Wakaranai

Despite all the buzz and chatter about the impending fall season if you were to attune your elf eyes to scour deeper into the horizon you should see an upcoming anime the potential of which dwarfs the offerings of the immediate future. Or you could be like me and already have your excited cap on for Yoshitoshi Abe and Nakamura Rytaro’s newest project, a TV-anime entitled ‘Despera’. Here are the announced staff for the series:

Original Character Concept: Abe Yoshitoshi
Director & Technical Director: Nakamura Ryuutarou
Script: Konaka Chiaki

If you’re not acquainted with the passionate and talented artist, Yoshitoshi ABe, or the works he’s been involved in, and if you haven’t seen or enjoyed Serial Experiments: Lain, you probably won’t be able to comprehend the anticipation. Most of those with the attentional fortitude to navigate Lain’s abstraction hail it as a masterful piece of animation that really pushed the bounds of cyberpunk and sci-fi. And even if you couldn’t get into this series, I’m sure everyone was smitten by the amazing artwork that accompanied the series. I know I originally bought it because the DVD covers were so stunning. Yoshitoshi then went on to write his own series, Haibane Renmei, which has gained equal attention as a unique and artistic character study. I say this very seriously, but Yoshitoshi ABe is probably my personal most-revered artist involved in the “anime industry”, SE:Lain and Haibane Renmei being some of my first and best-remembered anime.

Nakamura Ryutaro’s name, as director also carries a lot of weight. He was the director of SE:Lain, as well as the well-loved Kino no Tabi, and was also involved with GitS:SAC. All in all, he hasn’t done much that hasn’t been original and memorable. With him on board, there’s almost a guarantee that this series will be experimental, sophisticated and thought-provoking. I say almost because I’ve been burnt before by expecting too much from a director, but in this case I think we have to have faith that Ryutaro can pull it off, because it’s been too long since a truly satisfying and deep anime. Fanboying over the newest bishoujo anime is fun, but the last thing I want to see is for the anime industry to lose its ability to produce unique and original series. With Yoshitoshi Abe’s evocative artistic rendering alongside Ryutaro’s penchant for intricate and endeavouring storytelling, this series has a high chance of becoming something great!

The basic premise goes as follows:

The story centers around a 14 year old girl named Ain, who often builds devices despite the lack of scientific background for them. The sci-fi alternative period story is set in Tokyo during the Taishō era in 1922, one year before the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake.

It’s definitely a very basic premise, and I’m sure it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the plot that the show will ultimately tackle. But at least it provides a bit of information on the setting and the genre and already it looks like an unusual series. How to describe it … a pseudo-steampunk historical drama? The very fact that it can’t be pigeonholed is a promising sign in my books. Weils from animesuki forums did have a go at interpreting some snippets of information provided in Animage’s regular Despera segment, which act as an introductory ‘novelisation’ of the story before the show is finally animated. This was read from the first, introductory chapter in Animage’s Despera feature:

The story introduces the main character, Ain, and an unnamed man residing in the basement of the Ryōunkaku, a famous 12-storey landmark in Asakusa district of Tokyo (this landmark is damaged during the 1923 Kanto earthquake and subsequently demolished soon after).

Ain spends her time building all kinds of weird devices, including a number of cathode ray tube displays (in 1922, cathodes have only just became a commercial product).

The unnamed man, who’s sort of a friend to Ain, claims to be able to see the future by looking into the cathode ray tubes.
Einstein’s relativity theory is briefly discussed between the two.

So already we’re getting a better idea of what to expect from the series, if not a better understanding of the plot! It looks to have a quirky and scientifically rooted tone, which sounds really fascinating. And speaking of fascinating, some comments made by Yoshitoshi Abe in an interview which Sirn from animesuki translated really grabbed my interest:

—Why did you decided to start the series with a novel serialization?
Of course at first we want to do this as an anime project, but while everyone has the image of the show in their own head, it’s quite hard to explain what’s good about it. Main protagonist—the “man”, for example, will never have his face shown or even have his name mentioned in the series, how we will do it as an anime is quite hard to imagine. That’s why we decided to start a novel serialization in Animage magazine, because we’re not risking as much, and by doing so, how the show will look like can be built up from the illustration in the serialization.

—The “man” is a main protagonist, but he won’t make any appearance in the series?
Basically the “man” is someone who stay behind in shade of history, but nobody knows who he is so he will never have his face shown. But because we have his character design done, we may make have him make his appearance when the series becomes an anime. Although you can say “Ain” is another protagonist, but because we won’t know what she’s thinking, so we decided to built up the series from the “man” viewpoint. That’s my understanding.

The ‘man’ sounds like a really cool idea. It seems they already have some creative ideas about how to play with viewpoints and perspective. Just hearing snippets of information like this that make me go ‘wow, what a cool idea!’ is enough to get me more and more enthusiastic about the series. At the very least, it will be something that hasn’t been done before. My only slight worry is that it could potentially become too dry and abstract like other shows with interest ideas have become (mononoke, for instance). But if it has a powerful underlying emotional story like Lain or strong characterisation like Haibane Renmei then this could be a new TV-anime masterpiece! I also hope that the animation studio that handles the series will be able to do justice to the amazing artwork that ABe produced for it. I wonder who will take on this show? I’m hoping for Madhouse or even Production I.G.

As with the other upcoming anime pages, I’ll be updating this one as new information comes along. I hope everyone gives this show a look in when it finally hits the screens (no news on a release date yet), because, as an original and highly creative TV-anime concept it deserves support!