Concrete Revolutio: Inside the "Black Fog"
October 24, 2015 4:58 PM - Season 1, Episode 2 - Subscribe
Fuurota, a ghost boy, transforms into a bird and frees a colorful beetle before a black fog descends. The Superhuman Bureau retrieves him later and informs him that they're going to be responsible for watching him.
Episode 2 profile on MyAnimeList.
There are fewer timeskips this episode compared to the first one. But if this is a story that stands better on its own, it's also a more fragmented story, for which the threads only come together at the end.
Episode 2 profile on MyAnimeList.
There are fewer timeskips this episode compared to the first one. But if this is a story that stands better on its own, it's also a more fragmented story, for which the threads only come together at the end.
>The ending was a bit special as well, with the ghost getting the blame and guilt
Heh. Yeah, "Shame on you for killing all the Tartarus Bugmen, with the virus that we engineered specifically to kill all the Tartarus Bugmen."
So after Last Remaining Tartaros Bug Girl flies off, there's a scene in which the ghost kid says to the guy with the mummy arm, "It used to be easier. There were bad guys, and good superhumans beat them. Since when did things get so complicated? No distinction between good and bad." He goes on to say that maybe he can't understand because he's stuck as a child and can't grow up. He says he wants to grow up, too, but Mummy Arm Guy says no, you stay the way you are.
I don't know much about Japanese comics, but in US comics there was a real distinct point when the idea that Moral Ambiguity Is Cool And Adult got loose, and overnight, all the superheroes turned into growling, psychologically damaged killers who talk to themselves. It seems to me that this is what they're talking about in this scene. The fictional worlds of superheroes used to be happy places for kids, but now that's changed, and the heroes are having a hard time dealing with it.
If that's what they're doing, I like the idea. I thought it was done in kind of a slapdash way, though. "No distinction between good and bad," isn't so much a line of dialogue as a thesis statement. And there's a quick scene in which we find out there's Bug Men, followed by a quick scene in which we find out that there's no more Bug Men. Ghost Kid is supposed to have done something immense and terrible, but the way they presented it made it inconsequential. Likewise, if I'm supposed to care that there's now hostility between former teammates, you have to SHOW them being teammates at least a LITTLE bit.
I've got more or less the same feeling about this that I had after the first episode, which is that it's rushed and kind of unconvincingly written at times, but there's neat stuff in it.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 8:27 AM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
Heh. Yeah, "Shame on you for killing all the Tartarus Bugmen, with the virus that we engineered specifically to kill all the Tartarus Bugmen."
So after Last Remaining Tartaros Bug Girl flies off, there's a scene in which the ghost kid says to the guy with the mummy arm, "It used to be easier. There were bad guys, and good superhumans beat them. Since when did things get so complicated? No distinction between good and bad." He goes on to say that maybe he can't understand because he's stuck as a child and can't grow up. He says he wants to grow up, too, but Mummy Arm Guy says no, you stay the way you are.
I don't know much about Japanese comics, but in US comics there was a real distinct point when the idea that Moral Ambiguity Is Cool And Adult got loose, and overnight, all the superheroes turned into growling, psychologically damaged killers who talk to themselves. It seems to me that this is what they're talking about in this scene. The fictional worlds of superheroes used to be happy places for kids, but now that's changed, and the heroes are having a hard time dealing with it.
If that's what they're doing, I like the idea. I thought it was done in kind of a slapdash way, though. "No distinction between good and bad," isn't so much a line of dialogue as a thesis statement. And there's a quick scene in which we find out there's Bug Men, followed by a quick scene in which we find out that there's no more Bug Men. Ghost Kid is supposed to have done something immense and terrible, but the way they presented it made it inconsequential. Likewise, if I'm supposed to care that there's now hostility between former teammates, you have to SHOW them being teammates at least a LITTLE bit.
I've got more or less the same feeling about this that I had after the first episode, which is that it's rushed and kind of unconvincingly written at times, but there's neat stuff in it.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 8:27 AM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
The ambiguity that can exist between good and bad actions has been explored in mainstream manga far earlier than it was in mainstream American comics (setting aside the rare exceptions like Harvey Kurtzman's work for EC). I have the complete run of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy at hand and even the stories from the early 60s are about beings whose campaign of destruction ultimately has to be resolved through understanding, cleverness and compromise. They don't always end with simple, satisfactory outcomes; sometimes there are no happy outcomes possible.
