#120: Gravion (2002)

From https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/
images/Gravion_1126.jpg

Director: Masami Ōbari

Screenplay: Fumihiko Shimo

Voice Cast: Haruna Ikezawa as Runa Gusuku; Houko Kuwashima as Leele; Jun Fukuyama as Toga Tenkuji; Kenichi Suzumura as Eiji Shigure; Mai Nakahara as Eina; Yuu Asakawa as Mizuki Tachibana; Hikaru Midorikawa as Raven; Sho Hayami as Klein Sandman

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

The giant robot/super robot anime was 1963's Tetsujin-28, an adaptation of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's 1956 manga Tetsujin 28-go. The concept which has become a stereotype and large part of the aesthetic of anime in general, giant robots fighting each other or monsters, would however be properly solidified in the 1970s when manga author Go Nagai created Mazinger Z, which was a manga and first adapted into anime in 1972. Over the next few decades new aspects would be created within the genre - Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-1980), whilst initially not successful, would eventually generate into a cultural institution alongside bringing more adult "realistic" world building, whilst Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995-6) in the nineties would bring further psychological depth, alongside countless other shows that'd develop and further sub-genres and styles within this type of story.

At some point, however, giant robots no longer were a major genre in the sense of selling for children - the seventies shows were as much to sell toys to children, and when they weren't the target audience it had to become the children who grew up into adults, which is why we'll get into the prominence of "fan service". That term has been used to denote sexual content, but "fan service" generally means something to appeal to fans, including references to other anime/manga or anything to denote nostalgia, all the types discussed to be brought up with Gravion. This is important as, in the 2000s, after a crop of post-Evangelion work trying to ride its wave of success, you started from the nineties too to have throwbacks to the older type of robot shows but meant more for adults. Eventually you'd also have Gurren Lagann (2007), a studio Gainax work which was arguably at the time the one giant robot show which has a greater audience appeal, but was openly taking inspiration from the old style of the genre rather than Evangelion's dark psychological tone. In the middle of this is Gravion, which immediately denotes which side of the fence it is as, bright and vivid, it's a tale of a squad of pilots who fight monsters every week, scored by JAM Project, a group whose existence in anime is to score mecha programmes. When they have a lyric here in the transformation scene of "soldier of soldier", immediately it tells you from the first episode this is a deliberately broad and bombastic show.

It's befittingly the directorial work of Masami Ōbari, a figure who to give him his due credit is a highly regarded animator and character/mecha designer. Ōbari's directorial career on the other hand is a weird and polarising one sadly; immediately recognisable for his idiosyncratic character designs, (lithe figures, exaggerated curves on female characters, pronounced noses etc.), which could however put people off, he nonetheless started off with fan favourites like two episodes of Bubblegum Crisis (1987-1991), Detonator Organ (1991) and the 1994 Fatal Fury film.

It is by 1996 where his work gets divisive and also not liked. I can attest to Voltage Fighter Gowcaiser (1996), an adaptation of an obscure Neo Geo fighting game, and Virus Buster Serge (1997), one of the first TV series Manga Entertainment released in the UK, being ridiculous. At the point he helms Gravion, the first series in this giant robot throwback series, he's already in his period of directing hentai anime like Angel Blade (2001-2003), which is another irony knowing that, in the 2000s on, one of the ways to sell these giant robot shows to a wider audience was to increase the sex appeal, with a lot of fetishes clearly chosen for this 2002 series to please potential otaku.

Having not watched a lot of this genre, I have however developed enough knowledge of how this old school type of mecha show, not the realistic ones or the likes of Gundam, practically embrace their clichés, be it the elaborate transformation sequences to a plot about a piece of an enemy controlling the robot I remember appearing in Mazinkaiser (2001-2), a spin-off Go Nagai project for OVA. Here in Gravion, in the first episode, a mysterious billionaire named Sandman informs the global government of the planet that not only is there an oncoming alien invasion but, since no one believes him, he's thankfully prepared a giant robot powered by the mysterious energy of gravity to face them, piloted by denizens living in his giant floating castle. Be it Toga who grew up there, or Luna who was orphaned, everyone has a special trait that allows him or her to undergo the stress of piloting each of the vehicles that form the ultimate Gravion robot. One last member needed to pilot one of the legs is Eiji, who comes to the castle the night of this announcement to locate his missing older sister Ayaka, only for Sandman to have deliberately gotten him there to join the team through this, the mystery of his older sister enough to keep Eiji on.

From there it's, as mentioned, a monster of the week series, brightly coloured and with a lack of pretence which is charming. The show's simple, the characters archetypes that bicker, bond and want to protect the planet, even though there are details which are drip fed throughout. Secrets are revealed, and in probably the make and break aspect of Gravion, its arguably a prologue, as Gravion (whilst it took two years to appear) would have a sequel which finished the series called Gravion Zwei. Sequel series are a curious thing for me as, in most cases, a lot of anime is one show, or has over fifty episodes is required for big scale work; some major franchises have multiple sequel series, which I have rarely watched even in leisure, and there's the issue, for this case, that whether you have a show which tells its story over a pair of series that anime's spotty history in terms of availability can be a nightmare. This poses a problem if, like me, that meant having to try to track down that sequel series for the whole story including major plot details; bizarrely, in a growing file of strange decisions ADV Films made before they went in the red financially, they only released the first season in the United Kingdom, so its notable this review is entirely going to be about the first season only.

