Where animation can excel as a medium for adaptation in a way live-action visual media cannot is in copying aesthetics or creating them; this allows for visual experimentation in a way which goes beyond attempting to recreate a character’s appearance and instead permits an exact visual replication of a world. The adaptation into television animé format of the video game Persona 4 provides a clear example of this total recreation – the first two episodes begin with very precise reproductions of the settings and characters of the game permitting all the stylisation which defines it to be recreated. This level of aesthetic faithfulness immediately establishes the series as an adaptation focused on recreating, if not the plot’s exact progress, but the entire experience of playing Persona 4.

This is arguably the best way of adapting a video game to a non-interactive medium; Persona 4, like a game like Mass Effect transpired to be, is a game where the player’s choices influence incidental details key to the gameplay experience along the path of a fixed story with a fixed endpoint. Thus while these incidental choices – and the responses to them – are one of the main draws of the game, the other is the entire aesthetic and how it contributes to the telling of the common story. To all intent, Persona 4 The Animation sets out its premise in the very first episode aesthetically; it recreates the entire experience of playing Persona 4 in a non-interactive form. This would not work if the recreation was an inexact one; the adaptation to television already takes one of the pillars of the game’s appeal away in removing the choices and so much more emphasis is placed on those that remain. Obviously, as the choice elements are removed, the version of the story being told is not a definitive one but instead one of many – something which gives the adaptation a different kind of appeal to someone who has played to someone who has not. Seeing one presentation of a story they are familiar with and comparing it to their own experience is a natural kind of extension of the way in which games foster conversation and are memorable. What defines the lasting opinion of a game is incidental detail and the potential for randomness and different experiences that individual players might have, especially as the trend for choice in games becomes more focused on creating decision points that are superficial in the long run yet seem significant immediately.

Thus Persona 4 The Animation appeals to fans of the game as a sequence of familiar scenes – backgrounds such as the flood plain footpath, or the department store’s electronics display or even just a school corridor are infused with significance because they are such precise reproductions of common areas of the game. What it does not so much do, though, is assume that familiarity is present. The pace of the adaptation is much faster than the game’s simply by virtue of the use of a different, continuous medium. A game must progress at the speed of the player – a rate driven by their reading speed, skill at the game and capacity to solve puzzles. By contrast, a television series divides itself differently to a sequence of play sessions and focuses more on narrative chapters than anything else. Each of the first two episodes of Persona 4 The Animation focuses on one “chapter” of the game; the period between one plot development and the next, retaining how comprehensive and expository this must be for setting up the plot and future mysteries while removing the significant investment a game requires in explaining its mechanics. It is in this way that the other appeal of the adaptation shows through; by focusing entirely on the plot (what is ultimately the result of the choices made via the game mechanics) it is, as described above, depicting one possible playthrough – a kind of intruiging unpredictability in a predictable frame. A player of Persona 4 watching the adaptation has a different set of mysteries presented to them to someone unfamiliar with the overarching story. A new viewer will watch and wonder what is going on with the main story of vanishing people in a small town. A fan of the game will watch knowing what the mystery is and looking for the places where this retelling will differ from their experience.

What makes the visual aspect of this adaptation particularly interesting, above the simple reproduction of the stylised characters and familiar locations, is how it copies the visual language of the game’s user interface. Part of the appeal of the Persona games is their style (which extends beyond the specific style of character and scene depiction into a visually unified and atypical design for menus and combat animations) and in order to communicate this in a non-interactive medium (which will not have the user-interface needs of a computer game) these stylistic touches must be applied to the requirements of television. In the case of Persona 4 The Animation this comes from credit sequences and ad-break transitions that use the trademark visuals of the game, as well as scene transitions using the iconic calendar graphic that separates in-game days. This is not wholly pervasive, and much of the structure of an episode is that of a regular television series, but its presence provides continual reminders to fans that this is an adaptation of the game. Furthermore, the fight choreography, while not an exact replication of the game’s strategic combat mechanics (which are by definition concessions to gamism over cinematic combat) uses the visual language of the game’s battle animations; cutins, closeups and gestures contribute to the Persona “experience” that the entire series tries to foster across media.

To conclude, Persona 4 The Animation establishes itself from the start as a comprehensive adaptation; it does not seek to retell the game’s story in a different medium so much as to reproduce the entire game experience in music, aesthetic and even structure at times. This is primarily appealing to fans of the game who will see the parallels and appreciate them while also enjoying the unfolding mystery of how this invisible, artificial “player” is directing his own Persona 4 experience – yet it also gives the series a unique and eye-catching style that in its challenges to the usual traditions of television gives it an aesthetic appeal to outsiders.

In my previous article about the series Black Lagoon I wrote predominantly about its first season and the often repulsive and unsympathetic violence of it. The characters within were alienating – the sympathetic fish-out-of-water protagonist was often more than simply the butt of jokes but actively presented as an impediment to the expected lifestyle of those he was forced upon. What this did was make the group of characters that would usually be presented as relatable and entertaining seem particularly unlikeable not in a comedic fashion but in a way which undermined how entertaining the series ended up being. Many of the conflicts, once the initial introductions were out of the way, were ultimately petty and inconclusive ones with high body counts but no real catharsis in the violence.

It was, thus, an effective undermining of expectations – the series seemed to be a simple action-comedy and so when it proved to be aspiring to a little more (while still providing the kill-count of an action film) the result was compelling if not specifically entertaining. The main character’s idealism – presented as naïve in the responses he got from others yet to an objective viewer often simply the voice of reason (perhaps even the expected response of an ordinary man to meeting cold-blooded killers) – subsided and he was often forced to the background. Much was made of Revy’s almost total lack of empathy and contempt for naivete, while Rock’s initial repulsion at the idea of immersing himself in ultraviolence gave way to a tacit tolerance of it for an easy life. The result was a series where the usual staples of action-films – the wholesale killing of faceless enemies, the abhorrent pantomime villains etcetera was presented without the usual glamour. This is made clearest in the storyline focusing on a Neo-Nazi society and the war the protagonists wage upon them; for all the pompous ceremony of Nazism (initially perhaps redolent of something like Indiana Jones where the ideology is presented as a useful, unequivocally evil force to be fought), the Nazis which Revy fights are outwardly thuggish yet ultimately cowardly racists obsessed with the legacy of the Second World War. Thus the expected conflict between goose-stepping villains and idealistic heroes was nowhere to be found – the result was amoral killers laying into amoral killers of a different allegiance.

This is something of a recurring theme in the first series of Black Lagoon; the conflicts depicted are between awful people and more awful people, not heroes and villains. All that makes those framed as villains deserving of such is often their nationality or ideology – and even when those motivations for villainy are indisputable, as with the Nazis, it is still shown in a way which makes the violence less of a form of catharsis, or heroism against evil, and more just a slightly better-justified reason for Revy to kill a lot of people. The overall tone is therefore one of a very bleak setting; the pretexts for fighting, and the definition of being “good”, has changed such that it takes clearly-defined and indisputable labels of “evil” to create villains worth fighting. When a more comedic (yet no less pointlessly violent) arc begins involving a trained killer disguised as a maid even the jokes (her macho posturing and natural rivalry with Revy as a result) end up being far from easily relatable. The arc ends with Roberta, the assassin, involved in a brawl with Revy to settle who is the stronger – yet the response of the other characters is a kind of resigned boredom, and the humour is drawn from how prolonged and inconclusive this fight is. It is interesting to compare this with the ending of the somewhat different film Porco Rosso, which also has a lengthy and quite inconclusive fist-fight as its conclusion; in both cases the draw is not specifically the fight (which goes on far past the point where a film might usually stop) but how its protracted nature reflects poorly on both combatants. Revy’s fight with Roberta is entered into with Rock and the others expecting an inconclusive, messy brawl – in a series which has continually impressed upon the viewer how Revy is overfond of violence as a response to things in a way which is not the usual knockabout slapstick comedy of such a firebrand archetype. By contrast in Porco Rosso the fight is drawn out and out not to show the propensity for violence or the love of it that its characters have but to mock their unwillingness to back down.

