I finished watching the last fansub episode of Zettai Shonen, number 26. The downsides are 1) that the series ended and 2) that it had very incomplete plot resolution and explanatory conclusion. The upside is that it works nonetheless. It works very well indeed.

Zettai Shonen is a very well-crafted paranormal drama in two large arcs, the first set in the rural Japanese village of Tana, the story of a high school boy, Aizawa Ayumu, who is staying the summer with his father. He is somewhat alienated initially, but gradually establishes multi-hued relationships with a variety of characters: The excellent lady, Heigorousan, who operates the c-store; the scooter-riding hooligan, Ryousuke, who obsessively searches for the matronly semi-feral cat “Okakababa” in the belief that she will lead him once again to the Kappa he claims he saw as a child, so that he can vindicate his memory; the desperately co-dependent girl, Shione, whose unrequited love is given to a calculating, button-down council president-type boy, Takuma; the old man in the mountains who gardens with his St. Bernard at watch, and helps our hero to understand strange events, premature blossoms, lights in the air, in terms of a weakness in the “membrane of the world”; the sisters, Miku and Miki, working at the family liquor store, who will perform in the Cat Dance Festival, which has the aura of a ritual lost in ancient Shinto tradition, but is in fact a recent invention of local boosters; and of course, his father, the vetrinarian.

The art is lush, stylish, deco. The OP and ED are light and bright but not syrupy or bubble gum. Summer sunshine is warm and the sounds of motors and bottles rattling and cicadas are vivid, evocative. People start seeing orange lights rushing about. When seen in the reflection of an eye, they take sharper outline, and look something like horse-head floating ring toys, crossed with diving suits, a sort of steam-punk organic pacifier of a UFO. A mysterious boy child in the forest, Wakkun, waits forever, protected by the UFOs. Ayumu gradually realizes that he played with Wakkun in the forest as a child, before his parents divorced and he moved to the city with his mother. He comes to understand that there are mysterious places, which the locals leave in a wild state, where odd events occur. The mountain forest, with its streams and footpaths is not especially sacred, but it holds Wakkun’s grove, near the stream where he plays, which has that aura of mystery. Another, sacred in a more dramatically dangerous way, is a dense island of forest in the sea of farmland in the valley. In Shinto style, the center of Touya forest is blocked off with folded paper hanging on a rope.

There is a harem element in the storyline, as the interactions of Ayumu with the girls play out with varying degrees of romantic tension, but it is very understated, amounting to an increasing depth of interpersonal connection between Ayumu and each of the girls in the story, with the most trusting bond gradually becoming clear during the course of the Tana arc.

Ayumu has more affinity for the UFOs than others do. In response to strange reports, a local TV reporter, Senizawa Akira. accompanied by her brusque and grizzled veteran cameraman and driver, comes to resolve the mystery. She probes the villagers, but Ayumu is aloof, and avoids her. In the secret wooded places, he develops his relationship with Wakkun, and with Doshiru and Shishin, the two principal representatives of the orange lights. Ultimately, the village arc ends during the Cat Dance, when illegal dumping leads to a dam collapse, threatening the village. Timely intervention by the now plainly manifest UFOs, and their army of cats, is recorded for TV by the journalists as they save the day, and the lives of all those we have come to know during the course of the series. Now all of Tana and its visitors know about what Akira calls “Material Fairies”. Akira warmly commends to Ryousuke that perhaps he really did see a kappa after all. But when video is reviewed, the fairies that were plainly visible to those present are not in evidence. The cameraman compares this to the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima. Ayumu returns to his mother in Yokohama.

The second half, the city arc, begins in Yokohama two years later, as the tattered cat, Okakababa, trudges into the city, followed by orange lights which we soon learn are the same Doshiru and Shishin. An entirely new cast of characters is introduced and developed, beginning with Kisa, an elegant goth chick who has lost the motivation to attend high school, her friend and classmate Rieko, a smart, very earnestly well-intentioned class-rep type who works part-time in the Takiyama restaraunt which is owned and operated by a wise and stoic, grandmotherly woman, Hanasan. Rieko is emotionally fixated on Shigeki, a large-framed young man who dropped out of school to pursue his dream of becoming a professional shogi player, and who frequently dines at the restaraunt. Rieko is pursued by an annoying short selfish boy who plays games on his cellphone compulsively, by the name of Makki.

