Codex
Hermetica
Chapter
3: Demon Hunter Makaryuudo
When
I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has
glean’d my teeming brain,
Before
high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold
like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When
I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge
cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And
think that I may never live to trace
Their
shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And
when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That
I shall never look upon thee more,
Never
have relish in the faery power
Of
unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of
the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till
Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
--John
Keats
That is one of my
favorite Keats sonnets. I quote it here to show an example of what I
call “Efficiency of Information”, or the ability to convey
emotion within a limited space. Any one can write a lot – hell,
look at me. It is one thing to write without limit, it is quite
another to be constrained, as Keats is within the bounds of a
fourteen line sonnet. Or to quote Pascal, “I have made this letter
longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it
shorter.” In order to tell a compelling story in a such a short
time requires this efficiency of information, an uncommon skill even
in the best. It is especially rare in the anime directors and
screenwriters of today. In today's market, most marginal properties
get inflated into 12 episode series rather that the OVA release that
they would get twenty years ago. Not only does this add to the
current problem of oversaturation that plagues the modern industry,
but it atrophies the skills needed to be efficient. Add in the moe
boom of the past decade, which elevated character attributes over
plot and writing, and you find good writing to be the exception, not
the rule, in most modern anime. Lackluster writing skills and filler
time has given rise to the dreaded 'info-dump', a noxious state where
instead of depicting events, they characters merely tell the viewer,
in monologues that last minutes. Take Freezing, please (No,
seriously, take it far away from me). The first episode, the only I
watched before dropping the series, spent a good two-thirds of the
airtime filling in the main character who the characters are, what
they are doing, and how the world works. Important information, yes,
but show us, don't tell us. You find this manga, as
well. As I was reading Kampfer, I discovered a text heavy page where
the hero described in great detail how sweet and wonderful his love
interest was. Not a total waste, but the story would have better
served by showing us how wonderful she is, not by wasting my time
listening to him tell me. However, given the dominance of database
characters in certain segments of the fandom, the finer details of
writing quality tend to be ignored. So with that, I will turn to a
show from an older generation that still shows why efficiency of
information matters: Demon Hunter Makaryuudo.
Demon
Hunter Makaryuudo – Technical Specs:
Year
Released: 1989
Running
Time: 30m
AniDB
rating (at time of writing): 6.25
ANN
rating (at time of writing): 6.157
My rating: 7.7
The
First Act
The weakest point of
the story is the first minute, if you can believe that. The opening
scene is a conversation between two off screen characters that makes
little sense, until you've seen the entire OVA. The conversation
lacks context, and really is a shitty way to kick a show off. But
don't give up. Things quickly turn around. In contrast to the
opener, the next scene has no spoken dialogue at all, but the
atmosphere of the scene says it all for it. Inside a office room at
the local school, we see haunting shapes of half-bird, half-woman
monsters feasting on dead animals, being cared for by a woman whose
very appearance screams “EVIL”. The atmosphere is dark and
claustrophobic, with deep shadows cast everywhere. Particularly nice
how the first harpy we see is introduced. Hidden in darkness, we see
only the face, and think that it is just a girl, only to be rudely
awakened when talons and wings come lurching out of the shadow. The
use of shadows increases the unnaturalness of the monsters.
DHM
wastes no time in introducing the human stars. After the villains
are established, the scene switches to two students heading home in
the rain. In only a few lines of dialogue, the viewer quickly can
establish their relationship. They are friends, but not dating,
although the girl has a crush on the dude. Now that is being
efficient. As the two walk in the rain, something
scurries by in the shadows. The duo is relieved when the shape
reveals itself to be a woman's smiling face, only to turn to terror
when a lightning strike illuminates the rest of the monster. The
attack is brief, but how the harpies smile so while attacking is
rather unnerving. Fortunately for our heroes, the assault is
interrupted by the advent of the Demon Hunter, who makes quick work
of the beasts. The scene is very effective—the powers and
motivation of Yama, the Hunter are demonstrated, as well as the
one-sided romance. Yama erases the memory of the human girl, Kaoru,
but leaves Shou alone. Not only that, she hints at a shared past
with him, and with a sad smile, tells him she still loves him, before
disappearing into the fog. The act ends with a return to the evil
lady's office, and adds some more motivation and explanation. The
first act is not even five minutes long, but we know who the
characters are, their relationships, attributes, and motivations.
The story is set on firm foundations.
The
Second Act
The second act is the
'normalization' of the characters. It is an exploration of the
characters, which shows how evil the villainess really is, how good
natured the hero really is, and the tortured nature of Yama. Again,
there are good scenes without any dialogue. In an entirely to be
expected scene, we see Yama, in human form, introduced as transfer
student to Shou's class. In modern anime, you'd expect explosive
reactions and lots of childish drama, but there is not a spoken word
during this. The emotions are shown clearly on the face of the
characters, nothing needs to be spoken.
