The Irresponsible Captain Tylor! It's a classic and much-loved nineties anime show, and up until now it hasn't seen any real mention on this blog because I don't cover TV shows, except for the one or two times when I have because I got confused or someone asked me nicely. At any rate, that's not an excuse for not getting to the subsequent OVA series, and if I have one at all, it's that its reputation isn't especially great and the box set has been sitting unattended on my shelf for rather a long time. But what kind of review series would Drowning in Nineties Anime be if we cared about reputations? So it's finally time to work through the four volumes of the DVD release, those being An Exceptional Episode, The Rules of Being 16 / The Samurai's Narrow Escape / The High-Tech Opposition / White Christmas, If Only The Skies Would Clear, and From Here to Eternity...
Now, this is as good a place as any to admit that I've never been the world's biggest Irresponsible Captain Tylor fan. It's one of those shows that I have a ton of respect for, that I'd unhesitatingly recommend, but that I never quite clicked with. So it was quite the shock to settle down with An Exceptional Episode and almost immediately be hit by a flood of nostalgia and warm affection for its sizeable cast. That cast was always the heart of the show, of course, but in retrospect I wonder if part of my issue was that having so many people to keep track of and care about left it feeling a touch unfocused, just as the likeable hanging out that was its baseline made the shifts into actual drama sometimes seem more annoying than rewarding.
So it's to An Exceptional Episode's credit that it sidesteps both those failings, setting up a crisis that's suitably major but broad enough in its particulars that we can still spend most of the running time watching the cast bounce off each other, which is all the more fun here since characters who never got to interact before are thrust together in new and interesting combinations. The film - and I know it's not quite that, but it seems dumb to consider it anything else - also pulls off the neat trick of both capitalising on the growth that occurred over the course of the show and sneakily resetting crucial aspects, since we can hardly have ninety minutes of story about an irresponsible captain who doesn't behave irresponsibly and is unreservedly trusted by his crew of loveable eccentrics. Really, the heart of the tale is a mystery, one kept both from us and the cast and focused on why Tylor is back to being a shady goofball who seemingly puts everyone's lives in danger, and though the outlines are obvious from early on, the details are intriguing and significant enough to provide a solid narrative spine.
What's not on offer is much in the way of action, which is fine because that's hardly The Irresponsible Captain Tylor's forte, but it does mean the animation never really gets to impress. If there was extra money here, as you'd expect from an OVA from 1994, it seems mostly to have gone into making the character animation sing, which is arguably just as it should be. But the caveat is that there's nothing to distract the viewer who wasn't coming directly from the show, not when so little effort is made to reintroduce the cast and setting or to recap recent events, which from the perspective of someone who tends to blunder into OVAs without the requisite foreknowledge would normally be a turn-off. However, since I did the groundwork for once, I can confidently say that if you are familiar with the show, this is up there with the very best episodes, and perhaps even a touch better than any of them.
I said in regards to the last episodes that they were a pleasant reminder of how enjoyable the group dynamics in The Irresponsible Captain Tylor could be. The four standalone episodes that followed, produced by a different studio and a different creative team, were a reminder of the curious flipside of that, which is that I don't have much time for most of the characters when they're on their own. The thing is, and bear with me as I try and expand upon a really obvious point, but the core of the show is Justy Tylor, the man whose irresponsible attitude to nearly everything throws the overwise standard sci-fi milieu he resides in into chaos. So it follows that the purpose of everyone around him, to a greater or lesser extent, is either to react to Tylor or to create situations for him to resolve in his inimical fashion. That's truer of some of them than others, for sure, and the series got some good mileage from digging below the surfaces of its cast, but still, is separating them off for solo adventures really the way to go? I'd argue not, and lo and behold, director Yoshinaga and the team at Studio Deen gave me ample evidence.
The Rules of Being 16 is the most substantial of these four episodes, with a bit of dramatic weight to it and a bearing on the wider Tylor narrative. But for all that, the story of how teenaged emperor Azalyn finds herself meeting up with an old friend who's been left traumatised by events that her father and the Raalgon empire in general were directly responsible for strays a bit too close to rehashing ideas and incidents we've already seen quite often by this point, and as recently as the previous OVA episodes. I can't imagine the viewer who, having got this far, won't be able to predict exactly how Azalyn behaves - like a sixteen-year-old girl who couldn't really care less about emperoring, basically - and the true mystery is how she keeps pulling this stuff and not getting violently deposed.
