Red Garden, Volume 1 - Animation Insider

"sharply original"

"thrilling"

"a blast to watch"

Review

Volume(s): Volume One - "Live to Kill"
DVD Release Date(s): 09/18/2007
Distributor: ADV Films
Genre(s): fantasy, horror
Rating: TV MA (violence, language)
Website: www.RedGarden.tv

A.I. News: ADV Spring Licensing News

Most of the time, life isn't what you want it to be. But what about death? Ever spend a respected amount of time dedicated to the contemplation of that part of human existence everyone fears the most? Ever contemplate at great length, not just your own death, but the death of your best friend and of your peers as well? Beyond that, have you ever given thought to what it would be like to experience death only to find yourself returning to the land of the living, no longer possessing a blind confidence in the benevolence of humankind? You will now. Welcome to Red Garden.

In an anime I've been waiting to see for some time, Red Garden offers anime fans the opportunity to see something from GONZO Studios that is sharply original and actively seeks to engage the audience on all sorts of levels. The series is nestled into the realm of magical realism and is the type of program you have to get into early, less you risk getting lost as it's story deepens and deepens with later episodes. A story about how humankind deals with death in its most gruesome and gritty ways--and through the eyes of teenage girls no less--Red Garden is in many ways a thrilling mystery, while only occasionally sinking into terrible fits of melodrama.

Red Garden is the story of five girls: Lise, Kate, Claire, Rachel and Rose. All of them are dead. When the familiar face at an all-girls private academy in New York, Lise, vanishes one day only to turn up in a nearby forest proclaimed dead via suicide; it is as if the entire school goes into shock. Full of pride and touting its students as the best of the best, the ladies' school is currently out of sorts… because this isn't the first time a student has turned up dead. Through some as of yet unexplained series of events, four girls who happen to have known Lise, also find themselves in similar circumstances.

Kate, Claire, Rachel and Rose each have vastly different personalities, but nevertheless coexist in their school environment in that familiar but indefinable way that American high-schoolers are well aware of. Kate is the quietly brave one. She's upper middle-class but remains genuinely concerned for the well being of others in times of need. Claire is her opposite. She's tough, athletic, "tomboyish" and anything but humble; and yet, she's very adept at thinking on her feet. Rachel is the superficial party girl whose exhaustive tough-girl façade burdens even her. Rose on the other hand, is Rachel's opposite. She's highly emotional, believes in talking things over and spends most of her time mending the worries of others.

Each of these characters possess a type of persona that you are well aware exists in the real world, a fact that makes Red garden all the more effective in its display of human psychology under duress.

Although I do have a complaint that the compatibility of these characters is just as much their weakness in an anime that relies on their interdependence, as it is their strength, the personalities are nevertheless easy to engage.

One morning following the publicized disappearance of Lise: Kate, Claire, Rachel and Rose each awaken with a headache. Each of the four girls awakens with zero memory of the previous night. Trying to go through the day at school with a little bit of nausea and a great deal of paranoia, the four girls struggle through the hours with fainting spells and difficult to recall memories. The girls don't yet have any idea what may be going on and resultantly find themselves in a constant daze, stuck running in place as the world whirls around them. That is until suddenly, a series of red butterflies appear.

When dusk arrives, it appears that these four girls are the only ones who can see the red butterflies. Mysterious yet very ominous, the butterflies lead the four girls to one another. Congregating in a shadowy park the four girls--who only scarcely know one another personally--discuss their uneasiness of the past sixteen hours. But before they can come to any consensus, the girls are startled when a tall, pale man and a [very ugly] woman emerge from the darkness. The two strangers flaunt a knowledge of the girls that makes them tremble, and in the middle of conversation boldly claim that Kate, Claire, Rachel and Rose are in fact, dead.

After some explaining the two strangers clarify that the four girls, though able to fully interact with the world of the living and though able to think and behave on their own, died just one night prior.

According to the woman, the girls have signed an unwritten contract: in order to live with borrowed bodies, the girls must fulfill murderous deeds assigned to them each and every night.

If you think that this twist in storytelling sounds rather uninformed, complicated and random; then find some comfort in that fact that most every aspect of Red Garden is told in this same manner. Instructed to murder a series of deranged monsters under the guise of men, the four girls quickly find their capacity to live is only for the purpose of killing.

Red Garden does everything that a story of its mystique is supposed to do, bait its audience into believing one thing or another about any character(s), event(s) or motivation(s) and manipulate that audience perception to the advantage of the story's suspense and drama. Are the monsters the girls are killing really monsters? Are these two strangers, "mentors," supernatural beings themselves? With their newfound immortality, are the girls aware of their own supernatural abilities? These questions and more guide the viewership through the minds of teenagers whose hellish existence is becoming less and less favorable than death itself.

The directorial style of this anime is to filter information to the viewer only a little bit at a time, and mostly through non-linear narratives at third-person limited perspectives. In many ways, this is the great thing about Red Garden. The characters themselves are clueless as to what lies around the corner, what their assignment will be the next night or what the truth is even behind their own murders… a truth perhaps best left not tinkered with. The girls cannot believe that the murder of beings they knew not existed is the only thing that proves their own existence… but it is ultimately the only truism they must acknowledge.

Although the narrative style has a high probability of becoming an annoyance to fans that prefer a more direct interaction with the story, I think it works rather well here. Mostly due to the fact that Red Garden is a fantasy-suspense anime, the director's ability to throw you a curveball is dependent upon your acceptance of the story's flexibility as a tale of a magical or psychological nature. Director Ko Matsuo resultantly does one hell of a number on your conscience when you watch this anime. There are a variety of moments of brutal violence, intense gore, daring surprise and much more, that all force you to think and re-think what you are watching.

