This week, we follow the tale of a famous writer kept under lock and key by a deranged fan. Until Lenny Lents delivers the perfect end to his “The Crown of Dog Days” trilogy, he’ll continue to suffer and toil. Of course, this is anime so there’s going to be a mystical twist to a plot eerily reminiscent of Stephen King’s novel.
If this isn’t a mystery, then what is it?
The first scene we see in the anime is Lenny handing over a manuscript to Paula, the deranged fan. After only a cursory glance at the papers she’s been given, Paula is dissatisfied and proceeds to murder Lenny with a cleaver. Yeah, yeah, this is supposed to be the hook to this episode’s story, but I don’t think it works as well as it should have. The opening immediately tells us that Lenny is dead; hell, it even tells us who the culprit is. Well, that’s no fun.
Of course, we learn later in the same episode that Lenny isn’t technically dead… all the time, anyway. We see that he’s perfectly alive at about the 14 minute mark. As a result, the mystery doesn’t even enter the scene until the episode is half over. There’s nothing at all bizarre about the preceding events; in fact, the first 14 minutes are kind of clinical. Hugh and Dalian set the scene, they take the trip out to Lenny’s place, Hugh discovers Lenny’s dead body in a dungeon as well as Lenny’s lover. It’s all very cut and dry with little to interest the audience.
Another slip shod ending
When the audience sees that Lenny is mysteriously alive, there’s very little time left in the episode so the wheels of the plot begin to spin quickly — too quickly — to get things wrapped up in a neat, little package. It turns out that Paula possesses a Phantom Book allowing her to kill and revive Lenny and his lover over and over. Unfortunately, only one of the couple can ever be alive at any time. We then watch her mental condition deteriorate (even further) as she murders the lovers over and over until, uh, death no longer works?
According to Dalian, Lenny and his lover have developed a — you might want to sit down for this — resistance to death:
“Do you know what tolerance is? …continued use of a pesticide, no matter how strong, will lead to a mutation in the insect.” — Dalian
Ugh, that is so wrong. A pesticide won’t cause insects to mutate much like how tall trees didn’t make giraffes grow long necks. I don’t think this anime understands natural selection. When insects “develop” an immunity to pesticide, it’s not like they all sat down and decided to mutate a gene that will allow them to withstand poison. It’s simply survival of the fittest. The pesticide kills most of the insect population, but by chance, some insects survive due to a particular gene. These insects then procreate and propagate until a new insect population emerges — all with that special gene.
Two people dying and resurrecting over and over would not accomplish the same effect. Unless, of course, death was a disease and the resurrection spell mutated Lenny and his lover’s genes each and every single time they died and revived until they both magically, and simultaneously, developed genes resistant to death. Yeah… no. Blah blah blah, suspension of disbelief — sorry, but it’s not my fault the anime used the wrong analogy. They should have mentioned poison tolerance or something — like how drugs fail to deliver the same high after a while. Developing a tolerance to death in this sense is still unbelievably preposterous, but it wouldn’t have been as hard to swallow as the pesticide analogy.
The inconvenient truth
The problem with “Dantalian no Shoka” is that it’s lazy; it wants everything to be convenient. Every story is resolved by the end of the episode and everything is wrapped up in a tiny, red bow. The couples don’t develop this magical tolerance to death until Dalian and Hugh are around to watch it happen.
Then when a mystical green being murders Paula, it also conveniently knocks the prison key next to Dalian and Hugh’s cell so that the two can escape. I’m sorry but there are just too many contrivances in this anime. A book-shaped plant that eats people and now this? Ugh.
Stray Observations
• I thought it was a neat touch for Paula to shoot Lenny’s leg. C’mon, we all remember that infamous “Misery” scene. In fact, let’s watch it again!
• I’ll never when people get so worked up about a story’s ending. Maybe it’s because I grow up in an age where everyone fancies themselves a writer so there’s a festering pile of fanfiction everywhere I turn, but if Paula really doesn’t like the ending so much, why doesn’t she just write her own?
If Dalian wants to know what happens in the third book of the trilogy so badly, why doesn’t she just use her imagination? Y’know who I blame? I blame this silly thing called canon. Make your own stories, people — to borrow a word I’ve been reading a lot lately (thanks, Taka!), actualize your fantasies!
• “That’s why I traveled all the way into these inexcusably frigid mountains.” What does that even mean? How can climate be either excusable or inexcusable? I guess Dalian expects in nature to be her doormat.
