Glass Mask 2005 is a surprisingly underappreciated dramatic experience following 13-year-old Maya and her undying passion for storytelling.
The Plot
Although stories singularly occupy her mind to the extent she can memorize an entire movie after seeing it once, she, unfortunately, has no outlet for her talent. Due to her impoverished circumstances, she's obligated to work with her mom at a restaurant despite her young age.
The story kicks into motion when an eccentric retired actress discovers Maya's hidden abilities and guides her towards her destiny. The anime is basically a coming-of-age story following Maya's self-realization that she's not just a talentless, clumsy, poor girl.
Instead, she is a source of untapped potential as her boundless imagination grants her the ability to empathize with her characters. Although Maya's knack for empathy and method-acting allows her to fit each role, her skills as an actress are hindered by inexperience. After all, it's hard to empathize with a character when you have no similar life experiences.
Each role Maya enacts serves to provide new challenges for her as an actress and develop her as a woman by expanding her perspective. She'll have to train hard to understand what it means to be injured, blind, fearing for her life, hopelessly in love, and more
In addition to each play serving as a vehicle for Maya's character development, the plays themselves were also enjoyable on multiple levels.
First, I found their stories interesting, considering many plays span several episodes.
Secondly, Maya has to utilize adaptive problem solving as there are numerous occasions she must improvise due to technical difficulties to sustain suspension of disbelief.
In addition to her on-stage difficulties, she's on the receiving end of much tough love, bullying, and gaslighting, creating some truly tragic moments that try her patience and test her sanity.
While I wouldn't say her experiences are as densely bleak as Dear Brother, Glass Mask lacks similar balancing elements due to its lack of well-developed support characters. Instead, we get 51 episodes of Maya struggling while nearly every prominent character is either antagonistic or manipulative.
The narrative of Glass Mask shines like a spotlight down over Maya making her the singular most important character, and it shows. Most of the side characters are only developed when it directly relates to the main plot. Of course, some receive backstories in the final act and sparsely in between.
Still, the anime felt a bit too long for it to focus so intensely on just one character. Although I enjoyed her development and most of the plays, a few well-developed positive-natured supporting characters would have made the anime feel more balanced.
Thankfully the second half treats us to the developing rivalry between Maya and her idol Ayumi which I thought was the anime's most believable character dynamic. Maya and Ayumi both practice different acting methods.
Ayumi is more technically skilled, which allows her to play all roles equally well. On the other hand, Maya is more free-form, allowing her creativity and enthusiasm to place her into the mind of her character, becoming a method actress.
Each side has its pros and cons. While Ayumi lacks the spontaneity to adapt her roles to the mood, Maya has difficulties with unintentionally upstaging her cast members even when playing a minor role. I appreciated this competitive dynamic because it developed both characters almost equally through their life and on-stage experiences. Although I enjoyed the dynamic between Maya and a few other characters, I felt their involvement in her development was far too manipulative and detrimental.
Almost everyone here is complicit in some terrible acts that most people would never forgive them for, yet Maya doesn't seem to take their actions as seriously as you'd expect. I felt this cheapened its narrative all for the sake of adding cliche shoujo elements to an otherwise unique anime.
I usually don't like to use the word cliche, but in this case, being even slightly more descriptive would spoil the experience.
Is It Worth to Watch ?
Overall, I felt Glass Mask 2005 was a dramatic and almost consistently enjoyable anime with a few disagreeable narrative turns in its final act. I give Glass Mask 2005 an 8/10. I recommend it to everyone, especially fans of theater. Keep in mind, it's a subject I know nothing about, but they enact some famous stories and show the behind-the-scenes struggles of its cast and all that goes into their production.
Glass Mask also had 2 prior anime adaptations, a 3 episode OVA and a 23 episode anime series. Glass Mask 2005 is the definitive version. It looks the best, it adapts what I assume is the complete story while the others go about halfway, and I felt its pacing and directing was also superior. The first few episodes of 2005 were some of my favorites, yet these events were glossed over in the other versions. Needless to say, you can avoid both of these other versions and just watch the 2005 anime.
Comments
Post a Comment