Post by legios on Dec 19, 2007 21:41:59 GMT
"Flag", is a Japanese animated series from the 2006 - 07. First airing on pay-per-view TV it is one of the first shows to follow in the footsteps of "Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex" as being developed specifically for premium TV (a business model I can see possibly replacing the OAV model in years to come). Now finally it is getting a Region One DVD release - it has taken a while but I for one think it has been worth the wait. It is somewhat unusual in its subject matter - featuring a pair of photo-journalists as its viewpoint characters, and makes some interesting stylistic choices as a result (but we'll get to that in due course).
The Premise:
In the East Asian country of Udiyanna a civil war has been raging for years - mostly ignored by the outside world. That is until a photograph taken by a young photo-journalist named Saeko Shirasu, of the people of the capital city raising a UN Flag over the skyline as a UN Force helps to liberate the capital from an insurgent army, flies around the worlds media. The picture - called "Flag", and the flag itself become a symbol of the hopes for peace of the Udiyannain people. The UN Force decide to use this symbol as a way of dragging the various armed camps to the negotiating table, but one of the insurgent groups isn't playing ball. They steal the flag, and a UN Special Forces group, equipped with a prototype weapon system, the H.A.W.C (pronounced Ha-Vik) are sent in to retrieve the flag before the deadline of the impending peace talks. And the UNF want Saeko Shirasu to work as an embedded reporter with the unit....
The Series:
I said that "Flag" had made some interesting stylistic choices, and one of the big ones is in the way it choses to tell its story. With both of the viewpoint characters being photo-journalists, the series has chosen to tell its story through the cameras lens - quite literally. The series is presented as if it is a collection of partially edited video footage and still photographs that we are examining on a laptop. Some of the scene transitions actually involve the footage being closed down to a laptop's desktop and new windows being opened. The scenes aren't perfectly framed - sometimes we miss things because the camera wasn't pointing in the right direction, or parts of the scene aren't quite framed correctly. The idea is carried as far as having the camera readouts visible in frame as if we are seeing what the camera operator is seeing.
They carry this to the extent that we rarely see either of the two viewpoint characters. They only actually appear in frame in pictures or footage that someone else has taken, or when the camera has been left lying around. You'd think that this might serve to distance the audience from the series - and you'd be right, that is part of the point. The series is trying to create a sense of being the cameraman, interacting with the world at a remove mediated by the lens. It's an interesting experiment and gives the series a very unique feel.
The way the story is told strangely seems to add something to the various characters rather than take it away. Saeko's mentor, Akagi, who is one of the two principal characters does double duty as narrator, but rather than feeling artificial as narration often does the very casual style of narration employed makes it feel more like he is looking over your shoulder as you are working through the footage and offering his comments. Very different from the usual omniscient narrator.
Saeko herself is a character we predominately hear rather than see - generally seeing the subject her camera is pointed at and only hearing Saeko's side of the conversation. We only see her in unguarded moments when she puts down the camera and forgets it is on, or when she is a caught reflected in a surface in the camera's field of vision. Strangely this wraith-like presence she has in the series actually seems to make her a stronger character rather than a weaker one. We get to know Saeko primarily by what she choses to show us of the world around here, and that says perhaps as much about her as any of the dialogue she gets.
One thing worth noting is that despite what the premise would suggest "Flag" isn't, at least in these early stages, an action series. The UNF don't send in the HAWC and get down to kicking keister and taking names. Not only does the operation proceed in very much the way a real military operation does - intelligence, preparation and a lot of hard work before you get near to even seeing the enemy, but the episodes aren't really about the action. There is an action sequence in the second episode, but all we see if it are some very brief glimpses of rather ragged gun-camera footage - and more importantly the reactions of the HAWC pilots when they come back from the mission, and Saeko's reaction to the footage (glimpsed through her laptops web-cam, another of the series stylistic devices). At the same time Akagai, our other viewpoint character is chasing down the story of the factions in the civil war, and the differences that divide Udiyanna. The series seems less interested in the actual fighting of the war at this stage than it does in looking at how it affects the people who are caught up in it. Which is all to the good.
Technically, "Flag" is a fantastic series. They've done a fantastic job of marrying the 2D traditionally-animated characters and background with 3D CG vehicles. It is one of the best jobs of this I have seen - far and away more accomplished than "Yukikaze", and argueably more assured than "Stand Alone Complex" which had set the bar for this sort of thing. The mechanical design is quite good as well - a lot of it based on real-world hardware, but the chunky, prototype-seeing look of the HAWC blends in nicely, looking credibly like a piece of military hardware rather than a super-mecha. Character designs are good as well - very much in the "realistic" vein but quirky enough in places that you get a real sense of life from the various people, even the ones who barely appear (the UNF cook in episode four is a great example - barely on screen but you'd pick him out in a crowd scene easily).
