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「何でこんなことになったんだ。僕は悪くないのに」 (Nande kon’na kotoni natta nda. Boku wa warukunainoni)
“Why is This Happening to me? It’s Not My Fault”
Ajin is a series about which one could play the “if only” card all day long, but that’s a study in diminishing returns if ever there was one. The CGI is what it is – it’s not going away, it’s not going to get better. I’ve seen a lot of interesting theories on why it seems more discordant here than it did with Sidonia – my own take being that the fact that this series is much less stiff and wooden in terms of writing is the main cause, but also that it was the space setting suiting the CG palette better, or the comparative abundance of close shots of the characters with Ajin.
There’s likely some truth in all of that, but in the end it doesn’t really change the equation – everyone needs to decide for themselves if the CG is a deal-breaker. My gut feeling right now is that it isn’t one for me, because I really enjoy the story here. I got through it with Sidonia and with Sanzoku no Musume Ronja (though the beautiful Ghibli art design certainly helped there), I’ll get past it here and confine my wistfulness over what might have been with an I.G. or Madhouse adaptation to dreams.
The title of this episode – “Why is This Happening to Me? It’s Not My Fault!” must surely ring familiar to anyone who’s lived with an adolescent (even themselves). One could certainly take Ajin as a rather clever – and literal – discourse on teenage alienation, and I don’t think they’d be too far from the truth. Thematically this series comes off as somewhat reminiscent of Kiseijuu, with a more contemporary flavor to it. Adolescence is the time when we become a different creature than we were before – one that can seem monstrous to others (like our families), and even ourselves. This is a recurring motif in fiction for a reason, and Ajin is a good spin on it.
As with Kiseijuu, we’re forced to confront the question of who the real monsters are here. And so far at least, we haven’t even been given any direct evidence for why Ajin are to be so feared (or at least that was true until this happened). Indeed, the ones who come off worst in the episode are the two thugs – kidnappers and probably wannabe rapists to boot – who set their sets on Kei for the ¥1,000,000 reward money and his “friends” from school. If anything they’re even more disturbing because unlike the kidnappers they represent “normal” people and kids to boot, and (apart from one who seems genuinely unsettled at the way Kei has been turned on and tossed aside) they express no remorse over what’s happened apart from having lost out on the reward.
Also added to the mix formally are Tosaki (Sakurai Takahiro) and his assistant Shimomura Izumi (Komatsu Mikako), the government officials in charge of rounding up Ajin. Clearly Tosaki is telling the local cops (who he regards as mostly idiots, and I’m not sure he’s wrong) the bare minimum they need to know to try and catch the boys. But so far it’s only the hoodlums getting close, and indeed one of them manages to “kill’ Kei during a pee stop. But Kei uses his voice to freeze them once he revives, and interestingly Kai seems partially immune to its effects. Is this something specific to his nature, or is it a function of Kei’s intent?
The key to all this Ajin stuff is clearly the weird creature that materializes around Kei every time death is present (including when it isn’t Kei’s death). Is it death itself? An alien, some sort of Kami or youkai? This may be one of those scenarios like Kiseijuu where detailed origin explanations are not the point, but it’s still interesting to speculate. On some level this creature seems to be an extension of Kei’s consciousness, parroting his thoughts and feelings – and it kills the two hoodlums based on those thoughts and feelings. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff to ponder on with Ajin, and that and its insistent narrative drive seem likely to be enough to make it a highly watchable series.
Author’s Note: My site, Lost in Anime, has finally made the jump to WordPress! Stop on by and check out the new digs.
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Did some decent fansubber already pick this up?
DeadFish’s fine for me. At least has no grammar mistakes like anonymous release did.
@W.P.
Dead Fish doesn’t sub, they encode subs.
But yeah there’s a couple of groups (Underwater-μtw, TenchouSubs) subbing Ajin now, at least for the next few episodes. Probably shouldn’t expect same day releases though.
> The CGI is what it is – it’s not going to get better.
I wonder – why? Computer technologies are getting better every year, so you can take something like Blassreiter and render it on a modern system to get much better final result even without any human input. And it is not like it is unprecedented – early Star Wars movies get a face lift every decade…
Well, to clarify – it’s not going to get better in this series. And there is better CGI out there – just not from Polygon. See Bubuki Buranki as an example.
there are way better CGI out there. Watch Rebuid Evangelion for example. Good CGI needs a lot of effort and expensive
Good CGI is in some ways harder to animate than regular, hand drawn animation. You need good textures, rigging, lighting, effects and other components. A lot of times they need to be hand coded or highly modified from other assets. Then everything needs to be animated. That’s why CGI anime still typically has jerky movement and rather flat palettes.
None of that takes into consideration the rendering time as well for a show that is probably done in a month vs movies that are completed in a year or several. It’s getting better but you should expect miracles from CGI, particularly this type of cell shaded CGI that isn’t really movement friendly (at least not with complex movement).
> The CGI is what it is – it’s not going away, it’s not going to get better
Bubuki Buranki. Animation quality wise it’s a whole new level.
More than the black ghost, the creepiest thing of the episode is the brief moment when the driver dude got instantly frozen, unable to move an inch, and could only stare at the incoming train with such a terrified expression. Truly captures a person’s reaction when the death is closing at him.
CGI looks fine to me. I’d rather have slightly flat CGI than bad character designs or static animation. And the music is very good.
Is the three-part movie literally going to be 24 TV episodes? I’m wondering whether to download the three movies or all 1-cour episodes.
Minor continuity error: the girl in the van is shown to have her mouth taped, though when those thugs are outside of the van, her mouth isn’t taped before being able to free her hands.