Beck: Volume 5

Introduction

It's been almost 12 months since volume 4 of Beck was released in the UK, and at this time, there's no indication of when volume 5 will be come. But I'm not going to whinge about how such an amazing story as Beck shouldn't be treated this way, I'm not going grouse about how serial anime is disrupted when a regular influx of episodes isn't forthcoming, and I'm not going to mutter under my breath at overly lengthy release schedules. Not anymore, I'm not. Instead, I've done what I should have done months ago; I've imported the final volumes from the US. I'll get to see how the story ends before everyone else who didn't import, or didn't go looking for the episodes buried away in the darkest niche of the Interweb. That'll just be Dave from Dudley then. So sorry Dave, if this feels like part review and part gloat. Of course, after all this time, I had to start by watching the first four discs all over again, just to remind me of what this show is about.

It's a problem common the world over, the disaffected, disillusioned and rebellious teenager who wants to get away from the reins of authority and do something meaningful with his or her life. That means picking up a guitar and starting a band of course. That's before realising that they'd have to learn how to play, and most instruments are gathering dust within a month. There are some brief bursts of raucous glory, bands of Wyld Stallyns calibre, which provide a summer or two of memories, and tales of rock and roll excess to tell the grandchildren. But once in a while there emerges someone with genuine talent, someone who really can perform and has charisma. Then they have to deal with the fickle music industry, the adulation, and the groupies, all the while avoiding those pesky creative differences. Beck tells the story of Koyuki Tanaka, a daydreaming student who wandered into the wrong side of town one day, and had his future opened to world of possibilities.

This fifth disc of Beck - Mongolian Chop Squad, entitled Turn It Up, comes with four episodes. Previously on Beck, Koyuki had managed to put together enough money to buy a guitar of his own, and things looked to be going better and better for the band, especially when their CD got released in the US, and garnered plenty of favourable response. The problems began with the CD cover, which featured Ryusuke playing Lucille. It's just that back in the day, Ryusuke stole Lucille, and the rightful owner has been looking for it ever since. The rightful owner also likes shooting people, and at the end of the previous volume, a helicopter appeared over Ryusuke's home, accompanied by some very angry looking people.

19. Blues
Ryusuke's gone, Lucille is gone, the zombie dog Beck is gone as well, and no one knows where. Ryusuke's grandma reckons he's just walking the dog, but it's been two days. Ryusuke's in the tender care of Leon Sykes, who has come to Japan to visit his uncle Jon Lee Davis, as well as get his guitar and dog back. Giving Ryusuke a good kicking is just a bonus. Ryusuke actually doesn't mind bleeding that much if it means he'll get a chance to jam with legendary blues guitarist Jon Lee Davis. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Maho's got a sexy photoshoot in a magazine, which is news to Koyuki, and a cause of much nosebleed to Saku. Koyuki doesn't have to worry for long that he's losing touch with Maho again, when she calls and invites him to the Dying Breed movie, which has just opened in Japan. Only a certain soap opera actor has invited himself as well. Elation does turn to disappointment when Koyuki finds an ad for the Greatful Sound festival, asking bands to audition, but it transpires that the auditions were over months ago. But coinciding with a bandaged Ryusuke's return, they get a surprising visitor.

20. Greatful Sound
Kazuo Sato's sister started the Greatful Sound fest in Japan, but following her death, the festival has become commercialised. Kazuo wants to bring some feeling back to the event, and she's there to get Ryusuke to lean on Eddy to bring the Dying Breed back to Japan to perform. It's the perfect opportunity to get Beck seriously noticed, but Ryusuke will need to work on the other organisers. Ran, manager of Belle Ame is obviously out, but he can always call Leon Sykes, and apologise for bruising his knuckles with his face. At school, the movie has made a big impression, especially on girls, and following Koyuki's starring moment, he's even started signing autographs. Hiromi's more enamoured of him than ever, but it's actually Maho skipping pebbles off his bedroom window, climbing up, and asking to spend the night.

21. Write Music
With all the publicity in the US, Ryusuke feels that the best way to capitalise on it, is to release another CD, which means writing new songs, in between their day jobs, school and playing regular live sets at the Marquee. They are making an impact though, and the chances of playing at the Greatful Sound are looking more and more rosy. After taking a step forward with Maho, Koyuki inevitably takes one step back, when soap opera boy Yoshito just casually mentions that Maho isn't a stranger to sleepovers. Koyuki's depressed, then Saito's parakeet escapes so he's stressed as well, and suddenly inspiration strikes. Meanwhile Leon gets back to Ryusuke, with a chance to play at Greatful Sound, but he may be asking too much in return.