Very rarely do you see Japanese animation use misdirection so well. Matsuo served as the screenwriter for Satoshi Kon's brilliant interpersonal tale Millennium Actress; a stamp on his resume that is well reflected in his work on Red Garden. Toying with the viewer tendency to assume the result of a character interaction or the result of a conflict, this anime pulls no punches when the violent and complicated nature of human survival is at its most bestial.

Additionally, outside of the purpose of misdirection, the narrative strategy does an excellent job of moving you around from place to place, flashback to flashback. The way the director cycles from character to character, taking the audience through each person's inner thoughts is really interesting, even if it isn't exactly revealing. Going from Kate to Claire or from Rachel to Rose, juxtaposing their interpersonal anxieties as well as their public personas, allows the audience to gain impressions of humanity in the context of death from multiple angles.

The quality of animation, though interesting at times in this anime, still leaves a little bit to be desired. To clarify, the overall look of Red Garden is slightly grainy, attempting to staple together an atmosphere that feels edgy, apprehensive and organic. The result however, is a slightly annoying rendering of meta-filters that ultimately do very little to help the overall feel of the television animation. It is worth noting however, that when there is precipitation in the anime, the digital filters GONZO Studios used for foggy or rainy days are truly superb and do succeed in drawing you in.

The most complex facet of design in Red Garden are its character designs. While for some viewers it may be difficult to become comfortable with the large and full lips, stringy and fancily decorated hairstyles and alluring eyelashes, the amount of diversity is obviously a point of emphasis for the anime. Each character, for example, is composed of any array of identifiable shapes, colors and patterns that ultimately reflect their specific character persona. In Red Garden you will find mix-matched grunge (Claire), simple solids (Kate), hyper-stylish stripes or plaids (Rachel) and homely frill patterns (Rose).

Along these lines, perhaps the most amusing to me is the fact that this anime takes place in New York, and as such, thereby naturally includes a large deal of contemporary, American designs.

It's very easy, as a western otaku, to get caught up in other anime that forcibly incorporate some American-like sensibility into their fashion or character design and fall short.

But the Japanese animation Red Garden actually has characters that do well in looking and feeling American. Most notably, Kate's parents personify this design: they're suffocatingly metropolitan with an unequivocally modern/trendy sense of social awareness.

Overall, the visual design of Red Garden does justice to the fact that the anime is a suspense anime. Due to the fact that the four girls are contracted by mysterious persons to kill monsters (that appear to be lured into the area to attack them anyways), the anime looks and sounds visceral at its most brutal moments. It is perhaps this incongruity of raw violence with traditional images or representations of social innocence/ignorance that makes Red Garden effective at its most critical moments. Kudos should also go to both Japanese language and English language voice over artists for capturing the chaotic, blood curdling screams that frequently give Red Garden its most chilling moments.

The largest downsides to this Japanese animation are both easy to find as well as relatively obscure. One of the problems with the anime as perceived within its first few episodes deals with the peculiar fact that in each of the first two episodes characters break out into song. As random as it seems, the songs aren't those short, temporary reveries you normally get in your run of the mill, terrible episode-songs… what's odd is the fact that these songs are polished and complete. The songs are incredibly poignant, well written and well composed but are nevertheless ridiculously and completely out of place. While it's worth crediting the anime that the second song speaks of knowing oneself and yet feeling unable to fight against one's own fate, it remains true that randomly breaking out into song does no one a favor in an anime where approaching death is a daily mandate. (Additionally, as if it weren't bad enough that characters harmonize complex melodies at inopportune intervals; the matter isn't helped by the fact that the English language ADR staff struggled to figure out what the hell to do. It's ridiculous enough in Japanese, why bother translating it into English?)

The largest and most glaring problem with Ko Matsuo's Red Garden though, has to be the excessive melodrama.

Bare in mind that this is a suspense/mystery anime with deep, deep roots in psychological realism… whose main characters are teenage girls.

As confident, sensible, intelligent and/or cynical as any of the protagonists may be, it's outright foolishness to think that for one second that instances of high sentimentality or impulsive emotionality won't seep into this story of violence and human degradation. There's a lot of whining, crying and hiding in Red Garden, much of which may be relevant to the thrill of the moment yet still feel exhaustive in the bigger picture.

Fortunately though, the bigger picture itself is that this Japanese animation is really fun to watch. The plotting does well to string you along, step by step, with the fragile minds of its characters, pushing and pulling you into a world of death and despair with great acuity. The most intriguing thing about Red Garden is the way it questions what it means to be human and what it means to be alive. That is to say, to question what the purpose of being human is. It may not make sense now, but the anime does this quite subtly. Yes, the girls have to fight for their existence each and every night, but their lives aren't in constant danger and if they're smart enough, they can devise or plan a way to increase their chances for survival. But until the characters themselves vocally recognize their dilemma--to kill to live--they must endure one Hitchcock-like event after another.

Red Garden is a blast to watch. The program isn't a visual splendor to watch, but is unique enough to mean something when it matters in a story about how individuality may be the death of you. With a few continuity errors, really terrible sound effects, music that doesn't play as large a role in the anime as it should and plain old melodrama: the series has a few flaws. Nevertheless the anime yet sports high quality, sharp dialogue, brilliant narration and storytelling, slowly developing characters and original program direction. Red Garden looks to be the type of Japanese animation you'll want to stick with through until the very end.

Posted on Tuesday, September 18, 2007 (Archive on Thursday, October 18, 2007)