by Wednesday White

I sat here for a month, bringing plot and books and experts to the television. Bringing plot and experts to the screen. Reading and combing and gnashing my teeth. I wanted to know what made Broken Saints so gosh darned special. I wanted to know what the impact was. I wanted to taste it.

Mostly, I tasted the wine and the cider and the beer which landed in my life to forestall disaster. I distinctly remember a moment wherein I strode into the living room and picked up the Bombardier my partner, David, was drinking, pouring foam into my nose and never missing a beat. It was better.

Tell me I'm wrong. I want to be wrong.

I want to be wrong.

Oh yes.

Look, I can't tell you what I saw. Not in any discernible way. There was a bunch of military stuff, sinking ships, swearing, homoerotic posturing by muscular fellows, strobing and flashing and nothing at all. Apparently, if you take some cow/babe hybrid and dump her in Fiji, you can remake God and tie her to a crucifix of monitors and bring the Rapture. Look. I don't know, OK? I can explain Salem Kirban. I can explain Jerry Jenkins. This, I ... this, I have to drink for.

I don't know. I don't know, all right? I asked theologians and religions nerds and scientists and UNIX security experts. I asked, and I demanded explanation.

I don't know. And if I've missed the point? Don't blame me.

I don't know what to make of cute blonde chicks in the tropics. I didn't know what to make of Shandala, blissing over God. I know that voice; it's a Varsity Christian Fellowship member on her first E trip. The divine drew itself into her head like a migraine, bleached her even blonder, and all that resonated was her actress. Her actress, droning.

God, in this place, is droning. So you know.

An episode passed. We hit Linux references. I didn't know why anyone would go to Canada -- I'm a 'nuck geek, see -- I didn't know why anyone would do that just to go Code For Freedom. I asked David, whose nerd cred runs higher and hotter than even mine, to tell me what was wrong. "Well," he said, first of all, "he's running nmap -- albeit in stealth mode -- on a system he already has several ways into. On a system he had root on until yesterday, no less." And so Raimi, jaded haxor craxor to the stars, or at least to himself, was. It seemed off, but after all of the sodomy metaphors and other assorted posturing, I was prepared for nothing less.

"But," David noticed, ever astute, "he's just had his hand burnt by the Man." Then Raimi's suite of monitors -- suite of monitors, people; the man's running Xwindows at one xterm per CRT -- began screaming that the end was nigh.

We're now safely into MovieOS land. Never mind.

MovieOS land begets movies. I wasn't forgiving Oran, ninja Iraqi warrior from the land of piety, no matter how hard he wove his missionary zeal into the body of a deformed Bruce Lee. I wasn't forgiving him, no matter how hard he smashed the faces of his homoerotic aggressors. I wasn't forgiving him because his writer wasn't hemmed in by his director. The man of action drowned in his own scriptures.

The man of action was, therefore, difficult to distinguish from the man of thought and spirit. Kamimura, the Shinto monk with the Buddhist markings, supposedly carried the synthesis of mind and earth across water to America. I never discerned why. Exposition gave me ample opportunity, but all I could remember were two lines from The Craft:

"We need a fourth."

"North, south, east and west. We can make things happen."

I'm sure you can, girls. I'm sure you can.

Why, we all wanted to know, is this land an experimental comic? In the sixties and seventies, laced through the memory of grown children in every English-speaking territory, Spider-Man and assorted Marvel heroes incarnated as stiff marionettes. Limited animation was a budget miracle. In the eighties, and even today, you could take pages from illustrated children's books, move a limb, and call it animation. It didn't make the effort a revolution in storytelling; it made it moderately engaging to young children.

Broken Saints is animated in Flash. Sometimes poorly (never look at these people naked; never look at their expressions; never, ever look at how their mouths must work). Sometimes, Photoshop eats their skull-disabled faces and coats them with rendered shadows. Sometimes, it's lovely. Sometimes, it's like slideshows.

Sometimes, it's almost like old cartoons. On the DVD, there's a dub track, mixed in Dolby 5.1 (amusing, if insufficiently directional for the effort) and voiced by Ocean actors. (This, for the benefit of anime nerds everywhere, doesn't make it anime, no matter what the eyes look like. Ocean does ADR for all kinds of things.) When you read at the speed of sight, this amounts to having your book on film narrated by the snails.

