Anime: Figure 17: Tsubasa & Hikaru

Anime with 13 episodes of 50 minutes each can seem "scary" and it also takes a lot of people away from a work. In the case of Figure 17, it works very well.

We follow the story of Tsubasa and Hikaru, two little girls who end up becoming twin sisters.
As much as it has action and a lot of science fiction, this is far from being the focus of the anime. The focus is everyday life and the relationship between the characters.
But what makes this anime so special? Simple: Realism. An anime where it treats everything in a very realistic way, even more so when it comes to the interaction of the characters. But not only that, he also talks about dependency. Tsubasa is very shy and depends on Hikaru for a lot (which reminds me of Doraemon, watch Stand By Me Doraemon, here's my recommendation), or maybe almost everything. As the work progresses, characters develop in an Iyashikei atmosphere that is very pleasant to watch, until episode 09 arrives, where the atmosphere of the work changes completely.

In the end, it's a work that talks about dependence, and at the end it has a very beautiful message of "You can do it without depending on others".
It's an excellent anime, and I see myself in Tsubasa a lot in some ways. This made me like this anime even more.

Clearly one of my all-time favorites. Beautiful visually, enjoyable to watch, with great characters and a very well written story.

Figure 17 is the cute story about a little girl who gets parasitized by an alien who takes her form, stays on her house, eats part of her food, pretends to be her twin, is part of the brainwash of her father to make him think he always had two daughters, becomes better than her at everything at school while becoming more popular there, and makes her fight against horrible dangerous monsters.

There’s this little precious Tsubasa Shiina, a shy and rather quiet girl with clear problems to socialize and lack of self-esteem partly because of the loss of her mother, her dad being away almost all day at work and almost absent for her, and because she recently moved on to a new place and school. She bumps into a crashed spaceship where some eggs of extraterrestrial monsters hatch and scatter over Hokkaido, they fed off of it and evolve that way. At the same time she accidentally fuses with an alien weapon/battle armor/life form thing to fight them, which out of battle takes her form, and thus she begins to live on her house as her new twin sister, Hikaru.

How is any of that cute you may ask? Because of the way it’s presented. Let’s clarify that this show is a cutesy and relaxing slice of life and coming of age story first, and a sci-fi action monster of the week series after. The focus is clearly placed on how Tsubasa no longer feels lonely thanks to her new more optimistic, energetic and extrovert sister who is always by her side, cares for her and encourages her to talk to others, get new friends, try more things, and be more confident with herself, while also fights alongside her and protects her from the aliens they face. Since their father is a baker and they live in a farm, the first thing they learn together is to make some breads and cakes and all that stuff, while also stuff about different animals, particularly cows. Then at school they go to class together, practice and compete in sports together, and rehearse and later star on a stage play together, that kind of usual stuff.

As the series goes on, however, after a tragic event, where the more cynical view of the situation which I began this review with gets acknowledged and addressed, and with the acknowledgment of their inevitable parting once all the monsters are defeated, both girls will be a little more apart of each other and Tsubasa will effectively learn to be more sufficient by herself and less dependent of Hikaru.

But how does the action sci-fi part of the show fits in? Well that’s the thing, initially it doesn’t, it feels tacked on and it even drops the overall quality of the show actually, since those monsters are just horrible things with zero dimensions of personality to them, which exist just to be killed on each episode. Not only that but the fights, despite having some battle choreography and strategies to them, usually start with alien policeman D.D getting defeated, and get resolved by Hikaru convincing Tsubasa to not be scared of the opponents, and they defeat them with one punch, even when the more experienced characters couldn’t win.

Fortunately this appear to have been realized on the writing room at some point, and as the show goes on, the monsters keep evolving and sharing information with the others, gaining new characteristics and forcing the heroes to face them together, form new strategies and use new weapons in order to win, by the end of the show no alien can be defeated by the girls all by themselves, they have to fight alongside the two veteran space police officers in order to win, even survive.