On the plus side, it's the second-nicest-looking of the four, with some detailed, sensitive character animation across gorgeous backgrounds, both of which take something of a dip as we move into The Samurai's Narrow Escape and The High-Tech Opposition, which get up to more ambitious stuff and so end up showing the cracks in the budget more. It seems reasonable to treat these two as a pair because they both do exactly the same thing: take minor characters that have had minimal development until now and chuck them into a thirty minute action movie. The first focuses on fighter pilot Kojiro, and tries to cook up a Top Gun-style conflict which doesn't succeed since Kojiro's only remotely interesting trait, his phobic aversion to women, is wholly absent, and without that he's just your stereotypical hot-headed pilot type. Whereas The High-Tech Opposition has even thinner characters, in the shape of the Soyokaze's marines, but gets to have more fun with them, humour being something that's been extremely lacking up until this point. It also has a stronger concept - albeit one Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex would go on to do vastly better - and better action, and generally feels more in tune with what makes The Irresponsible Captain Tylor tick.
But ultimately, what made The Irresponsible Captain Tylor tick was the irresponsible Captain Tylor, and it's no surprise that his return makes for the best episode. White Christmas feels like the sort of thing the TV show did on a regular basis, with Tylor being thrust into a situation and making everything much weirder by responding in ways no-one would expect: in this case, it's an attempted Christmas Eve date with Yuriko, which has the added benefit that we get some nice development for her and the long-suffering Yamamoto. Essentially, though, it's our titular protagonist who's the star, and in a low-key, uneventful fashion that's perhaps a better fit for the character than the more extreme scenarios the TV series tended to traffic in. It also helps that White Christmas is a pleasure to look at, with some terrific backgrounds conjuring up a night-time city that's at once tangible and dreamy, familiar and alien, and a perfect setting for the woozy, bittersweet tale being spun.
One genuinely satisfying episode out of four isn't much of a success rate, especially when that one isn't up to anything especially fresh, and all in all this feels like a distinct step back from the superb start that was An Exceptional Episode. I respect the intent of splitting up the cast and then using them to glimpse at what the strained peace between humanity and the Raalgon Empire looks like from a variety of angles much more than I enjoyed the actual results, in part because none of these four stories are very illuminating on that front and three of them aren't that strong on their own merits. It's a decent idea not delivered as well as it might have been, and yet the results are perfectly fine and end on their strongest notes, so this middle stretch is at least worth sticking with, and I'm curious to see whether all its setting up pays off as we hit the final stretch.
I'd got my hopes up for another two-parter, given how excellent the last one we had was - and also how much the one-and-done episodes weren't working for me - and so it was quite the disappointment to discover that the two episodes of If Only The Skies Would Clear are practically as standalone as the preceding four had been. By this point, in fairness, there's finally a proper shape starting to form that implies all of these apparently separate incidents are building towards something, and this time around there are some definite links and continuity, and yet we're still essentially looking at two more independent tales, each with a different focus, and if the wider narrative's gaining momentum, that's not to say it's doing so with any haste.
All of this is truest of part one, which focuses on Yuriko, who finds herself the target of enemy agents whose motives are kept purposefully unclear - though given that the introductory text has been hinting heavy-handedly that there are factions on both sides eager to restart the war and they basically admit that's what they're up to, perhaps the intrigue isn't so intriguing as all that. Nevertheless, it's a better-than-average episode and another visual winner: someone on the animation team evidently knew a thing or two about drawing gorgeous cityscapes! And it's another step forward in developing Yamamoto as more than comic relief, which is handy for the even stronger second part, which sees him gaining and losing his first command in rapid succession. Logically, I'm not convinced it holds together - even in a world as unreasonable as The Irresponsible Captain Tylor's, what happens is transparently not his fault - but it still packs an emotional punch on behalf of poor Yamamoto and conjures some modest thrills, and in general the character work finally pays off on some of what the preceding episodes have been striving to set up.
So arguably If Only The Skies Would Clear is more of the same of what these OVAs have been delivering post An Exceptional Episode, except more effective, in part since the emphasis on character over action or comedy is coming to seem more natural and in part because, if the wider plot direction is still nebulous, at least it feels as though there is a direction. Problems remain though, and it was with these two episodes that I realised what had been bothering me on the animation front, which I've felt I was reacting harshly to given that in many ways they look more than respectable. The issue, though, is the low frame rate, and specifically its combination with designs that lean so heavily into realism. It's not that the slightly jerky animation is egregious by the standards of mid-90s anime, and with less detailed designs it would pass mostly unnoticed; but these latter episodes are trying to look classy, as befits the more serious and grown-up storytelling, and it's hard to do that when your characters are jolting awkwardly around the screen.