From https://ai.fancaps.net/galleries/Gravion/
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Immediately in the first episode the influence of trying to sell the series is felt in how Sandman's home is populated by maids, woman and young girls, including very young girls, which might be innocuous but has to be in mind, even if its kawaii (cute), such iconography is a fetish that grew in the decades for otaku. As you read that piece, that detail is understandably going to make many of you uncomfortable to consider. This is where I myself admit my discomfort with it too. Some of it is the usual absurdity - that the oldest pilot of the Gravion robot, Mizuki, has (and I apologise for the crassness) a Double F bust size which is comically emphasised by even her personal fighter plane seat involving her leaning over - but I could've done without the jokes of young (underage) maids constantly stripping Eiji naked for medical checks.

It thankfully never becomes the main point of the show, and at least we also got Cookie, a character I wish we had more of, the main maid who is an adult woman and, in this world, is so absurdly super strong she can carry five people, only one a child, on her own shoulders in the middle of a city wide evacuation. The rest is just, from the context, what was forced onto the production, as interestingly this is a female dominated show where said female cast are quite strong. There are only two male pilots of the robot, and even the techs, despite still wearing maid costumes, are women in Sandman's entourage. There are stereotypes, such as Luna having a love-hate relationship with Eiji, but Mizuki is revealed to have a back-story, in spite of her hyper sexualised character design, of being very intelligent and the friend of Eiji's older sister and no one is also incompetent. The one character, the shy glasses wearing pilot Eina, who gets flustered in fights is also painted as such without it becoming demeaning. So yeah, it is very odd that the show was stuck with some of the fan service of a sexual kind baring the usual sex comedy hijinks, the sign of how these giant robot shows were stuck having to do this in spite of strong female characters.

Not a lot is delved into in terms of the characters in general, their world almost entirely the castle and fighting robots. A lot of major plot points clearly will appear in Gravion Zwei, but titbits are given - we meet Leele, a mysterious shy girl hidden away in one of the towers in Sandman's castle, Mizuki has an episode dealing with her relationship to Ayaka, and we have an episode in Luna's home of Okinawa, which proved a great episode altogether for world building and comedy. The world Eiji left, alongside his conflict of whether to be part of this group, becomes the crux of the finale, which does end the series on a conclusion of some sort. It's here that the obvious issue, not the series' fault, that having two different seasons which were released separately will prove an issue if you cannot track Gravion Zwei down, such as when another throwback to giant robot anime which was openly inspired by Batman: The Animated Series (1992-5), The Big O had its 1999-2000 series and a 2003 series but only the first ever released in the UK on DVD. These are old series now, and realising how long it took to even get the second series finally produced, Gravion as a first season feels like merely the build, perversely like a nineties OVA which was without a conclusion and meant to sell the manga as a result.  

Animation wise, it's okay, notable a studio Gonzo show. Gonzo were another trend of the 2000s, starting properly as an animation studio making its own shows in 2000, being prolific throughout the 2000s, and thus a huge part of my life getting into anime in the early 2000s, before finding both financial problems and their notoriety for the erratic quality of their productions maiming them in the late 2000s. Nowadays they are a shell of their former shelves, even if they are still in business, no longer the polarising love-hate animation studio making a lot of noise in the early to mid 2000s.

If anything, my take from Gravion were its little pleasures. The mecha designs - held between Jin Fukuchi, Kunio Okawara, Masami Obari himself, Yasuhiro Moriki and Yousuke Kabashima - stand out as they should, JAM Project and everyone in the musical department providing appropriate rocking/bombastic music for this material. Even the fact that the monsters in this show are closer to the Evangelion "angels" is at least an idiosyncratic touch to. The strong female cast, in spite of its tone, is a compliment as is whenever the show has knowing winks to its over the top nature - particularly whenever Sandman, played as ultra serious despite his bombastic nature, becomes aware of it (bombastic proclamations during the giant robot transformation or just going to the beach), whilst his male second-in-command Raven eventually becomes the put-upon and disgruntled employee.  It's cool that the stereotypes do get undercut, and how, in terms of this being a giant robot show, its touches are novel, like a rocket punch which involved the pilot having to steer the fist into the monster herself, which is cool, alongside possibly the most logically way of getting said arm back in the physics of this world that has to be praised just for the fact someone actually thought about it.