But that’s just an improvement action wise, how it ends up connecting with the main plot? Well, first, by having D.D and the later introduced other officer Oldina have a little, but very little, lives on Earth on their own as well while they gather information about their enemies. Second, by having them changing a little from their cold initial attitude to be more comprehensible and respectful of the things the two sisters go through the show, even letting them out of a few fights and having a few instances where they take the monsters on their own. Although short lived, it was a very welcomed change to have the two veteran space police officers be the ones to kill the aliens. Third, since the majority of the series is dedicated to the slice of life moments on Hokkaido, having all of the characters the girls interact with at stake as the show goes on, makes the following fights to be and feel important. And fourth, part of the growth Tsubasa goes through ends up playing a part as well, since it leads to an improvement on their way of fighting, and she even gets to save Hikaru at some point, an even more welcomed change.

Another way the writing tried to connect the two plot points with each other was with the presence of an investigator who realizes weird stuff is happening in the environment of Hokkaido, even appearing in the final battle. Although this portion of the show is necessary to understand the actual effects that the monsters have, it is universally considered filler, and to be honest everything regarding this character feel as such. Which is a shame since it is something very easy to solve, just have D.D and Oldina be the ones to investigate this stuff, they already use some pseudo-science to learn more stuff about their enemies, might as well have them look into what those monsters are doing to the Earth, that would help them in their own investigation, and give them more screen time to have a little more lives on their own on our planet, and thus have a bit more presence and character outside the action bits. Eventually this investigator ends up getting a catharsis, but like I said, everything about this character feels unnecessary and tacked on.

Another thing worth mentioning is the unexpected but welcomed lack of plot armor, especially with how many times D.D could have died but didn’t in the initial episodes. This I find to be positive, since despite being primarily a slice of life show, Figure 17 still has stakes, and having important characters dying permanently is the proper way to make said stakes feel real and their consequences important for not being taken away. And is not like the deaths come out of nowhere for shock effect, they are properly anticipated and it’s great that the series does not chickens out with them, even leading to a somewhat bittersweet ending.

To continue with the positives, I was surprised by the visual quality of the show, since it is a rather minor production from 2001. There are quality drops and characters go off model when seen from afar, and the designs are simple and generic, even very lookalike to what the designer would do later on Planetes, for example, but still the visuals are usually very good, very good special effects, very little and well rendered CGI for its time, in turn well mixed with the rest, and some of the most beautiful hand drawn backgrounds you’ll get to see on anime. The motions, though not always, are usually pretty good as well, and even the slice of life bits have vivid enough body language to not feel those bits as visually inferior.

As for the sound, the children sound very cute and convincing, every voice fits perfectly and is well performed. The adults however, partially because of their part on the show, sound a bit more typical, not bad, just not special in any way. The background music is good, composed of cute and relaxing themes for the slice of life portion of the series, and heavy rockers for the sci-fi half of it. With that said, the soundtrack ends up coming off as repetitive because some themes have many different versions and are reused in the exact same way every time in similar scenes. The opening is also a cool rock track, and the base for some tracks of the soundtrack, but it almost does not feel like the overall vibe of the show, luckily the more relaxing ending song fits better, and compliments it well, just like the two different genres don’t fit together at first but end up making a proper whole later on. The sound effects are nothing special but they are fine.

And now for the issues of the show, aside from the ones I already mentioned.

-Brainwashing is one of the laziest plot devices to use in writing regardless of what it is used for, thus it is an issue here.

-Although somewhat explained, having just one human notice what’s happening it’s impossible to buy, another major flaw and another reason to get rid of that investigator.

-By the end of the show all memory and track of what happened is erased, except for Tsubasa’s, this way it does not takes away the most relevant aspect of the show, but still makes the ending to feel like very little mattered in the end.

-The sisters are away of all the people they live and interact with everyday every time they get called to fight, and no one notices them going away to fight and get back to their house late at night at times, how convenient.

