BNA – The Importance of Themes

So why can’t I make my summary text justified? I really hate it this way. In case someone hasn’t heard yet, Guttenberg kinda sucks for some things. It took me an hour just to figure out how to do my usual post opener and I gave up in the end. I had to use a classic block that is not reusable. Good job you guys.

Anyways… I had been on a pretty lucky streak with Netflix’s original anime. Everything I had seen had been pretty great so I was looking forward to BNA. When I saw that Trigger had made it, I was looking forward to it even more! I’m a bit of a Trigger fangirl. So how did it fare?

The look was pretty instantly recognizable and pretty great. I reminded me most of Promare with some Luluco thrown in. Lately, I find that Trigger has been very pink with their colour palettes and I am here for it! BNA is no exception with a palette that errs on the side on candy-coated.

Honestly, the show is pretty, the animation is great as you would expect and the acting is good across the board, at least in Japanese. Trigger knows how to make an anime and BNA is no exception. I will say the camera work is fairly conventional. but as the animation is often a bit frantic, this is actually a plus in my opinion.

Unfortunately, BNA is high on style but lacking in substance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not unpleasant or painfully stupid. I found myself enjoying it for the most part and at times I was quite invested and wanted to know where the story went. And it’s not like it didn’t go anywhere at all mind you. If you just flatly layout the plot you will see that there is a very coherent one with B and C plots to booth, which makes sense and comes to a viable resolution.

Similarly, the characters are all complete. They all have personal motivations that are in line with their personalities and backstories. They all act and react accordingly. They are logically developed and have individual evolution that fits in well with the larger plot.

The thing is, despite being a generally technically proficient narrative, it feels hollow or maybe just shallow. I have seen a lot of people call it aimless or unfocused and I agree with this. Mainly though, I think it lacks a proper central theme.

One of the very common narration problems I encounter when watching anime, especially shorter series, is that they try to cram way too many things in and end up losing their way. At first glance, I was tempted to lump BNA in with those anime. It tries to do a lot. There is the obvious race or class analogy, or both depending on your reading. There is a social commentary on political structures and on organized religion as well as on the general role and power of strength. There’s the obvious exploration of human nature and of artificial societal constructs. There’s even some commentary on the advancement of science! See what I mean, a lot is going on.

And because of all this, I figured that they just ended up losing the thread along the way. In the first half, I thought it was a sort of Noble Savage metaphor reimagined as the nobility was slowly drained out of the picture. Now that sounds pretty great. I would totally watch that. Except, as the episodes piled on, the story ended up contradicting this or just pushing aside the metaphor altogether and I realized that wasn’t it.

Then I thought maybe one of those themes I mentioned earlier is in fact the central one but it just got diluted in all the rest. However, a last-minute “twist”, which is a prime example of how not to do twists, pretty much undid most of those themes anyways so I was once again perplexed.

That’s when I figured that it was in fact a way more basic problem. Well, I don’t know this for a fact or anything, it’s just the feeling that I get. I think someone, or rather many someones, threw out all the ideas they thought were cool or interesting for this story-line and the production incorporated them in fairly well and then at episode 11 out of 12 an intern ran up to the director in a panic and shuddered out, we don’t actually have any sort of thesis to tie this all together sir!! What are we going to do??? Then that intern was fired and they thought, it’s fine, we’ll just throw a twist in and no one will notice.

Like I said, I’m not 100% sure that that’s exactly what happened. It’s possible the intern was fired before finishing the second sentence. All I know is that for me, the experience of watching BNA was like watching an anime made by a very talented studio that sort of forgot to give their story a point. Oddly, it’s by far not the worst series I’ve seen. And I will commend it for showing me that a point isn’t absolutely necessary for an anime. But I can’t deny that the story did suffer for it.

In the end, what could have been a great success for Trigger ended up as a pretty but forgettable offering. It’s a series you can easily skip but if you’re a Trigger fan like me, it does have some worth while moments.