• Have you noticed how any male character with more than a single line of dialogue will either be murdered or a villain? In the latter’s case, they’ll end up being murdered anyway.
Don’t forget that the writer’s being kept during the middle of winter. Also, damn you beating me to the Misery comparisons, though they weren’t exactly subtle.
Hey, I didn’t exactly focus on the comparison so be my guest!
I LOVED Misery. XD
Not really death-immune and gene-mutated, but this is somewhat like that Episode of Fairly Odd Parents when Timmy wished that the world lived in the stone age, and the downside was that they live in the middle of an island… surrounded by 4 volcanos. And they all erupted at the same time. Yes, at first the villagers were scared and frightened and they ran away, but the lava flow was too damn slow that after around 5-10 minutes, the villagers became bored, tired, and well… nonreactive to the point that Timmy finally wished to return back to the modern world… or someting.
It’s not really tolerance that I see, nor mutation… it’s just that they were doing the same thing over and over and over again without anything actually stopping… that it got kind of dull and used to it.
Now wouldn’t that be something? Lenny and his lover got so bored of dying over and over in this mediocre anime that they decided to, well, just stop.
I wonder if Charles Dickens will show up? Scratch that!!! They better not touch the Dickens at all!!
Dickens what? The writer died forty years before the events of the anime. If you mean his stories, I dunno why they would appear.
Lesson Learned: Run away from fans (even the ones that run on electricity).
Do you believe in fan death or something?!
Lulz lulz lulz Hugh looks like Quatre from Gundam Wing in that shot of them locked in the cell.
Hmm…
Actually, wait, with that hat, he looks like that guy from Gravitation!
Hey! Not all fanfics are bad! Sure, most of them are, but not ALL of them are. Like in The Simpsons fanwork community, which I’m a part of-There’s tons of great stories and poems, if you look hard enough.
I didn’t say all fanfiction were bad, but c’mon — there are a lot of shit out there.
You are absolutely right in that Dantalian no Shoka wants to be “lazy” – even the backgrounds, as good as the art can be at times, are merely heavily Photoshopped and painted over (I suppose calling that “matte painting” would put it in a better light).
Yeah, from the very first episode, I thought the show was particularly ugly for a Gainax production. I guess they’re phoning it in this season.
I liked how Dalian and Hugh just stood there expressionless as the two lovers were killed over and over again in front of them. No shock, horror or disgust, they don’t fling themselves against the bar or give any indication they are the least bit moved in any way by the events they witness.
That and given how trigger happy Hugh has been in earlier episodes it was awfully easy to convince him to drop his revolver. She wasn’t even threatening to kill him. You know in any other episode he would have Gung ho’d that shit whether it was a smart thing to do or not.
Well, either Gainax was lazy with Dalian and Hugh’s characterizations, which wouldn’t surprise me considering how the rest of the series has turned out, or Dalian and Hugh are too “above” caring for some random victims. Honestly, the latter wouldn’t surprise me either. There’s a haughtiness to the entire show, anyhow, what with “Phantom Books” being something that mere mortals could never understand.
The gun thing, though, is definitely just laziness on the studio, i.e. characters suddenly changing how they act to conveniently suit the moment.
“If Dalian wants to know what happens in the third book of the trilogy so badly, why doesn’t she just use her imagination? Y’know who I blame? I blame this silly thing called canon. Make your own stories, people — to borrow a word I’ve been reading a lot lately (thanks, Taka!), actualize your fantasies!”
It took my earlier re-read of the manga chapter to make this connection so I hope this comment still makes it, but check it out. Clearly the original author had the same idea, but like many other things this closing scene ceased to exist in the transition to an anime.
I thought Dantalian no Shoka is based on some light novels. Is the manga a near hundred percent adaptation or something?
It could well be, though to a sad mono-lingual existence like mine the only legible material I’ve been privy to is the current anime and the first few volumes of the manga (which are literally just this episode and the introductory bit of Hugh exploring his mansion for the first time).
My first thought regarding Dantalian was that it would probably make a pretty solid anime if it was adapted in the same way as something like Fullmetal Alchemist, which made it all the more disappointing to see just how cheap and ruinously formulaic the end result turned out to be.
To be fair, I was against the show’s premise from the get-go. Dangerous books just sounds like a poor message to me. Either way, Gainax did a poor job of it so oh well.