There is now a sense, annoyingly, of both a lot to potentially like here, enough that I really enjoyed the show, but that, even if you can see the second season, it just takes one bad creative decision to mess the expectations up set by the first season. That's another issue whenever sequel series are a possibility, as attested by people, since I referenced it, that didn't like the second Big O series. Gravion itself has plot points - the mysterious figure, new characters introduced halfway through, and the season arch about Eiji, with the additional subplot that the global government trying to get involved, ending with a great cruel punch line for the final episode. But it leaves many cards on the table un-flipped, and God help Gravion Zwei if it had a joker in the deck. There's definitely the ominous sense that, after this and the porn, Ōbari's only other major work was a couple more TV series up to 2011, where he hasn't been in the director's chair. So I am left saying the Gravion was definitely pleasurable and fun whilst it lasted, but Gravion Zwei's another review entirely that could vary wildly.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pxnp1DX7GhY/hqdefault.jpg

#119: Utsu-musume sayuri (2004)

a.k.a. Striking Daughter

Director: Takashi Kimura

Viewed in English Dub

Another work in the "worst of" anime list, but unlike a Mars of Destruction (2005), which is terrible in creation but too innocuous to really hate, Utsu-musume sayuri was built up as gross and terrible. In reality, whilst a weirdo one man CGI short, Striking Daughter (as its English title is) isn't deserving of such a list accolade. It comes off instead as if a segment from a weird midnight show meant to baffle drunken viewers coming in from a night in the town, even when it comes to the incredibly broken and wooden English dialogue.

It is the initiation of a daughter of a strange family, a group of varying shaped mutants who are like the denizens of a shunting ritual from Brian Yuzna's Society (1989) if they even allowed talking cows in at the door. That reference is appropriate as, whilst sexual, the short isn't as gross as I had built it up in my mind. The ritual instead is spanking on very pronouncedly drawn buttock on a wanting, which is far from the worst thing I have heard (thankfully rather than seen) in anime. Three years earlier, the OVA/film Malice@Doll (2001) would tackle creepier, icky imagery of sexuality by way of a fascinating early CGI anime I wish was better known.

It's a maligned subgenre, usually held as terrible but for me a fascinating little corner in anime's forgotten history killed off by Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within (2001). Into the 2010s, very bad CGI animation still exists, where as I view this early period purely experimental, which leaves the likes of Striking Daughter instead equivalent to early experimentation. Certainly, this short also belongs in general to the type of experimental animation that comes from Japan.

In knowledge one man, Takashi Kimura, animated and directed this, I cannot hold it as terrible baring being a strange oddity, merely what resources he had and a clear sense of being deliberately "weird" at that. Certainly, its grotesque looking, but I'm fascinated by grotesque/obsolete aesthetics anyway, to which that is aplenty here in the bold colours and style, particularly as in context to its history, its better animated by one man in lieu to its apparent awfulness. The bigger concern is that, at less than three minutes, it's just a slight snapshot where I would always posit that something significantly longer is more likely to be dreadful.  

The thing which is likely to be the bigger issue, and definitely is ridiculous, is the voice acting. One male voice, who for all I know is the director, speaking in incredibly fragmented pronunciation of English dialogue which is roughly recorded. It's bad, but God knows in this era people would deliberately create work which had details like this on purpose; in this decade, it'd be considered ironic.

The length prevents Striking Daughter from being the worst. Three minutes is bearable if you have courage - we will wait when the equivalent of this plays over a thirteen episode anime, alongside the fact that whenever I encounter anything boring and/or offensive is when the reader will likely find me write something vicious and very negative. Nothing here is that, Striking Daughter practically a mole hill over built when you could not only see it online but YouTube reaction videos of others watching it.  

As for the director? He directed an episode Koi Koi Seven (2005), about the only boy in an all-girl's school whose wars are literal and silly, and that's it. Unless we've got a case of two Takashi Kimuras in existence, that's pretty small as careers go. 

From http://history.bifan.kr/upload/movie2004/
Film/04FTS_UtsuMusumeSayauri_1.jpg

#118: Tesagure! Bukatsu-mono (2013)

From https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0318/2649/products/
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Director: Kōtarō Ishidate

Screenplay: Kōtarō Ishidate

Voice Cast: Asuka Nishi as Yua Suzuki; Satomi Akesaka as Hina Satou; Karin Ogino as Aoi Takahashi; Ayaka Ōhashi as Koharu Tanaka

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Returning to Kōtarō Ishidate, co-creator of the first season of gdgd Fairies (2011), Tesagure! presents an interesting conundrum for me as whilst it follows his trademark style - improvisations from the voice actresses, sketches, absurdity and thought bubbles with absurd whims being depicted - this is definitely his style distilled down to its most purified form, almost entirely dialogue in which four high school girls, one roped into this unofficial club of three, spend the first season here discussing the clichés of various clubs, and anime/manga clichés about their activities, until it descends into silliness. Baring some sketches where the cast play out these activities with absurd new premises - like baseball with players blindfolded and being told where to hit/throw/catch by bystanders - and sometimes a cold opening which mocks a troupe of anime, it's mostly this dialogue, with the cast speaking around their club room table.

It is definitely difficult work to scrutinise as that premise never drastically changes, and yes, this is made more poignant as this has three seasons in existence, meaning this is technically in terms of time Ishidate's most successful creation so far. Series one, the subject of today, is frankly as idiosyncratic as you can get. Openly, its cast do spend their time playing very predictable characters, which proves a problem in terms of actually reviewing them as, barring those few exceptions I mentioned, the show is mostly in the cast's club room and dialogue. The cast does grow into idiosyncrasies, but they are definitely caricatures - the meek older student who blushes at the others' crudity, the eccentric red head who hates almost every hobby and is energetic, the one who is roped into the club, and the fourth who is the club leader - meaning that the fact that improvisation is an integral part is a godsend, as it leads to farces where these characters develop far more personality then their initial profiles. Also of mentioned are the Sonota sisters - an insane number of identical sisters, pink hair and stars for eyes, who are helpful if they need players for a baseball game or an audience when one of their ideas is put their conversations on stage as acted theatre.