22. Performance Eve Festival
Just great! Koyuki's come up with a tune, and now Ryusuke is expecting lyrics as well? Not only that, but he's getting picked on at school again, and with just 10 days to Greatful Sound, the stress is getting to them all, and especially to Ryusuke for some reason. It seems everyone is making a deal with the devil, and the truth comes out when they get to the Festival. Ryusuke may have just signed Beck down the toilet to get the chance to play there. Meanwhile, Yoshito is performing with Belle Ame at the concert, and he's making deals with Koyuki over who gets to be with Maho. When will you learn not to trust that creep, Koyuki?

Picture

Beck gets an unproblematic 4:3 transfer (NTSC on the Region 1 of course). The image is clear throughout, the colours are strong, and there are no signs of obvious artefacts. The US disc gets multi-angle credit sequences. The US credits are re-versioned to show the English cast and crew in addition to the original crew, and when overlaid on the credit animation, the image suffers from strong aliasing. Fortunately the jagged lines are absent from the textless credit sequences in the extras, as well as the original Japanese language credits.

Madhouse studios provide the animation for Beck, and it is strong, vibrant and dynamic. The world design and the character designs are distinctive, and the singular feel of the show is palpable. As with all modern anime, CG and traditional 2D animation combines to make a pleasing whole. Here it is the guitars that are given the digital makeover, and the care taken on animating the instruments really adds a dimension to the anime.

Sound

You have a choice of DD 5.1 and DD 2.0 English, along with DD 2.0 Japanese and optional translated subtitles and signs. Naturally, given that it is a music heavy show, you can expect some serious j-rock tunes to nod your heads to. The sound design is more impressive in the 5.1 track of course, but it's pretty standard for a television anime. Given the music content, it's a shame that the Japanese couldn't have been a 5.1 track as well.

There is an extra dilemma in choosing languages this time around. Beck is a show about cultural differences; with everyday school kid Koyuki entering a new world of music. This difference is most apparent in the language spoken. In the Japanese dub, while Koyuki and his friends speak Japanese, Ryusuke and his circle are more used to speaking English (Ryusuke and Maho were raised in America), so for all the Japanese dialogue you'll be reading subtitles for, there is a fair bit of English too (the songs are mostly in English). The trouble is that fluent English spoken for a Japanese audience by Japanese voice actors, isn't fluent English for an English audience. Accents vary, with Ryusuke's VA quite good, while Maho's accent is strongly Japanese. Understandably then, the English dialogue is subtitled as well.

For the English dub, the cultural differences remain, but the script is reworked to lose the difference in language. It's understandable why this is done, and you don't have to suspend that extra bit of disbelief. It's like Arnold Schwarzenegger's perfect Arabic in True Lies. The thing that I am not quite au fait with yet is that the songs are rerecorded for the English dub as well. On the one hand you have performances by Japanese bands for the show, on the other you have voice actors rerecording those songs, and I'm not sure that is necessary in all cases. Regardless, you have both versions to listen to here, and you can make your own mind up as to which are better.

Extras

The usual animated menus, jacket picture, and textless songs are here. It's fun watching the end credits to see how many of the manga style music icons you can recognise. The Region 1 disc gets a large selection of trailers too, autoplaying with a trailer for Witchblade, and looks at Hell Girl, Mushi-shi, Dragonball Z, The Clamp Double Feature, Shuffle, Glass Fleet, Beck, and the Z Store on the disc. The US disc also offers multi angle credit sequences for the episodes.

There is another 'A Life On The Road' music video, this time it is, "Slip Out (A Little More Than Before)".

Finally, you'll find a Beck guitar pick slipped in the Amaray case, not the best idea for disc integrity.

Conclusion

At last, the penultimate volume of Beck. It really has been too long for this series to be concluded in the UK, and judging by the quality of this fifth instalment, keeping it from the UK audience is just cruel and unusual punishment. It is Beck after all, and if you have read of my unbridled fanboy love for the series in the first four volume reviews, then you won't be surprised to see more of that gushy and quite frankly embarrassing behaviour here. Volume 5 just reminds me of why I love this show so much. Having said that, volume 5 is where things get all… penultimatey. It's that big pause for breath, the moving of the chess pieces into position, that calm before the storm that is the series finale. You're in for the slow build up, the tightening of the screws in this collection of four episodes, and by the time we reach the end of the volume, the tension is unbearable. Let me put it this way, when volume 5 is eventually released in the UK, volume 6 had better be hot on its heels.

