Jinki: Extend - 02

There were a couple of things that were fairly clear to me back when I was thinking about starting a comically overanalytical weblog (all of two weeks ago.) First, blogging a show would require quite a bit of energy, and so there would be shows I watched but didn't blog. (Sorry, Komugi-chan, but it'd take more cultural knowledge than I have to do you justice...)

Second, I wouldn't blog a show unless I could start from episode 1. Writing about a show fundamentally changes my experience of it; as much as I'm enjoying Fantastic Children, I don't want to try to "catch up" by shortchanging earlier episodes, or draw an artificial line between "blogged" and "unblogged," or "blogged with foreknowledge" and "blogged without foreknowledge." What's more, I'm hoping more than anything that I'll manage some insights into the overarching structure of these shows, and to do that I'm going to need a good record of my thoughts as I encountered each episode.

I'm confident I'm right about those principles taken separately, but together they mean that pickings are going to be a little slim in the early months. I did okay my first week by playing catch-up, but now I'm basically current, and I'm faced with an awfully disappointing second episode of Jinki. It's as frustrating as I was worried it'd be.

Jinki, after all, made it into the "Current Series" list mostly because I thought it might pick up and I wanted a little diversity, not because I thought the first episode was really impressive. Now, the show seems to be disavowing the early gestures it made towards self-awareness (Aoba's mecha interest is a character point, but it doesn't really look like it's going to be used for meta-commentary) and settling into a comfortable position as a straightforward genre show. It still hasn't finished expositing, though, so it might do some interesting things with that story arc the first episode foreshadowed.

There's a dynamic being set up between Aoba and her mother, Shizuka - Aoba clearly didn't have a very happy homelife, but I actually think she's angry at Shizuka as much for invading the robot-filled paradise she's just found as for whatever went on long ago. The main point of this episode (aside from giving things names) is really the division between Aoba-around-mechanics (sunny, cheerful, and talented) and Aoba-around-her-mother (sullen and upset.)

I'll be watching to see if Aoba develops a full-blown Electra complex in the coming episodes as a result of that duality, or if her attraction to Ryohei (has an anime girl ever dubbed a male character "hentai/sukebe/pervert" and not actually had a thing for him?) is handled separately. It's also possible that the dualized father-figure of Genta and Ryohei (who are rarely apart so far) is split for exactly that reason: Genta's the kind and nurturing side, and Ryohei is the sexually desirable.

For that matter, that metaphor explains why it's Genta and not Ryohei that's wounded, allowing Aoba her first piloting experience. Godannar, of course, explicitly parodied the stylized sexuality of tandem-piloted mecha, but it was always there, and incapacitating the nonsexual, nurturing character adds strength to the loss-of-virginity motif.

So Aoba's loss-of-innocence is firmly established, and portrayed as mostly a positive development in the context of mecha, but then I can't help wondering why her mother, who seems to represent an alternate loss-of-innocence (or at least acknowledgement that mecha don't make everything immediately wonderful) is portrayed as a villain. I'm waiting for the inevitable backstory (in particular, Shizuka's side of the story) to see if it helps resolve that contradiction.

previous episode
next episode