Afterword

I rewatched 2 episodes of Rurouni Kenshin (the series, not the OVA) after watching and reviewing Samurai Champloo. To be honest... the action sequences in Rurouni Kenshin are a little unsatisfying after watching some of the sword fights in Samurai Champloo. So many cutaway scenes! No fluidity!

Of course, Samurai Champloo doesn't have the epic storyline (I mean, you just don't get lines like "defeating Himura the Battousai is equal to conquering Japan itself!!!" in Samurai Champloo), but... I may like the visuals better! The Kenshin OVA is still my favorite, but in terms of the TV series, I think I may actually prefer Samurai Champloo!

Samurai Champloo: Series Review

I just finished the 26-episode series Samurai Champloo and, to my surprise, found it much to my liking. The series was directed by Shinichiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame (that anime is on my list but I have yet to watch it). The premise is a little bit of a screwy one: it is a "cross-genre" mix that employs a blend of Japan in the early Edo period (with a revisionist historical bent) with use of anachronistic elements of hip-hop, punk sub-culture, and modernism.

Sounds strange, I know. But the series was done with such style that I ended up quite liking it, despite the fact that the show was a bit uneven and, quite frankly, WEIRD at times.

ART, COLOR & DESIGN

I absolutely loved the action sequences in this anime -- superior to those of Rurouni Kenshin (the anime series, not the OVA) in the way the frames cleaved to the swordsplay without cutaway screens. The fights were deadly, fast, and bloody. Slash, slash, dead body + blood spraying. Instead of having people stand around talking about their special moves, these guys made quick work of their victims. Their motions were fluid and animated beautifully.

Colorwise, I was pleased. The colors in the show were not too bright, not too dull, and also quite varied. Impressive use of contrast. The episode featuring graffiti in particular employed color to good use.

As for character design, I have to admit at first I found it odd and jarring. The designs of Jin and Fuu adhere to traditional archetypes: cold, steely samurai and (yes, sigh) ditzy, cute anime girl (though Fuu was less annoying than most anime girls). But the design of the 3rd main character, Mugen, is clearly taken from street sub-culture, from the way he looks & talks to the way he fights. It was so weird. But the way the show unfolded, the design just seemed to FIT.

In short, the show had STYLE. Action sequences, character designs, animation... meshing with the irrelevant dialogue and hip-hop music. It all meshed together, and it was fun to watch!

PLOT & CHARACTERS

This anime was not a plot-driven one. In fact, its basic plot is, well, basic -- Fuu recruits Jin and Mugen to help her find the Samurai Who Smells of Sunflowers. That's it. Most of the episodes don't advance the plot at all. It's not one of those I-must-find-out-what-happens shows.

Which I appreciated. The episodes ended up being random, mostly unconnected, and, as such, had great range and variety. The show sampled a whole host of topics, with tidbits lifted from Japanese (and Western!) culture: beetle fights, ukiyo-e paintings, zombies!, baseball, graffiti, marijuana, the blind assassin, Musashi Miyamoto, Tale of the Genji... Sometimes the show got really weird (as in the zombies and baseball episodes), but ... I appreciated the breadth of things touched upon.

I guess I would call Samurai Champloo a character-driven show, although I wish the characters' backstories and pasts had been more fully fleshed out. The contrast between the wild, unruly Mugen and the aristocratic, traditional Jin was great, and unfolded in the way they dressed, talked, and fought. That was done really well, and really formed the heart of the show. But I wanted to know more about them. Fuu was boring, as most anime girls are, but I wanted to know more about her too. The director seemed more interested in developing the characters as a trio, in relation to one another.

OVERALL

Overall, I really liked the show. It was a novel and interesting concept that was executed well. There were some really fantastic episodes in there. Episodes of note: "Gamblers and Gallantry" (Ep. 11, where Jin falls in love with and rescues a whore-to-be), "Bogus Booty" (Ep. 15, where Jin and Mugen go to the counterfeiting brothel), "War of the Words" (Ep. 18 - the graffiti episode), "Elegy of Entrapment" (Eps. 20-21, with the kickass female blind assassin who kicks both Jin's and Mugen's asses), and of course the last 3 episodes ("Evanescent Encounter").

And again, as I said before, the show just had such kickass style that it made up for a simplistic plot and slightly underdeveloped characters. And, of course, the animation was really good. Samurai Champloo didn't have the epic, addictive quality of Rurouni Kenshin, but it was just ... really fun.