Kisa encounters a blue light, which manifests itself to her as a zeppellin-like object, of very mechanical character, but manifesting personality. She takes it home, and calls it Bun-chan, after the “bun, bun” sound which is its only vocal language. It lives in a bucket hanging over her bed. One day, after failing to connect a fin to a model fish she is making in her room using adhesives, Kisa sleeps, whereupon Bun-chan uses the energy of his blue glow to coolly weld the parts. Kisa eventually shares her secret with Shigeki. Rieko and Makki learn of it as well. Makki continues to be annoying.

When rumors of odd lights, blue and orange, and odd electrical disturbances reach Akira, she comes to Yokohama as a freelance investigative journalist. She takes a room, which she keeps in a state of total disarray, lodging in the restaraunt where Rieko works. She is interviewed by local TV concerning the phenomena, as the author of a fictionalized account of the “Summer of the Fairies”. All is not well in the world of the fairies, it seems, as orange lights and blue lights are in conflict. Often blue lights in packs hunt down and destroy orange lights. Akira concludes that the blue are “Material Evil”, opposed to the good orange “Material Fairy”. Akira and Makki collude. Akira the outsider, through fate and her direct manner, makes the connections with each of the players, already well-connected by relationships and experience, which drive the story forward, little communications which trigger larger patterns that result in dramatic events, including strong character development in most of the younger players.

Ayumu, now a young man of fully mature stature, becomes involved as Okakababa, and Doshiru and Shishin, make contact with him, and through the network of connections, mediated heavily by cellphone contact, quite realistically, he eventually goes to meet Kisa, who carries Bunchan in a bag. Doshiru and Shishin attack and destroy Bun-chan in a battle of lights. Kisa is horrified, emotionally distraught. She runs home with the metallic parts of Bun-chan, to her dark room, where no effort can put his body back together, but while she lies insensate in the depths of depression at the loss of the one form of intimacy she had been able to accept, the one special distinguishing characteristic of her life which had offered her the hope of meaningful existence, the energy of Bunchan appears to the viewers to pulsate into life in the welded fin of the model fish. When light from the window later wakes Kisa, she is met by a winged white egg with markings similar to Doshiru, which has a round tinkle rather than a humming pulse. She names it Pouchan.

Meanwhile, all of Yokohama is in alarm as the increasing electrical malfunctions culminate in the visual manifestation of the vast rotating Material Evil complex over Tokyo Bay. Authorities cordon the surrounding area. Blue lights and orange lights destroy each other in increasing numbers, with the blue appearing to hold the day. Akira is much in demand on TV, offering an analysis which appeals to the viewer as superior to those of the scientific, religious, cultural and fringe analysts also engaged by the media, based on her deeper personal experience. She thinks the Material Fairies are natural forces, and the Material Evils are derived from artificial sources, and the two are out of balance. Ayumu watches on TV as Akira is asked about her counsel. She advises people to think about it, and then decide what to do.

Kisa doesn’t do TV. She is haggard from sleepless distress, but Pouchan has energized her. Seeing the rotating structure over the bay through the window, she decides to seek the center, in hope of finding a meaning for her loss and experience. Reiko meets her on the way. Through Reiko’s cellphone, Shigeki and Makki become involved. Through Makki’s phone, Akira becomes involved. Makki has been observing flashes in the rotating structure, and counting them on his cellphone. They are increasing exponentially. Everyone wants Kisa to be more sensible, but she is determined, and bypasses the police cordon. Reiko follows. Makki follows, plans a rendezvous with Akira, but eventually pursues Reiko. Shigeki is also converging, and one at a time, they all show up by the bay, where Ayumu has been waiting for Kisa, on intuition. Reiko is responsible, as always, and urges that everyone seek shelter, as the flashes of mutually destructive orange-blue collisions increase.

