Anime Day #6: Speed Grapher

As we approach AWA, my work gets more urgent and my costumes come together. Watching Anime at night has also become more urgent. I have to watch as much as I can so I can understand as much of the con as possible. Every year that I absorb anime, the experience becomes much more fun.

One Anime I just finished Tuesday night was a suggestion from a friend's wife. It's fairly new, but it's a great show with only a few minor flaws.

Speed Grapher is a contemporary anime about decadence and purpose. Tatsumi Saiga is a war photographer struggling to find his place during peace times. He works for a newspaper and feels like he has no muse. One night he goes to investigate a rumor about an elite club for the upper-crust, a club where debauchery is king, and finds himself in the middle of a mad-man's plan.

From the ceiling descends the Goddess, a tranced-out 14-year-old girl in a costume who kisses Saiga and unlocks hidden potential. Saiga is a euphoric and his deepest desire, to kill through his lens, comes true. Everything Saiga shoots in focus with film in his camera explodes. Saiga rescues the girl, daughter of the richest woman in Japan, and the adventure begins.

The cast includes a terribly designed crazy cop (Saiga's almost-girlfriend, whose design vastly improves with the addition of a coat towards the very end), super-gay Bob, and a host of excellent villians. The mastermind behind it all, Mr. Suitengu, is smooth and calculating. He is one of the greatest anime villians in that he is utterly despicable, but at the half-way mark suddenly becomes someone you root for.

I said a few things about Speed Grapher while I was watching it. First was that the show was like watching someone waterboard a bunny. The girl, Kagura, is so innocent and sweet and watching her be rescued and dragged back in to her terrible life over and over is a bit emotionally draining. The second is that Speed Grapher is a show that says, "Nobody is good, everyone has a price-- except this one guy." Really there are a few guys who can't be bought, but that is still a good idea to remember as you watch the series.

The animation is beautiful and the story manages to tell a story of a relationship that cannot be defined. Everyone accuses Saiga of being a pedophile, but his love for Kagura is never romantic. The only other big problem that I saw with the show was that while the show said, "Look at this disgusting vice", the up-beat theme music said "Yay! Vice!" Thankfully the theme is dropped for the final episode, which has a meaningful end and plenty of explanation and closure for every question raised during the series.