The Thrasher's Word
Shrine of the Morning Mist
Format: Series (26 episodes of 12 minutes each)
Genre: Comedy, Shoujou, Action
Studio: Star Child
Director: Yuji Moriyama
Before I get started on this review, allow me to apologise for my lack of updates these last couple of months. The last six weeks or so saw me take on a summer job in an effort to scrape some money together for university, at the almost total expense of any time to myself. In any case, it’s over with now, and I hope you’ll forgive my tardiness. I should have a wealth of material up over the next few weeks, so with that in mind, let’s get going.
Now that I’m back, I hope you’ll permit me to indulge in a little rant that’s been fermenting at the back of my skull for a while now. Although I consider myself a dedicated anime aficionado, and have done for the better part of my life, there are nevertheless aspects of our beloved subculture which I find to be consistently frustrating and tiresome. By far the foremost among these, of course, is what most anime passes off as “comedy.” I’m not such a misery-guts that I can’t appreciate a bit of comic relief here and there, and there are even a couple of shows which pull it off quite well. “Akira,” as I’ve noted in a previous review, is one such example. “Cowboy Bebop” is a second, “RahXephon,” perhaps, a third. But when an otherwise respectable show such as “Neon Genesis Evangelion” feels the need to interject its narrative with juvenile slapstick and crude sexual innuendos, all I can do is put my head in my hands and wonder, “what the hell were they thinking?” I’m fully aware that Japan is a different culture from our eternally ignorant west, but do the basic rules of narrative structure and tonal consistency not transcend cultural barriers? Do these shows’ directors not realise that what is justified as “comic relief” only serves to taint what are often great storylines? It isn’t cute, it isn’t funny, and aside from being a blight on otherwise well written and directed anime, it takes a sledgehammer to the notion of anime being as valid an artistic medium as live-action cinema and television.
This brings me to the object of my review, the series “Shrine of the Morning Mist,” which tempted me into buying it in its entirety by the ploys of an ambiguous blurb, pretty box art and a minimal price tag. The premise here is that an evil sorcerer is looking to resurrect Yagarena, the ancient god of evil who will destroy the Earth and remake it in his own image. To this end, he requires Tadahiro Amatsu, a teenage boy with a possessed left eye, to perform the necessary ritual to resurrect Yagarena. However, Tadahiro’s cousin, Yuzu, is of course a Shinto priestess, and thus she is charged with keeping Tadahiro from the sorcerer and preventing the renewal of Yagarena.
If you’re at all familiar with fantasy stories of any variety, you’ll of course realise that the old “preventing an ancient evil from being unleashed” setup is as old as the hills, and is about as generic and malleable a pretext as they come. While I, forever the optimist, had convinced myself that there could be a decent fantasy tale waiting to be told, Yuzu soon recruits a bunch of other girls to train as priestesses in the battle against the sorcerer, and the whole thing ceases to make one iota of sense as the story becomes a platform for a series of goofy slapstick gags and awkward plays on teenage inadequacies.
I could, of course, focus on how utterly absurd all of this is. When a hulking demon is attacking your school, you call the police or the military; you do not call four teenage Shinto priestesses. But to single out its absurdity is to skirt “Shrine of the Morning Mist’s” real failing, and here I’m lead back to my criticisms of the role of comedy in anime as a whole. Comedy, at its best, can be as valid a means of advancing stories and developing characters as any other, but when its presented as thoughtlessly as it is here, it rather creates an insurmountable detriment. “Shrine of the Morning Mist’s” characters are reduced to gurning, idiotic caricatures of themselves, with any opportunity for real empathy or sincerity quickly snuffed out by another gag at the expense of its audience. Example: in an early episode, Tadahiro and one of Yuzu’s friends whose name I don’t care to remember share what looks like will become an intimate moment, only for these expectations to be shattered when said friend reveals herself to be a nutjob with an obsession for aliens and UFOs. Sure, it might provoke a feeble laugh at the time, but hindsight reveals just how cynical this manipulation of audience expectations and character believability for a cheap laugh really is. It’s almost as if the show is laughing at us for daring to think it would imbue its characters with actual depth.
“But Thrash!” I hear you cry: “Surely an intellectual titan such as yourself must realise that just because you don’t appreciate anime humour doesn’t mean others can’t. Why should you ruin their fun by reading too much into it when the show clearly isn’t for you?” Sure, I can appreciate that “Shrine of the Morning Mist” might be just a good bit of fun for a certain audience, and I realise that you have to judge such a show by different standards than you would “Jin-Roh.” And I might have been willing to pass SotMM off as a harmless bit of light entertainment, were it not for the basic ineptness with which the show’s narrative. Leaving aside for a moment the relatively minor nitpicks – the half-length episodes leading to disjointed, hurried storytelling, Tadahiro’s disproportionately minor presence in the plot, etc. – there comes a point almost exactly halfway through when all of the show’s gaping inadequacies come to light. You see, roughly after thirteen episodes, “Shrine of the Morning Mist” adopts a much darker, more serious tone, the imminent threat of Yagarena taking precedence over the slapstick and high school comedy nonsense. Normally of course, I would welcome such a shift with open arms, but after thirteen episodes of indulgent frivolity, such a tonal shift seems jarring, awkward. All of a sudden, the show attempts to elevate Yuzu and co. out of the realm of caricature and realise them as fully rounded characters. But it doesn’t work. Rather that seeming like a natural extension of a character arc, these changes occur as artificial, almost a conscious attempt on the show’s part to rectify the problems noted earlier. In short, “Shrine of the Morning Mist” wants to have its cake and eat it too. It manages neither.
From a technical perspective, SotMM is perfectly respectable and completely unremarkable. Animation fluid, backgrounds pretty, character models presentable, the soundtrack not containing a single memorable tune. All in all, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a third-tier show produced in 2002, with just one notable aspect which causes me to grind my teeth like a pastel and mortar: repeated attack animations. Why? Why, why, why, why, why? Why, in the 21st century do these relics of the 80s still persist? Why, when technical marvels like “Last Exile” and “Appleseed” are becoming commonplace are such anachronisms given credence? Bah. Just screw your eyes shut and pretend it isn’t happening, it got me through.
For me, “Shrine of the Morning Mist” was hell. But then, I speak in the full knowledge that I’m a humourless bastard who doesn’t speak for everyone. Can I recommend it to its intended audience. Well, I’ve meditated on this, I really have, and I honestly don’t think I can. Whatever appeal it might have is swiftly undermined by storytelling which is transparently artificial and downright incompetent. Maybe, just maybe, if you’re really into magical girl shows and have low standards and a lot of time to burn, you might wring some enjoyment out of SotMM. Who knows? As for me, I’ll be back in a week or so, reviewing “Yukikaze” or something else suitably masculine.
-Thrash Til’ Death
LAA Rating: *1/2
Rating System:
* - Horrible
*1/2 – Very Bad
** - Bad
**1/2 – Good
*** - Very Good
***1/2 – Excellent
**** - Masterpiece