#144: La Blue Girl Returns (2001-2) [The UK DVD Release]

Director: Hiroshi Ogawa and Yoshitaka Fujimoto

Screenplay: Megumi Hitotsuyanagi

Based on the La Blue Girl manga by Toshio Maeda

Voice Cast: Kat Vandam as Miko Mido; Barry Banner as Nin - nin; Lotus as Fubuki; Lynna Dunham as Yaku / Maria; Tim Brash as King Seikima

Viewed in English Dub

[Warning: This review covers a hentai title from a notorious franchise in detail. Bare this mind in some of the more explicit content that has to be discussed]

Prologue

"Hentai", which is the term to describe pornographic work, actually translates from Japanese as "pervert". For Japanese otaku, placing the term "ero" in front of manga, anime etc. denotes it as pornographic. We in the West have nonetheless clung upon "hentai", and inevitably, this subject would have to be discussed here, though the irony is not lost in term we use having a loaded meaning when translated.

An initial problem for covering work like this is that the United Kingdom for all our history of sexual kink and liberation our laws are still draconian or just antiquated to modern society, particularly with the issue that especially now with the internet to factor in, there is not really a market for anything beyond what sells for pure titillation. Before the internet, and still to this day, porn is only available to buy legally in licensed sex shops. Not the illicit places of imagination but ordinary stores, ones however that only exist in certain locations and inherently prevents the medium of pornography from being seen in any artistic light, simply because it is not feasible with limited shelf spaces to stock anything not just designed for masturbation. Even in light of the internet making an obvious dent on the medium, it entirely depends on the market to whether animated hentai would be sellable here.

There is also the issue that there is so much of it, since the start during the OVA and video boom of the eighties, that trying to sieve through it would be a nightmare. The final issue, and the elephant in the room, is that even if it was a minority, the artistic freedom of hentai even in lieu to Japanese censorship laws has a double edged sword that a lot of it is very fetishishtic. That would not be an issue aside from the fact that, entirely from even my perspective of only reading of synopsises and of comments by people willing to sit through titles, this has also meant unfortunately lot of hentai with premises and content that sound gross and offensive.

I am not even referring to cheaply animated work either, but that the image of hentai includes material which reading descriptions which include transgressive material and sexual violence. This is not to dismiss the genre in the slightest, as in a case like the franchise Cream Lemon you can have someone like Hiroyuki Kitakubo cut his teeth on his first directorial work for an episode before he goes onto Blood: The Last Vampire (2000), but it does not help in the slightest that even some of the most well known titles, like the Bible Black series, are sold on taboos which suggest not something to watch for a romantic night in but really transgressive and nasty porn horror whatever its artistic merits. As we will get into for this review, this poses also an issue for myself as a British anime fan as this type of material would be significantly more filtered out by the British Board of Film Classification, and I would not be stupid enough on that factor and also for my own sake delve into material I might find disgusting.

One of the most notorious sub-genres, which became a stereotype of anime itself, would have to be tentacle monsters schoolgirls, an image of anime which is actually a tiny part of it in truth. The man responsible for it is La Blue Girl's manga creator Toshio Maeda, who created this trope of tentacles in a sexual context because he was not allowed to depict ordinary sex around 1986¹. Like the issue with depicting pubic hair in Japanese art, there is an irony that sexual Puritanism is entirely responsible for this, as the Meiji Restoration led to an influence of Western morality that affected how Japanese culture perceived eroticism, something which in classical art can be extremely explicit in shunga art before the censorship. The irony is that this led to a growth of many fetishes but also probably a few many like me would feel understandably uncomfortable with. Likewise, as a result of laws that to this day mean Japanese porn still has blurring, Maeda found a loophole that which was most infamously depicted in Urotsukidôji, a manga more well known not even for its three part OVA version for the first arch between 1987-9, but the theatrical version called The Legend of the Overfiend, which got a Western release and developed a notoriety which adds a huge back story to this review. You have probably been curious why the review is structured so differently from usual, and looks to be a long read, but context is important for myself as much for anyone in terms of trying to figure how to deal with this review.

Maeda himself? I won't dismiss the creator despite the troublesome tone of his content. Maeda is someone who works in a medium where he also does erotic manga for women, and also (to his own surprise)² gets fan mail from female fans for his violent material for men. He only created the use of tentacles due to artistic censorship and it says a lot of the banality behind a lot of art that, for all its shock value and controversy, the creator is still an ordinary working man. This is worth baring in mind for La Blue Girl Returns as, just looking at the directors, Hiroshi Ogawa has done a lot of key animation including for an episode of Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011) for example, whilst Yoshitaka Fujimoto has directed a bit of hentai, but has also say storyboards for the original Pokemon television series. Many people - directors, animators, voice actors - have to juggle this work alongside non-pornographic anime for jobs, so an accusations of the problematic nature of some of this content does have to be considered with the complicated nature of being stuck having to earn money to feed yourself.

When it comes to The Legend of the Overfiend, its notoriety and effect on how it made outsiders see anime comes under two lights for both the United States and Britain. In the States, Central Park Media released it with its owner John O'Donnell managing to even get the theatrical cut version released in cinemas. In the UK, Manga Entertainment released the title, and it also has had a lasting legacy which included a very negative image of Japanese animation that was painted before my time as a fan. Urotsukidôji itself is a title to discuss another day, though it ties a little into today's subject as Maeda as an idea man is a fascinating person, an interesting fountain of ero-guro creativity whose adaptations are problematic but could have been transgressive art without any hesitance if they were tweaked.

All the lengthy prologue above, and trust me this review is going to be a long dissection to get one's money worth, is necessary as it all ties in. See, going from the complex Cthulian tale set over hundreds of years to La Blue Girl Returns, which is meant to be a more comedic tale of sex ninjas, you get a complicated epic in itself. The first aspect is that, after The Legend of the Overfiend, there is not a lot of hentai released in the United Kingdom. Practically, as long as the United Kingdom has its work classified by the British Board of Film Classification, censorship is inevitable. It cannot be gotten around a lot of this stuff clearly plays with characters who are teenagers even when it is very harmless sex, which would be a no-no unless the dialogue was changed to say they were at community college, and it entirely depends on the content of each title if it was censored or refused classification³. Especially if you take the mad action of taking stuff likely to be censored even in the 2010s and try to release it as a mainstream release, as for whatever reason, a long defunct company in our earlier days of DVD releases called ILC tried a couple of time to release hentai like Alien of Darkness (1996), all of which was inevitably censored for release. ILC didn't really release a lot of prominence, barring some cultish horror titles and oddities that Arrow Films might release on restored blu-ray one day, but they managed to broker a deal with Central Park Media to release a couple of their titles in the UK. Most of it was their main catalogue, like the entire Project A-Ko series, but also inexplicably a sequel series for a hentai.

This review already has an absurd nature as the original La Blue Girl (1992-3) anime OVAs were titles refused classification by the BBFC on the 30th December 1996⁴, Manga Entertainment not even allowed to released a censored cut like The Legend of the Overfiend, but having their proposed released flat out rejected. That we got the sequel series after the fact is perversely comical. And, oh, not surprisingly this review is going to be about the censored release as frankly, attempting to review this like one would do the original uncut version would be a waste of time. See this as an absurd historical assessment.