As we get near the end, I continue to find that I like what these Yoshinaga-directed OVAs are gunning for in theory more than I'm enjoying the execution, though the gap has definitely narrowed with this so-called two-parter. And arguably the bits that do work prove that we only need a little of Tylor for that to be enough; we're three for three now on episodes where he's appeared without being the main focus and all have worked better than the preceding three that sidelined him altogether. If the goal was to prove that The Irresponsible Captain Tylor can function without its irresponsible captain, I'm afraid that didn't succeed at all, but at this point I'm ready to accept that the supporting cast and wider universe have enough depth to carry some solid storytelling.
If you're going to spend six episodes sloooowly building up to your epic conclusion, you'd better make damn certain that your epic conclusion is actually epic, and not, say, tedious, repetitive, and inconclusive. I've certainly had my issues with the preceding parts of Naoyuki Yoshinaga's set of OVAs, but I was willing to forgive all if that setting up had paid off, even as I'd come to suspect it probably wouldn't. There's no satisfaction in being right on that front: From Here to Eternity is a truly dispiriting affair, acting as though things we've already figured out for ourselves are fascinating and mysterious, laboriously retreading ground to make sure we get how the preceding parts fit together, and substituting scenes of people talking at each other for practically everything that's fun and appealing about the Irresponsible Captain Tylor franchise.
The reason for all this, so far as I can tell, is that there was content to be bridged in the novel series and somebody somewhere was both determined that it must be bridged and, presumably, convinced this would all pay off in more Irresponsible Captain Tylor stuff down the line, which is why we have eight - eight! - episodes establishing a new threat we learn barely anything about. That's the really disastrous part, and there really is no getting around it, the more so since it's basically all that was going on in the previous two episodes, which worked in large part because they felt as though they were raising questions that were about to be paid off. And the rest, which is the reignition of the conflict between the United Planets Space Force and the Raalgon Empire, is better more or less by default, but that's not to say it's much good. We've been told at length said conflict was inevitable, then spent far too long watching pieces being nudged into place and conspirators conspiring and everyone wearily acknowledging that there was never much future in this peace business, and by this point it feels more like characters being pushed into doing what they have to for the plot to advance.
I won't say that this material couldn't have worked, though I will say that it couldn't possibly have sustained this sort of running time - trim the lot down to a couple of hours and you'd immediately solve half its problems - but at any rate, Yoshinaga wasn't the right director to do it justice. It takes a special talent to make scenes of people plotting, or talking about other people plotting, or just plain old expositioning, interesting, and Yoshinaga hasn't the knack at all. I found myself thinking often about Mamoru Oshii, a director who followed up a lively, comedic, action-packed show with a slow-burn political drama that ditched most of what seemed essential about the franchise in question (that would be Patlabor) and ended up with a stone-cold masterpiece. Yoshinaga isn't Oshii, or anywhere close, and he frequently has no idea how to keep talky scenes visually interesting or to differentiate them from each other, so that large stretches of From Here to Eternity become a sludge of indistinguishable material delivered in indistinguishable fashion.
At least the animation and designs remain pretty nice, even if you could count the scenes in which they're used to their best advantage on two hands. There are moments when From Here to Eternity jolts into life, and they're a pretty clear indication of one of the things that went most wrong here, in that whenever Tylor and crew are the focus, these episodes improve considerably and even nudge up against being pretty good. Strip out everything else and you'd have maybe ten minutes of footage - it's truly astonishing how little this second set of OVAs care about Tylor and often seem actively embarrassed to have him around - but you'd have a decent little mini-movie that pays off on some of what the TV series left hanging. Ultimately, though, it seems that the goal here was to set up a bright future for the Tylor franchise regardless of whether that meant sacrificing much of what had drawn viewers in the first place, and while I respect the willingness to take risks on something different, I dearly wish someone had figured out how to make the alternative interesting or satisfying.
-oOo-
So it turns out the reputation was deserved, or even a little overgenerous, since while I'd heard that these OVAs were too serious and plot-heavy, nobody bothered to mention that they squander any good will they might have otherwise accumulated on a non-ending that makes all the build-up seem downright absurd. Ah well, at least An Exceptional Episode lived up to its title, though that does mean that I have to recommend the set as a whole despite not having much good to say about quite a lot of it.
[Other reviews in this series: By Date / By Title / By Rating]