The Japanese voice-actors seem to be a very good ensemble, bringing a definite sense of reality to their characters (especially important in the case of Saeko and Akagi - where the VA's are practically carrying the entire load of characterisation like the would in a radio play).
The English dub...well..... I'm not a big fan of dubs in general but this one isn't badly done. The voice-cast seems to know what they are about and the voice-direction (by Tony Oliver, a voice actor of long-standing who I didn't realise had branched out into direction) is seems pretty good. Like everything ADR'd it doesn't quite "gel" together properly - you never quite get the same sense of a real conversation with ADR that you do when you are doing prelay. But as english dubs go its pretty decent, and if you can't be doing with subtitles it is a creditable way to enjoy the series.
A very good series based on these four episodes, and one I am definitely sticking around for the remainder (I think it runs to about fifteen episodes iirc).
The R1 DVD release is unfortunately a little pricey - at around £14.99 for four twenty-five minute-ish episodes. It's decently presented though:-
The DVD:
It's a single disc set, fairly bare bones. The disc has the first four episodes, along with four sound mixes for each episode: Japanese 5.1 and 2.0 and English 5.1 and 2.0. I can't comment on the 5.1 mixes but the 2.0 mix seems clear and crisp in both languages. Video quality is pretty good - I can't say what it would look like on a big swish TV but on my 26" box the picture quality and the colour repro was very good indeed.
There aren't any extras as such on the disc, a pair of trailers: one for "Eureka Seven" and one for ".hack\\roots" (which amuses me because I can't see either of these having a natural crossover audience with "Flag" in honesty, the credits (which have been removed from the individual episodes, leaving the ending to play textless), and a textless version of the opening sequence. Pretty much par for the course in terms of Anime dvds, but is seems a little sparse after the interviews and gubbins squeezed onto the "Stand Alone Complex" discs.
Overall: A cracking little series, which tries something genuinely different and seems to be making it work. Quite enjoyable on its own terms, and very different from the usual war/giant mecha fare.
Worth importing? Probably not, unless you are already as smitten with the show as I am. It is being released on Bandai' Aniplex label so it will almost certainly get a release over here in due course. (After which you will probably be able to pick it up cheap in the sales, as I can't see this show appealling to the "w00t, splodes!" or "Kewl, Giant Robots d00ds" crowd who still make up a large chunk of the anime audience. Well worth watching, if only to see what is possible once you start looking sideways at the ways you can tell a story in a medium.
Karl
The Premise:
In the East Asian country of Udiyanna a civil war has been raging for years - mostly ignored by the outside world. That is until a photograph taken by a young photo-journalist named Saeko Shirasu, of the people of the capital city raising a UN Flag over the skyline as a UN Force helps to liberate the capital from an insurgent army, flies around the worlds media. The picture - called "Flag", and the flag itself become a symbol of the hopes for peace of the Udiyannain people. The UN Force decide to use this symbol as a way of dragging the various armed camps to the negotiating table, but one of the insurgent groups isn't playing ball. They steal the flag, and a UN Special Forces group, equipped with a prototype weapon system, the H.A.W.C (pronounced Ha-Vik) are sent in to retrieve the flag before the deadline of the impending peace talks. And the UNF want Saeko Shirasu to work as an embedded reporter with the unit....
The Series:
I said that "Flag" had made some interesting stylistic choices, and one of the big ones is in the way it choses to tell its story. With both of the viewpoint characters being photo-journalists, the series has chosen to tell its story through the cameras lens - quite literally. The series is presented as if it is a collection of partially edited video footage and still photographs that we are examining on a laptop. Some of the scene transitions actually involve the footage being closed down to a laptop's desktop and new windows being opened. The scenes aren't perfectly framed - sometimes we miss things because the camera wasn't pointing in the right direction, or parts of the scene aren't quite framed correctly. The idea is carried as far as having the camera readouts visible in frame as if we are seeing what the camera operator is seeing.
They carry this to the extent that we rarely see either of the two viewpoint characters. They only actually appear in frame in pictures or footage that someone else has taken, or when the camera has been left lying around. You'd think that this might serve to distance the audience from the series - and you'd be right, that is part of the point. The series is trying to create a sense of being the cameraman, interacting with the world at a remove mediated by the lens. It's an interesting experiment and gives the series a very unique feel.
The way the story is told strangely seems to add something to the various characters rather than take it away. Saeko's mentor, Akagi, who is one of the two principal characters does double duty as narrator, but rather than feeling artificial as narration often does the very casual style of narration employed makes it feel more like he is looking over your shoulder as you are working through the footage and offering his comments. Very different from the usual omniscient narrator.