Production wise, it's a low budget cel shaded 3D animated work, not as deliberately crude as gdgd Fairies but definitely working to its limitations, helped by the show being about the conversations primarily. The depth of references is severe, but never referencing actual manga and anime - instead, almost quickly to the point you can miss content if you even get distracted for a few seconds, these characters elaborate on the clichés and always create their own anime/manga story based on said clichés, so much so as whilst it could be off-putting for some viewers, others might find this rewarding for prodding types of storytelling in these mediums new to them. People who might get the references will definitely find them funnier, but its poignant I didn't need to get baseball manga reference but could hear about all the absurd clichés and get a lot of humour from them anyway. The references lead to tiny additional sketches and jokes which add a lot as well, such as the fact a pair of students, one male and one female, will always get trapped behind a closed door, or that one joke that cheerleaders should wear worn panties leads to a running gag about worn panties to the main cast, one where it feels like the voice actresses themselves are gleefully ribbing each other and having so much fun in their work.

From https://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire1/c
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Experiencing Ishidate's work so far, and these micro-series in general, (here, eleven minutes per twelve episodes), I realise there is a huge danger to dismiss these anime programmes, particularly when they are minimal in animation, not to be expansive and artistically incredible. But even Tesagure! is still pushing the format in some way; here, whilst very subdued, the show is taking the piss out of the medium in a warm hearted way, coming from a love of it, but in a way that even an outsider with some patience could get the joke is worthwhile, never namedropping a single anime to my memory and getting the absurd plot clichés over as the joke instead. This is very different from what a lot of anime does, which makes it insolar and in danger of dating greater, whilst this could age very well. For me, some references I did get and were funny as a result, but for others I didn't still there was a pleasure in still having them explained as the joke, leading to a silly air especially when the plots the cast come up with got more idiosyncratic as these characters barnstormed them. The sketches, where they attempt new versions of the activities, are also funny enough, especially as you could try to make them real in some cases.

And of course, the improvisations are the real meat of Ishidate's style, more subdued but with the same style as before as the animation is clearly built around what the actresses do and react, even out of character which is audibly apparent. A lot stands out for this - when the cast members stumble into failed jokes which are commented upon by the others,  get into crude tangents which always leads to the character of Hina, the meek one, to blush and be depicted far away from the table briefly, or the running gag of Aoi, the energetic redhead, trying to find word play puns in everything they talk about no matter how laboured they could be to reach.

Its charming, and god bless the series, whilst they deliberately undercut this in the second season with humour, the final episode of Tesagure! is actually bitter sweet, to the point the series could've ended here and ended on a high note, as the two seniors graduate and try to leave their club to the youngest members, heartbreak following. Even the ending animation, which is the same one, is given life as, based around a dance, there's new dialogue each time which builds on the awkward attempts to improve with a lot of self-deprecation. The result is sweet like tea and cake than Himote House (2018), a latter work which hit for more absurd and bolder jokes but did feel unfortunately a victim to an erratic structure. It's fascinating that this got two more seasons, and already before I even cover them, arguably Kōtarō Ishidate is an auteur on the basic level as he's honed this style over and over again. Pointedly with Ishidate, barring one show about Transformers where they from my knowledge argue about their franchise's lore, he's been obsessed with a female cast in new character roles playing to this dialogue based premises, and keeps going. That he's always provided voice actresses, in shows which from what I've seen of his never have any male characters of prominence, and give them so much to do, is awesome especially as he's creative. (And that's also from seeing how, for all the show's flaws, Himote House could suddenly turn into a critique of Japan mistreats the LGBT community in a "Yuri Game of Life" episode, thus exposing an even more surprising side to him and anyone involved with that show that's positive). That's going to be interesting to come back to when it comes to seasons two and three, and best thing is that, for all my fear this review would've been stupidly short, stuck in trying how to describe this show, I can thankfully (hopefully) give it the positive review it deserves.

From http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/tekitou_matome-sao/imgs/a/9/a922ac1e-s.jpg

#117: Sarazanmai (2019)

From https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/sarazanmai-kunihiko-ikuhara/images/
2/23/Sarazanmai.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190526195430

Directors: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Nobuyuki Takeuchi

Screenplay: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Teruko Utsumi

Voice Cast: Ayumu Murase as Kazuki Yasaka; Kouki Uchiyama as Toi Kuji; Mamoru Miyano as Reo Shinsei; Shun Horie as Enta Jinnouchi; Yoshimasa Hosoya as Mabu Akutsu; Junichi Suwabe as Keppi; Kenjiro Tsuda as Chikai Kuji; Mariya Ise as Otone Jinnai; Rie Kugimiya as Haruka Yasaka; Takaya Kuroda as Otter; Teiko as Sara Azuma

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

[Some Major Plot Spoilers]

Kunihiko Ikuhara's weakest? Well, no that's a first sentence designed to bait a reader, but also in context of Ikuhara's career as a huge fan, I have to weight it against his career so far, which means that Sarazanmai in any other anime auteur's CV would be a great production, but here has to weight itself against a lot.