Despite the minuses, I still found it to be a pretty good slice of life and action hybrid, each genre is ok by itself at first, and they get tied together properly as the series goes on. Plus, it’s a slice of life show with plot continuity, stakes, permanent consequences and actual character growth by the end of it, quite rare within this medium, and somewhat valuable and memorable because of it. It is also one of the atypical and unusual oddities coming from OLM, the Pokémon studio, worthy to check out when they make something outside their comfort zone, like this, or Odd Taxi, or Berserk, to name a few. Still, with each episode being 45 minutes long, the simplicity of its plot and how it takes a while for its two genres to feel like they belong in the same series, I don’t find rewatch value in here, but for a one time experience, it is a good choice.

For similar stuff, there are actually way too many options, but just to name a few:

For the slice of life portion of it

-Gin no Saji, a coming of age series about high school students from the countryside.

-NieA_7, a slice of life comedy about a woman living with an alien.

-Hinamatsuri, a slice of life dramedy about alien girls living on Japan.

For the sci-fi action bit of it

-The Guyver action franchise, about a guy who accidentally fuses with a bio-organic alien armor to fight against extraterrestrial monsters invading Earth.

-Brigadoon, a science fantasy action romance dramedy about a girl being protected by a bio-organic extraterrestrial being from other soldiers like him, as well as many other monsters.

-The Tetsuwan Birdy action franchise, about a guy who for plot reasons shares body with a female space police officer who captures space criminals.

And more, there are a bunch more similar titles out there, damn. Another title that it’s usually recommended along this one is Blue Drop, but as I will explain next time, it’s best to stay far away from it.

Remember in Cardcaptor Sakura where the slice of life moments and the character interactions were the only thing that mattered? It was also a mahou shojo show but the battles were just fluff, an excuse to see Sakura in moe clothes and for Shaoran to be tagging along for some reason. Well Figure 17 is also like that; it has action and a somewhat serious premise but it ends up being good only for its “normal” moments and not its supernatural.

Animated by studio OLM, which has made many series but none managed to be great. Most people remember it only for its work on the fabled Utawaremono, which for me wasn’t that good either. Directed by Takahashi Naohito, who also made the Berserk anime adaptation. He isn’t exactly a talented one but does try to offer something different in each of his works. Not too much though.

So in the story a bioorganic weapon is accidentally thrown on Earth and DD, a space police officer, uses his special Figure 17 weapon to destroy the numerous planet-killing plants that have scattered on Japan. A passing girl named Tsubasa unconditionally fuses her DNA with Figure 17 and the result is an identical looking person like her. Having to use her as an alias while looking for the alien threat, DD asks from Tsubasa to cooperate and pretend she is her twin sister Hikaru. He also brainwashes a few relatives to make them believe the cover easier. After that, the plot is about the two girls experiencing various cultural and rural events half the time and battling the devastating Maguar alien plants in the other half.

It all sounds too corny but in practice the show is a step higher than the average mahou shojo. Not that it is even a mahou shojo, there is absolutely no magic involved; everything has its scientific explanation. It’s just that like in Cardcaptor Sakura the slice of life moments end up being far more interesting than saving the world from the threat of the plants. And truly, the switch from the calm everyday life to the hard action against killer plants looks almost like two different shows entirely. I guess the animators opted for some sort of ecology-pro story where you get to enjoy the green pastures long enough for you to care about being saved by the alien superhero.

Ok, nothing bad in that but the action part left me indifferent. Not because the action was bad; in the contrary the battles have far more strategy in them than most action shows. It’s just that the Maguar plants were completely empty of personality and presence in general. I didn’t care in the least if they were there at all and thus without motivation to hate something other than mook monsters I simply didn’t like the action part. I understand that they truly were mindless weapons of mass destruction without personality who were activated without a further purpose by some alien villain but that still didn’t make me care. Not only that but they also didn’t seem to affect the actual lives of the far more colourful and interesting lives of Tsubasa’s friends and relatives; thus again it’s like I was watching a different show. But as I said, the action scenes are very well made; they just feel irrelevant to the rest of the anime.

Back to the meat of the show, the normal everyday lives of the two girls is actually very well done, as they interact with many people and Hikaru is constantly learning new things. It was so cute and sweet and all. At one point we even have a death of one of their friends from a complete accident, which gives the show a very dramatic switch and again makes you wonder what the hell are the aliens even doing in this series.