When Kisa’s Pouchan is revealed, it is pursued and destroyed by Doushin and Shishin. Can this frail girl take any more? She is collapsed on the cold concrete, fetal. Shigeki tries to help. Ayumu and Akira go aside for a tête-à-tête which exposes Akira’s journalistic dedication to unitary shinjitsu (the truth about what is real), and Ayumu informs the discussion with his understanding of polymorphous jijitsu (the truth of the individual’s experience and interpretation). Reiko is distraught and flees, only to be stopped by Makki. He has changed a lot, and is no longer annoying. He comforts Reiko.

Ultimately, a vast streaming wave of orange lights converge on the rotating structure, overwhelm the blue lights, and begin destructively colliding with the structure itself, which consumes them with a radiant release. Like a 3-mile-wide cookie being eaten by fireflies, it gradually shrinks, as the awed players work out their confusion in dialog, until the last orange lights and the last remaining blue manifestation evaporate in a flash.

Now I want some resolution, but there isn’t any. And in a way, that’s just right, because the most accessible symbolic content of the story is a riff on topics which are current in society, and don’t have a trite resolution. The story is very multi-modal, and generally very well drawn, with each stroke, each scene, adding complexity to the emotional flavor of the dish. We understand that the characters are now mature in ways that they were not mature previously. They have deeper relationships, and better information. It’s not clear whether Shigeki will qualify for the pros, but he will continue with determination. Reiko and Makki may turn out to have more in common than either of them thought, and Reiko regards him with some respect now. Shigeki and Kisa are closer, and we might expect Shigeki to care for her emotional wounds to good effect. But all of this is only unstated potential.

At the level of surface indirection and symbolism, the story expresses the peculiarly Japanese perspective on the man-nature dichotomy, in as much as forces which are equally real but ontologically separate from consensus experiential reality constitute the mechanism of fate, whereby imbalances are rectified. In this case, the imbalance at issue is the increasingly disharmonious and aggressive force of technological consumption as it asserts control over the organic forces of original nature. Pouchan, the scion of Bunchan, taking the form of a flying egg with the demeanor and appearance of the organic, but in reality being a technological product, seems to be a clear reference to genetic and proteomic engineering.

Kisa is a self-made creature, self-designed according to the dictates of her dark preferences, and her deep attachment to the symbols of technique is just as representative of a social type and force as is her emptiness. The fascination of technique is a confusion distraction from the real problem of her ultimate purposelessness, just as mechanism without mission is ultimately dissatisfying.

Ayumu is among the least damaged by the whole experience. It is overwhelming, but he has let that go, having long since integrated his experiences of the mysteries from Tana, and the Touya forest. In the last few minutes of Zettai Shonen, it emerges that Kisa and Ayumu played with Wakkun in childhood, as was very obscurely foreshadowed in the Tana arc. Kisa it was who named Wakkun, as a contraction of Zakishi-Warashi, the apparition of a small child which in Japanese tradition brings good fortune. While everyone was affected by the dramatic manifestation of the other side of the “membrane of the world”, it was by far the most painful for Tanigawa Kisa. But even she has matured and gained for it. As the story winds down, we see that she returns to school, albiet beginning with the closing ceremonies for the semester. The fourth wall is broken in part, symbolically, by the intrusion of the authorial role, when the epilogue shows Akira enlisting Makki for the “real work” of journalistic writing which is now due. To me this expressed the writer’s intention to convey shinjitsu through integrating the jijitsu of their own experience with the jijitsu of others, as expressed in a journalistic exposition, or the fictional format of Akira’s first book, or in the format of this anime.

There were failings in this anime. There is a certain dissatisfaction with the relative lack of resolution and explanation which remains troublesome, even though I appreciate its symbolic value. Some characters were a bit flat and pointless. Some characters of interest were left unsatisfyingly unexplored. While stylish, and often rich, there were some obvious economizations in the animation, but then there invariably are. The sound track was exceptional in it’s use of effects, but the BGM was minimal and inconsequential. The mode of symbolism was quite creative and well-drawn, but the content of that message was often trite and threadbare. Notwithstanding these points, this is one of the best works I’ve ever seen, both technically, and in terms of enjoyability. The characters were extremely engaging, to the point of overcoming the revulsion of their obvious personal faults, with the exception of Takuma, and the storyline was emotionally affecting at several points. There was essentially no objectionable content, unless you find Japanese culture intrinsically and irremediably offensive. (Seriously, W takes this view.)