Episodes 1 and 2

La Blue Girl is effectively Toshio Maeda's take on sex magic as, once you get past how big the franchise is with sequel anime and even a couple of live action films, it is a story about a half demon half human young woman named Miko Mido who is the last descended of a clan who is a ninja able to use practical sexual magical abilities. Even a cheap production like this four part OVA touches upon a really interesting concept, that is the idea of sex as a magical practice, with aspects of Shinto and Japanese folklore iconography likely to be discerned with knowledge even if in not in their original context. Honestly, we as a species have always had an obsession with sex having a magical nature to it, be it fluids like semen and menstrual blood having mystical properties to the likes of carved phallus to the Sheela Na Gig, a ward against evil which is a stone carving of a woman spreading her vagina open. The idea even if for a really kinky porn anime about sexual magic is not absurd to cover.

One of the immediate things, as mentioned, is that with the original series never being allowed in the country even censored, you are dumped into this world with little context unless you managed to see the original. Two stories, two episodes each less than thirty minutes. The tone was set when you get a CPM infomercial explaining "Japanimation" on both discs. Cut to clips of their other hentai titles, like a Sailor Moon parody where the sailor suits are noticeably shrunk, they explain why the female characters have high pitched voices, even and unintentionally admit that they had to age up the characters who were high school students in the original versions to college students by saying the later still wore school uniforms. That is not an actual comment made, instead the serious and thoughtful narrator explaining that such uniforms are worn by college students, but it is easy to read between the lines.

The first narrative is a clan in Japan's feudal past, the insectoid ninja clan of the Mahoroba, who are connected to butterfly humanoids. They are later revealed to be inter-dimensional butterfly humanoids, which is ridiculous, but until then they merely wish to take over the realm Miko Mido's parents have control over. Said realm, the Shikima, is literally inside a giant being, which may have the unintentionally hilarious moment of concern about sealing up the "anus", but is still an exceptionally inspired and grotesque idea in which you can be inside the colon of the entity said to have created existence itself, taking the idea of God being all to a literal extreme.   

This is where Toshio Maeda, even just going off other people adapting his work only, fascinates me as Urotsukidoji for all its problematic material is fascinating. If it had changed its attitude to victimising female characters, even being equal opportunities offensive in which transgression can happen to male characters and female characters can turn into horrifying power monsters, it would still be offensive but arguably more defendable in its take-no-prisoners attitude especially as it is still a tale of so many centuries of plot, characters and detail. A sense of scale and ambition beyond something grotty could be found here too, as even if very weird and kinky, the sex ninjutsu and ero-guro is at least fascinating. There is some odd stuff that you would be embarrassed to explain if walk in upon to ordinary people - group masturbation to enter the demon realm, or the shot that has been burnt into my mind as one of the weirdest in all anime where magical resistant lotion is applied by two female heroes to each other by tribbing - but it is at least a transgressive kink with creativity. None of this material is the real problem with La Blue Girl Returns but, as is the issue when deal even with non-hentai transgressive anime and manga, where every aspect of shock value always has to hang upon victimising female characters entirely and no one else, and that in a work like this it is also meant to be titillating even if completely excised from this release.

In the perfect world, La Blue Girl would have just been a comedy, the gender politics balanced out for still lurid but equal opportunities kink, no violence and entirely played out as a slapstick tale of a female ninja having to be the figurehead of this clan. The characters here around her could offer this version - be it her older sister, who is an ordinary human being whose romantic life is there just to keep his younger sister wide awake at night, or the diminutive dwarf ninja Ninnin who is reliable but a pervert, possibly a factor to why the original nineties OVAs were not allowed by the BBFC to be released despite being clearly an adult. You even have two former enemies turned female allies, one who turns into a werewolf and never getting a chance to use this properly story wise in what we got in real life. Unfortunately, this cheap and scuzzy production is not that, which warns you of what it is with a theme credit song so chintzy it is funny in how inappropriate it is for the material.

You cannot skip over the fact, no matter how much is cut out to the point the editing is a mess, that the show placates on monsters molesting and raping the female cast, with the one consensual sex scene turning into the hunky guy turning into a villain. That these heroines can bat it off as nothing has happened afterwards is strange in context but does not help the situation either as a viewer. Even in terms of ero-guro and someone who can defend parts of Legend of the Overfiend, La Blue Girl Returns is not worth dying on the hill for, gross and misogynistic with the added effect that the censorship the BBFC demanded really makes a point in subconsciously pointing this out by accidentally amplifying it rather than trying to obfuscate the material excised. Even if this was not the case, I will argue you cannot mix action and the erotic any without it coming off as inappropriately violent unless it is done with slapstick. La Blue Girl Return does have light-hearted humour, but it feels so tonally off between the unpalatable materials it feels worse.

Technically, this is the early era of digital animation where the OVA was released, so it looks gaudy, be it the bright colours to everyone having a waxy sculpted nature to them, especially the female cast who (to be polite) are not the most comically exaggerated designs but, for a cast for a pornographic work, have a look for the male gaze and are very shiny. I will admit if there was one interest to this, alongside the creative ero-guro ideas, is the trashy aesthetic of basic environments and an aesthetic that could be recreated with action figures, even the monsters and demons looking like toys you could buy in the nineties in their "toyrific" nature. Sadly, I cannot really admit a pleasure as with guilt I know it's for really uncomfortable material. The English dub, the only audio option for the UK DVDs, is just dreadful, adding a cherry on top of this mangled release in that, whilst it is going to get worse, it feels more embarrassing than be caught watching questionable live action porn, because as a result of the censorship and attempt at a complicated plot. The unnecessary amount of exposition and terminology makes the experience more terrible as you now have to put up with lore too. Combined in the English with moaning and a lot of leaden plot exposition and it adds a further layer of wrongness to all this.

This is worse as the plot is pretty simple - evil butterfly people who manage to take over the demon realm, which is depicted with magic resistant elixirs and actual fights between characters which are literally sex acts between them. The actual work, even with the censorship, has so much unnecessary padding and a lot of problematic sexual content whose existent is not really needed except for its own sake that it does not get around to much with its material. The first two episodes by themselves are a compelling car wreck, which I have no shame in admitting, but it feels like the entire production does not know what it is meant to be doing, even in terms of ILC thinking it was a wise idea to try to release this in the UK.

Episodes 3 and 4

By the next disc, someone clearly thought the release got away with too much sex in the first disc, as you even got drawn genitalia without showing any phalluses, so La Blue Girl Returns goes from butchered to being decimated for the final story arch.

Plot wise, in the aftermath of the first story, a plan is set up to gain entry into the brain of the Shikima realm, which involves clan members who protect it from all intruders even if they and Miko Mido are reincarnated from former lovers. After this initial set up, good luck, as from the final part of the third episode, where the scenes are fully ripped out, you are lead to entire plot points being lost, two characters suddenly waking up nude in a lab having been in virtual reality and nothing left to explain how this all transpired. It is ominous that the second disc, containing these two episodes, are less than forty minutes altogether including a repeat of the CPM infomercial, which shows a gutting policy to all the content more extreme than before.