I can't really say which (Kenshin or Champloo) I like better, though. I think it would depend on my mood. :)

Passions, Movements, Choices

[repost from my other blog]

The halfway mark on my law school career has come and gone, and I am no closer to figuring out what to do with my life than I was at the beginning. As my more ambitious classmates prepare to kiss ass at their summer law firm cocktail receptions, to track down the professors for whom they are research assistants for clerkships recommendations, and to think about public interest fellowship applications, I am left wondering whether I ought to be bothering to do the same.
Of course, to do that would require knowing what, and why.

I came to law school, ostensibly, to find my passions. It's what I told myself, anyway, and that was what my personal essay claimed. I never really had much passion for anything academic or career-oriented before law school. In my personal essay, I wrote about performing the Debussy String Quartet by memory with Awesome in the Bedroom (Ariel, Anicia, and Jeremy) junior year. I wrote about laying out and winning the game-to-go to Regionals against BU senior year. I wrote about a spark of interest in the New Bedford immigration raids case that I had observed when I was a paralegal. I hoped to find passion in law school; it was a leap of faith.

Then I got here, and then-Dean Koh told us he hoped we'd come to find our moral compass, and I gulped, knowing I didn't have one. Next to some of my classmates, who'd spent college (and even high school) careers Involved in The Pursuit of Social Justice and Trying to Change the World, I was The Selfish Hedonist who had spent all my time playing music and frisbee and ignored the outside world. Had I really come to law school to find my passions? Or did I cave into my parents' bidding -- i.e., enter a financially stable profession that would pay the bills while I reproduced and popped out more selfish, hedonistic babies that cared only for their own well-being and the well-being of their progeny?

Spring of my first year, by gift of MW's draw, I found myself immersed in an immigrants' rights clinic. I continue to find the clinical experience the single best thing I have done in law school -- indeed, the only thing that I find enjoyable about law school. Clinic has been all-consuming, and yet when I'm not constantly consumed by it, I miss it and find my life worthless without it. In my end-of-clinic reflection, I wrote that it was my "lifeblood."

I've felt at once incredibly inspired by and alienated from my fellow clinic students and supervising professors. They seem to be part of a movement, a revolution, continuing what they have always seen themselves as doing: Involving Themselves in the Pursuit of Social Justice and Trying to Change the World. The rhetoric is everywhere: we are the clinic machine, working together to further the public interest. We eagerly employ the ever-appealing narrative of the hero. We, the underdogs, serve to protect and empower the weak and the marginalized against the crushing hand of the Antichrist and the Establishment, all the while forgoing the riches that our not-as-selfless classmates pursue! We are the unsung heroes.

It makes a great story. It makes us feel great pride. It makes all the blood and sweat feel worth it.

But for me, I am new to all of this. I am always conscious of how uncomfortable I feel trying to follow them. Partly because I am not yet convinced I am on board with where the "movement" is heading. Partly because I am not yet convinced that I like the self-aggrandizing smugness of the narrative of "movements" at all. Partly because I don't appreciate the implicit normative judgments upon others that underpin the whole "movement." I don't know that I share the vision.

Recently, following my clinic partner's and my appearance in federal court, the Nasty Internetz had the following to say about me: "These students will “do their time”, pad their resumes and move on to lucrative jobs with large law firms where they will represent major corporations screwing the American public. Great."

The commenter's criticism stings with the bite of reality.

I know my fellow WIRACers, who've always been revolutionaries, will continue as they always have: fighting what they see as the good fight, doing what they see as self-sacrificing, and winning incremental battles in what they see as their never-ending quest for social justice. And I applaud them. And I wish I were like them. I wish I had the courage of their convictions and their confidence in their correctness. I wish I could get swept up in that beautiful narrative.

But maybe the Nasty Internetz is right about me. As I am beginning to realize how behind I am in the elbows-out scramble for post-law school positions, I feel as if a crucial decision-point is approaching. What am I doing with this law degree, and why?

I have come to love my clinic, to love what I am doing, to love my fellow clinic students and my clinic professors. I have come to thrive on and to live for their respect and approval. I have been nearly completely swallowed up by the clinic culture and enchanted by the clinic narrative. I know I would feel deeply disappointed in myself if I did not continue along the path that clinic has set out before me. Worse yet, I would disappoint the professors and friends who have helped me find this lifeblood.