A minus in the “normal” side of the show is a news reporter who is constantly looking for proof of the alien threat. A lot of time is spent on him speculating things we already know if they are true or not and in effect count as dead time. Even after he was proven right in the finale, he still didn’t offer anything to the show other that lots of boring intermissions. Shoo with you man; I wanna see the girls learning how to milk a cow.

In a similar notion, what’s with the opening video? It makes you think you will see some sort of heavy action show. I love that song and I even feel it has Buzuki (Greek acoustic guitar) for a few seconds but man, the merits of the anime are NOT in the action.

Other than that, the production values are average to good as nothing is given too much or too little attention to ever feel bad or good. The atmosphere of the everyday life is very sweet even if nothing major is going on and the action scenes have choreography and strategy rarely encountered in a show that is mostly for young teens rather than kids or elder teens.

I loved the normal parts and the action had choreography but the alien villains were completely uninteresting and the reporter was just eating away precious time. It is not a bad show but seeing it from afar you think it was made by two different teams, one making the everyday life and one making the action and the alien technology explanations. Plus it’s not like it has a great story or great characters; it’s just nice to look if your expectations are not too high.

And now for some excused scorings.


SUGGESTION LIST
Cardcaptor Sakura
Brigadoon Marin to Melan

Introduction:
I've held off on a review for quite some time because I love it so much, I didn't think I could give it a fair review, but fact is it isn't the world's best anime. However, in it's field, nothing else really compares.

Animation:
I particularly enjoyed the watercolor backgrounds (yes, they're real water color paintings made for the series), and the artistic style of the characters was interesting as well. The fluidity of motion was good; not superb, but good. The overall feel was quite nice, peaceful, really. If you're looking for something flashy or bright colors, this isn't for you. However, the quality of it's style is pretty top-notch. please inform me if you can find an anime with a better Claude Mone style to it.

Sound:
The voices are perfect in Japanese, and mediocre in English. Some people say Tsubasa has an annoying voice, others have said they find her yelps and gasps overused, but believe me, children are about 10x more vocal than adults, not just with words, but with simple sound expressions as well. Also, unlike adults, they won't pick and choose when and where to use a vocal sound based on who they are with or what it will imply. It's called INNOCENCE, something our society seems to have forgotten the meaning of.
The Music was really masterfully done. Admittedly some didn't like the intro and outro, but the only 2 songs you will ever recognize are the battle theme and the overall theme song, played at the very first set of scenery slides, then repeated in various different arrangements throughout the series. There are, in fact, 9 other completely original songs in the series, they just aren't noticeable because they fit so well with the scenes they are used in, and aren't meant to be remembered specifically, but rather the scene as a whole.

Story:
Admittedly, the story wasn't perfect, and in fact the over-arching story is really just an excuse for the character development. It had a couple twists, and wasn't all together bad, but it was nothing special. on the other hand, a 'better' story may have detracted from the beauty in simplicity in this anime, as well as the pure display of emotion and children's perspectives. It is even possible that the story would have been just as good without the Maguar ('bad' aliens) and fights.

Character:
OK, i can't express how good this series does in this department. Admittedly, only 3 characters get more than one episode in the spotlight (Tsubasa, Hikaru, and Shou), but the two leads in particular are absolutely incredible. I have never seen another anime compare in the way of character development to this. Perhaps it's just because that's all there is really, just pure character portrayal beauty. The characters change very realistically and coherently as well. I simply have no way to describe how much you can get attached to them.

Value:
10. I bought it. yes, BOUGHT. I shelled out money and bought it. not netflixed, not youtubed, not downloaded (the 3 primary means by which I get anime), but BOUGHT. It is one of the only 2 series I've ever bought, and I've seen over 250 hours of anime, if not more.
The sentimentality is off the chart for me with this one. I have only watched it once because I must have cried for an hour after I saw the entire series, and I don't cry on movies. or animes. or books. heck, I just don't really cry usually.

Enjoyment:
well, being my favorite series of all time, i'd have to say 10 ;)
But seriously, I loved it. The characters truly place this anime in a category of it's own. If Alien 9 had been as long, it may have been just as good, but it was too short.

