which was the being responsible for bringing them that far, who died shortly after their arrival.  Due to this being's death, they were unable to be transported back to the Alpha Quadrant, and thus was born the show's primary underlying plot line - getting back home.  Both being stranded and needing to rely on each other for survival, the Maquis and Federation crews banded together and became one crew aboard Voyager to find a way to get back home, despite the fact that at maximum warp, it would take some 70+ years to do so.

You've come a long way, baby... 

It is in this goal, and the determination of the crew to find ways of shortening their trip home, that the show finds its initial footing.  However, viewers are quickly drawn into the myriad storylines, and are quickly prompted to care about the characters in the ensemble cast due to the vulnerability of their situation, their determination to get home, and their "humanity", indeed, even for those characters who aren't even human.  Alien crew members who joined the Voyager crew early on whose "humanity" was evident early on include the Ocampa named Kes, and her love interest, the Talaxian junk dealer known as Neelix.  Perhaps the most shining example of character "humanity" is the "Emergency Medical Hologram" doctor, played expertly by Robert Picardo.

Did someone forget to deactivate me AGAIN?

The thing about Voyager that makes it so endearing is that the cast is so well chosen for the show based upon the characters they play.  Half-Klingon, half-human B'Elanna Torres can be at once fired up and yet still tender, accentuating both sides of her personality.  Janeway is a strong lead with a commanding presence, yet she reveals her layers and gives viewers a reason to rally behind her as the captain.  Ensign Harry Kim may have the nickname "Starfleet" from Belana, and his "by the book" approach may seem a bit silly in the face of the odds the crew faces, but he's just such a nice guy that he's hard not to like.  Tom Paris' renewed sense of responsibility and desire to experience life is infectious, and who doesn't like Neelix and his over-eager personality and "people-pleaser" mentality?  Then there's Kes, who, despite only being on the show for 3 seasons, manages to capture a child-like wonder (indeed, for a race that only lives between 7 and 9 years, at 2 she is still very much a child) that is inspiring.  Let's not forget Chakotay, who nicely balances his Maquis bravado with his previous Starfleet sense of duty, and then The Doctor, who brings much comedy to the preceedings.

Captain, I have a delightful Leola Root Stew you simply must try...

Now in 2011 (10 years after the show's run ended), though the show looks a touch dated due to changes in hairstyles, updated CGI and special effect techniques, Voyager still looks pretty good and still manages to impress, though not in the same way TNG did years after its debut.  Still, it's no slouch when it comes to the visual department.  Depending on your chosen format for viewing, some of the visuals may be a touch "jittery".  Now that Voyager is on the Netflix Instant service, that's where I'm watching it (though I do plan on purchasing either a DVD or perhaps BluRay set at some point), like the intense orange lighting in portions of Engineering on the ship.  It's slightly off-putting at first, but you get used to it, considering the timeframe when it was made and the limits of the effects technology at that time.  In terms of sound, the modern Trek series have always been good about sound editing, and Voyager is no different.  Rarely do you need to either crank the volume up, or turn it down in order to avoid being "blasted" by your TV, or to catch that lingering word or phrase.  The show has always had well-balanced sound.  A handful of the early episodes are unintentionally funny at times, in part due to the cast sort of feeling their way through their characters - like when Kes freaks out due to being unendingly hungry and Neelix throwing her over her shoulder to haul her off to the doctor - her reaction is priceless.  But then TNG suffered from a very "stiff" cast for about the first season and a half or so, which makes this less a complaint and more an observation.