Generally, the production manages to become worse. Harsher editing, a less "interesting" plot, and a truly dreadful dub performance of Kanako, a character introduced as the last of another clan who is barely used, a performance whose vocals at time feel slurred with the addition that she is completely wooden. Semblance of interesting ideas needed to be rescued are found - a pool of desire in a dreamt world where, if in for too long, causes one spirit to be lost into the ineffable eventually - but have mostly dried out when such ideas even in a transgressive work could be a compelling, surreal one in better hands. That the whole OVA ends in tragedy, over a death of a character we barely knew but ending the story as an inconclusive downer, with demons attempting to assault the brain, adds to the damned experience. It is more an abrupt end as this was the last anime adaptation from the original nineties release, with no others in the La Blue Girl world coming in the rest of the 2000s or in the entire 2010s.

Conclusion

Here I will confess that I have seen the first two episodes three times now, the last two twice. I owned the first disc, a compelling mess even if one that many and I may be embarrassed, the second rented. Then they are included in a boxset ILC released of Central Park Media titles, these four episodes an outlier. This is not something to be proud of, yet it says a lot I can argue I have still seen some terrible anime which does not have the morally questionable content of this. The studio behind this, ARMS, have found that creating franchises like the sequels to Ikki Tousen, the Queen's Blade franchise and Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid (2015), very fetishishtic television programmes which even censored can have uncut physical releases and OVAs sold for, very lucrative without even being hentai. To know they directed the anime series Elfen Lied (2005), divisive and lurid but a programme I would defend, just adds to the strange nature of how the industry works.. 

Here, I have to include a comment or two. One, that hentai is not something to just dismiss, that a lot of it is probably kinky but not like this. Secondly, it is a very obvious thing for a male viewer like me to dismiss aspects of this title based on content we in society accept as morally repugnant. Where the real questions are to be had is if a female viewer, or preferably a few, were willing to tackle subjects like this as, alongside a feminist opinion, there is also an argument I will make even in my naive perspective that we oversimplify female sexuality especially when it comes to transgressive desires, something that should be considered and why, even if it is this mangled DVD release, a fascinating perspective on content like this would be a pro-kink female critic or even just a female anime fan with her own perspectives on titles, her own gender and her own sexuality, rather than merely for myself as a man, a heterosexual one at that, making the presumptions.

The question left also is what the experience of the uncensored version would be like, as so much tonally and in content being added back would drastically change one's opinion. As mentioned before, this is less a proper review of this title, but examining a cultural relic. From there you learn a surprising amount, or at least I did, of an entire side of this type of anime by way of seeing how BBFC censorship would come into play. It certainly feels of another era even if hentai still exists and is in chique - Central Park Media went into bankruptcy in 2009, whilst ILC have disappeared off the face of the earth, as CPM's downfall was when the violent and erotic titles it sold were no longer in fashion, whilst ILC would be replaced with the slow grow of boutique companies who would eventually be taken over by those we have with their glossy restorations. If hentai is available in the United Kingdom, it is never a censored title with an eighteen certificate, but the occasional title you might find in a sex shop if any.  

These discs can occasionally still be found in our British second hand stores, alongside obscure titles even from a year or so after from the likes of ADV Films, MVM and Manga Entertainment etc. All of them are worthy of examination, and La Blue Girl Returns even in this state was definitely memorable if in a way to feel embarrassed about having on your DVD shelf.

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1) Yes, before anyone mentions it, let us not forget the Hokusai painting The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (1814) about a woman's octopus fetish.

2) HERE

3) The story of the Urotsukodoji sequels, number 3 and 4, for their UK DVD releases is an entirely different example of a doomed financial license that was ill advised from the get-go. Suffice to say it involves an entire episode being forced to be removed by the BBFC and requiring a text explanation on the DVD, let alone butchering in the editing, so the result experienced would be a baffled historical example few would know about.

4) HERE

#143: Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)

Director: Gisaburo Sugii

Screenplay: Minoru Betsuyaku

Based on the novel by Kenji Miyazawa

Voice Cast: Chika Sakamoto as Campanella; Mayumi Tanaka as Giovanni; Chikao Ohtsuka as Birdcatcher; Fujio Tokita as Lighthouse Keeper; Gorō Naya as Campanella's Wife; Hidehiro Kikuchi as Young Man; Junko Hori as Zanelli; Kae Shimamura as Giovanni's Mother; Kaori Nakahara as Kaoru; Miyuki Ichijou as Marceau

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Around 1927, Japanese author Kenji Miyazawa wrote Night on the Galactic Railroad. After his death in 1933, this was found unfinished. Four versions existed in an attempt to compile a final text, Night on the Galactic Railroad now held with immense regard. This adaptation is such a distinct and idiosyncratic production to watch that it had a significant influence on the other work that has dealt with Kenji Miyazawa. It was such an idiosyncratic production to watch even as someone who has seen some truly unique anime.

The best way to describe the film's plot is that of a young boy Giovanni, looking after his ailing mother, finding himself on the titular railroad, a train that travels into outer space which he rides with his friend Campanella, encountering surreal environments and predating Leiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999 manga, which I'm not surprised is inspired by this novel. Three details need to be considered. One is that our characters baring one huge exception are anthropomorphic cats, a trademark that lasted even to a biopic of the author, TV special Spring and Chaos (1996). It came after the production struggled with trying to get the adaptation right, finding this idiosyncratic creative decision the right one in tone. Secondly, this is a European influenced work right down to the use of the language of Esperanto, a constructed auxiliary language that Miyazawa was an advocate of, learning it and even writing poems in the language of, laced in the film here. Thirdly, Night on the Galactic Railroad was written soon after the death of Miyazawa's sister. A Buddhist in belief, Miyazawa's text is meant for children but the anime itself is one of the starkest and symbolically surreal meditations on death, Giovanni eventually learning to consider the path of virtue to help all other human beings rather than lamenting the loss of a loved one, as Miyazawa himself went beyond mourning his loved one to wanting to help all in his acceptance of death.

The pace of the film, which only gets to the introduction of the train until the middle half, is intensely methodical. Between this and Mamoru Oshii's Angel's Egg (1985), this pace is completely different from most anime, a glacial nature that even when you get on the railroad is tangibly quiet as the other passengers, who can just appear and disappear with ease, are polite and curious about Giovanni. It is amazing to think that for most like myself, director Gisaburo Sugii despite being a veteran working in the industry since the sixties is probably the most known for director Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994), a fighting video game adaptation (and one of the only few with lasting currency). That title's reputation was probably made more significant as Manga Entertainment, releasing it, made a goal to sell the title as a cross over hit including acquiring a soundtrack for the English dub including the likes of Alice in Chains and Korn. This history for him is a perverse and jarring experience when you return to this title; both are well made, Street Fighter II one of the only well regarded fighting game anime due to its technical and plotting cohesiveness, but Night on the Galactic Railroad belongs to an entirely different area of anime, a hauntingly beautiful piece.

This is poignant as, upon reaching the galactic train, the journey is openly surreal and littered in symbology between a mass excavation of ancient bones, one Giovanni attempting to take away immediately dissolving into dust, to a catching of swans that break into pieces and taste of candy. To try to unpack the meanings, some obvious and others vague, is something to consider on future viewings. Like Angel's Egg, whilst Oshii's film is more openly surreal and exceptionally minimalist in terms of lack of dialogue, these two films from the nineteen eighties where money was available for creative freedom produced two utterly distinct productions to admire.