I feel I have found my passion in law school (but wonder whether it has been for the right reasons), and yet at the same time, I cannot shake my pragmatism. Passion doesn't pay the bills, after all, and houses don't buy themselves. I don't want to subscribe to the idea that the yearning to live a decent, comfortable, and ultimately uneventful life with a family that you love ought to be replaced by a hungry drive for revolution. I don't think the moral compass points in one direction or the other. It's a false dichotomy, and maybe the choice isn't so stark as it seems right now. Maybe, as MA likes to put it, it's just an issue of not being able to see around a bend.

Article on the Fat Cat bankers

Obama and the Fat Cat Bankers -- WSJ opinion from my bizorgs professor.

Book Review: Dreadnought

I've recently completed Robert K. Massie's Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (1991).

This was a truly exceptional book covering the interesting naval buildup between Britain and Germany before World War 1. Massie covers the period with a series of character studies looking at key players in Britain and Germany. The result is a series of mini-biographies that reveal the interesting interplay of the various characters and provide a truly compelling story. The reader sees the events through the eyes of the various players and has a good sense of their motivation and intentions. This is one of the best books I've read and I'm looking forward to Castles of Steel (his follow-up book).

Intelligence Failure

I like this WSJ editorial regarding the mistake of applying 4th Am reasonable suspicion standards in intelligence gathering.

Peacemaker Kurogane: Series Review

I just finished watching all 24 episodes of Peacemaker Kurogane in a span of two days. What a strange, strange show. And not particularly good, either. Luckily, the anime is very short, so it wasn't TOO big of a time vortex. Once I'm done with this review, I can get back to studying...

There were a lot of things to dislike about the show:

First and foremost, its main character, Tetsu, was a short little red-haired brat that was really difficult to like. He's supposed to be a real historical figure, but in the show he was extremely annoying. So was the little personality-less mute girl that he had a crush on. (Yet another example of annoying anime females, sigh.)

Second, the plot was really weird and incomprehensible in the middle -- there was some weird stuff about esoteric encantations and this odd gay "Lord" Maro villain that just came out of nowhere. And actually, the overall the plot was not particularly interesting, since we all know what happens to the Choshu clan at Ikedaya Inn...

Third, there were no good evil characters. The main villain, Yoshida, ended up kind of being a disappointment. I suspect the manga takes Yoshida's page, Suzu, and makes HIM into a villain, but the anime ended before that happened, so I don't know if he turned out to be a good villain. But really, the show really lacked compelling evildoers.

But there were also some things to like:

I think I really enjoy anime set around the Bakumatsu and the Restoration. (Rurouni Kenshin, of course, is also set during this time, though that story is told from the POV of the Imperialists, whereas this one is told from the side of the Shinsengumi, who work for the shogunate.) I think the time period is fascinating, and I loved that the anime took time to explore the historical characters from the Shinsengumi. Maybe that's why I wasn't TOO bored when the show just spent episode after episode developing characters like Saitoh and Sano and Nagakura and Yamanami that really weren't important, plot-wise, but are all real historical figures. I just enjoyed "getting to know" one fictional version of the Shinsengumi.

The animation was all right. Not great, not terrible. I didn't like the design of a lot of the characters (e.g., Tetsu, Nagakura, Saya, Suzu), but others were interesting.

The ones I found most intriguing, actually, were the random gender-benders. Like Okita (pictured right)! He was such a fun character to watch. When he first appeared in the show, I thought he was a woman. That was on purpose, of course. Okita is one of several characters in the show that had effeminate features and displayed effeminate behaviors. (The cross-dressing spy, Susume, is another.)

What was also amusing was the gay subtext (or just text -- not so subtle, actually) all over the place, too. It made the show fun to watch. Will the demonic vice commander Hijikata admit his love for Okita before the latter dies of tuberculosis? Will Suzu ever stop carrying around the decapitated head of the master he's in love with?

In the end, this show lacked the narrative punch (and cool villains) that the Kyoto Arc of Rurouni Kenshin had. It also only had one or two cool sword fight scenes (though the ones it had were quite bloody, which I liked). And the characters weren't as compelling. But it was still fun to watch, if only because of the historical setting.

It's just funny to watch the show end after the Shinsengumi's big victory at Ikedaya Inn, because you know that eventually the shogunate loses. Haha.