Yet the second season of Black Lagoon is somewhat less subtle and is a significant change in direction tonally. Characters who were previously immensely unlikeable in how their conduct did not have the usual fictional sheen of relatability – notably Revy and Eda (a nun whose church is a cover for illegal dealings) – are toned down into comedic archetypes. The amorality – or perhaps simply rejection of expected morality – is replaced by exaggerated greed and the swearing which in the past was used to depict Revy as alienating and unwilling to communicate becomes instead a kind of catchphrase. Here the appropriate comparison is the shift in tone throughout the Rambo films. The first is quite unlike its successors in that it presents John Rambo as an ex-soldier driven to violence by a world which provokes and betrays him – actually providing a measure of social commentary about the treatment of war veterans in a post-war society. Subsequent films changed this message to a more straightforward patriotic one where the “appropriate” use of an ex-soldier is to return him to fighting and have him seek glory. It is still ultimately presenting the viewpoint that society expects nothing from soldiers except service, but making this a positive thing not a negative one.

Compare this with Black Lagoon‘s transformation of Revy from a quite alien character – defined by her lack of any kind of aspect that Rock (and by extension the viewer) can understand or relate to – to a relatable if thorny action heroine whose aims are to get rich and (reluctantly) save the day. Her character has not specifically changed – she is still coarse, amoral and greedy – yet these are now positively-depicted comedy archetypes. Indeed there is little save bad language and gore separating Revy and Eda from one of the archetypal animé firebrands, Lina Inverse from The Slayers. This is also reflected in the choice of antagonists. The first series of Black Lagoon, as described above, established its enemies as the worst of the worst – the politically and ideologically abhorrent, presented in all their hollow and secretly cowardly baseness. The second series begins with pseudo-vampiric cross-dressing war orphans performing superhuman acts of combat and then moves onto a battle royale between Revy & co and a group of one-note hitmen defined by gimmicks (a soft-spoken psychopath with a flamethrower, a mute with a chainsaw, a modern cowboy etcetera) over an endearingly clumsy forger’s secrets. In many ways this is far more entertaining; the action is more straightforward and full of exploding cars, chase scenes, boat stunts and one-liners. The series is far easier to watch and laugh at the macho posturing of Revy and the nervous naivete of Rock (and subsequently Janet the forger). Yet it is also very much a more straightforward action-comedy, and any of the subtlety that the first series may have had with its generally bleak outlook (where Revy’s amorality was shown as alienating and hard for an outsider to comprehend without seeming patronising, not endearing) is gone.

It is fair to say, I feel, that the second series of Black Lagoon fundamentally provides what the first lacks, yet loses something as a result; it is pacy comedy with high-octane action and memorable scenes, rather than a more subtle kind of black comedy based around how incomprehensible an action-hero might seem to someone meeting them face-to-face. Revy is still the same action-heroine, in fact; what has changed is the depiction of what being one entails.

Note: This article is also available at Super Fanicom HERE

There is an ongoing tension by this point in Eureka Seven between the desire for normality – and the concessions that must be made to make this happen – and the repercussions of the traumas that the cast have encountered. Too much has changed for there to be any hope of the life that anyone initially wanted; Holland cannot have the life with Talho and Eureka he desired now Renton has entered the scene, Renton will not get his naïve dream of a fun life spent with sportsmen and rebels. How this has manifested is in an increased sense of responsibility, shown perhaps most clearly in Talho’s change of image. Her more modest outfit and short hair is a simple visual cue of “seriousness” – she is not the casual, figure that she was before but instead a mature adult.

Yet the initial emphasis of episode 31 is not on the Gekko’s crew, stationed as they are in a remote laboratory complex; it is on the Federation’s “sages”, their apparent government who made the unpopular decision to give Dewey power and now apparently regret it. His plan is made a little clearer – it centres on the “Ageha” squadron alluded to in the previous episode by the scientists ordered to construct experimental missiles for it. Yet the other mystery introduced in this scene is by far the more interesting one; the woman introduced is on a space station, looking down upon the planet below. Space travel is not an alien concept in Eureka Seven; much earlier in the series, the Gekko entered orbit to travel quickly across-country – yet the existence of what seems to be a completely habitable space city and space elevator is quite new and something not previously even addressed. Back on Earth, Koda (the woman on the space station) is presented as clearly someone of great importance; a vast honour guard has been assembled for her arrival. This provides a clue to the nature of the Earth government that strengthens the sense that it is fractured and losing control; the previous depictions of its reach suggested it was a military dictatorship with an effective secret police force engaged in action to suppress religious groups – yet Sage Koda’s arrival is met with almost religious ceremony and she is as much spiritual leader as politician. The war on the Voderak sect that has defined early conflicts seems to be a difference of faith, not an attempt to suppress religion as a concept.

When the story subsequently returns to the Gekko crew, the full impact of Talho’s changed appearance is becoming known; Michael provides a cynical view that she “realised her real age” and while he is rightly criticised for his lack of tact it provides a plain and explicit reminder to the audience of what Talho’s motivations were; while it is not quite so simple as her “acting her age” she is using it as a chance for a fresh start and to show her intent to change as a person. Her conversation with Holland, where he explains how unfamiliar she does seem and how this is natural since it encompasses both a change in behaviour and a change in appearance, seems to even bring out a change in him – he questions her decision to tell Renton the truth about Eureka. That scene seemed to be Talho living up to Holland’s legacy in his absence, yet Holland is concerned it might have long-term effects on morale. That this is juxtaposed with Renton and Eureka continuing to get along does suggest that for all Talho and Holland think they know what the right thing to do is, the truth may be far less dramatic than they fear and they are overreacting. Episode 30 showed a development of the friendship between Renton and Eureka born from greater understanding – and episode 31 has this manifest in a moment of accidental intimacy that evokes (coincidentally) the last time space travel was shown in the series. In that past episode, Renton and Eureka ended up physically close by accident and Renton reacted in a way which showed both his immaturity and awkwardness; in this episode, the same thing happens and crucially his response is no different.

Here it is worth considering how Eureka Seven uses accidental intimacy within its story. Renton’s unfamiliarity around women and naivete is an ongoing focus of the core plot-thread of his progress toward maturity; learning appropriate behaviour and coming to terms with social norms within an adult society is a vital part of a coming-of-age story. His relationship with Eureka has been a difficult one in part due to her complex history but predominantly due to his utter inability to comprehend what is appropriate or acceptable. By this point, though, although he is clearly still childish in his response to anything that could be perceived as a moment of human contact and understanding, he is nevertheless “better” as a character; Eureka trusts him in a way she did not previously and he is able to understand what she means. The accidental contact gives way to a genuine embrace in a charmingly awkward scene that reminds the viewer that although Eureka may be a Coralian, and she may have once been a child-soldier, she is still possessed of humanity and it is this which makes her relatable. Similarly, for all Renton’s social inadequacies, he is beginning to understand what the right thing to do is; this has been shown first in his taking a stand and fighting his corner among the Gekko’s crew, and now in his response to Eureka’s need for support. The scene begins with Renton remaining apparently the same as he always has been but, as it progresses, continues the theme of sudden change and epiphany; only now can Eureka really be open about her feelings not only for Renton but about her past. The big changes that the characters are undergoing are moves towards greater openness and honesty, with the intent of putting behind them the confusion and mistrust that invited past conflict. The love story of Eureka Seven is thus as much a story of coming to terms with the flaws of others and accepting them for what they are as anything else.

Yet the culmination of the scene – the completion of the move from awkward adolescent accidental contact to genuine love in the form of a kiss – is interrupted by Eureka having a premonition about the Nirvash. It turns out the machine is acting uncontrollably, rejecting the repairs being done to it. The scientists claim their aim is simply to repair the Nirvash, not upgrade it, while Eureka claims this is what is causing the problems – as the explanatory video in the previous episode showed the machine is sentient and evolves over time and one such evolution is happening now. Past changes in the Nirvash have resulted from the progression of Renton and Eureka’s relationship and here an outsider is trying to interfere with the process. The result is a complete reworking, bringing the story in a new direction still and with it the eccentric figure of Dr Egan. The gross, childlike Egan brings with him new revelations about the setting; he used to be the husband of the ship’s doctor Misha, and he knows Eureka. Yet the biggest surprise is when he claims that the planet on which the story is set, for all its strange similarities with Earth, is in fact not Earth. This has never been made wholly clear previously; the strange landscapes previously assumed to just be results of various natural disasters are in fact alien landscapes. Notably, Egan’s laboratory is inside an abandoned botanical garden and parallels with William Baxter, who lived in his remote farm, are apparent. Isolation and unity with nature are again shown to be condusive to radical thought that rejects what is known; Egan turns the viewers’ (and the other characters’) understanding of Eureka upside-down by claiming she might be a messenger from a nonhuman intelligence; it has been known she is a Coralian, but what implications this may have have been downplayed until now.