Of note is that the screenwriter taking on this task of adapting the source, Minoru Betsuyaku, is not from the anime industry but an influential novelist and playwright, particularly for influence the Japanese “theatre of the absurd” (fujori-geki). Choosing an outsider to tackle this material proved a wise idea as, from an entirely different perspective, he could structure the material in a way appropriate to express whilst the team at Group TAC had to visualise the material. TAC sadly no longer exists, since 2010, but as the company behind the cultural monolith that was Space Battleship Yamato (1974), they can at least have a lasting legacy alongside their other projects. Theirs is an odd assortment of titles over the decades, including that Street Fighter II film. Also Tokko and Black Blood Brothers, two series both from 2006 I have no good thoughts on in the slightest, so let's think on Night on the Galactic Railroad again...

[Major Spoiler Warnings]

Notably when human characters interact with our cat protagonists, the film takes a very distinct direction. It is implied heavily, as two children with a young man, they were on the Titanic or a similar vessel which sink in the ocean, giving the film an explicit them that the railroad is where the dead travel on, Giovanni having found himself there as a rare case as he dreamt on a grassy knoll and will grow as a person because of this vision. This is all heavy for what was meant to be children's literature, but also compelling with the virtue that the original text, whilst incomplete, had all this detail inside with a beginning and conclusion, this allowing still a profound message from Miyazawa to still be told in his own journey of grief. The film does end on a tragedy, but it is not a tearjerker, a calm and collected take on grief which in itself is tonally isolated in terms of how calm the story is for profoundness.

[Major Spoilers End]

Technically as well, a huge factor at play is the music, of its time but ethereal. Notable it is from a Yellow Magic Orchestra member but not Ryuichi Sakamoto, the most well known member who went into cinema, but Haruomi Hosono. Hosono's work here is absolutely appropriate for such an unconventional mood piece, which cannot be stressed enough, a haunting nature to match incredibly unconventional material.

The result is something to behold. I had fascination with this feature film over years since I had first heard of it, but really wasn't prepared for how unique the actual feature was. Notably the source material's influence is profound, even making its way to anime and manga, from Galaxy Railroad 999 to Kunihiko Ikuhara's Mawaru Penguindrum (2011) that explicitly references the tale, from a creator of equally unique stories, including the motif of apples which connects back into Night on the Galactic Railroad, those here able to be multiplied in one's hands to distribute to passengers. Such as lasting legacy of course, just for this film, is to be found in how the aesthetic choice of humanoid cats representing anything related to Kenji Miyazawa was followed on from, showing how much this film fully honoured and succeeded in its goal to adapt the material.

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1) The implied references to the Titanic in the film take on a greater, unexpected emotion when you learn the composer is the grandson of Masabumi Hosono, the only Japanese passenger on the Titanic who survived but was ostracised by the Japanese society in his time for not going down on the ship.

#142: Gun x Sword (2005)

Director: Gorō Taniguchi

Screenplay: Hideyuki Kurata

Cast: Houko Kuwashima as Wendy Gallet; Kikuko Inoue as Carmen99; Takanori Hoshino as Van; Junko Noda as Joshua Langlen; Kenyuu Horiuchi as The Claws; Mami Kingetsu as Elena; Saeko Chiba as Priscilla; Satsuki Yukino as Yukiko Stevens; Sōichiro Hoshi as Michael Gallet; Takahiro Sakurai as Ray Langlen

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

The best way to describe Gun x Sword is a multi genre masala. A western frontier sci-fi story, set on a planet like ours described by the narrator as the "Endless Illusion"; it is a lawless world populated with major urban cities but also small hamlets and rampant gang problems. Add into this giant robots and a man with no name, actually called Van, who in his wedding suit is on the path of revenge for his slain bride, and Gun x Sword is a fascinating hodgepodge.

Notably, a few years later director Gorō Taniguchi would score a huge hite with Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (2006), a huge sci-fi space opera which ticked all the right boxes in terms of trends in the late 2000s. This was before however and Gun x Sword is distinct that it was indebted to Western culture just from the awesome opening credits music, a hybrid of a spaghetti western instrumental theme with Japanese instrumentation and manly choruses of shouting. In fact, whilst its not perfect, you are shown that this was made with some love and great creativity that, in the title credits alone, the show does something unique in that it obfuscates characters and images in just silhouette until the episode they are introduced, or blanks them when the story writes them off. From the get-go you have a show dangling great anticipation of what will transpire, where the project was cared for and wanting to try to stand out.

Van, as our drifter, is after a figure known as the Claw. At first, he encounters Wendy, a teenage girl from a Western film town who joins him as she tries to find her older brother Michael, last seen with the Claw. For the first half of this twenty six episode show, eventually figures that are more eccentric cross paths and join them as he accepts their existence, some enemies and others allies in the quest that becomes more than revenge. This'll be a spoiler to discuss in more detail, as the show will have to be discussed in more detail to explain what exactly it is, but I would recommend you the reader to track the show down first if you want at this point. It's a solid show, with one little plot mechanisation of the Claw which is confusing, but was utterly fascinating and fun, more so when it pulls a switch in pace in the second half of the series. That it's also a funny series as it plays itself seriously is something also to appreciate.

For everyone who wants to know more...SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.

Among the cast there's Carman 99, a Fujiko to Van's Lupin III, a heroic femme fatale. There's Ray Langlen, another man wanting to kill the Claw but a dark sided version of Van, alongside his good hearted if incredibly naive brother Joshua. There's a great character, sadly underused, named Priscilla, an energetic teen girl whose gymnastic abilities can be replicated by a cat faced robot she uses. There's the awesome team of aged robot pilots who are a tribute and parody to old seventies giant robot shows, of teams whose bots formed a giant one, leading to the logic and bittersweet idea of what happens when they get old, the sole female member passed on with her daughter by the side as these old men, usually drunk, still do their damndest to show they can be heroes. And thankfully, whilst the one episode would've been one of the best, these guys do appear later on, as this show even in cameos returns back to some of the episodic one-off characters in the ongoing plot.

The villains, whilst not as seen as much, as just as fascinating in the sense that, as is common in anime, they believe they have a good reason behind their cause. The Claw's reveal is startling when a mysterious and civil figure is actually the person we find the rumour, a cult leader whose questionable grasp of power is part of the plot later on. I will be blunt in saying that the show's one real flaw is how vague this villain's plot actually is, that it's not as well explained as it should be when a lot does work. His questionable sense of sanity is fascinating, as is the idea that he's surrounded by a cult, as idiosyncratic from the large staff he's acquired to characters like a former female sex worker whose unnervingly calm attitude stands out. That there is, as mentioned, one moment where even his own side questions him adds a layer of complexity much appreciated.

Aside from one flaw, Gun x Sword does work. Even Van is not a dull gruff male protagonist but an interesting loner character with funny aspects like not being able to remember peoples' names, one you come to like in one of the show's best virtues, giving everyone including the villains personalities. (Even if the running gag that Van covers his food with every condiment available is over the top.) Gun x Sword is also the type of show I grew up with in the early 2000s, when for me a twenty six episode show was more common and the standard structure of a show, the first ten the introduction, the episodes from ten to usually sixteen the tangents and build up, the and last ones the denouement. They juggled so many type of tone, comedy to seriousness, and if they were good, they were good. Even a show with flaws had charm and, barring potential issues of transition to digital animation that would make the first few years of the Millennium questionable, could stand out because of one great episode, a great character or two, or a quirky premise.