And bear in mind, I am a fan who has only been able to see his 2010s work, where after a decade of absence throughout the entirety of the 2000s, (baring some storyboard work on productions like Diebuster (2004-6)), Ikuhara finally came back into the director's chair with Mawaru Penguindrum (2011). This does mean I still have Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) and its 1999 theatrical film, huge parts of his career, as well as his entire work with the Sailor Moon franchise left in front of me. This does however mean that there's Penguindrum and Yurikuma Arashi (2015) to be compared to up to the release of this 2019 production, which are as insanely strong and unique productions for the 2010s as you could get. Against them, Sarazanmai is definitely a more streamlined and, for his standards, conventional production. This is still a strong and idiosyncratic tale of three boys who are turned into kappa^, a cucumber obsessed mythological creature, to stop kappa zombies so he hasn't thankfully become boring.

Notably, when his career has mainly dealt with female protagonists and with Penguindrum prominent female cast members in key roles, this is a show about men, which bearing a couple of female characters of note is a huge creative change for Ikuhara. It's also a show, eleven episodes for Fuji TV's Noitamina block, known for unconventional anime, which is about explicitly gay themes as well, interlaced with his ideas of emotional connection and stabs about the modern world. If there was any issue with the show, it is that with deliberate repetition involved, it's streamlined in comparison to the director's previous work I have seen, felt symbolically as this is a co-created work with Nobuyuki Takeuchi even if the later has been working with him since at least the Utena years. But it still has a lot of great reward.

The three leads represent ultimate three potential breaks from human connection. Kazuki is the normal kid, a talented soccer/football player, who is however revealed to not be the biological son of his family and thus having existential crisis which leads him to "no beginning", more so as drama involving this led to his younger brother being left disabled, the guilt leading to various behaviours to try to ask for forgiveness. There's been concern as one such act, masquerading as a female celebrity who does predictions and news reports on television, which has been called "trans baiting", presenting a potential transgender character only for this not to be, something I'll disagree with. There's a difference in gender binaries, which makes it inherently problematic to merely perceive a person dressing as the other gender as transgender, which needs to be taken in account in real life let alone in fiction, especially as being transgender is more than in terms of the physical appearance and dress, especially as the issue of cross-dressing in manga and anime where it was very common in the medium over the decades. Sarazanmai's only possible flaw here, looking at this character, is that it didn't have the time to explore Kazuki's decision to do this as there's clearly a pleasure to be found in it beyond text images to his brother to help him believe this famous figure is talking to him. That is not necessarily the flaw of the series but merely a practical problem.

Enta, his bespectacled friend, feels Kazuki is drifting away from their friendship, which is explicitly a romantic longing for his friend too. It is covered fully thankfully, even to the point that fearful of losing him, whilst ultimately a good person, does lead to him falling into petty actions beneath himself alongside showing clear love, left in a scenario of "no end" as this ending is only possible with Kazuki ever showing affection back. Having "no connection" whatsoever is Toi, the younger brother of a yakuza member who ended up murdering someone in childhood, scarring him, and in his teens is already cultivating marijuana plants to sell, an even bigger taboo as a crime in Japan with their extremer punishments for drugs, alongside other criminal activities. With a brother who told him the bad only survive, Toi is the one with the biggest issues of the trio.

The words "no beginning", "no end" and "no connection" are important as, without revealing everything, their opponents are literally controlled by an entity, portrayed as an evil shadow otter, who calls itself a mere concept and is a representation of despair. (Not as strange as a choice as you'd think as, if you research Kawauso, otters are shape shifters in Japanese who fool humans like foxes and tanuki, continuing Ikuhara's obsession with animal mascots for his shows). The kappa zombies are explicitly humans killed for their desires with the issue that, when exorcised, they are literally removed from memory and existence. Adding to these themes are the two otter cops, two minions of the evil otter named Mabu and Reo who have a tragic story of their own. As a result these two men who romantically love each other are caught in a Faustian trap which involved them literally picking up fresh subjects constantly - men who long for women for the most part - to turn them into the zombies which steal anything from cats, pouch bags and even women as brides around the central city of the story.

From http://www.allyouranime.net/wp-content/uploads/2
019/04/Sarazanmai-PFI.jpg

Ikuhara likes to mix dark and adult themes with strangeness like this, even humour as Penguindrum even in its most serious moments; implicitly dealing with the 1995 Sarin Gas attacks on the Tokyo subway among other details, late episodes of that series when it got completely serious still had anthropomorphic penguins prating about in the background without it ever feeling inappropriate. Sarazanmai, initially vague in what is going on, ultimately becomes the theme of choosing between love or desire, which becomes itself the theme of despair or connection, even if to symbolise this the otter uses a giant factory which boxes victims, to extract their desires, and then shreds them. Surrealism for Ikuhara is a template for him to tell stories of emotional existentialism, though with "Kappazon" boxes everywhere and the otter's kingdom boxing victims before using them, he also clearly wants to take a dig at modern, cold high tech society with a swift punt. Thankfully, Ikuhara, working with Teruko Utsumi here, has never been a "political" creator, of obvious shallow takes on political and social themes, but someone who thankfully fleshed out such ideas in greater detail, be it challenging the patriarchal oppressions of gay women in Japan and their storytelling in Yurikuma Arashi to this with its swipes at Amazon. He has never shied away from difficult subjects, and the fact that he wraps it up in such colourful, idiosyncratic pop symbolism is why he got the auteurist name tag and deserved it.