Saeko herself is a character we predominately hear rather than see - generally seeing the subject her camera is pointed at and only hearing Saeko's side of the conversation. We only see her in unguarded moments when she puts down the camera and forgets it is on, or when she is a caught reflected in a surface in the camera's field of vision. Strangely this wraith-like presence she has in the series actually seems to make her a stronger character rather than a weaker one. We get to know Saeko primarily by what she choses to show us of the world around here, and that says perhaps as much about her as any of the dialogue she gets.
One thing worth noting is that despite what the premise would suggest "Flag" isn't, at least in these early stages, an action series. The UNF don't send in the HAWC and get down to kicking keister and taking names. Not only does the operation proceed in very much the way a real military operation does - intelligence, preparation and a lot of hard work before you get near to even seeing the enemy, but the episodes aren't really about the action. There is an action sequence in the second episode, but all we see if it are some very brief glimpses of rather ragged gun-camera footage - and more importantly the reactions of the HAWC pilots when they come back from the mission, and Saeko's reaction to the footage (glimpsed through her laptops web-cam, another of the series stylistic devices). At the same time Akagai, our other viewpoint character is chasing down the story of the factions in the civil war, and the differences that divide Udiyanna. The series seems less interested in the actual fighting of the war at this stage than it does in looking at how it affects the people who are caught up in it. Which is all to the good.
Technically, "Flag" is a fantastic series. They've done a fantastic job of marrying the 2D traditionally-animated characters and background with 3D CG vehicles. It is one of the best jobs of this I have seen - far and away more accomplished than "Yukikaze", and argueably more assured than "Stand Alone Complex" which had set the bar for this sort of thing. The mechanical design is quite good as well - a lot of it based on real-world hardware, but the chunky, prototype-seeing look of the HAWC blends in nicely, looking credibly like a piece of military hardware rather than a super-mecha. Character designs are good as well - very much in the "realistic" vein but quirky enough in places that you get a real sense of life from the various people, even the ones who barely appear (the UNF cook in episode four is a great example - barely on screen but you'd pick him out in a crowd scene easily).
The Japanese voice-actors seem to be a very good ensemble, bringing a definite sense of reality to their characters (especially important in the case of Saeko and Akagi - where the VA's are practically carrying the entire load of characterisation like the would in a radio play).
The English dub...well..... I'm not a big fan of dubs in general but this one isn't badly done. The voice-cast seems to know what they are about and the voice-direction (by Tony Oliver, a voice actor of long-standing who I didn't realise had branched out into direction) is seems pretty good. Like everything ADR'd it doesn't quite "gel" together properly - you never quite get the same sense of a real conversation with ADR that you do when you are doing prelay. But as english dubs go its pretty decent, and if you can't be doing with subtitles it is a creditable way to enjoy the series.
A very good series based on these four episodes, and one I am definitely sticking around for the remainder (I think it runs to about fifteen episodes iirc).
The R1 DVD release is unfortunately a little pricey - at around £14.99 for four twenty-five minute-ish episodes. It's decently presented though:-
The DVD:
It's a single disc set, fairly bare bones. The disc has the first four episodes, along with four sound mixes for each episode: Japanese 5.1 and 2.0 and English 5.1 and 2.0. I can't comment on the 5.1 mixes but the 2.0 mix seems clear and crisp in both languages. Video quality is pretty good - I can't say what it would look like on a big swish TV but on my 26" box the picture quality and the colour repro was very good indeed.
There aren't any extras as such on the disc, a pair of trailers: one for "Eureka Seven" and one for ".hack\\roots" (which amuses me because I can't see either of these having a natural crossover audience with "Flag" in honesty, the credits (which have been removed from the individual episodes, leaving the ending to play textless), and a textless version of the opening sequence. Pretty much par for the course in terms of Anime dvds, but is seems a little sparse after the interviews and gubbins squeezed onto the "Stand Alone Complex" discs.
Overall: A cracking little series, which tries something genuinely different and seems to be making it work. Quite enjoyable on its own terms, and very different from the usual war/giant mecha fare.
Worth importing? Probably not, unless you are already as smitten with the show as I am. It is being released on Bandai' Aniplex label so it will almost certainly get a release over here in due course. (After which you will probably be able to pick it up cheap in the sales, as I can't see this show appealling to the "w00t, splodes!" or "Kewl, Giant Robots d00ds" crowd who still make up a large chunk of the anime audience. Well worth watching, if only to see what is possible once you start looking sideways at the ways you can tell a story in a medium.
Karl
