Forming a List (Anime, Part II)

Continuing on from yesterday, here are some thoughts on my core collection of anime.

Here and There, Now and Then

This may be the darkest anime that I have ever watched. Shu, a boy from present day, is transported to the far, far future where the sun is huge, resources are scarce and things are prettymuch as bleak as they can be. What makes the show all the more heartbreaking is that Shu is really earnest and energetic and, although transported to a hellish future, doesn't fall into a depressive whirlpool -- even when he is beaten down at every opportunity. Shu personifies the resolve that investigators in games like Call of Cthulhu must possess. Any normal person faced with similar circumstances (transported into a hellish future in Shu's case, facing the madness-inducing true nature of the universe in the investigators' case) would curl up in a ball and want to die (or just go insane). And speaking of insane, the main antagonist (who is the absolute dictator of a mobile city reminicent of the treaded cities of Phillip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles) is absolutely unstable and insane, and can go from being coherent to raving mad instantaneously. To contrast with the overall dread of the show, the opening credits' music is upbeat, happy even, but with the constant sense of dread, it becomes bittersweet and exemplifies the longing to return to the time that Shu came from.