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| From https://myanimeshelf.com/upload/ dynamic/2011-11/07/211.jpg |
Based on a original premise
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
Yuki Terai - Secrets is an obscure compilation DVD, as obscure as
you can get and probably for the better as in all honestly there's no real
value to the set of shorts baring another curiosity in terms of early computer
animated anime, another one covered for the blog but with an added factor that
this is a portfolio for a fictitious female idol entirely created on a
computer. This belongs to a series called Virtually
Real that, in the weird early existence of DVD from 2000 and the first few
years of that decade, was released in the UK alongside many a weird obscurity;
in fact, from the trailers on the DTS sound enhanced disc, there are two more
of these devoted to their own idols out there and can still be found on Amazon. Yuki Terai herself is a permanently
seventeen year old girl who is brought to life by actresses in VR costumes and
animators, able to star as multiple characters and show off many talents over
the shorts contained in the disc. She is the titular figure of Comet the Thief, stealing a priceless
guitar and fighting the owner over it in a fist fight, then a singer in a jazz
club in Fly Away Home. She is
trapped on a spaceship infected by a virus in Lazy Gui, the damsel whose love for an American is contrasted by
being a spy in World War II in teaser Project
BB-11. She sings, does her own action scenes, stars in a comedy with a cute
robotic dog in Das/Chin or is
terrorised by her own reflections in The
Mirror.
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| From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059814.jpg |
Like the other proto-3D animated
anime I've covered on the blog, this is another case of time being unkind to
the material. A lot of it is clearly meant to demonstrate the graphical
capabilities of the animators creating Terai, particularly an individual named Kenichi Kutsugi, a videogame visual
effects and CGI cut scene designer, who overlooks this work altogether;
unfortunately due to this emphasis, rather than plot or anything away from
predictable stories, it lessens any chance for anything great to stand out now
the animation is obsolete. Worse, this was released in the UK in 2002, after (entry
#20) Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
(2001), making it look dated even back when it was first released. Comet the Thief, the first on the DVD
menu, is a perfect warning of its lacklustre look, the fight scene in the
middle between Terai and a male crime boss resulting in stilted character
movements against basic backgrounds. It's detail in hindsight to viewing all
these works - from this to (entry #3) A.Li.Ce
(1999) - that is the ultimate crippling flaw of all the ones I've covered,
the reason I have to flog a dead horse in these reviews of praising one called Malice@Doll (2001), an anime I need to
review on the blog at one point, for
doing something different by melding 2D animated details on 3D models. This
detail also has to be a personality too, which is why The
Spirits Within was bland even though the animation was innovative in its
day on an extremely high budget. Particularly with Yuki Terai - Secrets I cannot help but compare it to old
videogames, why once high calibre games which pushed graphics have mostly been
forgotten but people still go back to old 2D Megadrive and SNES games, although
from context its clear the compilation wasn't even the highest quality possible
of its kind.
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| From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059819.jpg |
Most of this compilation is
pretty bland, less than five minutes long a piece, which cannot get out of the
mind set of test demos or plain old music videos in the case of Fly Away Home and especially My Dearest You, which is a clear music
video with the model of Yuki Terai against what appears to be a lava lamp for a
background. Whether it's the jazz club of Fly
Away Home or the interior of a WWII battleship, there's little aesthetic
style to these models or even a mood. Even in Lazy Gui when Terai is threatened by a virus that gets into the
security system, cuts off her oxygen and even turns off the gravity, the short is
mainly set in one corridor with a computer figure with no emotional draw or a
quirk to make it stand out. Something like Dos/Chan
only stands out because of the cute dog, with an iPhone for a face, which
doesn't determine quality by itself. This is worse for a short like A Life, about Terai as a suicidal young
woman, lacking any emotional connection especially as it ends with her shooting
herself. The exception, which could've
been utterly rewarding if polished and worked on by itself in terms of its visuals,
maybe even animated in 2D rather than 3D, is The Mirror where there is a creative and bold story at hand about
Terai being haunted by her mirror reflections. It's not a great short, but it
manages to have a dreamlike tone where her doubles crawl from any reflective
surface - mirrors, windows - they can and she can fell into a puddle of water
into another reality. It goes as far as having countless duplicates pin her in
the corner of a subway car, jumping out of it only to be hit by another train
passing by and being absorbed into its reflective front window. The only real
flaw with it is that, with a final rooftop battle between her and a double with
a neon sign involved and a cheesy pop sign on the end credits, it does get a
bit silly at the end, needing a drastic rewrite if it ever got remade.
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| From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059818.jpg |
Within all these shorts, Yuki
Terai is a figure we're meant to emotionally engage with, created by Kenichi Kutsugi for a manga of his in
1997 and having a string of appearances by the time of this DVD. This is part
of a long line of virtual idols that particularly exist in Japanese pop
culture, the likes of Vocaloid, a voice synthesiser, can make possible, able to
sustain a popular audience but contrasting with real female idols. It reminds
me of Sharon Appleof Macross Plus (1994),
a virtual pop idol who however could only exist, in that anime's plot, because
a former idol has to implant her personality into its software. The virtual
idol, especially when you get into the issue of virtual film actors th, is
still stuck with being a figure that needs human life put into it to actually
have a personality. The idea of actors being replaced by CGI ones, taken to its
biggest extreme in the Ari Folman film
The Congress (2013), has been
brought up occasionally and was the case with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within where the female protagonist, a
mere 3D character design barring her voice actress, was meant to become a star
in her own right who went on to other films in numerous roles. That never took
place and it's an immensely failed idea as, not only was the "uncanny
valley" as much a problem for a mega budget film like that let alone this
compilation, but also there's the issue that these 3D figures can be completely
bland and usually end up with tedious personalities as a result of their
character designs and/or the narrative they're in.
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| From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059827.jpg |
Terai here is just a model of a
seventeen year old as depicted by a male otaku, beyond a pretty face the kind
of bland figure that'd sink a conventional anime TV series through her lack of
personality. The character is meant, be it to the point of being exceptionally
creepy or narrowly avoiding it, to personify a cuteness meant to attract male
viewers; amongst the two other Virtually
Real DVDs, one is of a stereotypical pin up with gravity defying breasts
who in one of the scenes in her DVD's trailer is wearing only sexy underwear and
body tattoos fighting zombies with katanas, thus showing that a fetishisation
is as much part of the series as any other reason. Terai's lack of personality
is also defined by her bland character design, which is ironic as she's clearly
the only figure that has been giving some care of her design baring the robot
dog. Like other 3D anime I've covered for the blog, the male side cast such as
in Comet The Thief is comically rudimentary,
like basic templates from a 3Ds Max
programme, the obsession with bald heads probably better than the American
soldier of Project BB-11's plastic
blond hair. She herself is as much part of the problem with the whole
compilation, neither protected by kitsch as early eighties and nineties CGI has
been nor belonging in quality roles hiding behind a dated shell. Only the
recognition of the animators pushing this animation really stands out for me,
admiring their work despite the time that has passed, but for an anime of any
sort it needs to actually engage beyond the technical details behind it.
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| From http://images.myreviewer.co.uk/fullsize/0000059830.jpg |
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