I saw the new
Iron Man motion picture recently, and I actually enjoyed it. Most of it had to do with the light touch applied to the plot. Most recent comic book film adaptations have tried to imbue their subject matter with a certain gravitas: The hero is encumbered by a tragic past, has some kind of identity crisis, or is on some kind of quest for revenge. Usually there's some tedious moralizing that accompanies the story. Not that this movie doesn't have a message, or that
Tony Stark doesn't have a sense of purpose. Those are staples of the genre. It just doesn't dwell on those bits. There's this unavoidable geopolitical element arising from Stark's career as an arms dealer. And he goes through a conversion experience that leads him to try to rid the world of war, or at least try not to add to it. But incessantly hammering the anti-war message would only heighten the contradictions built into the story. It's about a guy who tries to end war by building the coolest weapon in his private workshop (It's great to be rich). Still the simplistic message has obvious resonance for Americans looking for easy answers. Just don't look at the film too closely.
Then there's the the anti-corporate populist stance presented.
Obadiah Shane is the typical evil capitalist who puts the bottom-line before ethical considerations. He berates Tony for not giving his personal creation to Stark Enterprises so the company could profit from it. The irony of the message (no pun intended) comes from the fact that the Iron Man character is a corporate property owned by
Marvel, but was the creation of individuals like
Stan Lee,
Jack Kirby,
Don Heck and
Larry Lieber working in the 60s. They gave up the rights to their creation to the publisher, and Stan Lee gets to have cameos on all the films.
I also finished watching The early 90s
Cutey Honey OVA. I haven't had much prior exposure to this particular
Go Nagai creation. This is the Japanese equivalent of a project meant to attract older fanboys, only without the continuity-porn and shared universes that plague American superhero comics. I didn't have to watch the 70s anime or read the manga to see that the OVA was basically a homage to those earlier works. A popular argument in favor of the appeal of Japanese comics is that creator ownership has meant that serials eventually end. But if you're like Nagai, turning your creations into successful ongoing franchises is a perfectly sensible option. Cutey Honey is one of those long-lived properties that has never been successfully transplanted to the English-speaking world. It's a bit too classic for most younger western anime fans. From what I understand she is the original transforming superhero of manga. While transformation is used by some American characters (The original
Captain Marvel to name the earliest precedent), transformation has become a staple in
tokusatsu and
magical girl stories. The transformations in Cutey Honey work on one level as empowering fantasies, and on another as
voyeuristic entertainment. Every new form is supposed to imbue
Honey with new abilities, and she clearly revels in every one of them. But like most superhero costume changes, they seem more aesthetic than functional. That's the fun part of the anime. No two transformation sequences are the same. They're drawn exquisitely with an obvious sexual component.
This is more about exploiting the character's retro charm than about storytelling. The plot is pretty weak. An arch villain is introduced in episode one, but is defeated halfway through the series. The rest of the OVA is composed of disconnected episodes that leave the narrative arc unresolved. Perhaps there were plans for future episodes that never came through. There's definitely a decline in animation quality towards the end. Whatever the case, it feels incomplete. But as someone who grew up watching late 70s anime, the sustained use of a generally light tone and the refusal to update a classic character, or inject adolescent angst and Freudian analysis is much appreciated.