Nowadays there are more thirteen episode shows, and whilst I suspect if that's just nostalgia clouding my mind, I do find that not as many longer shows exist anyway. Certainly to Gun X Sword's advantage, you have a well made shown which wasn't padded out, that's also very well made for its production. (For giant robot fans, certainly the creations here are memorable, and personally even without nostalgia being involved, the characters also present the same colourfulness in design as in personality that came from that era). It helps there's the two act structure. The first half is many episodic stories building to the search of the Claw, including one of the best episodes at a seaside town where a young heterosexual couple torment Van with their transforming car trying to steal his robot. The second half, without fully losing the comedy completely, gets more serious as its built from after the moment of the Claw is revealed, a narrative drive now with apocalyptic issues as the gang builds up to take on the villains.

It is entirely playful as a show, with the added advantage that it's taken the giant robot trope but connected it to a journey tale, only grounded itself in one location for the final conflict when it's dynamically necessary to. Moments of idiosyncratic weirdness are peppered through alongside jokes, especially as Episode 2 already puts the bar high with a ground of macho evil men able to control their beards and moustaches as weapons. Even into the later half where the story gets serious, you get the episode about a matriarchal city led by a woman who demands all those women inside, even guests, have to wear skimpy and super strong bikinis. Maybe that episode is a bit too silly for this show, and it had to have a TV edit even if the uncensored version is tame, but it adds to the charm in its moment of silliness that still is necessary for the plot of the whole series. Any dangers of being crass, whilst still accusable, are contrasted with that conflict being resolved with a very suggestive mankini.

The sense of fun on display is also found in the comedic shorts, Gun x Sword-san, which I'll throw in as a mini review here. Another trope of the type of anime I grew up with, and is still found occasionally, is the "omake" (additional material) content that was made at the same time for the DVD releases and usually was for comedy. In obvious cheap CGI, in which Wendy and her pet tortoise (now able to talk and voiced like an old man) are played as hand puppets, it's a great way to break levity, as actress Houko Kuwashima in particularly takes one of the meekest and brave female characters in Wendy and turn her into an egocentric sociopath here. Most of the gags involve the tortoise being maimed (usually by Wendy), with Van reduced to an incompetent vagrant and some cameos, but they are funny. I might've found it funnier is characters like Pricilla, or the villainess with the calm voice, were included to take the piss and let other voice actors have fun, but in a few words they make a fun bonus to an already rewarding show.

Now for now for major spoilers.

Only the fact that the villain's plot is vague is, again, the real flaw. It's clearly meant to be a plan by the Claw to brainwash the entire planet into complacent "peaceful" figures, but it's the one case of some needed exposition rather than exposition being unnecessary, especially as its vague that his plot involves flowers with a toxic influence and hijacking the Moon. Thankfully, the show has built enough goodwill to the characters this isn't as much an issue. Even that there's only one tragic death doesn't take away from how dynamic the show is. All by way of tropes and structure that was common in anime I saw getting into it into the early to mid-2000s, titles usually released by the late ADV Films, even in terms of the post-credit stinger in the finale episode taking place or an epilogue where characters have aged. Here it happens with both in one, and it's just as fun and a perfect moment as so much else.

Here's the end of major spoilers.

Gun x Sword was sadly an obscurity, one that's been out-of-print in the United Kingdom in the 2010s after its release by MVM Films. Not helping was that, in the USA, it was first released by Geneon USA, a distributor who went out of business with the only virtue that, for every title of theirs that went into a purgatory of not being available, this title was license rescued by Fumination for one of their discount box sets.

Helping in the recent times was the surprise inclusion of characters in the Super Robot Wars franchise, a video game franchise who has been given an incredible amount of carte blanche in that, whilst most would be copyright hell to try to distribute in the West, those without original characters have been cast with anime licenses from titans like Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) to the surprise obscurities like Gun x Sword, which means that (for example) Super Robot Wars t, the game writers were allowed to have characters like Van butt heads with cast (and robots) from the Gundam franchise, Armored Trooper Votoms (1983-4), Gunbuster (1988), and even Cowboy Bebop (1998) in the ultimate licensed fan fiction. Deep cut choices like this help obscure anime find new fan bases, and hopefully this review would encourage people to try to track down Gun x Sword as, in terms of the run of mecha TV shows I've covered, even Gundam Reconguista in G (2014) in its unintentional weirdness, it's been a good batch with this the most eclectic title of the assortment.

#141: Zaion: I Wish You Were Here (2001)

Director: Seiji Mizushima

Screenplay: Hiroyuki Nakamura, Manabu Ishikawa and Natsuko Takahashi

Voice Cast: Joe Odagiri as Yuji Tamiya; Yukari Tamura as Ai; Daisuke Gouri as Domeki; Hiroaki Hirata as Chanpua; Isao Yamagishi as Tatsumi; Jin Hirao as Kurosawa; Katsuyuki Konishi as Kaneshiro; Kotono Mitsuishi as Mitsuki; Nobuo Tobita as Satake; Romi Park as Tao; Tesshō Genda as Kudou

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Zaion is very much the project of a new company with too much ambition, not enough resources. Studio Gonzo were the anime studio I grew up with at their height in the 2000s as I got into anime, so there is a certain aura to them that I cannot help to have in spite of the obvious issues they had. The common idea, whether true or not, is that they always start strong on the first episode of their TV series, a company striving for the slicking productions, only for projects to suffer from budget or having to create original material when the manga sources weren't finished, something to attest to twice from my experience from Hellsing (2001-2) and Chrono Crusade (2003-4). This narrative should be held to debate in reality. What I can however say with true is how it's amazing to think that by the 2010s, whilst they're still around, they crashed and burned due to financial difficulties, having been founded in 1992, started anime production in 2000, and ended up having to delist themselves in 2008 and being merged with another company in 2009.

The best way to answer this question for myself, whether Gonzo were a good animation studio or one which failed, is only answerable by actually watching their work from their main period, in which between 2000 to 2008 they were very productive.  Zaion is a little different as, made in 2001, this is very early for the studio, just breaking into the industry in the 2000s as they originally began in video game animation, the same year as one of their earliest big titles Hellsing. It is also an "ONA", an early original net animation streamed directly on the internet.

Zaion also unfortunately has similarities to Mars of Destruction (2005), a notoriously "bad" anime OVA, if on a higher budget which is still a bad comparison for it. Like Mars of Destruction later, this is about a meteorite landing on Earth and causing an alien outbreak to transpire, in this case a virus that creates monsters from those infected. Unlike the later anime where it's a group of schoolgirls with guns inexplicably having to deal with them, this has a team pumped with nanobots in the blood stream that allow them to transform into effectively a sentai team. A new project, a girl called Ai with tremendous psychic powers, is planned to be the new secret weapon, but alongside a burgeoning relationship between her and Yuuji, a member of the team, the virus is evolving and starts to surpass the nanobots that protect from them.

A four part ONA, it is pretty standard material for a plot, but with the notable detail being that it's directed by Seiji Mizushima. I liked Dai-Guard (1999-2000), a real surprise in the transition to computer assisted animation about ordinary office employees having to operate a giant robot, and he's known primarily for the first adaptation of Full Metal Alchemist (2003), which was a colossal boundary passing hit. Zaion, honestly, does feel like a job for hire, particularly as Zaion's biggest weakness is that story wise and in available resources, it's incredibly bland and doesn't do anything of interest with its basic material.

