So let me set the stage. We’re sitting alone in our room trying to figure out what that vision meant. You remember the vision I told you about, right? It was like a ship that was there and then not, and then there again. A ship, unless its a shipwreck (which this wasn’t), has to have people onboard. On something as big as this one seemed to be, there were surely lots and lots of people. We took it as an allegory: Try to imagine all those people living and working together and going about their lives and what you could learn from that, and that’s the basic premise we start from. The ship is its people and the people are their ship. The story, like most stories do, comes to us as we try to parse out some semblance of meaning and resonance from the images we saw. The story is written because it needed to be written, because it is important and necessary, almost like destiny. It really is as simple as that. But, can we really make a story out of all their stories?

Now I’m sitting on a beach tending a campfire because we were getting ready to go on a surfing trip before you stopped us and asked me to talk about storytelling structure. So I gave you the best I could come up with.

Anyway.

One thing I think the philosophers might be on the right track about, as I told you before, is the idea that there might be some truth in the wheel. No, wait, that’s wrong. What I mean to say is, if you look at a wheel, that can maybe tell you something about the universe because it’s a symbol. It’s something that stands in for something else. You don’t need words, at least not the things we typically think of of as words, because the thing reflects the truth-bits you write onto it back at you all by itself. But this is all stuff you already know (you did watch the episode, right?), so there’s little point in me rambling on about it. Where I might disagree with the philosophers I think is the idea that everything goes around and around, constantly repeating itself (I’m not repeating myself, am I?). That’s a consequence of them fixating on the wheel so much.

I don’t write stories. I channel them. What that means to me is I don’t see wheels going around and around, but tides ebbing and flowing, coming and going. The tide goes out and comes back in again because it always does. We can predict when and where its going to happen (damn it, what did I do with that tide chart?), and though the tide is a little different every day and every night, it’s still there and still a tide. Remember, we can’t say precisely what’s going to happen in the future (I don’t think I’d even use that particular term, to be perfectly honest with you), but because we see things happening we know, by definition that they’ll happen.…

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What it comes down to is that we were compelled to write it. That’s the main thing.

It started, like most things do, with a vision. Some people say visions are messages from somewhere else telling you what you need to do next. But I don’t think that’s true, personally: For us…for me…It’s more of a brief flash of some image or feeling, always without any sort of context. We never comprehend the things we see as we see them. You have to understand that when we touch the visions we see are not clear at all-More…fuzzy and muddy. Those are words you could use for it. But the vision is still there, and it’s my job to bring it to you because, in my experience, visions usually tend to mean something. So now I suppose you want me to talk about the things we said and the order in which we said them. R-really? I mean, isn’t the story already enough for you? I’ve already said my piece. I’m a storyteller, not a philosopher. I just do my job and consider myself lucky to be able to do what I do. I can’t possibly be that interesting to you, can I?

Well, fine, I guess you wouldn’t have called me here for any other reason…

I’m of the mind that things happen because we know they’re going to. Planets orbit their stars in the silent darkness as they always have, casting day into night and into day again. I don’t believe that space is an ocean, but I do think that our words, our songs and our mantras flow through us just like water flows through the oceans (which reminds me, I need to check the tide charts for Ocean Ridge. We’re going on vacation soon, you know). The very best we can strive for is to be able to channel this flow in a way that can help us. When we do this, I think we can feel a bit the arcs and rotations of the universe. Those philosopher guys who spend all their days in the casinos spinning wheel after wheel hoping that *this* time it will be different understand maybe some of this, but they’re so focused on spinning around and around in circles they never get to the point of realising they’re in the wheel too.

But look at me. Here I go on and on again like a silly broken record. This isn’t what you wanted to hear me talk about, was it? Well, what we saw that night was a ship adrift in inky night. It was an enormous ship clad in the loveliest shade of blue you’ve ever seen. It was sparkling and glowing, illuminating the darkness around it Except, not really. It was more like the idea of a ship…but also the idea of a ship not being there.…

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Irritatingly, the much-discussed pattern is still in effect. You know what that means.

Although truth be known that’s being a tad unfair. “Nostalgic Blues Makes a Killer Soundtrack” isn’t terrible: There’s a handful of things about it to recommend and it’s not ethically bankrupt, but the fact is this is still an off week and this still means it doesn’t work either. The big problem is this is yet another episode that lacks thematic cohesion: The best way I can come up with to describe it is that it seems to be a combination of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and The Defiant Ones. Also the blues for some reason. Why…I honestly couldn’t tell you, unless I’m missing something particularly blatant, which is always a possibility.

The first film is credited with finally killing off the western genre in the US and chronicles the falling out between a bounty hunter and an outlaw who decide to terminate their partnership and come to blows over the money, while a mercenary discovers the whereabouts of a hidden stash of Confederate gold during the Civil War. The other two find out, and proceed to generally try to swindle and betray each other throughout the film’s runtime. Our analogues here would I guess be Blues the assassin and his target, the business tycoon of the “Miss Creamy Gal Beaty Pageant” (and I can’t believe I actually wrote those words: This is going to look so, so wrong outside the context of this episode) who killed Blues’ mother, a Blues singer, by throwing her into the gaping maw of an active volcano for reasons I don’t think are ever actually explained. The owner is running an insurance scam on the local hotel and plans to blow it up, and Blues is out to stop him and avenge his mother’s death.