Here it is worth noting the use of real-world names in Eureka Seven; it is a series heavy with allusion and references to computing, dance music and extreme sports and this has been clear from the start with references to the “Second Summer of Love” and even the names of the war-machines used (LFOs, the 808 and so on all being references to the theme of electronic music). Many of these are simple references, such as the Gekko’s electronics staff being called Woz and Jobs (references to pioneers of computing) or the pun inherent in Ray and Charles’ names. Yet Dr Greg Egan, the radical expert in extra-terrestrial and nonhuman intelligence, is a character whose referential name is possibly more important. The living author Greg Egan (1961-) is renowned for his works’ focus on transhumanism, rational thought and radical imagined science and his fictitious namesake in Eureka Seven is portrayed as a radical scientist with theories about nonhuman entities that defy received wisdom – both respectively renowned for their reclusiveness.

What the meeting with Egan reveals is a theory that, while it seems initially radical and absurd, holds with the contextual clues the series has provided; beginning with the belief that the corals are sentient and the Coralians (Eureka included) are their way of monitoring humanity, the next logical step is the belief that eventually humanity will be judged based on what the Coralians have seen. While Egan’s theory is limited in scope, it provides a new way of considering the past phenomena surrounding the Nirvash; if Eureka is an observer or emissary from an alien species, and the Nirvash has some kind of symbiotic relationship based on her own friendships and emotions, then how she is treated – and how her opinions of humanity are shaped – may in time affect the Coralians’ response. This interpretation is then again reconsidered as the Nirvash’s new form reflecting Eureka’s own innate desires; Egan claims the upgrade it builds towards is an aircraft form to reflect Eureka’s desire to “fly.”

This first half of episode 31 of Eureka Seven has significantly advanced the main plot via a series of character vignettes; much has been learned about the Nirvash both explicity via Egan’s exposition and implicitly from how that has informed the audience’s understanding of what they have already seen. Egan himself is clearly a driving force of the story, and sits within it both as a parallel to William Baxter (as the radical, almost-spiritual voice that rejects what is “known” for more interesting possibilities) but also as a contrasting approach (in that rather than accepting faith and forebearance as a route to contentment he chases knowledge and new horizons).

The initial draw of Super Dimension Century Orguss is its gentle introduction into the world at a pace led by the characters; the process of discovering the mysteries of the societies Kei encounters and trying to understand what is happening is made into the main narrative driving-force. As the series develops, and the viewer learns more about the setting (and how it ties into the main narrative), some of the finer setting details develop into miniature plot arcs that contribute to a further development of the world being depicted; such digressions are interesting, and presented in a way which is not simply expository. The act of “in-character” worldbuilding suits a story like Orguss well, in which a character unfamiliar with a new world must live within it – but the risk is ever-present of an overreliance on explanation to benefit the viewer. Too much exposition in too short a time breaks the illusion of it being in-character and makes it too plainly artificial.

Note: This article will contain specific plot details for Super Dimension Century Orguss

Orguss is an ambitious series in its attempt to create a developed and credible science-fiction world, and then add to this a story about time-travel and alternate futures. A story about a traveller stranded in a bizarre and hostile future would itself be an interesting story to tell, with the potential to depict interesting alien races and societies – yet this is one of a number of story-threads in Orguss which complement each other. The core plot is not so much about Kei’s exploration of the new world and his interactions with the warring nations of Chiram and Emarn, but instead about how the cultures exist within a world which is fundamentally wrong; one where parallel universes collide and interact awkwardly and destructively. The wrongness of the world has shaped the behaviours of the cultures depicted and the story – and the war it its centre – is effectively one of a fight for the right to exist.

Yet alongside this grand-scale story run personal ones such as Kei’s friendship with Olson and his realisation that Athena is his daughter – the reminders are there that even in a world out of joint there is the capacity for individual lives to matter. Indeed, a theme of much of the series is on trying to keep what “matters” – ordinary life, humanity and adherence to a kind of code – alive in the face of disruption and the unknown. This is made most clear in what becomes a major sub-plot of the first half of the series; the love-triangle between interloper Kei and the apparently happy couple of Sley and Mimsy. Kei’s feelings for the Emarn girl end up making her doubt her choice of fiance and putting off her impending marriage, while he questions whether it is right for him to pursue someone who is ultimately not human. His being of a different species while still trying to pursue a romantic attachment is an interesting spin on the questions of inter-species relationships raised in SDF Macross (Macross, alongside Super Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross, forms a loosely-linked franchise with Orguss) with its characters of Max and Miria (incidentally, Kei’s voice actor also played the role of Max). Seeing the development of this – from his initial insensitivity to Emarn customs to his eventual arguments with Sley – provides a focus for in-depth worldbuilding while avoiding exposition. Kei learns of Emarn customs via his attempts at maintaining a laddish, oversexed personality in a culture with very different attitudes to gender and at first this simply contributes to the “alien-ness” of the new world. When the Gloma’s captain, Shaia, invites him to share a communal bath with her he cannot understand the apparent lack of taboo over nudity – which seems inconsistent with his continued rebuffing by the younger women for flirtation.

This presents an implicit contextual cue for the viewer; the society being depicted has firmly differentiated non-sexual contact (simply seeing a woman naked) from sexual contact and so Kei is an antique and transgressor. As the love-triangle plot progresses, and Mimsy proves unable to decide between Kei’s attentions and her loyalty to Sley, she appears to be being pressured into marrying young – providing another clue to a somewhat intimate setting detail that may normally be ignored. Kei’s integration into this new world is providing a background for explanation of the Emarns’ sexualities and marriage-traditions and the love-interest character (a genre staple) is thus somewhat more significant that perhaps would be expected if the story were a more traditional militaristic one.

What this steady building up of clues about what seem to be strange societal traditions ultimately leads to – and with it a new development of the love-story – is the explanation of one of the idiosyncrasies of the Emarns as a species. Their women are only fertile for a short period of their lives, and so the social pressure to marry young is a result of the need to procreate and further the species. Kei’s interfering in Mimsy’s relationship results in her almost missing her chance to marry and have a child, and his response to realising this – attempting to reconcile himself with Sley – provides a major turning-point in the personal story. From this revelation, the apparent oddities previously seen (the lack of concern about Shaia’s nudity from male crewmembers) are thus contextualised – as Shaia is no longer fertile (and thus no longer marriageable), she is seen differently to a younger woman like Mimsy (who, being capable of having children, is desirable for marriage). With this, the entire love-story plot – and with it the Emarn culture depicted so far in the series – almost takes on a social commentary role, showing the endpoint of society’s obsession with parenthood, marriage and youth. Social pressures fetishise fertility, youth and beauty and marginalise women who do not conform; in Orguss this is made literal with women who do not marry young ostracised by society and seen as completely non-sexual.

Thus Orguss shows its ambition as a piece of science-fiction; for all its oddities, robot combat and amusing escapades, its apparently sympathetic species at the centre of the plot – the Emarn – can be seen as subtle commentary on the flaws of human society. The Emarn culture with its biologically-necessitated social pressures is an extreme extension of more real pressures to conform to a family ideal and the idea that an unmarried woman past her “prime” is a failure. Kei enters this culture with a different set of social attitudes and a different form of conduct, and rather than the cultural clash being a gesture of peace (as Max’s progress in Macross is) it risks turning Mimsy into a social pariah.

