Video Backlog: "Flag"

Publisher: Bandai Entertainment (USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English dub and English Subtitles
Length: 13 Episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 2006 – 2007
Currently in Print (as of writing): No

Twentysomething photo journalist, Saeko Shirasu, becomes a Japanese media darling when her photo of civilians raising a makeshift national based on a discarded UN flag at the end of a civil war in Uddiyana, becomes the defining image of the war. The flag itself becomes a symbol of the country’s new found freedom and as a rallying point for insurgent groups in upcoming peace talks. However despite being under UN guard, the flag is stolen by an opposing rebel group/religious cult. In what seems to be a public relations exercise, the UN hires Saeko Shirasu through her mentor, veteran war journalist Keiichi Akagi. The flag theft was not made public, and the UN’s idea seems to be for Saeko to tag along on the mission to recover the flag in the hope of her taking another iconic photo. She is assigned to the SDC (Special Development Command) who are using a new weapon, HAVWC (High Agility Versatile Weapon Carrier), which is essentially a bipedal robot. Some soldiers have a problem with her presence (even if they don’t publicly say so), however she is soon accepted as a member of the team and participates in missions as an observer.

This is a very interesting TV series from Ryosuke Takahashi, the creator of other robot shows such as “SPT Layzner”, “Votoms”, “Blue Gender”, ”Dougram” and “Gasaraki”. As you can see, he knows a little about robot anime. Just a bit. What’s most surprising about this show is that robots are part of the background and not the focus. Instead the focus is on the journalists, mainly Saeko, as well as the members of the military division SDC. The way the story is told is also quite different. Most of what we see is through the viewfinders and laptops of Saeko and Keiichi as well as a couple of news reports. Keiichi also provides narration throughout the show. The series is like a documentary using video footage shot by the pair as well as photographic stills mostly taken by Saeko. An emphasis is placed on how the journalists use their camera and how they document a story. So we get out focus and sometimes shots which aren’t framed well, and of course lot of camera shake. A lot of the shots use CG models which makes for some realistic camera angles, though not all of this works. Some of it looks awkward. The show is also a story told on two fronts; the internal workings and life of a secret mission to recapture the flag as told by Saeko, and Keiichi on the outside sniffing out stories using contacts and continually being frustrated by the UN public relations.

For the most part, this show really works and is quite different from other anime you care to mention in this genre. The country itself, the fictional Uddiyana, seems to be located in the region between Pakistan and Afghanistan with some Tibetan-like culture mixed in. It’s a very timely piece and has obviously been influenced by post 9/11 conflicts in the Middle East. I think because of that and the public’s familiarity of how journalism covers these conflicts, some of the material presented here doesn’t quite ring true. In the battles in particular, there never seems to be any bloodshed, even though we’re up really close to the battle. It was all rather sanitised and I found this to be rather a curious way to present this to an audience that is really familiar with these kinds of conflicts. Some of the drama, in particular a tense scene between a HAVWC pilot and Saeko was rather ham-fisted and preachy. Saeko’s character can be quite hard to swallow as she comes off as rather naive and seems really ill-equipped to be a journalist in a war zone. There’s also the annoying re-usage of animation and stills throughout the show. It’s not overused, but it’s noticeable enough. Surely they could have upped the budget slightly to at least change these scenes to make it far less noticeable. However more often than not, everything clicks and it’s great show. I personally liked the interaction between the locals and the UN on the SDC base, and how they befriend the locals. There’s also this contrast with the general UN and their seemingly lack of care for civilian causalities in getting an outcome.

The mecha is quite interesting if a little awkward at times. Studio Nue’s Kazutaka Miyatake was the designer. Maybe it’s the transition from paper to CG model that doesn’t quite make some of the movements of the HAVWC work, mostly in tank/vehicle mode. I had some difficulty with Bandai Entertainment’s volume 2 DVD. The disc was released in the period where the company seemed to pressing batches of shitty or badly authored discs that almost all players refused to play in their entirety. Unfortunately I didn’t really take notice of this when the issue was brought up on various forums, and only figured out what was going on well after the fact. This annoyingly resulted in having to repurchase the second volume. Ignoring the follies of Bandai Entertainment, the series is a very different beast from just about anything produced at the time of its release. Scratch that, make that most anime, full stop. There are no child characters and it’s told primarily from a mature, adult perspective. The documentary-like structure and cinematography also makes it stand out from the pack. The somewhat simplistic way certain parts of the plot played out and some of the character interactions and their personalities sort of destroyed the realistic setting that had been created. However this show was pretty damn good and gets 7.5 out of 10 from me.

Remaining Backlog: 26 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).