OMG I'm making a blog post! :o too bad it's really uninteresting for most of whoever would read my blog (considering people still check over here) and at the very most all you'll get out of it is considering myself as a pedophile.
Why? Because Uta Kata is the most loliest anime I've ever seen. I'm also presuming that it must be the most loliest non-hentai anime out there, even more than Negima. (At least in Negima they had "14 year olds" that looked like they were 30. In Uta Kata, they have 14 year old girls that look like... 14 year old girls... and way too much fanservice to go along with it). Therefore, first and formost, I would like to say that I do NOT recommend this anime to ANYONE, unless you have a tolerance for loli. And I'm serious about that. Other than that, the show pretty damn awesome, because the artwork (*coughartworknotfanservicecough*) is very nice, especially since they have a different artist doing a costume design for Ichika in each episode, followed by a special CG pic at the end of each episode. It's amazing: there was the mangaka for FLCL, one from Kannazuki no Miko, Kiddy Grade (I think this artist designed the characters for the whole series), and even one from Ken Atsumatsu (sp?)!!! OMG, the person who did love hina and Negima designed one of the character outfits!!! /omg
Well, that was like a otakuish moment right there. Anyway, onto the commentary!!
Uta Kata, at first glance, seems to serve only as fanservice. But when you really get into the series, you find out that, it's main purpose still seems to stand for fanservice. :p But in seriousness, there is a pretty deep theme and plot going on here. It's very intriguing, and for today's commentary, I'm going to split the major thematic questions in Uta Kata into four groups:
1. What's the purpose of the Djinns and her having super powers anyway?
2. What's with the dream and Manatsu saying she's gonna kill Ichika?
3. Who (or what) the hell is Manatsu anyway? And what's up with the tears?
4. The two decisions Seya-san gives her at the end.
1. Ok, now, when you're first watching the episodes, you're wondering why this schoolgirl gets super powers in the first place. There isn't any horrific terrifying monster killing innocent people along the streets, so why give this 14 year old such a power? After watching the entire anime, it became logical to me. The purpose of the anime is to show the period between "innocence" and "adulthood"; innocence where the child was fragile, ignorant, and blissful, having, in general for most children, barely any worries despite what they may have been through. In adulthood, there is understanding, knowledge, and perhaps corruption in some of the adults; they know the world is not a safe place. Some opt to live to be beneficiary anyway, despite this knowledge; some of them do not bother with the knowledge and live their lives in apathy, more or less (I would be classified in this section); some take advantage and play a part in the corruption of the world. Of course, there has to be a transition phase between innocence and adulthood, and Uta Kata shows exactly that, the pains of suddenly realizing the world isn't as blissful as they may have once thought. The super powers, other than for costume fanservice, shows the progression of the child's mind as it goes into this transition; initially, Ichika tries her best to use the powers to help others, only to find out "truths" behind each Djinn usage and discover some form of corruption within the people she was helping. After a point where she became jealous of Seya and began realizing her own anger at the world (in essence, developing selfishness), she began to change, just like a typical teenager. Unlike a typical teenager, though, she had power, the power of the Djinn; this was purposely given to her so that she can abuse it after she discovered what the world was like, whether she wanted to abuse it willingly or unwillingly. Her own desires were fighting against her consciousness and innocence as the episodes began nearing the end, and thus with the appearance of her "evil" self.
2. The dream's main mystery lies in the phrase "I will kill you". But of course, no one really dies in the end of the episode. So did the dream not live through its legacy? Wrong. It DID kill her, it killed, in particular, her ignorance of the world. Before, she could look at the world as if it were heaven; nothing can go wrong here, because everyone is supposed to be nice. But with the arrival of Manatsu and the powers of the Djinn, she was allowed to see (that's what comes first), hear, taste, smell, etc. all the corruption in the world, until she could not even eat anything without tasting the bitterness of corruption in her mouth; she could hear the tears that were being held back by some of her friends and thus feel their pain when it was meant to be hid. With so much overwhelming her, her innocence truly collapsed, and while she retains the consciousness of her former self, the conscience alone struggled greatly against her developing hatred and desires of the world.