Well, hope I don't get flamed for the review just because it is my favorite series. I just saw so many people not giving the characters the credit they diserved.

Figure 17 is not a very good show. It's not a very bad show either, it's just...there. This isn't a series that you'll remember fondly, years from now. But then, it's not a show that will make you go "damn, I just wasted a LOT of time watching this crap". It's just...fine.

Summary: Tsubasa just moved out to the sticks (aka Hokkaido) because her dad wants to be a baker(?!?). She has trouble fitting in at school and she's shy and she's 10 years old so it's a very traumatic time to be uprooting the poor thing. She looks destined to grow up into an emo/goth until a spaceship crashes out behind her house, which as everyone knows, automatically saves you from wanting to slash your wrists or recite dark poetry...

...I digress. So Tsubasa runs out to check that action out. While narrowly avoiding being eaten by a Space Monster(tm) and watching a Friendly Alien(tm) get the crap beaten out of him, she manages somehow to get into the ship and get a special living metal power suit of massive awesomeness to "merge" with her. Kinky. Adventures commence when the suit unmerges with her and appears as her twin!

No, I'm not making this up, but I might be a little sarcastic.

Animation
Character Design: The characters are...ok. Tsubasa is a bit plain for a lead character, and that makes Hikaru just as plain, but that's supposed to be part of their charm: innocence. DD and Oldeena are fairly attractive, but all the other characters are...dumpy. Ugly, in some cases. While I certainly don't mind plain looking characters, when a show has fantastic elements, at least make the characters look a little fantastic.

I do have to note that the monsters (Maguar) were a little creepy at first, a little gross. They definitely evoked thoughts of stereotypical tentacle scenes. But nothing special in the end. Too bad.

Op/Ed: Yeechhh. The opening animation seems to be designed specifically for pe...lolita lovers. I mean, you're seeing Tsubasa and Hikaru in shifts. I don't want to see 10 year old girls in shifts. Maybe I'm alone in this sort of thinking, but...I doubt it. The ending is just one of the standard "let's throw clips together" endings. Ho hum.

Artwork: This actually redeems the animation category a little bit. Some of the background artwork and animation was quite good - Hokkaido does lend itself to some nice scenery.

Sound
Op/Ed: The opening is good, but completely unfitting. If the designers had made the girls 15 instead of 10 and put more action and complex emotion into it, maybe the opening would be properly evocative. It's much too "exciting" for such a low-key show.

Voices: I watched a dual-audio version. Usually I have English voices with subtitles on, but this time, after three episodes - I forced it to Japanese audio. The dubbing isn't bad, but the English voice actor for Hikaru was the equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. Too. Damn. Cheerful.

The Japanese voice acting was decent though. Tsubasa was pleasantly soft and Hikaru, while retaining her upbeat nature, didn't have a voice that sounded like the voice actor was stepped up on a combination of helium and Prozac.

Music: The music is passable, but forgettable. There's a few decent tunes but nothing worth pointing out or listening to.

Story
Plot: Oh, bloody hell. Was this sci-fi with slice of life, or the other way around? I don't know, and apparently the creators weren't too sure either. There were strong elements of both genres plugged in, but it didn't work all that well.

The plot itself is banal and forgettable: kill the evil monsters to save the world. The ending is typically lame. The only reason, the only ONLY reason that this series doesn't get a 4 or 5 for the story score is because of episode 9, the one concerning Sho. Damn you all, I almost wept. That one episode almost made up for all the rest.

Writing/Script: I blame the writers for some of Hikaru's obnoxiousness, but otherwise, they made a decent attempt at making a well-beaten plot sit up and do a few more tricks. You're not going to see anything special out of this series, that's for sure.

I really do have to question the creators writing the main characters as 10 year olds. Most viewers will find it more difficult to connect with a 10 year old than a 16 or 20 year old. While the innocence idea is a good one, they failed to really capitalize on it, by interrupting the slice of life with sci-fi sequences.