After some classroom
scenes, we return to the evil lady, who reinforces her evilness by
calmly murdering three delinquents. And as a follow up act, she
launches a psychic assault on our heroes as they are leaving school.
The attack is easily repulsed by Yama, but as she quickly rushes into
the evil lady's office, she falls into a trap.
This,
my friends, is how you do a flashback. The trap set by the evil lady
is a trap of the mind, designed to reveal Yama's secrets and past.
Generally, flashbacks are a sign of weak writing, a tool for a writer
to use when they can't adequately explain their character's
motivation. And they only seem to happen when the plot calls for a
piece of information that they writer has failed to prove so far.
But by establishing this flashback as a sort of mental interrogation,
we get an actual reason for it, and an added substring of mind rape
throughout the scene. Act two is all about exploration, and here
explore Yama's past. A lot of the information revealed is not
particularly necessary, as it deals with events beyond the scope of
the OVA, but it frames the character of Yama, and explains her love
of Shou and the source of her bittersweet nature. The overall idea
of DHM is that demons are infiltrating the human world, which causes
imbalance, and threatens the foundation of both hell and heaven as
well. This is a common idea in supernatural anime, and is the corner
stone of other series like Enma-kun and Vampire Princess Miyu. A lot
of DHM is rather standard, a by the book story—but one that is
still executed very well. There isn't much that is groundbreaking
here, but it is still a solid piece of work.
The
Third Act
After a rather cute
scene between Yama and Shou and his family, we return to the evil
lady and begin the final battle. Again, the setup is rather
standard—the evil lady captures Shou's friends and uses them as
hostages. This act is a bit rushed, perhaps too much time was spent
on exploration in the second act, but overall it is pretty good. We
get another good example of show, don't tell, with the mind control
snail shells, but I get ahead of myself.
The first fight is
between Yama and the sub-boss snail boy. There are plenty of
tentacles, if you're into that sort of thing, but the animation
remains strong, even with all those arms flailing around the screen.
There are some shortcuts taken, but it lightyears better than a lot
of other examples I could name. The fight also provides some pretty
good nightmare fuel, if a boy's face on a giant snail wasn't bad
enough, this happens:
The
boss fight is a fight by proxy, the evil lady controls the humans in
an attempt to cause Yama to self-destruct. This stratagem worked,
and she would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for those
meddling kids Kaoru
helping Shou resist the mind control. After overcoming this
obstacle, the final boss appears, a huge, golden demon that only
speaks though text displayed over the screen, oddly enough. I've
seen characters use notepads instead of talking, but this isn't
moe at all.
Actionwise, the final
fight is a rather lacking. There are some nice scenes where we see
only the characters' silhouettes against the clouds, but Yama
dispatches him rather easily. The story ends with a quick wrap up
loose ends, the evil lady suffers a truly hideous fate, and Shou and
Yama agree to work together. Roll credits.
So what do I take away
from DHM? First excellent use of Efficiency of Information. Scenes
and characters convey information without talking about it first, and
the sole flashback is interleaved into the story well. The
atmosphere is expressive and used to great effect. And I am
fascinated by the character of Shou. I can't think of another male
lead quite like him. The only one that springs to mind is Yakumo
from 3x3 Eyes, but he is much more protective than Shou is.
Generally, characters in these stories are either complete losers or
go the “I don't care if you are a demon with super-magic powers,
I'm a man, and therefore I have to protect you in order to enforce
traditional gender roles” route. There is a sense of equality with
the characters. He defers to her in battle, and she defers to him in
normal life. Maybe this is just due to the lack of screentime, but
it is not something that I've seen before. Amazing, that even after
350 odd anime titles, I can still see things I've never seen before.
The
Boxscore:
Plot:
8
Art: 8
Sound:
7
Character:
9
Enjoyment:
9
Value:
5
Overall:
7.7
Grade:
B
Recommendation:
It
depends on how good your Japanese is. This was never licensed, of
course, and there is only one English translation, done by the fansub
group ARR. Their quality is subject to quite varied swings, and this
is a low point on the pendulum. The translation is utterly horrible,
and while there isn't much that is wrong,
the text is stilted to the point of unreadable, and the failure to
follow the basic rules of grammar don't help. I need to take and
polish their subs to human readable at some point, but I just don't
have the time. I mean, those eroge aren't going to play themselves.
Anyway, the overall plot idea is nothing that new, and so it is not a
loss if you never get to see this one. But if you do take the
trouble to track this one down, you will find a clever and well
executed story.
Side
Note:
This is supposedly based on a manga series, but I've been unable to
find any information about it. That troubles me sometimes, enrages
me, what knowledge might be lost in the turning of the Wheel,
knowledge I need, knowledge that I have a right to. A
RIGHT!
Sorry, I was channeling my inner Moridin there. You know know
what's bad? With thirteen books and thousands of pages, I was able to
find that exact quote within minutes. In the middle ages, monks
would train their minds to memorize large sections of the Bible. I'm
like that, but with high fantasy.