Even in knowledge that this was an attempt at something from a newly created studio, it cannot be denied the OVA feels impoverished. The plot is very conventional for anime, but if you add style, any can grow in quality even in four TV episode length parts. You can make even a generic premise grow. Zaion isn't that anime, not particularly investing any real pathos for the cast, including a bland snarky male lead, whilst the only character of note is one of the scientists being a middle aged slob who eats a lot of junk food for his main diet. Even the aliens aren't that inspired as, whilst a threat when they can melt together into one giant alien or infect anyone who survives them, there's a lack of any distinction between them.

Production wise this is felt too, not in the obviously dated early effects, which stand out jarringly even in terms of frame rate, but for how generic it is. This is particularly felt as, barring one shot of a crowded city of pedestrians (in the day), this exists in some of the most empty locations possible. Not since Mars of Destruction or even Ai City (1986) have I seen such empty environments, where skyscrapers were just background to the film. Zaion follows a pretty obvious plot you can guess from what I have already described, which leaves little space for this bland aesthetic to be deliberately changed.

The only aspect which stands out is that the production hired composer Kenji Kawai, a regular collaborator with Mamoru Oshii and a talented creator who brings his a-level talent here. Zaion to its credit, when everything else isn't interesting, has a great soundtrack, touching upon New Age and electronica with an incredible atmosphere.

Aside from this...yeah, this is difficult without just recounting how the story ends which defeats the purpose of the review. It ends with some tragedy and a happy ending, but I didn't care. There's generic plot points here that could grow and blossom into good stories - that the sentai team are a multinational steam willingly risking their lives by punching infected mutants when the remote controlled combat robots don't work, or the military are both covering up these alien outbreaks, and emotionally isolating a sixteen year old girl to turn her into a hologram projecting laser weapon - but they are the most basic interpretations of them. As a result, this isn't an artistic failure, just an insignificant production which is worse as people worked hard on the episodes only for this to be the result.

#140: Adolescence of Utena (1999)

Director: Kunihiko Ikuhara

Screenplay: Yōji Enokido

Based on the manga by Chiho Saito and the Be-Papas

Voice Cast: Tomoko Kawakami as Utena Tenjou; Yuriko Fuchizaki as Anthy Himemiya; Aya Hisakawa as Miki Kaoru; Kotono Mitsuishi as Jury Arisugawa; Kumiko Nishihara as Shiori Takatsuki; Mitsuhiro Oikawa as Akio Ohtori; Takehito Koyasu as Touga Kiryuu; Takeshi Kusao as Kyoichi Saionji; Yuka Imai as Wakaba Shinohara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Even into the 2010s, the United Kingdom never got Kunihiko Ikuhara's seminal 1997 series Revolutionary Girl Utena as a release. MVM nonetheless released the 1999 tie-in film as Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie. This film is a thirty nine episode story condensed into less than ninety minutes, which does prove an obvious issue for a first form of this franchise to see. I however am externally grateful to them for this curious decision as I've now seen Adolescence of Utena, which eventually doesn't become something under the series' shadow but something greater. The result in just ninety minutes is a surreal one-off that ties Ikuhara's work, a franchise with a huge significance for LGBT anime and manga fans, LGBT themes being discussed in a major project in the series, and is tied to even Japanese avant-garde art and the films of Shūji Terayama in some of Ikuhara's creative choices.

Ikuhara, alongside likely directing episodes of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, cut his teeth in the anime industry through the Sailor Moon franchise, which is notable as it deviated from the original Naoko Takeuchi manga with the nineties anime franchise its own huge cultural beast. Reolutionary Girl Utena was his seismic powerhouse, let loose and still having a profound effect today, to the point most people probably don't realise it's based on a 1996 manga created as part of a circle involving him called the Be-Papas.

Trying to assess a full plot is going to be an issue as this is a retelling of a series, but sticking to the film's form alone, it can be boiled down to this: in a school existing out of time, an ever shifting entity like a living M.C. Escher painting, sword duels between students are taking place with the prize for the winner being the "Rose Bride" Anthy, who is explicitly for this film a figure who will be with the victor even in bed. The titular Utena, a new female student, discovers about these duels and intervenes out of indignation and by pure accident, having accidentally found a ring important to her is a symbol of dualists, winning a duel when provoked and thus tying herself and Anthy together.

You cannot talk about any Utena, even just the film, without considering just how significant it was for LGBT fans as, ironically alongside Sailor Moon which had a lesbian couple awkwardly dubbed as cousins in the American export, this is a love story about two young women. Utena in this film is hostile and pining for a male friend, but the romance between her and Anthy grows over the course of the film. It's explicit in the film at the beginning what is intended in how Utena is introduced in the first scene, very short pink hair and dressed in boy's clothes, before their slowly growing romance blossoms and becomes the crux of the narrative. A lot of people to this day speak of how much of a watershed moment this franchise was, such as Erica Friedman, a proud gay former publisher of yuri (girl's love) manga, a writer on the subject, and who got to present Adolescence of Utena at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco, the British LGBTQ Film Festival and the Tampa LGBTQ Film Festival back in the early 2000s¹.

Coupled with this, and still felt profoundly even in this abridged version of the series, is the delusions and heteronormative trap of fairy tales. The "prince" who rescues the princess as in old Disney films aren't good, either an illusion or an unhealthy concept,  the back-story of Anthy with her brother having a dark, incestuous aspect as Ikuhara never pulls his punches in dealing with adult subjects in bright colours, especially as this back-story is elaborated on further in the television series. The only good prince is Utena herself, who decided to become one even if she eventually reveals full length feminine hair in contrast to her masculine dress. Set in an ever changing, shifting fantasy school Utena whilst beautiful to look at constantly reveals the artifice throughout, a place that is an illusion that eventually crumbles in shadows and horrors.

Significant to this is how gorgeous this production is. Ikuhara is someone I call "pop surrealism" because for me, the "pop" is his use of bright colours, very clear symbolic motifs (roses here) and the energy of his work that can juggle comedy to drama, such as the abrupt cameo of a character Nanami but only in a gag segment as a cow stood against very serious subject matter. This is the only theatrical film Ikuhara has made - a production even co-produced with Sega, which is likely explained with them collaborating on a 1998 Utena Sega Saturn game - and it's stunning to witness in the quality and the early use of computer animation which thankfully gels.

Here it's notable how much Ikuhara was influenced by Japanese avant-garde art. Probably one of the trademarks of this tale, found here, are the silhouette girls, schoolgirls entirely as black shadows (without any features) in school uniforms, who act as a Greek chorus, even acquiring a salacious videotape involving Anthy and her brother. One of the most striking sequences, when the leads fully connect, is literally staged on a pool supported on top of a tower full of roses. The other pronounced choice is J. A. Seazer, an experimental composer whose trademark is combining theatre and rock music who Ikuhara explicitly hired for the television series to compose songs for. With his trademark chorus singing to acid rock guitars, Seazer's only other anime contribution was to the notorious independently made Midori (1992). Beyond this, he's famous for his work in live action cinema with Shūji Terayama, the experimental filmmaker who is tragically under seen and whose work clearly inspired Ikuhara in hindsight for myself, productions like Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974) very much psychodramatic and surreal films with bold visuals and choice of colour. The Seazer music here, especially in the few duels seen, is exceptional as is the score by composer Shinkichi Mitsumune.