And that's because he is wonderfully vibrant, subversive and colourful. It's noticeable, and dangerous to ignore, that he co-created this series with Takeuchi, which might explain the more streamlined approach, but this is still Ikuhara's themes and ideas. It's dangerous in anime, and frankly with any medium with auteurs (barring literature), to just say one person is responsible for a great work, especially as to even exist as an auteur Ikuhara had the help of an entire production staff on each of these shows I've referenced of his. But he is idiosyncratic and you can tell it's his work; he's thankfully someone then who has always had a damn good production staff, and his own past career in the industry before he got to helm whole projects, to work from. It's strange, having only known of his work from the 2010s, as his older work isn't really available in the British Isles at all, he skipped an entire decade of the anime industry and negated the difficult transitional period from hand drawn to digitally assisted animation of the 2000s. Even the late 2000s, if in subtle ways difficult to describe, looks very different from the type of anime in the 2010s which is vibrant and distinct in its own way, the style his work fits like a perfectly sized glove.

Nothing in Sarazanmai is aesthetically disappointing, the use of repetitious symbolism common in his work one of his prominent trademarks. Football becomes a symbol of friendship. Kappa good, otter evil. Boxes and conveyor belts oppressive. The idea of exiting existence, cutting all connections, reduced to a two dimensional diagram of a ball pushed into a black void like a pinball machine. And I have not even mentioned how Ikuhara snuck past the producers that to exorcise desire, never mentioning it and then adding it afterwards, is to absorb the force out of the anus, or if the figure is large enough to climb up its rectal passage and extract a giant orb of desire to bring back. It's amazing that this can be gotten away with, as it's very graphic, but I guess that the inherent comedy of the scenario completely separates it from anything too much for TV. Of course, Ikuhara never mentioned it, which is dangerous to have done but also awesome to know as a detail.

Neither have I mentioned this is a musical for large portions of the series. Music has always been important to Ikuhara's work, but this is another different change of pace for the director. Many of these details, when you are used to Ikuhara's style, makes sense in his own logic, the musical numbers expressing the themes and characters' motivations a lot more poetically than exposition. Even the butt obsession, with the knowledge of the custom of kanchō, a prank performed by clasping the hands together in the shape of an imaginary gun and attempting to poke an unsuspecting victim's anus, befits the idea that, if you have a vulnerable area of the human body, you'd presume it to be the weak spot. Especially as the desires extracted, including wanting to be someone's dog to quote Iggy Pop and the Stooges, are explicitly sexual or about the conflicts of romance and desire in the first place, it isn't a surprise if he took a risk here too. The man who ran with the flower symbolism in Yurikuma Arashi to the point it was just openly sexual wouldn't shy from this either here, and with the erotic caressing of a robot heart involved too, he gets away with this type of material on Japanese television, makes it nonetheless approach and even sensual, and never feels crass for it.  His style, of bright colours and yet layering it with this type of explicit subversion, has always been a commonality for him and these details are just examples of this.

A complaint can be made that the show, as mentioned, is very repetitious, reusing scenes and playing as a monster of the week story over half its length, repeating these events mentioned in the last paragraph over and over again. Thankfully the show builds to a huge climax in the final four episodes, a huge risk were it not for the fact the episodes before built towards detail and characterisation being spoon-fed slowly to the viewer. Forced to work together as the desire souls will provide them a "dish of hope" that grants wishes if they collect enough, the process of exorcism leads to accidental leaks of the central trios' secrets to each other; it feels already a better spin on this type of material, that such paranormal/supernatural work would lead to leaks of thoughts, but it also builds a lot of the drama, especially as these characters to find happiness will have to sacrifice their desires and find love instead. That the "villains", baring the otter, aren't truly evil, a commonality also for Ikuhara, and eventually grow in plot exposition means that once the show fully escalates, it deserves the patience you had for its repeating narratives.

And Ikuhara always balances out the darkness of his tales with happiness, even stories which have bleak endings still bitter sweet. Arguably this has the happier ending of the three shows that will make Ikuhara's 2010s work, though it's not without some drastic changes in pace and plot revelations throughout. His style, due to how unpredictable it is, allows for this to fit altogether for these major changes especially in the final episodes, and it's clearly the work of a man who is a hopeful person who champions love and virtue. He thankfully comes from the school of having to earn that happy conclusion, showing as much the heroes' futures likely to not always be good, and playing with a clever structural trick with the opening and ending credits for the final episode for a dramatic build.