Persona 4 Arena succeeds here; it is among the most accessible and easily-comprehensible fighting games around yet the desirable complexity of the genre never feels compromised. This is a result of its three-level tutorial system – firstly a “Lesson Mode” which explains controls and fighting-game staples, then moves into explaining how it specifically differs from other games of its type. This is followed by a “Challenge Mode” of the sort many games have, systematically explaining and teaching each character’s movelist and combo timings. Finally there is the staple customisable training dummy, allowing a player who has mastered the system to try applying it in fixed conditions.

What differentiates it from other fighting games is the deceptive simplicity of each character’s move list. The standard four main attack options mapped to the controller’s four main buttons are present, but there is much more emphasis on differentiating the characters with small libraries of very different moves. A fighting game like Dead or Alive or Street Fighter gives all its characters a large basic moveset of combos – combinations of light, heavy and medium kicks and punches – as well as a smaller number of unique special moves. What Persona 4 Arena does is have its four groups of attacks be light and heavy “attack” strings (kicks and punches in combination) and “persona” attacks (projectiles or easily-used basic specials). These are supplemented by health-draining character-specific techniques and throws. This adds spectacle to the game, with summoned assist characters an integral part of combat, but also adds variety as each character’s attacks are unique to them. The result is like a more refined version of the Blazblue games in which the characters feel far more differentiated mechanically, and characterful as a result. What this means in game terms is that the player is more strongly encouraged to focus on a smaller number of favoured characters since there are fewer transferrable strategies.

This much more focused design is inherently divisive; the quite disparate cast of characters can make finding one that suits a play-style require significant time investment and practice and changing character requires learning an entirely new style. This is in some way mitigated by the standardisation of inputs to simple quarter-circles (each characters’ moves require the same basic library of inputs – meaning the challenge is entirely predicated on learning the reach and timings of the attacks). Indeed, as one plays the game over time the apparent lack of ability to transfer learned skills between characters becomes less of an issue – understanding of the game’s systems remains transferrable. The diversity of design is built on an elegant framework which is as predictable and learnable as any fighting game – and it is this which is Persona 4 Arena’s mechanical draw. The simplifications (such as the automated one-button combos and the standardised inputs) add a strategic element since they provide a learnable basis for strategy. Basic attacks are always short-ranged and always chain in similar ways. Persona attacks factor into these combos in known fashions and can be interrupted – a successful “Persona Break” forbidding their use for a period and impacting certain characters far more harshly than others. The small movelist, in comparison to other games, thus becomes a strategic factor. Furthermore, the prebuilt combos are as restrictive as they are accessible – getting locked into unfavourable move sets can backfire.

The emphasis on differentiation of characters is not only mechanically useful but thematically vital; Persona 4 Arena, unlike many fighting games, not only has the narrative emphasis of a game like Blazblue but also a heritage in an RPG series predicated on socialising and friendship. Rivalries and friendships are the defining thing of the Persona series and so their importance within the fighting game spinoff is significant. Without the series ties – in fighting style, in characterisation and even in UI design and general visuals – all the strengths of the game would be worthless. It is important to note that although the game’s story mode is a continuation of Persona 4‘s plot, it is a lighthearted one which explains salient plot points from the original for those who have not played it and seems quite self-aware in its justification for turning former allies against each other. The “feel” is Persona through and through, and long-time series fans will appreciate the references and story in a different way to a newcomer.

Thus, Persona 4 Arena is a standout game; it marries theme and mechanics closely, and through its apparent simplicity that allows a total novice to enjoy it adds levels of strategy for advanced play based on positioning and timing rather than specific dexterity at inputting attacks. This much more strategic aspect is almost a way of translating RPG combat to a fighting game and changing the focus much more towards system mastery. As a result, it accentuates the strengths of fighting games while working to avoid the inaccessibility and confusion that can make them offputting. Most notably, its concessions to accessibility do not compromise the strategic depth, or add alternate control schemes such as one-button special moves only for those players who choose to use them (which simply means that such players are disadvantaged by the simplification against opponents not using it, and do not get a chance to learn the full game); there is one method of playing, applied to all, but that method is easily-understood and standardised.

The first time I played through Mass Effect 2 I was nonplussed; it seemed to have less of the rough and experimental charm of the first game, which seemed to be a haphazard evolution of Knights of the Old Republic into an attempt to create the definitive, ne plus ultra, science-fiction RPG which would encompass everything the genre had to offer. It had aliens, and a planet-hopping plot, and exploration of uncharted worlds, and xenophilia if you liked, and upgradeable weapons with dozens of options. The result was uneven, and often clumsy, but it was quite unlike most games in its attempted scope and as a result I defended it quite vehemently as a good game. The second, by contrast, was more elegant and simplistic – all of the aspects of Mass Effect were present but in a form which worked without any inconsistencies or awkwardness – and as a result at first seemed too clinical and perfunctory.

Yet a second run of both the first and second games, with much of the supplementary story material added (something I usually avoid doing) quite changed my view. Mass Effect‘s idiosyncrasies were endearing for a period but quickly became too awkward to be truly enjoyable – that the game could be played while ignoring the features in question showed up quite significantly as a shortcoming. The game’s ambition still showed through – it still aspired, in a clumsy way, to be a comprehensive science-fiction experience with everything possible thrown in. The characters were still endearing and the setting still a compelling homage to all manner of science-fiction works. Furthermore, it was short – even with the supplementary missions – sufficiently so that it never became actively boring or difficult to play. My overall impression, however, was that it was a game which was kept from greatness by its mechanical awkwardness. When I continued into the second game, the changes – the move towards a more mechanically slimline and polished base for telling the same kind of story in the same way – seemed more welcome. They were still not ideal – the game, in its attempts to open up the capacity for exploration in some ways while removing others made suspending disbelief difficult (although not as much as the still-further streamlined exploration of the third game.) Similarly the weapons were too far scaled back in granularity and diversity to be rewarding or worth collecting and upgrading (something the third game ultimately fixed with its system that was an able compromise between the two extremes.)

What, ultimately, changed my estimation of the Mass Effect games was completing them all for the first time. The move towards clean, simple mechanics and the erosion of the awkward edges made quite clear that the series was intended to tell a story; not to specifically allow the player to forge their own narrative as something like Skyrim or Dwarf Fortress might, but to give a limited amount of agency – or the illusion of such – in the telling of a narrative. In essence, it was a shooter game with hub levels. The player was presented at each chapter of the plot with a range of missions, one of which was plot-critical. They could complete them in any order, gather items and characters, gain new abilities and then approach new challenges. If it was an RPG, it was a much more linear and constrained one than perhaps I wanted it to be. Yet understanding what it was – this kind of compromise between the linear shooter and the open-world RPG – made it far easier to enjoy. Arguably this is simply ignoring shortcomings – the series was not specifically marketed as a linear or semi-linear shooter with a fixed start and end point – but it provides a foundation which allows a player to see exactly what the series does well. Any two players’ anecdotes of favourite Mass Effect moments are likely to be very similar; this is not a game with any specific scope for emergent gameplay or randomness, it is a game where the player is expected to see all of the narrative points of interest and interact with them.

A common criticism of heavily single-narrative driven games is that the player has no agency and no illusion of agency over the direction of the story. They are the spectator, often with only limited control over how capable their character is if the narrative demands certain things happen. What Mass Effect does with its conversation trees, and choice of level order, and completely inconsequential diversions and between-mission banter, is make the player feel, even if they are but a spectator in a fixed story, that it is being told the way they want it. Every time one plays the Mass Effect series Shepard will go from the first Promethean relic all the way to fighting Saren, to recruiting a team, to traversing the Omega 4 Relay, to fighting on Mars and on Earth and then choosing the fate of the world. Trying to claim that one has any degree of agency at this level is false (and that the games were talked up as having this is a major criticism of them, for sure). But disregarding this – playing the games long after the arguments have died down, long after their value and nature have been discussed – their real merits show through. What remains, beneath the promises and the shortcomings, are a series of games that tell a story and allow the player to alter the fine details – the memorable ones. The actual story missions of both of the first two games are quite unremarkable. What I remember of my most recent playthrough are things like my character failing to resolve a row between Tali and Legion just before the final mission, and so I made the decision to keep the one I agreed with by my side and let the other take their chances (with tragic results). Or that my constant pangs of conscience and attempts to do the best for friends while being disdainful of others resulted in my character being neither forceful enough nor conciliatory enough to successfully press their viewpoint in big arguments and having to rely instead on threats and bluster to muddle through.