Oddly enough though, without the usual quota of big emotional moments, the regular and necessary catharsis required in a show like Beck, I actually had the time to pick at a couple of frayed edges. This is where I decided that the more fantastical elements are the weakest part of the show. Beck is at its best when it's being realistic, when it's about the young band members and their emotional ups and downs, their relationship issues, and their ambition to succeed in the music business. Just by being in the entertainment industry, they are moving in high circles, and rubbing shoulders with other music stars and actors is to be expected. Occasionally stuff happens which, while integral to the plot, is just a little too fantastic for comfort. Beck, the zombie dog turned out to be a rather benign distraction, but here it's the character of Leon Sykes. Leon is a gangster, prone to violence, and rumoured to be complicit in some notorious high profile crimes. He's also the guy who Ryusuke stole Lucille from, the bullet ridden guitar that Ryusuke was pictured with on the cover of Beck's CD. He's in Japan to recover his stolen property, which is fair enough, but in one of those annoying coincidences, he's also the nephew of Jon Lee Davis, blues guitarist, and once Ryusuke jams with him… Well, you know about music calming the savage beast and all that. It also turns out that Leon is a big player in the music business, and he's the one who can get Beck on stage at the Greatful Sound festival. I know stories like this thrive on coincidence and serendipity, but at no point should you actually notice that. I did here, which was annoying.

I have another gripe, believe it or not, but it isn't about the show, the disc, the writing or even the artwork. It's about Koyuki. There are times that I just want to slap some sense into the guy, and one of those times occurs in the final episode on this disc. However, if at anytime you start reacting to an animated character as a real person, that indicates two things; one, that you probably need psychiatric help, two, the creators of the anime have succeeded, they have you fully invested in the characters and the story, and the show won't let you go until it's done wringing every last emotional response from you. Some people would be lamenting the writers falling back on a character trait, becoming repetitive. I'm yelling at the screen for Koyuki to stop being so damned trusting, after all the times soap opera boy Yoshito has screwed him over. Koyuki and Yoshito are both rivals for Maho's affection, and that rivalry looks to be coming to a head at the Greatful Sound festival, where both of them are performing. Now, we've seen on several occasions that Yoshito has no qualms about setting Koyuki up for a fall, and the slimeball does it again here. The thing is that Koyuki practically asks him to, accepting when Yoshito offers to translate between Koyuki and an English-speaking band that want him to sing on stage with them, just as he did with Dying Breed. You can see it coming a mile off, and I guarantee that you will be sitting there, head in hands, peeking at the screen through your fingers.

Two negative paragraphs about Beck! I bet you weren't expecting that. Truth be told, they are two minuscule negatives in a whole ocean of positives, but it saved me from cutting and pasting from my previous reviews. I was still glued like a hawk to these four episodes, invested in everything that was occurring on screen, and rooting for the characters to succeed. It's pretty much the same response I had to the first four volumes of the series. Events move on in this collection of episodes. The next step for the band is getting to play at the Greatful Sound concert, and it slowly comes together in this volume with the profane aid of Leon Sykes, and the forthright passion of music lover Kazuo Sato. It turns out that dealing with Sykes is like signing your soul to the devil, and that sets up one thread of growing tension for the final volume. The second is Koyuki's growing closeness to Maho, and the rivalry with Yoshito. Koyuki and Maho's relationship has been volatile at the best of times, but in this volume there is more forward than reverse, with Maho spending time with him at the movie (which that rat Yoshito invited himself to), and Maho even sleeping over at Koyuki's place.

Musically, Koyuki is moving forward as well, finding inspiration, writing a song, while also recognising that the constraints that society has placed on him may be holding him back creatively. And once more, there is so much packed into these ninety minutes, so much going on in both the background and up front, that you know that you'll need a second watch just to appreciate it all. As a serial anime, Beck suffers more than most from its extended hiatus, and anime fans aren't known for their patience. The sooner this volume and the final one can be released in the UK, the better. But I can't exactly be a hypocrite and urge you to support your local anime industry anymore. If you can spin Region 1, then the conclusion is out there to be had, although my instincts tell me that I was the last one to the party.