Also of note is screenwriter Yōji Enokido, who deserves a lion's share of the praise as, as I look into his career, whilst it is smaller than other's he's made a career of idiosyncratic work. Penning the story for FLCL (2000) in particular on his resume immediately suggests someone very comfortable with surreal and unconventional storytelling, and considering he also penned the TV series, it's for the better the person who worked on the TV series tried to compact this into a smaller and more subjective piece.

Does the film actually work though, especially as I have never seen the series? If we were talking about just the first three-quarters, it's a gorgeous piece to watch, but a curiosity only from Ikuhara. Things change considerably in the final act, starting for me from a sequence in an elevator involving water, which brings on from there and onwards a level of great emotional relevance to the characters barely touched upon that cannot help but over take me. Then the divisive final sequence happens, and Adolescence of Utena becomes incredible. I cannot spoilt it, because just describing the scenes in a sentence isn't the same as watching the finale as I have learnt thinking of this film over the years, that a character is turned into a car and the final act is a car chase to escape into the real world.

It is one of the most surreal things I have witnessed, where even the mech animators hired were baffled infamously why they were hired for a Revolutionary Girl Utena film themselves. The result also happens to be one of the best things to have been done in theatrical anime, an exceptional short in its own length of animation, spectacle, emotional power and symbolic power. The car metaphors in the film are strange but a) Ikuhara has been quoted in being inspired by a craze for supercars in the seventies which he viewed as a juvenile fantasy², connectable to the dangerous fantasy of fairy tales and found in the TV sereis, and b) there's loaded symbolism in Anthy's brother and his madness which we eventually see being connected to his desperate search for car keys, fearing if they cannot be found the "car" will rust.

The finale is something to behold when, if considered, the symbolism is simple and understandable with a spectacular result. The leads must traverse the perils of a fairytale castle, now a monstrous hundred wheeler that can crush cars underneath, to find happiness. Even if happiness is in a literal wasteland, as it is no longer the delusional fantasy, reality is found and the ending sequence turns the Adolescence of Utena beyond a curiosity in Kunihiko Ikuhara's career, but a crowning gem.

And thankfully, it has lasted. This franchise is still held highly to this day, to the point that arguably this work is just as monumental to anime in the nineties as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop (1998-9) are, the kind of show that has been itself an influence, as can be attested to Stephen Universe creator Rebecca Sugar admitting this for her own famous work³. At the time, this was followed by an absence from Ikuhara in the industry, still working on other projects as well as in other mediums, but never directing any titles throughout the 2000s. Thankfully, in 2011 we got Mawaru Penguindrum, leading to a trilogy throughout the 2010s alongside Yurikuma Arashi (2015) and Sarazanmai (2019). What the 2020s will lead to for him will be of interest and baited anticipation. For myself, until the TV series itself, this is a pretty big title in my own personal fandom to finally have seen, and by God did it exceed expectations.

=========

1) HERE

2) "When I was little there was a supercar boom. Maybe because of that, even now such a car is something that satisfies childish desires in the adult world. A car seems like that sort of thing. As you grow up toys tend to disappear quickly from your life. Even if, as a child you wanted a model of robot, when you’re an adult these sort of things that you want seem to disappear, isn’t that so? Well, you may want something like a house, but obviously, it’s a little different from wanting a toy. My idea of a car is something that is exceedingly close to an adult’s toy..." - "Be-Papas Interview". Animage. 20 (1): 4–13. May 10, 1997. [Found HERE]

3) HERE

#139: My Sister, The Writer (2018)

Director: Hiroyuki Furukawa

Screenplay: Yūichirō Momose

Based on the light novel by Seiji Ebisu

Voice Cast: Reina Kondo as Suzuka Nagami; Tasuku Hatanaka as Yū Nagami; Ayumi Mano as Esaka-san; Chinatsu Akasaki as Ahegao W Peace Sensei; Eri Kitamura as Reika Shinozaki; Kazusa Aranami as Sakura Minazuki; Yua Nagae as Haruna Kanzaka; Yui Nakajima as Akino Kanzaka; Yui Ogura as Mai Himuro

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

In 2018, one show in the winter schedule quickly became infamous. The premise, comic and light, was a light novel adaptation about a young teen light novelist who scores success but, likely to get into trouble as her school bars students from having income on the side, asks her older brother and aspiring light novelist to pose as her in public, necessary as her first volume is a success in a competition and officially published. Before we even arrive to the notoriety, of how the production quickly capsized immediately, let us get past the immediate concern that she also has a crush on her biological brother that is kept a secret. This is the first time incest is brought up in an anime I have covered as a main plot. If this amateur work of mine is meant to reflect watching all types of anime, this will not be the last time either.

Most anime which covers this isn't, say, Koi Kaze (2004), a drama which is meant to tackle the subject with incredible weighted nuisance, but uses incest as a kink popular in anime and light novels as step siblings and step parents are in 2010s porn onwards.The entire concept is merely a drop of water in the ocean, that curious place where this is not reflective of the entirety of a medium but also happens to be popular enough in a minority its covered a lot in titles like Kissxsis (2010). Why incest is this common in this subsection is probably more complex than a merely misinformed presumption on Japanese culture, but against God knows the joke I have made about step family porn being popular in the West on porn sites isn't a mere jest either, so this taboo has become a growing ellicit one. A work like My Sister, The Writer doesn't hedge its bet on these two being step siblings either.

The irony is that in spite of this premise, as the sister wrote a novel about a brother loving his little sister reflecting her crush for him, it feels insidiously tame and not the thing we jaded anime fans batted an eyelid at. Even in knowledge of how arguably filthy the show is in spite of its wholesome tone, with many fetishes approached as the siblings negotiate around their new career path, it's not the moral quandaries which have been the talk of the net about this series. No, the real notoriety was also because the show right into episode two dropped so much in animation quality it became a meme.

Animation faults happen in television, as schedules are tight and usually cleaned up for Blu Ray, only an occasional mishap being really notorious, from cabbages looking like green balls or characters suddenly having distorted or comically flat features in one shot. A show Samurai Flamenco (2013-14), which I loved, could gain poor luck for its television run as, whilst I and others could see the cleaned up physical releases, the viewers for the broadcast saw animation failures which coloured the experience. When it gets so bad, you get a Gun-dou Musashi (2006), a notorious Monkey Punch adaptation and one of the first examples of irony from Japanese otaku, who demanded the DVD release to have the bad television broadcast quality animation rather than something attempting to salvage the production. My Sister, The Writer by the second episode had howlers in terms of animation posted online, made worse as this was a simulcast in the West through Crunchyroll, unlike shows of decades past like Musashi, which led to more eyes on the product.

I was ready to be controversial by saying it wasn't so bad in the first episode. I have seen some infamous examples of badly animated work before. Then by the second episode to the middle of these ten episodes, until I accepted this issue, I would make hissing noises in embarrassment even by myself watching the show. The animation problems, not comical examples like the sister Suzuka Nagami (in a pink pair of fetishishtic bunny pyjamas) melting on her bed, are really painful when it comes to facial expressions in particular. This is a common problem in television animation, with eyes too far from the nose or like they have had faces drawn as if on a paper plate, but here some of them alongside other animation are teeth grinding in how bad it gets.