Kunihiko Ikuhara's weakest? Of the 2010s, yes as the two previous anime series he's helmed are so good this finish of this decade's trilogy had a lot to compete against in expectations. But the series itself is better than most from the last few years anyway from what I have covered. His weakest is still thankfully excellent, so it was a wonderful experience to see him again, especially as in this particular case the world of streaming anime means you could catch up with it the same year, only months after, it premiered on Japanese television. Time before I would have to wait impatiently, and that's as much because, annoyingly, he's a cult director who isn't a huge mega selling star; as we wait impatiently in the United Kingdom for Revolutionary Girl Utena to actually get a release here, my view of his work from these 2010s trilogy is still so unique, their conclusion unless he suddenly snuck a fourth surprise by the end of the decade a perfect one.

From https://i2.wp.com/anitrendz.net/news/wp-content/uploads
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#115-6: Skelter+Heaven & Mars of Destruction (2004/5)

From https://cdn.myanimelist.net/
images/anime/7/68855l.jpg

Skelter+Heaven

Director: Yoshiaki Sato

Screenplay: Yoshiaki Sato and Toshihiro Sugiyama

Based on a video game by Idea Factory

Voice Cast: Megumi Nasu as Rin Ichikawa; Yukitugu Miyoshi as Otsuya Hunagai; Hideyuki Tanaka as CEO Mishima; Kaori Nazuka as Konomi Tamura; Minori Chihara as Ayaka Matsumoto; Naoko Suzuki as Misaki Kashima; Shizuka Itou as Midori Matsumura

Mars of Destruction

Director: Yoshiaki Sato

Screenplay: Kouji Takeuchi and Tsunekiyo Fujisawa

Based on a video game by Idea Factory

Voice Cast: Nozomu Taiga as Takeru Hinata; Erina Nakayama as Tomoe Nakahara; Asuka Aizawa as Yamabuki Unno; Minori Chihara as Aoi Kurita; Kaori Nazuka as Shizuka Isono; Yukari Kawabuchi as Kyouko Kawagoe

Both viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Let us plummet to the bottom...though in terms of titles on the bottom of bottom lists for anime, is it really constructive to pick on two obscurities like this that, as I'll get onto, were made by a company in their infant period when there are probably worst higher produced creations in existence to rag on? It's a subject to get to later, but less than twenty minutes each, these aren't as painful as anime I have suffered through that are much longer. Don't get me wrong, in the history of anime viewing, these are two are among the most technically flawed and messy productions I have sat through, so on a technical level they are the worst you can find, but twenty minutes a pop can be endured, whilst I can only wonder in an alternative reality if a thirteen episode series of this production quality each might be a greater hell. That doesn't suggest a defence of these Idea Factory properties, but in terms of notoriety there's also the irony that their infamy has brought more people to watching them as I have than when they were first released, a la the Gun-dou Musashi effect (that 2006 series is for another time). This is ultimately a victory particularly as the case for me comes off as picking on a minority in terms of the anime industry.

Mainly because Idea Factory, the creators of both, have made some notorious anime (Diabolik Lovers (2013/15) is possibly a bigger concern as that's a two season series), but they're predominantly a video game company. Mars of Destruction and Skelter+Heaven, ordered here by level of notoriety between the two, are tie-ins to video games and, honestly with a little research, are from a time when Idea Factory were a very different company to how they look now. Nowadays, their material on Steam worldwide, is a lot more boosted in style and production even if their JRPGs and visual novels do look the stereotype of anime. Mars of Destruction and Skelter+Heaven as video games, seeing clips, are mainly still screens of text with an occasional scene of interaction where you move a crosshair to shoot things. This was a period where, and I will be incredibly careful in my words, they belonged to a type of a budget videogame that was imported to Europe and Britain on consoles like the Playstation 2 in the early 2000s. Now there were some highly regarded budget priced or obscure cult imports from Japan in this era, including for the Playstation One, and I am being specific in console choice as this denotes a period in my life and that these games were for that console, but there were likely a lot of small companies who work struggled against technical issues. Sometimes they still created unconventional games admired today, sometimes for ironic reasons, but there was likely also incredibly minimal work like Mars of Destruction and Skelter+Heaven which, if you can see clips of online, are as minimal as games as you can get. Hell, I suspect animation from Mars of Destruction the video game was used for the anime tie-in at least as a template.

So this comes from a very different place as a review. They have come up in the world in terms of the time that has past, so I seriously doubt anyone would be offended by a review like this. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't laughing to the bank, as they now have a much bigger boost in production, a lot of titles sold around the world, and a shitton of merchandising (including for titles not their own) to sell. It would be interesting to see them revisit Mars of Destruction and Skelter+Heaven even if it was just to screw with the Western anime viewers who talk about these shorts still.

From https://s3.narvii.com/image/zbhuf2djx2tjbqykrapvr2qqnudkt67z_hq.jpg

Befittingly, I watched the duo in wrong chronological order, but Mars of Destruction is the most well know of the pair. The story's simple, a mere slither like a dream of a half remembered anime, beginning with a crudely depicted space expedition to Mars crashing on the way back with entities terrorising parks at night in Japan, only a super group of young female (teenage) soldiers and the son of the head honcho in super armour to stop them. Notably someone was taking notes from Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), as this is a tale of humans versus Martians that is muddier than this, whilst the son is forced by his father to wear the armour against his will whilst being moody. This may present a bigger issue for Idea Factory in terms of the originality of their content, which I will get into.