In conclusion I think replaying the first two Mass Effect games taught me two things about the series. The first is that neither is, on a fundamental level, a mechanically sound game. The first game is over-ambitious in its attempt to be comprehensive and ends up feeling like awkward busywork. The second is far too pared-back and focused on story-telling over providing mechanical choice and so feels superficial. This is where the third succeeded; it found the missing mid-point on a fundamental, behind-the-scenes level and was probably the best game. Yet here is where my second point comes in. Properly seeing where Mass Effect shines relies on understanding what it is – and what it is is not what it was described as. The amount of agency that the player has the illusion of was ultimately unsustainable across three games and so the continued claims that it existed ultimately fell through. The result is a story with fixed start and end points and a procession of known events in the meantime – not an open-world RPG with divergent or emergent stories. And this, ultimately, is where the first two entries – mechanically unsound as they are – succeed far more than the third. The illusion of agency is far better presented, the superficial choices far more memorable. The third game overreached in trying to exceed this foundation and as a result the failures in suspension of disbelief – a constant shortcoming around which the early games skirted – became too great.

Episode 6 of Rahxephon was perhaps the first to properly follow the structure of a super-robot animé episode, with its setup of an enemy showing its power, the creation of a plan to fight it and then the fight itself, in which the enemy’s unique ability caused setbacks which had to be overcome with special abilities from Ayato’s machine. Yet it was something more than that formula mostly due to the history within the setting ascribed to the enemy. Most super-robot series have a new monster each episode created at its start by the enemy to do battle with the hero, but the Dolem from episode 6 was shown to be a seasoned weapon of the Mu which had previously destroyed much of Australia. The episode was thus as much about Kim’s coming to terms with this and taking part in the fight as Ayato’s continued quest for acceptance and understanding his position.

Episode 7 picks up where episode 6 ultimately concluded; TERRA’s commanders are returning to their island base, with the journalist they met, Futagami, in tow. Seeing as the “secret” of the Rahxephon is out – despite all efforts to keep outsiders uninformed – TERRA are switching to a feigned openness, picking the most outspoken of their perceived threats and giving him a “tour” of the island. Commander Kunugi’s tone of forced levity and the awkwardness of the conversation during the flight makes it clear that there is an underlying deception going on here – and not enough is known about the parties involved to know whether it is justifiable. Indeed, the unsubtlety of TERRA’s actions here make the bumbling unsubtlety of the journalist seem suspicious – Kunugi is acting relaxed to seem accommodating, but is his opposite number feigning stupidity to ingratiate himself with TERRA?

Ignorance – feigned or real – continues to feature as the action returns to the island. Ayato is helping test a new device installed in the base to allow him to teleport to the controls of the Rahxephon from the main command centre by walking through a wall. Kim and Megumi seem confused as to how the teleporter works, and assume Dr Kisaragi knows – yet the next scene shows he is as ignorant of its function as anyone else. As Ayato enters the machine, he claims “she’s not here” – the confused conclusion of the previous fight, where apparently a vision of the late Reika snapped him out of his trance and allowed him to escape – still unexplained within the setting. Throughout the whole series, the amount known about anything by the characters and audience changes gradually; when everyone seems ignorant of something (not merely some characters keeping a secret from others) then it immediately seems more significant.

Elsewhere, the tension between ignorance and secrecy continues as Kunugi and his entourage meet Elvy and her new squadron, now assigned to TERRA’s main land base. Their meeting is a series of awkward moments; Futagami is tactless and flirtatious, while the TERRA officers are apparently cruel in their formality. The matter of the raid to rescue Ayato and the Rahxephon is raised, and Elvy is reminded by a Federation representative that she was the sole survivor of it. The first real sincerity comes when Kunugi is reunited with Souichi, apologising for giving him the added responsibilities of co-ordinating the fighting against the Dolem single-handedly and offering him a present. Their relationship is shown as almost familial – probably the most genuine friendship despite the significant disparity in seniority. As a result, when Souichi is asked to escort Futagami around the island it seems a reasonable request and is met far more pleasantly than when Megumi was asked to chaperone and host Ayato. For all Kunugi’s secrets – implied in his actions and tone – his use of his authority and stature around TERRA seem sincere. The real impression of Kunugi that is being built up is that for all his authority and secrecy – or perhaps despite them – he is really the only sincere character as yet in terms of his relationships with others.

Inside the Rahxephon, Ayato is undergoing further tests under Kisaragi’s supervision – yet in the control room the doctor seems unimpressed. He dryly (yet claiming sincerity) describes Ayato as “a young boy saving the world” – the kind of banal and slightly patronising description that really emphasises him as “just” a superhero. Here, a comparison with Evangelion in this common consideration of this genre tradition seems relevant. In both series – throughout parts of the opening arc of Rahxephon and right from the very start of Evangelion, the belief of the authority figures is that the protagonist should immediately and unquestioningly conform to a heroic ideal that crucially suits the genre of the fiction. Shinji and Ayato both have reservations about their suitability as pilots, but more importantly the fact they are subject to expectations from authority figures that they will fight. The thematic divergence here is what sets Rahxephon apart; the fact that it is Shinji’s father in Evangelion who demands he fights takes that conflict off towards themes of betrayal of familial trust roles. On the other hand the strained relationships of deceit involving Ayato, Haruka, Dr Kisaragi and even Kunugi are all based around shutting Ayato off from his family and trying to convince him both that he must fight, but also that he is not allowed to know why. This is a clear example of what makes Rahxephon so compelling; it is a series where here the audience, being probably genre-aware and now aware of plot details that Ayato is not (about how Kisaragi views Ayato’s role – and how this is the embodiment of a genre cliché) can see an impending conflict of interest.

Yet while Ayato is shown to still be something of an outsider – and in Kisaragi’s eyes simply a soldier – he is making an effort to fit in. He talks with Kisaragi’s partner about what Christmas presents to buy Megumi and Haruka, and the conversation returns to his family back in beseiged Tokyo – at which point he reassures her that he is quite come to terms with the truth of the matter. The theme of Ayato’s “duty” and forebearance appears again in the next scene as Haruka talks about how he is diligent, dutiful and co-operative; traits which well suit a super-robot pilot, or a soldier, but if they are all he is respected for (as is apparently being made clear) then he cannot be really claimed to fit in – or to be properly respected. This is not properly picked up on, though; Souichi’s return brings with it the spectre of Futagami, who has gone off alone to find his “favourite places” on the island. The truth of it is implied in the very next scene as Kisaragi talks with a Federation officer about the presence of observers like him, sent to spy on TERRA and monitor the Rahxephon. Although the viewer knows his conversation-partner is from the Federation, the fact the scene is juxtaposed with Souichi’s revelations about Futagami – and the viewer already being suspicious of him – is significant. Each of these short conversations slightly redefines the perception of a different set of characters – how Ayato views himself within TERRA, how Haruka views him, and how various characters view Futagami. Futagami himself, though, still seems to be playing the fool. He meets Ayato at a local shop in a scene almost paralleling the one where Ayato and Megumi finally opened up to each other, only this time it is apparently Ayato who is the knowledgeable and experienced one. That he then lies about his role – calling himself only an ordinary office worker posted abroad – confirms any suspicions the audience may have. Both sides are lying, neither convincingly – Futagami hides his role as a journalist (which may itself be a cover story for his role as a spy) while Ayato lies about his job as pilot of the Rahxephon.

Thus the first half of the episode ends with the arrival of a new Dolem; a complex interrelated network of different stories and facades has been built up which seems like it will inevitably break down in some way, and each scene has contributed in some way to increasing both the viewers’ knowledge of characters, but also their suspicions about how reliable that knowledge is.