3. Who the heck is Manatsu? At first I thought it might be Ichika, but the more I thought about it, the more I didn't see how it can click. First off, there is barely anything in relation with Manatsu and Ichika other than they are girls; I really cannot see any connection that makes Manatsu the same as Ichika, which would be implied if she was the reflection of Ichika. Rather, I do believe she is a henchman of the Mirror Djinn, only materialized into reality. Now, before getting into detail about Manatsu and my theory about her, let's think about mirrors for a sec. Mirrors show the reflection as it is, but only shows the physical nature of the reflection; inside the mirror itself, there is no consciousness, no feeling, no emotion, though the person in the mirror may seem to express it (however, remember, this is only the reflection of reality). Therefore, when Manatsu first came out of the mirror, she did not have emotional connections because she can only react physically to reality, not mentally. She started off as acting, but slowly began to acquire human ways because she was now in reality and not in a mirror; she can experience emotion and feeling, and while she still was a mirror for most of the series, she began to understand Ichika and "feel" for her. It's like the mirror is an actor behind the glass; it knows nothing of what it's performing, but it just does so, decieving its onlookers into thinking it can actually feel what it is acting. When the mirror shard becomes reality, however, she can suddenly feel and act like a real human, and what was once a straightfoward command that can be easily done (think of her as a machine at first that suddenly gets emotions... like Ruby :o) now becomes a task where she wonders... "is this right?"
4. The final two choices: Kill the rest of the world, or kill yourself. This can be said as the two main choices teenagers make when they reach their point in life where innocence is gone. Do you want to kill the world? If you do, then you become part of it, corrupt, always wanting to decieve others to your advantage. In a sense, to choose that option would mean you were selfish and thought of yourself as higher than others. Killing yourself isn't much better either, but many teenagers do so anyway. They may be under the belief that the world, including themselves, is corrupt, and the only way to end it for them is to end their lives. Or they may begin to blame everything that is corrupt on themselves, which then makes them think that if they kill themselves, they can save the world. However, Ichika makes the right choice (obviously, she's the protagonist -_-;;). She claims that she understands the world is corrupt, and herself may have flaws, but she wants to live anyway. She wants to continue to change. Remember, before she did not want to change and wanted to keep her innocence, therefore, she continued to run away. In the middle of the series, she realizes she cannot keep her innocence and it dies, as stated in #2. For a moment, she becomes eer... "evil" and wants to kill the world, then she begins hating herself because she wants to kill the world, and then in the very end she makes the very smart decision that it's neither hers nor the world's fault, as we are dicussing right now. It's change from not wanting any change to looking foward to it. She moves from wanting to stay innocent and never changing, to becoming "sinned" (stupid religious terms :p) and knowing she is, but hoping that change comes along and either lessens the sin inside her or around her. It's truly a touching anime....
One last note: the one question I could never figure out was what Uta Kata has to do with anything. Because it was like, never mentioned in the show and I have no idea what it means. After looking up some stuff on the internet, I found out that it has something to do with mirror shards and the title of the last episode, so I guess it's shorta like symbolism of the shards in the title. :o Ok that wasn't as deep.
EDIT RE: THE NOTE- Ok, I looked up the kanji in a chinese dictionary, and apparently the two words (in chinese, "Shi Pian") mean something to the extent of "a piece of poetry". Shi has relations with poems and whatnot, and Pian is a unit word for usually thin slices. So it's something like a thin slice of poetry? o_O well... that doesn't help much. -_-;;
UTA KATA IS AN AWESOME ANIME!!! BUT NONE OF YOU EVER WATCH IT!!! BECAUSE YOU GUYS WILL THEN COME AFTER ME WITH A BLOODY KNIFE SAYING THAT YOUR INNOCENCE IS DESTROYED!!! (ironically :p)