Wild Arms 2 vs Final Fantasy X's pre-rendered animations
Of course Wild Arms 2 got its butt handed to it by Final Fantasy X. FFX was as close to real life as anyone had ever seen at the time, and in WA2 you could see the individual pixels. But what it lacked in budget it made up for in heart. The gameplay was solid and creative, the soundtrack was beautiful and the story was nothing short of awesome.
The story: a blue-haired boy named Ashley signs up to be a monster hunter when he is possessed by the lord of all darkness and evil. Brad is a war veteran turned wanted man with a robotic arm and a dog collar set to explode if he ever disobeys his orders. Lilka is a young sorceress that can alter reality. Tim is a fourteen year old pretty-boy who controls the Gods like pets on a leash. Kanon is an assassin whose body was ripped apart by monsters as a child and replaced by cybernetic parts. Marivel is a millenia old vampire that lives on a private island making giant robots. These six characters travel around the world on their giant robot dragon fighting magical terrorists and thwarting two reptilian thieves named 'Liz' and 'Ard.'
...So, it's all you'd expect from a JRPG/anime. Complicated plot, kawaii girls in mini-skirts that control the universe, all that good stuff. But what makes this ridiculous plot work is the reason why I love anime: it plays it off completely seriously. Western media, namely Hollywood, almost acts like its ashamed of its own stories, to the point where nearly every movie, TV show, has to be wrapped in a layer of irony. Especially with the recent rise of bad movies with cult followings like The Room and Birdemic, Hollywood movies have been increasingly making movies that make fun of themselves. Anyone remember Jennifer's Body?
Its not a surprise that this movie bombed. Aside from the fact that it is bad, here's a film that is supposedly a horror film, but then spends its entire trailer marketing itself as a godawful B-movie. Why? Because it was released around the same time that the 'bad movie' cult in America became huge, and this movie was trying to appeal to horror fans who thought they might like it, while at the same time appealing to the ever-growing market of cynical Millenials who go to movies to make fun of how much they suck.
But Jennifer's Body is low-hanging fruit. What about the Marvel movies? I love superheros; alongside JRPGs, Anime and Fantasy novels they are pretty much my favorite thing. But I am starting to get sick of the Marvel movies because they are practically all the same. What separates them from their DC counterparts, it seems, is that Marvel is constantly making fun of itself. Characters like the Hulk mis-states his own catchphrase, Thor constantly gets run over by a minivan, and Tony Stark, Starlord and Black Widow are constantly firing off one-liners like they're trying out for The Tonight Show. Why? Well in part because a lot of Western media changes hands. Most films you see actually started out with an original script pitched to a studio; that's where you have the auteur writers with bold, clear ideas for movies. Then once it gets greenlit by producers they bring on other writers who 'fix it.' Then in post-production it gets handed off to 'punch-up' writers who write throwaway jokes. Have you ever watched a cartoon or film where off-screen characters yell jokes out of nowhere? That's punch-up, and even the great Patton Oswalt used to do it for easy money.
By the time Western films get through this meat-grinder they end up being the bland, generic Hollywood things we all expect. Furthermore, so many Western films mock their own premise within the movie, in large part because the savvy, hip, established writers whose profession it is to take original ideas and turn then into something sleek and marketable very often do so by turning on their own premise and making fun of it. Western video games don't seem to be as bad, but because of Hollywood and other reasons, the US is a cynical culture and our media reflects it very heavily.
Don't get me wrong, self-deprecation is great, and the Marvel characters can all be funny. But does everything in Western society have to be wrapped in a protective layer of irony? Does everything have to make fun of itself and point out how you can't take it too seriously because its afraid that the extremely bitter, jaded Millennial generation might hate it for trying and failing to be good while meanwhile hipsters flock to terrible things like Twilight, The Room and Fifty Shades of Grey?
The great thing about anime is that it seems to have a child-like optimism to it, even when dealing with serious subject matter. Eastern culture doesn't seem to be afraid to be what it is, and doesn't apologize for trying something ambitious. Of course, this means 90% of anime sucks because it isn't grounded in reality, and very often the auteur writers get to dictate the story lines (Akira Toriyama was with Dragonball all the way through GT and was able to have a large voice the whole time), while meanwhile the savvy Hollywood 'script-fixers' writers are mostly absent. But the 10% of ambitious animes that actually work like Ghost in the Shell, Fullmetal Alchemist, Samurai Champloo and Baccano! deserve to be put up next to Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire and The Wire.
What makes Wild Arms 2 work as a story is that even though the premise seems ridiculous, all the characters are so fleshed out that everything makes sense and has a reason to it. The reason the vampire Marivel lives alone on an island making giant robots is because she has lived for a thousand years, watching everyone she loved die. Grief-stricken, she lives alone away from all people. But of course, no one can be alone forever, so she starts developing robots to interact with. Hence, vampire Tony Stark.
I could go on with each character; needless to say, they are all heavily developed, even Liz and Ard. Everyone has a backstory, everything is explained. Starting out, the game seems ridiculous, but as you learn more of the story and it 'pans out' you get to see that everything is connected in an intricate design. In this way, it's like Game of Thrones. In GOT there's resurrecting warriors, frozen zombies, killer shadows, and yet bitter, jaded American critics still treat it as a great human drama because every character is fleshed out and has real goals, dreams and ambitions.
I was inspired by Wild Arms 2's bold story-telling and anime's like it. Irony is one of life's gems, and self-awareness can be great. But I'm sick of the cynicism that seems to taint so much of Western media. Japanese culture might be crazy at times, but it has a beautiful charm to it. Wild Arms 2 has an incredible story to it and its crazy enough to pursue it without apology.
Wild Arms 3 and 4 had the same crazy level of self-belief, and unfortunately they sucked. So self-confidence and lack of self-criticism has its downsides, and maybe Japanese shows/video games aren't as consistently good as Western ones, but I'd rather have two failures and a masterpiece than a handful of halfway decent products that were too afraid to try to be great.
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