Scissor salad

Anime is not only a Japanese thing anymore! Although they certainly still dominate a huge part of the market, in recent years more and more Asian countries have been giving their fair share within the animated medium. It is not only the case of famous manhwas that later received an anime adaptation either, as Solo Leveling for instance (in this case, the studio that produced it is still Japanese, but the source material is Korean). In the past few months, I had the pleasure of exploring the Chinese side of animation and, I must say, there is much to see and talk about. Just to name a few shows, already a few years back there was a lot of hype surrounding Hitori no Shita, by now Super Cube just finished airing its first season and there is much anticipation for the upcoming To be Hero X. Today however I wanted to discuss one series in particular that caught my attention: Scissor Seven.

Scissor Seven, created and directed by He Xiaofeng, starts off as a very whimsical, cartoony and mindless anime series that tends not to take itself too seriously. Already in the first season however – in the very first episode in fact – it is possible to note a certain darker undertone. Given that the main protagonist has partial amnesia, this also enables the series to analyze more ontological issues and deeper themes. There is a fantastic word that is used in the very first episode, one that is applied to an absurd scenario but I feel can be used for the series as a whole: melodarkmatic (instead of the obvious melodramatic). While this minor thing may seem trivial, I would like to give it a little more emphasis than just a simple comical line dropped within the anime.

As far as the animation is concerned, there is a certain roughness to it accompanied by drastic style changes. This is however does not seem to be made by chance as the immersion is never ruined. The shifts in style accentuate the comedic moments, making already absurd scenarios feel even more whacky. The action sequencing is where Scissor Seven truly shines: I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but it is almost as if the animators used fewer frames in the fighting sequences for instance; this creates moments that feel more abrupt, but also more dynamic. The punches and the choreography of the battles in general, as such, feel like an explosive depiction rather than a static one.

So it is cartoony and yet it is existential, it goes bat shit crazy and yet it conceals a deeper character building, it is fun and funny and still manages to take time for some more solemn moments. Oh yeah, on a secondary note the music just hits like a goddamned truck. I might not be able to understand the Chinese lyrics, but I still vibed with the guitar riffs.

I have been reflecting on the status of anime in recent years and something has been on my mind; I noticed more and more a certain degree of stagnation and mediocrity. Let’s face it, when a genre becomes popular and attracts a vaster quantity of people, it also creates an economic interest which in turn leads to the oversaturation of the market. It is, for instance, the case of many of the dime-a-dozen generic isekai that have been coming out every year. This is however not to say that there is no originality left, quite the contrary. As opposed to the majority of the cinematographic industry, from my personal interpretation, anime is still evolving. While there still are many series that are being produced and are at best trivial, every year it is possible to find something that feels like a breath of revivifying fresh air. This is even more significant when considering that Japan is not the sole producer and exporter anymore. The way I see it is that the genre of anime itself is growing and adapting; it is still an important medium to convey different interpretation on the state of current affairs or provide reflections that would be otherwise difficult to learn from books or cinema. Scissor Seven is just one of the examples where mindless whimsical fun slowly translates into a grimmer and more mature story that has something to say.

PS: In this article I mostly discussed a specific type of animation. For this reason, I did not touch on the western animation works (think for instance Avatar the Last Airbender or even a more recent Arcane) that stylistically share a lot of similarities with Japanese anime. I acknowledge their existence and importance, but I was ultimately discussing something else.