The second is the classic story about two convicts, a black man named Noah and a white man named Joker, who escape prison, hate each other, but are handcuffed together and are forced to co-operate and learn to appreciate each other in order to survive. The analogues here are clearer, with Blues as Joker and Kei as Noah, as they spend the majority of the episode in handcuffs bickering with each other and have to team up against the greater evil of the owner. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly also has a scene where Tuco, the bandit, is captured by Union forces and is handcuffed to his captor. Both it and this episode also have scenes where trains and bathrooms play pivotal roles: Tuco uses a trip to the men’s room to escape in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly by leaping from the moving carriage and killing the Union soldier he was chained to and Dirty Pair uses restrooms to make a really lame and unfunny joke. And indeed, trains do prove important to the climax here, as the owner has rigged a ridiculously convoluted scheme that involves running a monorail over a precise section of track at a precise moment in time to detonate a bomb that will burn down the hotel.…

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Over at Teatime in Elenore City, webmaster Nozmo has a list of mini-reviews of several animated Dirty Pair stories with ratings out of five. Apparently, this one was terrible enough to warrant Nozmo’s lowest possible score: A 1 out of 5. Now, I can certainly see how this episode could rub some people the wrong way, especially if you happen to be of a Hard SF predisposition, as this is essentially the opposite of that. It is *quite* silly and there are times you worry because you’re not sure which way it’s going to go, but its not long before it becomes clear this is, at least as far as I’m concerned, yet another classic.

For the first time in what feels like ages, though in reality it’s only been three weeks, Dirty Pair is actually shooting for the stars and hitting its target. There are moments of undeniable wackiness; almost to the extent of the Mouse Nazis, but this time there’s enough charm permeating the whole production that it doesn’t feel off-putting or inappropriate. And furthermore, much to my delight, “An Unjustified Lover’s Grudge. Let Me Love You Without Revenge” is once more as cosmic and profound as this series has ever been. But before we can get into that, we should square away what is likely the biggest complaint about this episode right away. You would think that after all I’ve ranted and raved about lately in regards to Kei and Yuri being written badly, badly out of character and the narrative constantly mocking them I would throw an absolute *fit* here. This is, after all, an episode where Kei and Yuri seemingly spend an inordinate amount of time competing for the affections of a reclusive suave bishōnen millionaire, each trying to prove she’s a “better woman” then her partner. Well, in between blatant pratfalls at any rate.

Ah, but this isn’t even what’s going on at a textual level: The girls are undercover again, this time extradiegetically. Kei (natch) even comes right out and tells us (that is, she looks straight into the camera and addresses the audience directly) their mission is to show their client what real women and real love are truly like. They fear Reamonn’s dedication to Meshuzura, a plaster statue, is unhealthy and counterproductive, especially as they go in thinking he’s a raving misogynist. He’s not, just *literally* allergic to women (hence why he only allows himself to be intimate with plaster statues), but his inability to coexist with them is nevertheless seen as a problem that needs to be corrected. So, Kei and Yuri put on various elabourate displays of femininity they assume Reamonn, a dashing, upper-class aristocrat, will find attractive and appealing. Naturally, they fail hilariously and spectacularly, because Kei and Yuri can never and will never be subsumed by traditional gender roles and commonly held notions of ideal femininity.

(This is, in some ways, a scene that is more relevant today then it would have been in 1985, with contemporary young Japanese society *literally* divided along gender lines due to confusion over the collapse of traditional gender roles.)…

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Yup, it’s not so hot.

Although, we do seem to be experiencing a kind of averaging-out of the show’s quality. There are numerous good bits intermingled with more then enough not-so-good bits to land this one at decisively mediocre, but at least it’s not another catastrophic derailment. The girls aren’t really right again, landing more often then comfortable in a depiction that reinforces their inaccurate pop stereotypes, though there are a number of scenes that do balance this out some. Much like last time, the show is trying to combine slapstick humour with a darker and more serious tone, but its not as effective here. There are specific moments that really stand out, like the comedic shootout in hotel in the first act, which contrasts with the dramatic storm on the police station at the end where Gooley is gunned down by the crooked chief who set the 3WA up, but this episode can’t mode shift to the same degree last week’s could, and this ends up giving the impression of a story that, in spite of its individual successful setpieces, never really comes together in a cohesive form.

But the quality argument isn’t an especially captivating one anymore: Another thing “Pardon Us. Trouble’s On the Run, So We’re Coming Through! “ shares with “Come Out, Come Out, Assassin” is that it’s a further step in the development of Sunrise’s version of Dirty Pair: Mixing light comedy with drama and heady sci-fi concepts is a theme that will be dealt with explicitly (and far more effectively) in the second series and two of the three movies, Dirty Pair: Affair of Nolandia and Dirty Pair: Flight 005 Conspiracy. Looking at Sunrise stumbling over this now really isn’t much help to us except as an example of what amounts to a rough draft. Part of this may also simply be do to the fact it’s functionally impossible to sustain momentum over a 30-episode season of *anything*, and even Dirty Pair isn’t immune. This is why it’s such a wise decision on the part of Sunrise to slice the episode count for the second series by two thirds, but now I’m in real danger of spilling my hand too early in my attempt to avoid talking about this episode.

No, what’s of more interest to me at this point in the show’s history is a theme I noticed and touched on briefly in the last mediocre outing: Who exactly, is this show for and what makes it unique among Dirty Pair adaptations?

The answer seems, at first, obvious: Surely fans who wanted to see the next logical step in the evolution of Kei and Yuri’s dynamic and their narrative universe, right? But it’s actually a more complex and muddled issue then it might seem to be at first glance. We’ll talk about it in considerable more depth when the time comes, but one of the things that’s revealing about Affair of Nolandia is that it was explicitly made for and marketed to fans of the light novels who didn’t like the first series, and the movie pretty clearly sees that audience as “hardcore science fiction fans”.…

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