The proper first scene sets up the infamy, as three high school girls in battle armour and rifles approach three aliens in an empty park at night. With no helmets on, one of them wearing military approved bows in her hair, you realise how absurd the common trope in anime of teenagers in combat scenarios truly is, even Neon Genesis Evangelion until I revisit it having to explain why hormone driven and usually emotionally confused teenagers were the wisest idea to save the world and handle military equipment, something entirely blameable on Mars of Destruction in bursting the illusion of. Mars of Destruction rubs the salt in, as unlike Evangelion where despair and psychological breakdowns were common, these girls can see their colleague get her head blown off in a gravity defying burst of blood rain, the most infamous gif of the series, and not bat an eyelid until one scene later of mourning.

Skelter+Heaven takes this common anime trope and makes it even more absurd now as, set in a world where a large Christmas tree decoration/Christmas tree/beige CGI octopus hovers menacingly over a Japanese metropolis, the soldiers are again young teen girls or barely into adulthood, this time similar to Sakura Wars¹, originally a dating sim crossed with a period diesel punk tactical combat video game where a squad of women commanded machines with one male as their captain who was clearly the player stand-in. That premise itself is problematic in how there has to be a male form organising what could've been an already strong matriarchal combat squad, but the least of issues in Skelter+Heaven's take. The bigger issue that, even though these are meant to be artificially created super soldiers, to debate whether still human or not as it's vague and blood is still bled, one of the main female pilots has a crush on their male captain and this compromises the mission to save the city. Alongside being sexist, the example suggests that no sane military commander should leave the fate of the world in the hands of hormone driven teenagers of any age, regardless of super soldier abilities, unless you really were stuck or the screenwriter could make it more fleshed out. 

From https://i.imgur.com/ZqU3hLV.jpg

Mars of Destruction in general is a lot more subdued than its notoriety suggests. The huge gaping flaws don't lead to any real insanity, barring that the only other main action scene has no one else barring cops to be dismembered on the streets in a metropolis. There's not as much unintentional humour as you'd hope, the one exception in how the major plot twist, that Earthlings are the real aliens on Earth, is disclosed so abruptly, cutting to two older men in a corridor, leading to another bad habit (copying the Americans in Hollywood) of anime where all major events happen in Japan first, just to annoy one of these characters who is actually American.

Beyond this, Mars of Destruction is actually disappointing for me in terms of if I wanted a hellish car crash. Skelter+Heaven on the other hand is that though and through. Crowbarring even a title sequence, Minori Chihara who sang the themes for the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya franchise of all people providing songs to both shorts, Skelter+Heaven comes with a knowledge of it being a short tie-in to a low budget game, but is still more than what everyone presumed these two to be notorious for, having the greater issues. It's too peculiar to hate, but good Lord, those abrupt flashback cuts, lunging into them, are enough to knock the viewer out briefly. The training montage including girls strapped to vibrating chairs that look uncomfortably sexual due to how the actresses have been asked to moan in distress, or suggesting that blowing up balloons is adequate military training. The voice acting, and even the echoing sound effects especially for footsteps, is rougher. (Also embarrassing, per both shorts, as they have actors who have gone on with further work). The mouth movements on a particular female staff member in the control centre where it looks like they've superimposed a person's mouth moving over her face crudely than animate lips. Cheating fan service where, crudely, they put in a shower scene but with the greater sense of exploitation of there being no actual nudity, or that the CGI, for the giant robots and the alien squid they're meant to fight, look definitely low budget to the point they enter a particular pleasure of mine of obsolete digital animation.

Together I view these titles as a company in very early days of their career, technically in the middle of their existence but still at the point, this project would be them biting more off than they could chew. Arguably what is a bigger concern for me, but with the two too slight to be painful to sit through, is the sexist gender aspects, which are frankly an issue for the whole of anime and manga in general in their clichés, where having cute schoolgirls welding military grade equipment is obviously meant to appeal to otaku, but can also lead to a curious fetish which can also be demeaning to their portrayals depending on how its handled. As a result, I cannot call Mars of Destruction or Skelter+Heaven the worst in my books. They are among some of the worst in terms of technical achievement, but my own personal criterion is very different. In fact, Skelter+Heaven's too amusing in its failures to really hate.

Besides, the director also helmed Spectral Force (1998), another OVA based on a video game of Idea Factory's but also one hour long. An hour a slightly different scale to work in and to fail miserably within...

From https://i2.wp.com/www.weebswire.com/wp-content/uploads
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1) Sakura Wars is actually an incredibly good premise with many virtues. Unfortunately, up to the 2000 TV series, none of the initial OVAs and that series tell the tale of the video games, instead set between events or side stories instead of telling the video game story; the series itself is a prologue, right on the cusp of the transition to digitally assisted animation which looks ropey, which unless anything changed is frankly one of the biggest missed chances in terms of creating a super hit anime.