And those were comics in publications targeted at nine year old boys. This was done without the adolescent grimdark and revenge fantasy. They were slam-bang potboilers without a lot of character depth, but they still attempted to portray the world as a complicated place where getting what you want isn't always going to be a good thing.
posted by ardgedee at 12:46 PM on October 25, 2015
And those were comics in publications targeted at nine year old boys. This was done without the adolescent grimdark and revenge fantasy. They were slam-bang potboilers without a lot of character depth, but they still attempted to portray the world as a complicated place where getting what you want isn't always going to be a good thing.
posted by ardgedee at 12:46 PM on October 25, 2015
(And yeah, I'm no fan of Frank Miller and his kind. Even setting aside the Ayn Randian bullshit, all that endless persecution and rage is no more mature than superhero comics were beforehand; they are still nothing but simplistic framings of the world and straw men propped up for wish fulfillment purposes. Not that I'm opposed to such a thing as a creative strategy (obviously, I hope), but at least the guys writing U.S. superhero comics in the 60s weren't fooling themselves about the maturity level of their work.)
posted by ardgedee at 12:52 PM on October 25, 2015
posted by ardgedee at 12:52 PM on October 25, 2015
Anyway, the repeated remarks by Jiro that he's the only human in the Bureau is, I think, a clue. As the archetypal characters (the magical girl, the magical boy, the machine-man...) continue addressing problems in exactly the ways they always have, the consequences of their actions will keep piling up and complicating things.
It seems a little too pat in this episode (Oh hey little boy, that crisis you averted? Actually it turned out you committed genocide. Do you understand that with your seven-year-old's mind?). But it seems like Jiro had gone rogue because he was changing with the world, and his comrades weren't.
posted by ardgedee at 1:00 PM on October 25, 2015
It seems a little too pat in this episode (Oh hey little boy, that crisis you averted? Actually it turned out you committed genocide. Do you understand that with your seven-year-old's mind?). But it seems like Jiro had gone rogue because he was changing with the world, and his comrades weren't.
posted by ardgedee at 1:00 PM on October 25, 2015
Yeah, I wondered about Jiro saying he's the only human. I'm the kind of viewer that writers love, because I only remember clues once it's revealed what they're clues to; as soon as a new shiny object appears onscreen, I completely forget whatever half-revealed secret was up there a moment earlier. But come to think of it, whenever there's a chuunibyou-afflicted character in an anime, don't they make jokes about having a demon living in their arm? It occurs to me that there must be some big Japanese-pop-culture thing that they're referencing--I'm not hip enough to know what it is, but I'm hip enough to have heard a lot of references to it. And Jiro must be a reference to the same thing. So HE's human, but that arm of his...
>I'm no fan of Frank Miller and his kind. Even setting aside the Ayn Randian bullshit
Aw, I don't know--I mean, yes, I am happy to set aside the Ayn Randian bullshit. But I think it's possible to admire, for instance, Dark Knight Returns as a fairly original, fairly well-done take on Batman, though it's easier to appreciate if you don't take it TOO seriously, and it'd be even easier to appreciate if practically everything that followed it for a decade and a half hadn't tried to ape its tone. Somebody showed me a few pages of a Cereberus The Aardvark comic in which a Miller-Batman parody character was muttering darkly to himself while, I don't know, spreading butter on toast or something, and it was comedy gold. Of course both Miller and the aardvark guy have gone seriously off the rails since then, or perhaps were always seriously off them and people just noticed. But this is neither here nor there as regards The Matter At Hand.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:13 PM on October 25, 2015
>I'm no fan of Frank Miller and his kind. Even setting aside the Ayn Randian bullshit
Aw, I don't know--I mean, yes, I am happy to set aside the Ayn Randian bullshit. But I think it's possible to admire, for instance, Dark Knight Returns as a fairly original, fairly well-done take on Batman, though it's easier to appreciate if you don't take it TOO seriously, and it'd be even easier to appreciate if practically everything that followed it for a decade and a half hadn't tried to ape its tone. Somebody showed me a few pages of a Cereberus The Aardvark comic in which a Miller-Batman parody character was muttering darkly to himself while, I don't know, spreading butter on toast or something, and it was comedy gold. Of course both Miller and the aardvark guy have gone seriously off the rails since then, or perhaps were always seriously off them and people just noticed. But this is neither here nor there as regards The Matter At Hand.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:13 PM on October 25, 2015
Bakemonogatari's Kanbaru is a riff on the same thing, isn't she? She's got a bandaged-up arm with a demon living in it, more or less. BRB, congratulating self for picking up on something obvious...
