True Tears and the Invisible Entertainment

Author: nova

While the behemoth of modern western entertainment industry keeps on going strong and growing like a dough under a warm blanket, fueled by the masses starving and desperate to fill their lives with pictures and experiences of imaginary adventures, there’s one little branch of entertainment that isn’t doing all that well. Japanese animation industry is in for rough times of more budget cuts and diminishing DVD-sales especially on international markets. But even still the anime industry keeps going and in a way could be considered as one of the last final frontiers of the entertainment business, where unconventional techniques and constant evolution are required for survival.

Every now and then from the mud and dirt rises a title that’s something new, refreshing and almost groundbreaking. And I dare to say that in this season, Winter 08, it has happened once again – as a short loose visual novel adaptation named True Tears.

Expecting a Key/KyoAni-copy about Sad Girls In The Snow with plenty of BAAWWW, supernatural elements and mentally retarded females I fired up the first episode of TT – and I have rarely experienced such a pleasant surprise. The subtle fashion in which the show is able to convey feelings and arise emotions in the viewer are something that I have so far been able to experience only with Makoto Shinkai’s works. The way True Tears does things is almost beyond artistic in its finesse compared to most shows in its genre and in the entire entertainment industry in general. This however is also where the problem lies.

As beautiful and unique experience as TT may be, the internets nevertheless contains a good amount of people who describe it by such terms as “Typical”, “Clichéd” and “Boring”. Owen S and kurogane have tackled the issue somewhat – which also inspired me to write something as well. So what makes people call TT by such names? Is the show really boring and melodramatic stereotype of high school romance and people just hype over it for such shallow reasons as cute chix and graphics? Are we just elitist otaku asshats who are misguided and want to hop on the bandwagon of whoever’s better than us?

Sad girls but no snow. And I don’t see any foxes in human form or incarnations of cursed winged people either. What’s going on?

While I can only speak on my own part, I’d say that the answer is strong no. In fact my personal feelings on the matter are that True Tears is one of the best things that has happened within the anime entertainment subculture in a while and anyone who calls the series clichéd and boring is has no taste or understanding on what entertainment is supposed to be all about. However as I try to make it not my habit to preach my own ideals as the Word, I do harbor understanding towards those who simply don’t like the show – after all not all of us are interested in romance or drama. Instead I shall bring my view on why people tend to not appreciate the subtle style TT is employing.

I noticed the phenomenon when showing Makoto Shinkai’s The Place Promised in Our Early Days to a person with no real experience or knowledge on anime titles. While I have good experiences of showing such titles as Macross Zero and Black Lagoon to “regular” people, this was the first time I actually decided to try out how a more artistic and emotional show would work. The result was a disaster. I could tell that after about first 15 minutes the subject wanted to switch to something else and after the movie finally concluded probably wished he hadn’t agreed to my proposal in the first place. Yet the person in question is an eager movie-watcher with a wide range of taste. What went wrong?

I concluded that the main problem are these “subtleties” I have been talking about, or more specifically how the people identify them. We western inhabitants are normally used to the format of entertainment media in which everything must be explained throughly so that the viewer follows without having to guess things or feel confused. This goes to such extend that vast majority of entertainment produced deliberately attempts to avoid leaving things to the imagination, gut feeling or common sense of the viewer and instead display every event and its consequence in an easily understandable audiovisual package. I must note at this point that anime is no exception to this rule and vast majority of anime produced is just as shallow as any Hollywood-movie or even worse. As we are used to this sort of “patting on the head”-treatment as viewers and consumers of media, it’s easy to grow blind to the subtle things that aren’t directly obvious or detectable with our five basic senses.

Somehow I always end up liking the side characters most. Poor Aiko.

In a way True Tears reminds me of the heavy duty science fiction books I used to skim through like there was no tomorrow. As anyone with any experience in hard science fiction knows, the genre is almost entirely about secrecy and keeping the reader in the blind while giving small, subtle hints that eventually make up the big picture. The reader could form his own theories to figure out what’s happening, who is who and doing stuff for what ultimate purpose.

While comparing animation shows like True Tears to the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Vernor Vinge might sound just retarded and completely out of context, it’s in my opinion rather good illustration of what I’m trying to point out here. Many people who complain about True Tears aren’t only misunderstanding but entirely missing the emotions and circumstances that aren’t obviously stated on screen. The movie-lover who I had watch Place Promised didn’t enjoy the show for the simple reason that he could not sense whatever wasn’t available as a conrete audiovisual evidence. He couldn’t grasp the strong emotional content, familiarize himself with the characters and do the rest of the math in his mind – instead he saw a boring melodrama that wasn’t making any sense whatsoever and appeared to be composed of confusing flashbacks of characters who and whose feelings weren’t explained in any detail at all.

I do not wish to imply that I’d be opposed to burger-entertainment and that all shows should be like True Tears – far from it. We all need to have the kind of entertainment that mixes things up into a nice lukewarm mash and feeds it to us with a spoon (Aa~n <3) while promising that if we eat the vegetables without complaining, we get something sweet in the end. True Tears is a heavy duty show that doesn’t make things obvious and takes its time with the characters and the setting to let the viewer do the math on his own. It’s challenging, exciting and refreshing – but those unable to grasp its finesse will not see it as anything much aside from graphical achievements.

Yandere in the making?

If you, dear reader, did not enjoy TT and think it’s just a steaming pile of boredom and dramaz, I recommend you keep in mind what I have been preaching here and give the show a rewatch – think of the audiovisual elements merely as a support for the nonobvious things you can’t directly see. Also, Aiko kicks ass.

Added bonus! Since the Nerd Wars over True Tears is commencing, I quickly made a few war banners. Use them freely and remember that your opinion is always superior. Now off to AnimeSuki with you and give ‘em hell!