Part 2 begins immediately with the fight against the Dolem; the Rahxephon now has a ritualistic start-up sequence in true super-robot style, set alongside footage of Elvy’s squadron sortieing. Its dramatic emergence from a pool of water (submarine bases or hangars a common setting feature within the genre beginning with Mazinger Z‘s storage beneath a swimming-pool) and heroic flight in formation with jets is presenting it in quite a different light to even the genre-aware previous episode. That was very much about planning and waiting, while now Ayato is acting more aggressively. Indeed, he is fulfilling the genre expectations that were implied in how Kisaragi talked about him. A cut to Kunugi exclaiming how incredible this all is – followed by confusion about military standard time among the TERRA bridge crew – subsequently shatters the illusion of competence and professionalism. It is an imperfect scenario and that ultimately makes it relatable and endearing. Indeed, as the scene plays out precisely how unprofessional and confused it all is is made clear – TERRA simply cannot even see the Dolem. It is so big it hides in the clouds with only spindly legs visible and so for all the preparations and apparently detailed tactical briefing that Haruka goes through, nothing of real value is communicated to Ayato.

Ayato’s fight is juxtaposed with another encounter – Futagami meeting Megumi’s uncle. Here again Futagami presents the affable facade he is defined by, as he circles around Ayato’s true identity in a way that seems to confirm the suspicion he is a spy. Yet the real focus is the Dolem, and the battle with it. Elvy orders Ayato to hang back as she attacks the Dolem – an act of attempted vengeance for those killed in the attack on Tokyo. The initial strike, intended to break its leg and immobilise it, turns out to be ineffective – what was assumed to be a leg was in fact simply a feeler and in reprisal the Dolem launches a swarm of smaller flying drones. A dog-fight between Elvy’s fighters and the smaller Dolems begins, at which point the action returns to Futagami and Megumi’s uncle. It is perhaps fitting they are shown playing at a board game – Futagami asks direct questions while Shougo (Megumi’s uncle) responds with guarded answers. Ayato is “one other”. His initial response to be asked if he lives alone is that he is unmarried. Again a suspicion of the viewer is thus clarified; it seems Futagami’s ruse of feigning affability is not as convincing as he expects.

As Ayato comes under attack from the Mu drones, he finds his usual tactic of brutal melee combat is completely ineffective in a dog-fight, yet once again the machine finds a way to save him. Rather than the supernatural aggression and destructive force the viewer is expecting, it instead produces a shield to block the enemy attacks. Yet despite this manifestation of the correct tool for the job, Elvy remains too proud and obsessed with vengeance to call Ayato into the fight proper – whereas in the previous episode Kim came to realise Ayato was needed to help her avenge her family, Elvy tries to fight alone. Just before the viewer can see the Dolem, though, the action returns to Futagami; he is coming dangerously close to working out the truth about Ayato and Tokyo. Shougo reminds the journalist that it is clearly impossible that the Ayato Futagami remembers could be the Ayato living on the island, presuming (or feigning) ignorance of the time-dilation effect. If anything it is this showdown between two older men which is both higher-stakes (for whatever reason Futagami has for working out who Ayato is seems unwelcome) and more tense (for all the viewer knows of Futagami is that he is not who he seems – they are kept ignorant of what he actually knows).

Elvy’s attack on the Dolem is an abject failure; she breaches the clouds around it and is immediately incapacitated by an apparently psychic attack which even affects the TERRA ground crew. Ayato proves able to neutralise the attack with a similar weapon from the Rahxephon, and saves her, yet the Dolem subsequently traps him in ice as the clouds freeze. Much like Episode 6′s climax, this is an exciting and very standard kind of super-robot battle – an enemy with bizarre powers versus a hero always one step behind. As the Dolem’s attacks superheat the trapped Rahxephon, a vision of Tokyo and his own thoughts of vengeance – especially for Reika – force him into a last burst of action. Although his machine’s legs are trapped, he is able to activate a gun in its arm and shoot the Dolem, destroying it. There is not the same visceral brutality here and – perhaps significantly – it does not explode completely into the blue blood that the others have but instead slowly disintegrates and crashes.

With the “main” fight thus complete, Shougo and Futagami’s game also comes to its end. Shougo asks if he will play again, and the reply is that the journalist will “come again.” That the last part of the conversation has gone almost entirely unseen – save for Futagami’s parting shot calling Shougo “Dr Rikudoh” – means that the crucial revelations – how much each side knows about the other’s motives – are still missing. Kunugi is then shown to be disciplining Elvy for her ill-judged attack – apparently harsh and a total reversal of tone after his more relaxed attitude around Souichi from the previous episode. However, the camera pans to reveal the Federation officer lurking in the background, and the implication is that Kunugi is keeping up appearances. Yet after this scene the truth of Elvy’s actions is revealed in a sequence that brings the episode around full circle to the idea of a pilot’s duty. She acted alone to protect Ayato from danger, resenting TERRA’s reliance on “a child they have kidnapped.” This is the total opposite of Kisaragi’s estimation of Ayato as a youth destined for greatness (under TERRA’s auspices) and it brings out Haruka’s true feelings – that the entire affair has gone out of control.

There is one final revelation to the episode which perhaps begins the spiral of revelations that has been hinted at throughout. Ayato meets Futagami again, and this time the journalist finds out his real name which leads into more pointed questions. Nothing is certain about Futagami’s loyalty at this time, but the juxtaposition of scenes depicting his tenacity in finding out sensitive information with scenes of the TERRA staff talking of loyalty and divided duties seems to heavily imply he is more than he seems.

A fairly common theme in science-fiction – both in animé and outside of it – is the reduction, in the future, of war to a game or some kind of challenge of skill with minimal human cost. It is a kind of compromise between anti-war themes and a desire for action – replacing the mass-combat elements of a war story with personal rivalries and hero-centric combat, while also preserving the thematic ideas inherent in a nation-scale conflict. If anything it is a narrative progression of the most desirable and relatable aspects of a war story while also keeping the tone inherently light and innocuous; the idea that with the increased possibilities of future technology, grand-scale crises and problems can be reduced to amiable disagreements resolved between dedicated champions is an interesting one.

It is, if anything, this concept which quite informed Moretsu Space Pirates – it removed the military conflict element completely and used its childish characters with their irrepressible naivete and ignorance to make the grand-scale conflicts of space opera ridiculous. This was not always successful, but for much of the series it was a charming and intruiging experiment. A further refinement of this – changing not only the method of conflict into a childs’ game but also the reasons into childish ones – was the subsequent series Girls Und Panzer, in which groups of schoolchildren carried out mock battles in restored WW2 tanks to compete for a tournament prize. Conceptually, Girls Und Panzer – and indeed Moretsu Space Pirates to an extent – are ridiculous and it is that absurdity – the acceptance that children or teenagers can take on adult roles be it captaining a starship or maintaining a tank – which defines their settings and ultimately defines the points of dramatic conflict. The action is present, and entertaining, but it is rationalised within the setting as something completely normal and ultimately inconsequential in the long run; the drama in Girls Und Panzer is centred on a failing team whose lack of a future in the war-gaming world might lead to their closing down, in order to provide it with a core point of tension beyond simple “will they win?” Similarly, Moretsu Space Pirates fell down as a series when it tried to involve its cast in conflicts wider in scale than the lighthearted setting suggested – the childish problems with childish resolutions were well-defined and entertaining while the larger ones felt overly ambitious.

This all leads, ultimately, to a precursor to both series that thematically resembles each of them. Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko is an entertaining science-fiction comedy centred on a group of school-friends who live a double life as champions of a space empire in an interplanetary military tournament. Their mission is to defeat all comers in fleet battles taking place entirely in a simulation of the battlefield. The conceptual similarities with both subsequent series are immediately evident – there is the juxtaposition of the childish with the tropes of space opera as in Moretsu Space Pirates and the war-gaming focus of Girls Und Panzer. Yet Starship Girl stands out precisely because it provides the narrative support for its concept. I have talked previously about “conflict-focused” design – how some concepts seem preoccupied with emphasising some aspect of the setting (for example Shingeki no Kyojin‘s emphasis on its humanity-under-siege themes and wire-fighting) and Girls Und Panzer provides another good example.