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:33 PM on October 25, 2015
posted by Sing Or Swim at 1:33 PM on October 25, 2015
...and the guy in Princess Mononoke has a cursed arm. I am only just now noticing that this is A Thing.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:27 PM on October 25, 2015
posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:27 PM on October 25, 2015
Show creator and main writer Shou Aikawa and director Seiji Mizushima are frequent collaborators, who most recently worked together on UN-GO (also from anime studio Bones, responsible for Concrete Revolutio as well as Blood Blockade Battlefront). Aikawa has also been the writer for several Kamen Rider shows. In interviews they've said the basis for the show was a conversation they had about 10 years ago, wondering why so many of the heroes they admired as children were created during that particular time period. Aikawa was born in 1965 (Showa 40), Mizushima in 1966 (Showa 41), so their exposure to manga and anime would have started in the 70's. And I think this may be why the anime evokes the 60's and 70's. And anime / manga / tokusatsu characters alluded to, such as Ultraman, Cyborg 009, Kamen Rider, originated in late 60's - early 70's.
As an aside, Concrete Revolutio takes place in an alternate Japan during the Shinka period, and Shinka was an alternate name that had been considered for what came to be called the Showa period (Hirohito's reign, 1926 - 1989).
Timelines so far in the show:
Shinka 41: Kikko and Jiro first meet and Kikko joins the Superhuman Bureau (ep. 1); Fuurota releases the virus on the Tartaru Bugmen, joins the Superhuman Bureau (ep. 2)
Shinka 46: Kikko tries to bring Jiro back to the Superhuman Bureau (ep. 1)
Shinka 48: Fuurota encounters the adult Campe (ep. 2)
posted by needled at 2:49 PM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
As an aside, Concrete Revolutio takes place in an alternate Japan during the Shinka period, and Shinka was an alternate name that had been considered for what came to be called the Showa period (Hirohito's reign, 1926 - 1989).
Timelines so far in the show:
Shinka 41: Kikko and Jiro first meet and Kikko joins the Superhuman Bureau (ep. 1); Fuurota releases the virus on the Tartaru Bugmen, joins the Superhuman Bureau (ep. 2)
Shinka 46: Kikko tries to bring Jiro back to the Superhuman Bureau (ep. 1)
Shinka 48: Fuurota encounters the adult Campe (ep. 2)
posted by needled at 2:49 PM on October 25, 2015 [1 favorite]
> ...with the ghost getting the blame and guilt for something the bureau was willing to do on their own anyway.
That's not quite clear. The Bureau clearly intended to have it available as a weapon, but not necessarily as the tool of first resort. Jiro accepts blame for considering its use but the buck stops with Fuurota for using it.
Which I guess sounds a bit weaselly. But we don't know what Jiro and the professor intended. And afterwards, anything they could say would sound hollow.
posted by ardgedee at 3:06 PM on October 25, 2015
That's not quite clear. The Bureau clearly intended to have it available as a weapon, but not necessarily as the tool of first resort. Jiro accepts blame for considering its use but the buck stops with Fuurota for using it.
Which I guess sounds a bit weaselly. But we don't know what Jiro and the professor intended. And afterwards, anything they could say would sound hollow.
posted by ardgedee at 3:06 PM on October 25, 2015
...and the guy in Princess Mononoke has a cursed arm. I am only just now noticing that this is A Thing.
You'll love Parasyte: the Maxim.
As an aside, Concrete Revolutio takes place in an alternate Japan during the Shinka period, and Shinka was an alternate name that had been considered for what came to be called the Showa period
THANK YOU.
That had been bothering me for ages.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:00 AM on October 26, 2015
You'll love Parasyte: the Maxim.
As an aside, Concrete Revolutio takes place in an alternate Japan during the Shinka period, and Shinka was an alternate name that had been considered for what came to be called the Showa period
THANK YOU.
That had been bothering me for ages.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:00 AM on October 26, 2015
>...and the guy in Princess Mononoke has a cursed arm. I am only just now noticing that this is A Thing.
>You'll love Parasyte: the Maxim.
Ha! I did watch a bit of that. I wouldn't have thought of it with these others because it's science-fictiony, but of course it's just a science-fictiony variation on the theme.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:07 AM on October 26, 2015
>You'll love Parasyte: the Maxim.
Ha! I did watch a bit of that. I wouldn't have thought of it with these others because it's science-fictiony, but of course it's just a science-fictiony variation on the theme.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 6:07 AM on October 26, 2015
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The ending was a bit special as well, with the ghost getting the blame and guilt for something the bureau was willing to do on their own anyway.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:10 AM on October 25, 2015