Character
Interest: Ugh. Tsubasa's not really interesting. She's the archtypical shy girl. Hikaru's more interesting only because her archetype of the outgoing girl is inherently more interesting. The other characters are...well, bland. DD's kind of cool, Kenta is a punk but a fount of knowledge, and Tsubasa's dad was actually a pretty good rendition of a single father trying to raise a little girl (or two).

Growth: The story, in the end, is pretty much about growth. It probably isn't a real spoiler to say that by the end of the story, shy little Tsubasa is starting to assert herself. Whether or not you think that's worth watching is, well, up to you.

Value and Enjoyment: Well, the value on this is surprisingly high: each episode is based on an hour-long time slot, not a half-hour. This means that the 13 episode series is about as long as a normal 24-26 episode series. It's a double-edged sword though - while longer episodes allow for more story to be told in each chunk, the story itself is hard to take in those chunks. It's like having a plate full of brussels sprouts or lima beans that are twice as large as normal: sure, there's less of them, but they're twice as big, and they're no less sickening because they're bigger.

Enjoying this show was pretty difficult for me. While parts of it were quite good, the majority was banal and boring. The payoff is minimal and it's something that's coming off my hard drive as soon as I submit this review.

Conclusion: You can do worse, but you can also do a lot better than watching Figure 17. Save this for rerun season.

One of my favorite series ever. The 2 leads truly make this series shine.

Animation: The discs come in anamorphic widescreen, and they filmed the series just like a movie (big plus, sort of like Arjuna) For most of the drama, you have beautiful sceneries of Hokkaido done in watercolor. Even though all the coloring is done by CG, it looks somewhat like a 90's movie.
CG is more apparent in the actions scenes (of course), and everything is nice and very smooth. Since they gave the combat suit a somewhat retro design, you get some shots of old-school combat hehe.

Sound: OP song may be weird to people, but I like it hehe. They have certain songs that they repeat for drama/combat which I also like a lot, mostly done in choirs. Even though there are few songs, they get quite addictive. Of course, it's nothing as grand as say, Noir or Cowboy Bebop or some other series these days.

Story: They planned the story out very well, with every episode titled with an appropriate theme. Since each episode is about 50 minutes, you get 40 minutes slice of life drama and 10 minutes sci-fi action. The drama is where the juice is at. Very little of the soapy melodrama from which other series suffer is here because the characters behave realistically. Each episode focuses on a certain set of Tsubasa's emotions, of lessons she learns at school, home, work, combat, etc. You'll always feel warm and fuzzy, except towards the end when they become tear jerkers.

Sci-fi is only used to make way for the drama, but it's still very interesting. The combats are cool because they use a different strategy each time to take down each Maguar (the monsters), which of course gets tougher and tougher to kill as the series moves on. The Maguars are really creepy, but their strength gets a little out of hand at the very end, especially since they sorta start disregarding the conservation of mass.

Chars: Like I said previously, the 2 leads make this series shine. I doubt there's anyone who doesn't like Hikaru. She's a mature "adult" with the cloned memory of a kid, so she ends up with a very interesting personality. Hikaru's outgoing personality complements Tsubasa's introversion and lack of confidence perfectly.

Most of the develeopment centers on Tsubasa, who has to go through a lot in her life. She has some selfish/depressed moments, but none of it is overdone (ie melodramatic). There is only one scene near the end when she undergoes the big "depression stage" and gets angry, but it ends with one of the best written dialouges I've ever seen...made me cry like a baby.

With all the help from Hikaru, in the end you just have to be impressed at what Tsubasa goes through and becomes, especially since she's only an elementary student.

Even though they are the main characters, my only gripe is about the other characters DD and Oldeena, who doesn't get fleshed out much...at all.

Value: Definitly worth rewatching...and even better if you have a young daughter. In fact, anyone with a young kid should show him/her this. However, I would NOT watch this again until at least a year later, as it's just too emotional.

If you're not into the slice of life/growing up drama of a little girl, it'll be hard to sit through the episodes waiting for the action (which really isn't the point of this series anyway). If you are, this is a very fine and rare gem that is different from most series you will see, and one that is very well executed.