The idea that in some largely undefined world large-scale war-games are a popular kind of entertainment is justified just enough in Girls Und Panzer to establish it as a concept, and then the remainder of the series is about enjoying those battles this engenders. Starship Girl takes its idea of military tournaments almost democratising warfare by allowing anyone skilled enough to be an admiral and builds the plot around the repercussions of that. The space-battles that crown each episode are exciting but they feel a natural part of the story – each episode building to its fight while also providing detail about the world and the opposition – as opposed to steps in a tournament. Girls Und Panzer had one motivation for all its teams to fight, in the end – winning. The framing of the tank-battles as purely a sport – one which is a way of life for those involved but ultimately a form of mass entertainment – limits the motivations for conflict and ultimately limits the potential for the series to develop a world. Starship Girl has a tournament in the same way, and similar narrative arcs about the backgrounds and rivalries of the teams involved, but makes it clear that it is a tournament to a known end – the battles do have a motivation simply beyond entertainment in- and out-of-setting. What is more, it – as Moretsu Space Pirates also does – makes into a plot thread the reasoning for the system of problem resolution it focuses on, and the incongruous nature of the protagonists within it. Starship Girl‘s protagonists are young and inexperienced compared to the other contenders in their battles – much as Oarai School are the underdogs in Girls Und Panzer and Marika is inexperienced in Moretsu Space Pirates. Yet the stakes, in narrative terms, are much higher and so the incongruity is more pronounced. Marika ultimately was an atypical pirate but one in a setting where piracy was meaningless. Oarai are underdogs but for much of the series it seems all that is on the line is their reputation as tank crews. Yohko and her team, on the other hand, are presented as from the start players in a space-opera narrative – simply one framed as a series of game-like challenges rather than battles with a human cost.

What this allows is for an effective compromise between the sense of grand-scale threat and drama which a space-opera story requires to thrive (and which the absence of made Moretsu Space Pirates so divisive) and the personal crises and rivalries that make good narratives. When there is genuine danger in Starship Girl – as in one episode where an obsessed rival removes her ship’s ejection system in order to fight literally to the death it is within a setting which both has real gravity to its conflicts (as the viewer is constantly reminded that the stakes in these “games” are whole worlds) but which also has bloodless, impersonal wars. This is ultimately its defining feature as a series; it most closely cleaves to the science-fiction tradition of the war fought as a tournament and uses that to its full potential to tell a science-fiction story. Even though the visual framing emphasises the gamification inherent to the setting, and the characters are sufficiently setting-aware to understand the “rules” of it, the narrative emphasis – impressed upon the viewer both via exposition and via character behaviour – is on how even though there is minimal risk in the war, it is still a war not a game.

To conclude, Girls Und Panzer reduced war all the way down to sport and so its dramas were appropriately small – yet as a result less convincing. The clear framing of its core drama as a sports-story of the heroic underdog (indeed the plotline of fighting against a team’s closure is a cliché of the sports-story genre as much as the gamification of war is a science-fiction trope). Moretsu Pirates explored, for better or for worse, what the aftermath of war does – if there is no need any more for military conflict in an enlightened age, then there is room for quirkiness. By contrast, Starship Girl is a war story. Its entire setting is predicated both on the idea of the space-opera warfare it features and on the ramifications of it being so gamified.

Some games feel overly mechanically designed as reliant on a single strong or innovative mechanic; the emphasis is on foregrounding and promoting that mechanic and the result is an experience which feels unbalanced. One such example is the recent board game Exile Sun – its slider-based conflict resolution mechanic was uncommon among games of its type but outside of this there was little substance to it. Each other mechanic within the game was focused on drawing the players into using this conflict resolution system as much as possible, in order to draw attention to the limited pool of design strengths and discount the weaknesses in the overall. Such a game can be called a combat engine – a developed idea which ultimately lacks any kind of framework to be anything but abstract mechanics.

This is a relevant comparison to fiction; some genre fiction falls into a similar trap of over-emphasising an interesting detail or quirk of the setting to the detriment of the overall experience. The 2013 animé Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) ultimately embodies the idea of fiction being a “combat engine” like Exile Sun was for board-games. The premise of Attack on Titan is that in a fantasy world, humanity is reduced to a single city-state hundreds of kilometres across and bounded by immense walls, constantly beseiged by grotesque giants called Titans, and that in order to fight these emotionless colossi a new kind of fighting using grapnels and climbing equipment has been developed. From this synopsis the two main interesting aspects of the setting are clear; firstly the unique method of waging war against giants, and secondly the war with the giants. A straightforward story of society under siege provides a basis for a variety of personal conflicts as well as the omnipresent threat of the monsters themselves, while the challenges of a new fighting-style developed over time to fight a previously incomprehensible threat allow for unique action sequences. Yet the framework that these crucial setting details enables is a shallow one; the emphasis is constantly on aspects of it which are almost perfunctory in their depiction – the society fears leaving its safe haven, there is a tense relationship between those who fight the Titans and those who are served by them, and so on. The entire story – of protagonist Eren’s quest to join the Survey Corps and escape the prison of the walled state – seems to be a way of continually emphasising the details which set the world of Attack on Titan apart from other fantasy worlds, without creating any kind of strong context or motivation for the audience to follow.

The first episode’s conclusion, with a Titan attacking the city in order to kick the story into action, emphasises this; the whole episode has been responsible for creating a sense of tone and place and highlighting the unremitting grimness of the society depicted. The walled city is ruled by paranoia and superstition. Its people are ungrateful for those who fight for them, and the human cost of the war with the Titans is immense and horrific. Fighting the Titans invites a terrible death and great risk. The protagonist’s naïve desire to fight the Titans causes friction. These plot points do not stand out to any great extent as providing a reason to care about the world; they are almost ciphers on which the interesting ideas (the fighting-style, the grotesque design of the Titans, the striking visuals of the city and its colossal walls) are hung. It is perhaps expected of an action series that the emphasis should be on the action – yet the seriousness and attempts at depth of the series provide an awkward compromise. The climax of the episode, with its slow-motion – indeed gratituous – depiction of the horrors of the Titans’ taste for human flesh ultimately feels cheap and by-the-numbers – a predictable plot development used to drive the story towards its need for action. Since the human element is so unremarkably depicted, and the emphasis far more on the violence than the victims per se, the end result feels like a “combat engine” of a piece of fiction. Attack on Titan‘s selling point is its war with the Titans, and so the emphasis of the scenes featuring them is on showing off the monster designs and leading towards fights with them.

It is worth noting here that simply being generic or shallow is not inherently a bad thing – similarly, an emphasis on foregrounding points of difference within an apparently formulaic framework is not in itself a sign of an unrewarding story. The problem with Attack on Titan is that its central conceit – the overwhelming power of the Titans and the immense scale of the city-state – is illogical and challenges suspension of disbelief in its fine details that are elided over. A city of the scale depicted built, if the narration in the second episode is to be believed, during a war which mankind is losing defies sense. There is a major disconnect between the threat presented by the Titans – both in terms of the exposition and of the combat with them – and the state of daily life depicted when they are not attacking. Even accounting for the provided explanation – that they have for whatever reason left the city alone for a lengthy period – the sheer scale of the city and the human cost of the continued expeditions outside of the city make it hard to believe a society on the brink of extinction could be sustainable. Like how the human drama – such as the death of Eren’s mother – seems solely there to drive the story towards Eren’s development as a soldier to fight the Titans, the conflict feels strangely and inconsistently defined in order to prolong it to suit the overall narrative. This is a common flaw in genre fiction intent on presenting a hopeless society, or one based on surviving some apocalypse – an inconsistency of scale or threat that does not hold up to close scrutiny beneath its defining quirks.

To conclude, Attack on Titan is a story which has intruiging details and strong action, but overplays these at the expense of a credible and compelling narrative framework. It is perhaps telling that my first impression upon seeing the horrific monster designs, gratituous violence and fluid, visually striking combat was that it would make a far better game of some description than a TV animé or comic series – giving the audience the chance to test their skill against this defined threat and allowing for the same story of personal vengeance and mastery of an unfamiliar weapon as Eren’s story will follow. A series relies not just on a neat conflict and conflict-resolution mechanic, but all the sundries of narrative that tie each fight together and motivate the characters; Attack On Titan takes a very standard framework and as a result feels more like it is consistently driving as quickly as possible from each deployment of its point-of-difference to the next. As soon as one slows down to consider what is being watched, the gaps which are elided over in order to facilitate this become obvious.

