Ask John: Will Violinist of Hameln Ever Come to America?

Question:
I absolutely love this anime and manga serious, Hamerun no Baiorin-hiki, and I wonder if it will ever make it to US shores. Have you seen this anime, and, if so, did you think all the stillshots were that terrible? I mean, I know it used for cost-cutting, but at times, it gave a somewhat “dramatic” and “artistic” effect.

Answer:
I’m not familiar with the Violinist of Hameln manga, but I have seen the movie fan subbed and all of the TV series both fan subbed and in untranslated Japanese. This is a series that I’d very much love to see brought to America, but not one that I actually expect to ever see licensed. The Violinist of Hameln movie, though, may be a good candidate for American distribution for several reasons. It’s a short, stand alone film that doesn’t require any knowledge of the manga or TV series, and it’s very good and quite funny, including a great Sailormoon parody. The TV series, however, which premiered in Japan a year after the movie, is a very somber, complex and intricately composed war drama featuring exceptional character design, background art and music, and compelling, unpredictable and mature dialogue and writing, unfortunately at the cost of typical animation quality.

As you’re aware, the TV series makes use of an unusually large number of still frames and pan shots with little or no motion in them. At times the TV series seems more like a slide show or narrated storybook than actual animation. Rather than spend its limited budget on animating every scene, it seems as though the TV series staff chose to spend its resources on writing and art quality rather than physical animation. This never really bothered me, especially the second time watching it, when it was translated and I could pay attention to the story rather than the animation quality, but this has bothered a lot of the serious, hard-core anime fans I know that have tried to watch the show. If the severely limited animation annoyed them, I honestly don’t see mainstream or casual viewers being willing to overlook this shortcoming.

As you’ve said, the limited animation does occasionally make particular scenes more dramatic, like the use of slow motion in one of John Woo’s HK gunplay films, but on the other hand, the occasionally fully animated battle sequences exhibit impressive, exciting and fluid animation that can’t help but make viewers want to see more. Graceful and masterfully animated sequences including some of Sizer’s flying attacks and Drum’s invasion of Szeforzend are simply amazing for television animation. But these glimpses into what could have been are like offering a diner a bite of steak at a sumptuous banquet to which he’s not invited. The normal character action animation used throughout the series is adequate, but the limited animation employed during action scenes, used to replace the quick camera cuts and extensive incidental animation normally required for action sequences, is simply disappointing. The TV series staff did a brilliant job with what it obviously had to work with, but its a terrible shame that the TV series had to compromise its production in the first place.

If the entire series had actual normal animation, I firmly believe that Violinist of Hameln would merit consideration as one of the best anime TV series ever created. The complex, morally ambiguous story and multi-faceted physically, mentally and emotionally conflicted characters reveal some of the most challenging, multi-layered and thought provoking writing in all of anime. The use of classical music as score is genius, and the art design is simply wonderfully to behold. As it exists, though, in spite of these positive points, the excessive use of still frames and limited animation are probably too great of a deterrent for all but the most devoted animation fans and will probably prevent the TV series from ever reaching America.