And all which that entails.

Book me. I'm unromantic. Type by moving your hands in broad arcs? I can't come with you. Fire your gun from side to side after aiming it at your partner? I can't believe you. I've fired guns. I've typed. I've hacked. I know. I know this much: Marionettes aren't revolution. Paper marionettes are WWII. Fire when ready.

What do we do, folks? What do we do when they fire?

I'll tell you what we do when they fire.

We run.

I spent a month with these discs. I can't tell you what the plot was. I tried. I related what I knew to a dozen individuals, at least. None of them could discern my babbling. I showed them portions. I showed one entire discs. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing.

Is this melodramatic? They give pretense. I return lamentations.

We watch anime once a week, together, in a group. Once, someone told me that his threshold was not that Utena or Haibane Renmei or anything else meant something, but that it believably appeared to. We waited and we watched; we had no conviction of meaning here.

Broken Saints was hollow.

Broken Saints was wrong.

On any other planet, when the child of a barbaric culture washes up onto your shore, and it's your sacred duty to kill the kittens?

You kill the kittens.

Shandala, who came to be known in our house as "hot white Fiji chick," is problematic. She's God's blessed Mary Sue, so special and sacred that the purple-eyed muggle-borns cry themselves to sleep.

The village chief saved her, raised her, cared for her. Even when he lost his wife to circumstances you can tie to the Sue, he carried on. Little one is special. Little one is wise. Little one is perfect. God's own blonde. God's own modest blonde.

God's own vision in blue.

Shoot me now.

Shandala sacrificed so much that she'd have eaten plants to save her kitten. It really is all about Shandala and her kitten, when you reach the core. Save the kitten. Kill the kitten. Love the kitten. Kitten washes onto the shore in a sack? Here's a hint, Shandala. Here's a clue. Here's a bloody clue.

Kill the kitten.

Kitten's gonna die. Kitten's gonna die on disc four. Kitten's gonna have your eyes. Kitten's gonna die. Kitten's gonna kill you, Shandala. Kitten's gonna die. Go first.

Instead, up floats Prince Gabriel to the island. Your parents are worried! Your life is waiting for you! Come away! Come away and drown. Yeah. Okay.

Whatever.

I have no mercy for Shandala. I've read The Courage to Heal; I've read Elizabeth Loftus. I've destroyed the plot. Let me tell you something: hinge your goddess on a flawed, glossed, ill-researched model of traumatic memory? Lose the plot. And if I've missed the point? That's not because of me.

My hopes rested with Raimi, haxorcraxor supreme. Everything was sanded condom sodomy to him, but at least he spoke a language something like the world.

Sanded condom sodomy is close enough to real. Oran, pious as a tract and half as deep, lost me within minutes; his aggressors piled homosexual slurs upon him, and he flung monotony right back at them. Kamimura, dense and fogged, insignificant and wrong, passed out money like an automaton. Raimi posed and wanked and stood for every disaffected nerd alive, but he spoke English. Cussing English, but English. Could I ally myself with him? Could I deal with the excess, and call him young?

No. He had a tarot reading, then he had a battle cry: "I believe in myself!"

Fuck.

Or, to quote Raimi's every fifth word: Motherfucker.

Badarse. Baby. Take me now.

Whatever.

You're how many paragraphs in, and you want to know why I'm unclear. You're how many paragraphs in, and you want a justification. You want to know: yes, Wednesday; what did you love?

Very little.

I loved Shandala running around in a charcoal and pastel world. I loved the moments where house style was an accessory, though not the points where masturbatory film screamed explicit voice (The Matrix? Fight Club? Fat and ash don't make a soul). I loved the moments where I wasn't where I was.

All too rare.

Broken Saints carries awards, and kudos, and shimmer, and shine, and praise. I tried. I wanted beauty; I enabled like a codependent sponsor. "One more disc and it'll be better. One more disc and it'll rule. It'll evolve. They had years. These are years in a bottle. This is a bottle. It'll distill."

No. No. No. It can't.

It's too shrill.