The fifth episode of Rahxephon built up to a series of guarded revelations that both explained more of what the future holds for the story and also explained how powerless Ayato actually is within it; the conspiratorial confusion that defines the action is given a more cruel, personal aspect in how it is denying him apparently simple answers to genuine and reasonable questions. It is clear he is being used to the audience, and his realisation of this is the main dramatic conflict within the episode. Yet it ends with some measure of harmony; while his life with Megumi and her uncle is a strange one based on necessity over genuine friendship, the way it is visually framed in the cliches of young love suggests there is hope for the future. Episode six begins some time after this, immediately revealing its core conflict. The personal is apparently being set aside for the human-versus-alien war that one might expect from a mecha animé.

The initial scene of some unknown force – reasonably presumed to be a Dolem – attacking cities with a kind of land-melting effect cuts in predictable genre fashion to the progress of Ayato and Megumi; they are again arguing about trivialities of daily life, framed in a way which makes a discussion about local food appear to be a series of innuendos. The scene is used to introduce Kim, Megumi’s comrade and co-worker at TERRA – and again enforce how powerless and inconsequential Ayato is. Kim already knows who he is, and why he is here – and in order to try and regain some control of his own life, Ayato claims he is never going to fight again. This is the kind of personal crisis that defines super-robot animé as a take on the superhero story; the protagonist is not the personal owner of great power but the wielder of it, answerable to its custodians and reliant on machines and their support crews to succeed. Resisting this natural hierachy and sense of duty is a commonly-used device. Yet in this episode of Rahxephon the device is both used in its expected form (Ayato’s rejection of his duty in the eyes of TERRA) and presented from a different angle in the next scene, as TERRA is itself under scrutiny for its bad practices. The conflict around the attempted appropriation of the Rahxephon by the Federation – the kind of disregard for authority and rules that is usually endearing in a super-robot series but here was shown to be a shambolic affair where no side appeared sympathetic – is now leading to the press turning against them. That TERRA continues to deny the existence of the Rahxephon – and thus downplays Ayato’s status to “officially non-existent” – goes some distance to justifying his resistance and scepticism.

Yet continued attempts to deny the existence of the Rahxephon seem impossible to maintain as the Dolem’s attack is all over the news, and TERRA must respond. The creature attacks by erasing vast swathes of land from existence, carving Mu symbols into the earth, and presenting an obvious and unignorable threat. This political tension continues to be juxtaposed with standard super-robot smaller-scale dramas; Kunugi is unable to return to TERRA and leaves the inexeperiences Souichi in command to face an enemy with apparently unstoppable capabilities. What follows is a combination of world-building and continuation of the main plot; the Dolem is a known specimen previously responsible for the destruction of much of Australia – immediately presenting a credible and immense threat. Previously the Mu have been shown to attack with spectacular and powerful yet ultimately focused weapons, their intention to destroy the Rahxephon and suppress the population. This creation, however, is shown to attack population centres with a mysterious intent (carving the symbols in the earth) which has an immense human cost as well – indiscriminate destruction as a side-effect of some other purpose.

Ayato’s confusion at the simple human scale of this kind of a weapon – six million dead in its attack on Australia fourteen years previous when to him that figure represents a quarter of the entire population – does little to endear him to the others at TERRA. That he then rejects his role as the person who must stop this creature from repeating its carnage seems both reasoned in context of how he has been treated by TERRA, but inhumane and petulant when set in comparison to the human cost of inaction. Even in the context of this potential disaster, the truth of the matter turns out to be different; Ayato’s refusal to fight not only represents an insult to TERRA’s hospitality (limited as it is) but a personal one to Kim, whose family were killed by the Dolem in its last attack. While this news seems to invigorate Ayato and encourage him to reconsider, it also alienates Kim from TERRA; her personal investment in the fight makes her unsuitable for the operation in the eyes of Souichi. Here, though, TERRA’s love of undermining its own authority and working against its best interests for some short-term benefit results in Dr Kisaragi subtly letting Kim remain on the operation staff; he has her run an errand to Haruka, ensuring she remains close to those at the centre of events.

From here the action cuts suddenly away from the impending destruction to a look at a wider – and as yet mysterious – picture. TERRA’s senior staff meet with a “Lord Bahbem” to discuss some long-awaited event or plan forty years in preparation. Kunugi explains the status quo of TERRA’s relationship to the Federation to Bahbem, establishing his importance as an undeniable thing yet leaving its nature vague. All that is known, ultimately, is that he is a backer and probable founder of TERRA, with a vested interest in their relationship with the Federation and use of the Rahxephon. While the emphasis is still on the past, the audience see Kim reminiscing about the last time she saw her parents, and how she apparently cut herself off from grieving. Here, Quan’s inhumanity – or rather alienating behaviour – is again made plain. She cannot understand why Kim is sad, and the viewer is by now unsure if this is because she simply does not know about the events in Australia, or if she is simply viewing the world from her strange, emotionless perspective. What is more, when she listens to the music Kim has been listening to – revealed to the the Dolem’s call – she seems to almost be able to translate it, giving what is apparently a clue to its next objective.

Without much explanation save for what could be implied by a genre-familiar audience (that he was moved by Kim’s past tragedy), Ayato is shown to have found his nerve again and decided to fight. Yet it is apparently only a simple test and it is because of this he pilots again; Dr Kisaragi uses his rebellion against him in a patronising fashion, and in a private conversation with his assistant explains that Ayato is being duped. For Kisaragi, and apparently for everyone at TERRA, lying comes naturally; he claims that “there is a significant difference between happiness and truth” and reminds his assistant this is natural adult behaviour.

As the action returns to Kim, continually reliving the past – and fighting herself in what way she can in order to “be a good girl” and avenge her family – the truth of her past is revealed. Megumi’s tactful boiling it down to a simple revenge-story is shown to be a useful lie intended to get Ayato back in the cockpit and avoid emotional complications, while the audience is given the full picture. Kim’s relatives looking after her were unsympathetic to her loss and rejected her – and what seemed at first like stoicism was in fact a result of this lack of any kind of support. This moment of reflection in turn leads to the revelation that if the Dolem’s call is plotted as a wave – using Quan’s cryptic “translation” as a starting-point – it allows TERRA to plot the creature’s course. Again, this kind of breakthrough bringing together all the fine character-details of the episode to reveal something crucial to the machine-versus-alien conflict is a super-robot genre staple, deployed quite subtly by Rahxephon and given power by how unexpected its use is. To see straightforward episode structures used in this way – and dressed as more complex plot points – stands out in a series which apparently eschews simplicity. Even Souichi’s resigned response to her insubordination is the precisely expected one in a story of this kind – and the story continues as expected with a massing of military force on the strength of the tip-off. What transpires, from the ranks of armoured vehicles in preparation to Haruka and Elvy’s messing around, and then the ultimate destruction of the tanks and the deployment of the Rahxephon, is a straight homage to classic super-robot stories and fight choreography.

Even the denouement of the fight – with Ayato being initially beaten back, then tearing into the Dolem before it trapping him with its unique attack – is a genre staple. It is followed by a flashback to Ayato and Kim talking about why he chose to fight again – and he denies the heavily implied reasons that the episode has presented. He claims it is not a matter of revenge or sympathy for Kim’s past, but an acceptance of duty – and him finally realising that piloting is his talent. This seems hollow and unconvincing – for the viewer knows well that Ayato does have his own revenge-drive in having seen Reika die at the hands of the Mu. That it is a vision of Reika which allows him to escape the Dolem’s trap supports this idea – and the end of the fight is a quite different affair to its beginning. The Dolem is shown to be almost afraid of the Rahxephon, which has awakened in similar fashion to previous fights – running away and eschewing its weaponry to simply try a ramming attack which shatters it against the Rahxephon’s shield. It is a development of the previous sudden shifts from indecision to carnage. The episode thus ends with some sense of normality restored through this employment of genre staples – Kim has avenged her family, and set the past behind her, Ayato now “belongs” at TERRA and Kunugi has returned, congratulating Souichi for his unorthodox plan.

In relying heavily on the structures and plot-points of a traditional super-robot episode, episode 6 of Rahxephon effectively shows how the story has developed and how it is finally settling down; the narrative pacing and structure mimicking the narrative subject. There are still mysteries, but they are mysteries increasingly framed within a known setting.