This Week in Anime

Artsy-Fartsy

Sylvia
Oh, that is quite the relief. The creepy VHS wolf puppet was just telling me something completely different and far more convoluted, but I think he's trapped in the TV anyway. Probably nothing to worry about.

Anyway, how about that Shiboyugi? Wow! What a picture. What a many pictures.

You know an anime means business when it's letterboxed.

It's a unilaterally excellent series and adaptation, if you ask me. It is kind of unfortunate it has to compete with the transcendent Journal with Witch in my seasonal rankings, but Shiboyugi should harbor no shame in being the second-best. This is, to be crass, extremely my shit. Twisted, slow, quiet, and consistently creating new ways to present itself to the audience.

Of course, I was hyped for this before the season began, having been introduced to Souta Ueno through his idiosyncratic slow-cinema adaptation of Days With My Stepsister. I think this flew under most radars, but if prestige incest anime is what you seek, you cannot do much finer than this.

Ueno definitely is not a director who fears stillness, and furthermore, he makes that quality work for the material it's being applied to. With Stepsister, he used quietude to organically develop the unique bond and level of (dis)comfort found in its central relationship. In Shiboyugi, he uses it to extremely disquieting ends. Our journey into Yuki's interiority in this week's episode is suffused with minimalist abstractions that nevertheless reveal volumes.

And I love anime like Shiboyugi because they let me write pretentious sentences like those.

That facet in particular is so great. I also did not clock it as the OP at first, because it bears no resemblance to your usual one. It doesn't run through the cast. It doesn't include a montage of scenes to come in the season. But in stripping the concept of an "OP" to its bare essentials, Shiboyugi reminds us what it's there for—to establish mood. And here, the starkness is the point.

But yes, the eternally thorny question when it comes to discussing so-called "pretentious" works of art is how we define "pretentious" in the first place. Like, the traditional definition refers to a work with the hubris to reach beyond its means. Something that grasps for deeper meanings while only displaying a shallow understanding of its subject. The problem is that, too, can be difficult to definitively identify, so any work that attempts to be "high art" ends up wearing the pretentious label to some degree. And then contrarians like myself embrace that label because it gets used on so many of my favorite pieces of art. And moreover, I like pretenses! I like when a work is in open conversation with itself and its antecedents.

It's theater! Both Ave Mujica the show and Ave Mujica the band are all about theater, so it only makes sense to draw on that medium for such a pivotal episode. It also mirrors the third episode of It's MyGO, a flashback that is instead told entirely through Tomori's POV—another deliberate creative choice heralding the series' focus on the psychologies of its characters.

I'm also especially drawn to anime influenced by theater thanks to Revolutionary Girl Utena, which is the primordial reason I am like this. In general, but also in regards to my taste.

Utena would simply not be the same series if Ikuhara hadn't drawn so specifically on the works of Shuji Terayama and the Tenjou Sajiki theater troupe. He went so far as to recruit the troupe's composer, J.A. Seazer, to write the duel choruses, for cryin' out loud.

Now, I certainly didn't know any of that the first time I watched it. I just enjoyed how weird and unique its presentation was. But that enjoyment caused me to research it further. And in that way, I learned a lot thanks to Utena.

Yeah, I think smart directors tend to look to theater for inspiration because it, like animation, has to work within a lot of constraints. It's about using limited resources for maximum impact. Shiboyugi's consistently great blocking, artificial settings, and small cast of characters in the game all might resemble that of an avant-garde stage production.

Shiboyugi also hits a common symptom of "pretension" with its idiosyncratic art style. I especially like the juxtaposition between the super ornate eyes and the lack of outlines in distance shots.

Ooh, good comparison! There is, of course, no one singular anime style that all shows must conform to, but I also tend to like many series that significantly deviate from what we "expect" anime to look like. And I'm sure you will be shocked to see that The Flowers of Evil is my first example.

Same hat! That scene in particular, with deliberate lack of action and evocative music accompaniment, feels like a key precedent to Ueno's style. Hiroshi Nagahama took many big swings with his take on Flowers of Evil, and I'm so glad we have directors following in his footsteps. Shiboyugi's deliberate disconnect between the character art and the 3D-rendered backgrounds also reminds me a bit of the iconic clash of styles found throughout the gothic Gankutsuou.

Now that's an anime that puts the art in art house.

Big time. For me, it's the editing that stands out. Monogatari's anime began by punctuating its scene with interstitial cards that usually quote the novels, add context to dialogue, or throw in some other gag. These went on to become synonymous with the show's style. They are, importantly, beats that dictate the rhythm of individual scenes and entire episodes. They're a great means through which you can notice how important editing can be to the feel of a cinematic work.

Most obviously, Shiboyugi counts its sections from one to the final part, introducing these chapter numbers as a "ticking clock" the audience can follow as the games progress.

I've already noticed that they've skipped a chapter a handful of times, so I'm eager to see what that's all about. But yeah, it's a potent reminder that narrative shape and structure, while not as visible as the visual components on-screen, are still important factors in how an anime creates its identity. Shiboyugi's meticulous construction is a reflection of its highly controlled environments, as well as a lens peering into the psychological mechanisms holding Yuki together, game after game.

I mean, she's ritualized grief into something she does with a kitchen timer running.

Yeah the "show within a show" construction is an oldie but goodie, and in modern times, it is frequently used as a vehicle for social commentary. The viewers of the death games thirst for extreme violence yet shy away from blood. On an extremely unrelated note, how about that Super Bowl? Meanwhile, we can't ignore that the most common stated reason for participating is debt.

In many ways, this is the logical endpoint of the gig economy. Putting one's entire existence on the line merely to make ends meet. Shows with explicit leftist political leanings also tend to get labeled as pretentious. I think it's too early to tell for certain what Shiboyugi's endgame might be, but in a world that gave us the anti-cop antifascist Akudama Drive, anything is possible.

Thank you for reminding me about the wolf, because I wanted to mention my affection for works that span the spectrum from so-called "low art" to "high art." While the death game genre has always been political (further reading here), it is also a space that revels in the abject. The Saw movies, which Shiboyugi partially riffs on, are extremely trashy, gory, quickly thrown together, and nonsensical. But it's cool to see these same components painted with a veneer of sophistication.

Yeah, I love that Stepsister and Shiboyugi feel like very distinct works, and not just because of their content. Ueno is already great at calibrating his approach to suit the material, without letting his voice disappear beneath the weight of the source. I really hope he gets to work on an original, Sonny Boy-caliber project of supreme artistic indulgence one of these days.

You heard him. You better watch Shiboyugi and start appreciating art before we throw you all in the contraption.