I guess the thing that makes me most nostalgic about Voyager is that I never properly finished it.  Voyager, like the other modern Star Trek series, was in syndication, and not long before it moved exclusively to UPN is when I stopped watching because we had no UPN affiliate where I lived.  So while I watched long enough to see the introduction of the much-lauded Seven of Nine character (Jeri Ryan's calling card), I didn't get to see much of her character development before I was unable to watch the show.  I wasn't madly in love with Jeri like most other Trek fanboys were - honestly, with what little I saw, I preferred her in Boston Public after Voyager ended.  That said, I am anxious to see the development of her character fully, as I understand it was an interesting evolution from dyed-in-the-wool Borg to a more fully realized individual.  And perhaps that's the thing that Voyager boasts, at least as much as The Next Generation - that ability to take a cast of characters and propel them into a situation that forces you to care about them from the word "go", and then keeps you interested by making them as real as possible within the context of the fantasy world they were created for.  That, and the blissfully utopian view of society that Gene Roddenberry espoused, are the endearing qualities that give Voyager a leg up over much TV sci-fi fare, and certainly allows the show to hold its own against its other Trek alumni.  If you haven't jumped on the Voyager bandwagon, now's a good time to start.

A Tale of Two Netflix

So, you'd just about have to live under a rock to have not heard about the Netflix price hike.  The media has had a bit of a field day with this, and a fair amount of customers have decried the move, claiming they plan to jump ship and go with Blockbuster's service or use their local RedBox for DVD rental, or possibly the new Amazon service.  My question is, what is everone so up in arms about?  This is a non-essential service provided for strictly entertainment.  Not only that, but as has been mentioned by a Netflix exec, increasing prices and making the streaming and DVD plans divergent means that they can provide better service.  I only just joined in February of this year, so while I understand I feel the impact of this FAR less than someone who has been a member for years, I still don't quite understand the huge backlash that has happened.


I will wholeheartedly agree with the majority of Americans who think gas prices are too high, or property taxes are too high, or taxes in general are too high.  I will wave my flag of support behind initiatives to shrink the size of government and end corruption in politics.  I cannot fault anyone who says that products and services are becoming too expensive in general to truly budget for everything families want and need, because though costs go up, wages aren't following suit.  But when a service like this changes their price structure so they can provide better service, and it's a relatively small price change, isn't it a bit petty to decry the service and suddenly leave said service strictly for that reason?


To be fair, I'm a bit of a niche Netflix subscriber.  My wife and I have used the streaming service almost exclusively.  Granted, the Instant library is far greater than it was even just a few months ago when we first started, but being able to stream TV shows, movies, anime, and documentaries from our Wii, laptops, and my iPhone are a wondrous thing.  Not to mention that some of my favorites are available via this service, which just makes it more attractive to me.  I understand that average subscriber is going to be pining for blockbuster films on DVD as soon as they're released, but let's be honest - how often are you going to be the first one to get the big blockbuster in the mail as soon as you've added it to your Netflix queue?  Chances are, if everyone wants "Film XYZ" on DVD and have it pre-loaded into their DVD queue, plenty of folks are going to be disappointed when it doesn't show up in their mailbox the week it's released, or 2 days after they send back whatever DVD they've had in their home.


But as much as content is becoming more and more online and less with "owned" content, it makes sense that this model would be the right move.  They can continue to expand and support the DVD business for those subscribers that want it, and they can focus on having the monies available to continually license good content for the Instant service, which I suspect will only continue to grow and get better.  I'm a DVD lover, and I own a number of DVDs of varying types: music/concerts, movies, niche fare, and TV series.  Some of that content is on the Instant, some of it is not.  But as more becomes available online, the more opportunity I as a subscriber will have to have more ready access to that content, even if I already own it in a physical format.  I will continue to purchase DVDs for content that either will likely never be on Netflix Instant, or for stuff I want to permanently have a physical copy of for my own uses.  I will use the Instant service for quick access to content, regardless of whether I own it or not, and it affords me the ability to see all kinds of stuff that I will enjoy watching, but would never pay full price for in a physical format, or purchase digitally.  If there are "must see" movies that I miss in the theater, I can always rent a DVD here and there, but by and large, the Instant service meets my needs and provides a lot of value for what's available and how much my wife and I use it.


In short, I don't feel the need to complain about Netflix's price hike and service level change.  Companies change over time and sometimes the growing pains of those changes include paying more.  As far as I'm concerned, Netflix offers a valuable service at a low price-point, and this change isn't going to convince me to change service providers or "jump ship" as a means of showing Netflix that I'm a dissatisfied customer, because if I'm being honest, I'm quite satisfied.