The production history is more talked about than the show, which is ultra generic. The show does develop as a generic harem story, in which our bland male protagonist Yu Nagami doesn't try to negotiate around the situations he is in with all the female attention he has. He is another bland protagonist who is psychologically meek and complacent to the point it is a concern, easily replaceable with a potato without any change among female fetish stereotypes smitten by him. There's the busty publicist who has a tendency to call him about work whilst bathing. There's another light novelist writer who wants to know his secrets as a successful writer, a tsundere whose trademarks is her red hair and that, as a tsundere, she follows the trope of the hostile and aggressive female character that secretly hides a softer side to our potato-kun hero. There's also a voice actress who is blonde and bubbly, whose fandom of the light novel is to the point she wants to be his little sister to his real sister's annoyance, part of this circle around our hero with the personality of starch.

And then there's Ahegao W Peace Sensei, who needs her own paragraph as the only character of note. An erotic illustrator, the thing to bear in mind is that she stands out more for her voice actress Chinatsu Akasaki, playing a busty and energetic blonde, being utterly professional as her character at one point at a Comiket, a real major Japanese fan convention, says that she enjoys "degrading rape porn too much". That will put people off, just referring to real dialogue she has; some might be put off just from her preferred nickname Ahegao, which is the term in anime and manga porn for a shot of a (usually female) character having had a violent orgasm to the point of comically over the top facial expressions and looking like one's mind has been blown. Ahegao in another story would actually be a fascinating if controversial female character, a proud and independent creator who just happens to have a very transgressive catalogue of sexual fetishes she enjoys. We exist still with a gender bias where we don't presume in mainstream culture women can have fetishes and sexual interests which can be uncomfortable to many, which would make Ahegao such a fascinating character if handled in an anime that was actually good. This is especially as she never comes off as a deviant; she says openly crude and sexual things when it would be deeply inappropriate in public, but a subtler take of this carefree, very talented and sweet figure would be a challenge to tackle with interest. This is My Sister, The Writer though so don't expect it to take this character and ask these questions from her, asking the challenging ideas she has the potential to suggest¹.

Come to think about it, as one man who actually watched the whole series rather than just the first two episodes, not a lot actually happens at all in all I saw. The show's infamy got a deeper layer when the production staff started hiding messages in the production credits, like the name “Shojiki Komata” which is likely shojiki komatta, meaning “We’re in serious trouble.” It is pointless to argue about gender politics, whether it's acceptable to fetishize incest, when the back story of this show was a show capsizing from the beginning and getting bad to the point the staff themselves were sending messages of help to the viewers. This was the reason I ever considered watching this series, and in a world which promotes romance between biological siblings, without anyone onscreen arguing the ethical problems involved, it's not something to be shocked by in the blandness of the show. Or the bigger ethical issue, in real life, that someone confirmed none of the staff on the show were being paid^2.

If you ignore this, the issue falls to the side as the cutesy tone manages to plain out all the fetishes this about whilst being utterly sleazy inherently. It is explicit to the point the television broadcast, which I saw on Crunchyroll, had to censor the nudity with onscreen "stickers", contrasting a tameness which is surprising as this deals with a lot of fetishes distinct to this pop culture, a running joke that Suzuka wants a term explained to her only to blush and be shocked when someone (usually Ahegao) does. The light novel aspect, super popular novellas with illustrations which have become a big part of anime in how many are adapted, is barely covered. There's a perversity in a notoriously bad show talking about a great light novelist, that Suzuka's work is so good it can generate female fans wanting to be her brother's little sister, or the many debates about what a good story should be. It doesn't bother even trying to show the world of light novel production, which would've be fascinating to see even in an exaggerated form, especially as we do have the character go to a real life fan convention here. Instead I have to write about something as absurd about the anime director, when this light novel gets so popular it is being produced for an adaptation, arguing with Yu that he is not liking cute little sisters enough to be a good writer. Many sane readers of this might be grossed by this. I just wondered in hindsight what bizarre world such an argument would make sense within.

Once I got accustomed to the animation problems, nothing really stands out. The main female cast are mostly insignificant, generic/buxom/cute characters baring Ahegao and Suzuka who are so generic this is a rare case of not even the character designs standing out, made worse as there's nothing credible or defendable about the main story about the lead siblings getting closer, as Yu has to play out being romantically attracted to his real sister to pose as a creator. It might've been a real transgressive streak if they went with the incestuous romance fully, but this a tedious romantic tale, some mild internal angst and the additional cast being roadblocks, which makes the relationship not that compelling either.

It's clearly a fetish delivery system of a show to be honest, and it goes for low laying fruit to the point My Sister, The Writer is inert. Little happens. An episode doing research at Suzuka's school summer festival, where they inexplicably end up as the romantic leads for a theatrical performance, just happens, and that applies to most of the plot points. There's no real conflict baring that anime director and two female light novel creating sisters, the youngest with a hugely broken friendship with Ahegao feeding her animosity to her. Neither conflict is dabbled in greatly, nor the sisters as they merely tag along with Yu as potential suitors. Beyond that, I honestly suspect the show was quietly put to pasture before it intended to, when your animators are having honest to God pleas for help in the credits.

They did however create a single two part OVA episode, in spite of this, whose existence was fully uncensored bared breasts. Both parts are about Ahegao having experimental virtual reality games, one where the women play a reverse netorare situation, "netorare" a type of adult manga and anime trope of adulterous relationships, where everyone is trying to steal the lead potato from the designated wife with simulated sex. The other inexplicably turns into a sexy version of Saw (2004), still with two people chained up in a grungy bathroom with a body, alongside Die Hard (1988) if re-imagined with nipple triggered bombs. Even with the nude and kink it would be tame, baring the discomfort of one character being the under aged teen sister of the lead, making the scene (and let's be blunt about the moment) where she messages her older brother's back in a bathtub with her chest probably one of the scuzziest things I've covered, especially when you consider an otaku has probably masturbated to this scene.

"Trangressive" is a questionable word to use as I don't consider My Sister, The Writer doesn't have its plot idea of incest to deliberately subvert or offend normalcy, but just as a token. Its neither to be forgotten that a lot of these incest kink shows are usually about cute little sisters, a sense of "moe" and such concepts' sinister underbellies being popular as unlike an actual girlfriend, a cute younger girl fantasy is more appealing as they can be told to be quiet so the male can play his videogames. Aesthetically, by the conclusion probably the worst thing alongside the morality is that this was already as bland as you could get, that is colourful and bright with its pop credit songs but looking like everything else initially anyway, with additional atrocious animation and questionable story pacing that makes the experience worse. This isn't School Days (2007), bright and bland but with an intentional dark heart, instead My Sister, The Writer the kind of show we would thankfully have forgotten and buried weren't it not for how much of a conceptual disaster it turned into.  

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1) Ahegao is also meant to be British, which really is a surprise as a British viewer to learn. I mean we're secretly kinky over here, but should I proudly embrace this character or not? There's not even any sense of Britishness in the character seen in the series, even tea drinking, so it's a character trait that's a non entity.

2) HERE