#245: Yukikaze (2002-5)

 

Includes a review of Fighting Fairy Girl Rescue Me Mave-chan (2005)

Studio: Gonzo

Director: Masahiko Ōkura

Screenplay: Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Ikuto Yamashita, Masahiko Ōkura, Masashi Sogo, Seiji Kio and Yumi Tada

Based on the novel series by Chōhei Kambayashi

Voice Cast: Jōji Nakata as James "Jack" Bukhar; Masato Sakai as Rei Fukai; Masako Ikeda as Lynn Jackson; Miho Yamada as Edith Foss; Youko Asagami as Rydia Cooley

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

You want me to psychoanalyze a fighter plane?

Thirty three years before this straight-to-video anime begins, the “JAM”, an alien race, invaded Earth through a wormhole from their planet to ours via the Antarctica. Now, based on the series of novels by Chōhei Kambayashi, the human race pushed them back through the passage, back to their planet “Fairy”, and keeps guard on that side. Yukikaze’s author, Chōhei Kambayashi, is a prolific author in science fiction, with this series one of his most known. It is neither the only one to have had an anime adaptation, as an obscure OVA series The Enemy's The Pirates! (1989) is based on another of his works, imagining a space cop duo where one of them in an alien talking cat.

Yukikaze is a considerably more somber premise, but to factor in as well, this was a ten year anniversary for the animation studio GONZO, which could seem odd as they were founded in 2000 as the studio most known them for. This ten year anniversary is because, whilst the animation studio most will known was founded in the year 2000, the original company Gonzo K.K. began in 1992, working with other companies and on video game cut scenes. Whilst they still exist, financial problems between 2008 and 2009 eventually led to the company being merged with Gonzo K.K., taking them out as a prominent animation company even if they still work to this day. GONZO before them, between 2000 to 2005 at least, were a prominent company for me as I got into anime at that time, as the late ADV Films released so many of their productions over in Britain, nostalgic to think of but with a sensibility to know their flaws. They had shows like Chrono Crusade (2003) I loved, but hesitate to return to, and others like Hellsing (2001-2) were works with were divisive to viewers. One of their biggest issues which was obvious even back in my barely developed years of taste, and is found with Yukikaze, is that they were a company cursed by the journey it took to keep a long form production consistent in narrative and quality, even in terms of pure sod’s law as both of the titles mentioned, for example, were cases where the source manga were unfinished and they had to create new endings within only a handful of episodes. They were once a high profile name, even to the point that arguably one of their most successful and highest profile productions was not a series but a Linkin Park music video, Breaking the Habit, which with the nu metal band was something non-anime fans would have seen at a time when anime and other pop culture crossed over multiple times.

Yukikaze however is an example of the problems with organizing and pacing their projects. For years my only knowledge of the show came from one of the longest lasting and running anime podcasts since 2005, Anime World Order, where the five part straight-to-video production was buried as a sci-fi story which absolutely failed. The build up over a decade plus means that I actually found material in Yukikaze of virtue, and what was once jokes on that podcast¹ have by accident been more salient as this presents one of the most  (accidental and at times intentional) and compelling psychodramas one could have wished was in a better managed project. Truthfully the bar was set so low I found so much to enjoy here, something compelling but an undeniable mess that, could have actually succeeded. Even in terms of the unexpected content, the fact that the central relationship between its male leads, James "Jack" Bukhar and Rei Fukai, has moments beyond platonic friendship but potential romantic readings is something you are likely to find in a lot of anime. Sometimes it is deliberately placed in shows even if with its own moral questions, as this can be done in anime as a way to appeal to certain female audiences attracted to “yaoi” and subtext of possible relationships between male characters, something with its own questions as that means it is not necessarily for a gay viewer’s benefit first in characterization. What is unexpected, and was merely presumed a joke in that podcast I listened to many times, is how even if unintentional, this platonic relationship ends up being a triangle between these two men, struggling through this battle against an alien menace.. and a sentient fighter plane.

It feels less like a joke either to say that, as there are two sides to the Yukikaze project in terms of the production, and one of them (the most compelling) falls further into this even if an exaggeration of the actual content seen. One side, despite its sci-fi setting, is realistic aerial dog fight scenes which made this an expensive project, using what was cutting edge CGI animation for the sequences, and the other is a drama. The latter’s character dynamics became, even if by mistake, in certain dramatic choices more psychologically idiosyncratic and deeper than intended. Rei Fukai, our lead, is clearly written in script and in depiction as psychologically disconnect from the world, close to the point of becoming a savant who would not be able to function in the ordinary society back on Earth, but found harmony helming the Yukikaze, a fighter plane which has such advanced A.I. It and Rei have developed a bond, strong enough that he follows its advice to even shot what it consider an enemy without question.

Considering dreams Rei has include depicting him in a jail cell and Yukikaze itself, which means “snow wind”, depicted as a female fairy creature on the other side of the bar he yearns for, the production may have accidentally loaded so much more meaning to his bond to the plane, especially as the tension with his senior officer James Bukar reads too closely to a crush between them even if it was just meant to be a close friendship in dialogue. Even if pure accident, this is the material which is the strongest of all of Yukikaze because it is at least memorable, and aspects that are clear in dialogue suggest even Chōhei Kambayashi’s source writings had an unconventional characterization for Rei himself. One of the odder details is how the two met, James meeting Rei in a canteen mashing peaches and peas together in a meal, a bizarre touch showing Rei’s unsociable form, and there is a lot to Yukikaze which I would not be surprised is from the books and in a fully fleshed out form would have more eccentric but compelling to witness. Even if meant to be platonic friendship between the two, their drama is still interesting even if the result in this anime makes Yukikaze extremely weird. That would clearly be the idea of James being the one person who cared to help Rei, finding friendship with him, and the constant fear for his safety as Rei is attached to the Yukikaze more to ordinary life. It is obviously a metaphor for the dehumanization of war, where Rei only feels alive in the peril of danger and aerial combat, but when a female superior, Rydia Cooley, tells James he is losing Fukai to Yukikaze, you get one of the multiple moments where the show may have unintentionally made Yukikaze more compelling as a story by making that plane a rival for Rei’s heart and mind. The plane, thought it downloads its consciousness into another machine, even has a sad send off in Episode 1 to emphasis their place as the third main character of this material even over human characters.

The project without this idiosyncratic melodrama has a compelling premise which could have breathed into something truly engaging. It is a well worn one, an invading forced known as the JAM which are totally unlike human beings, but only seen as horrifying sentient goo, the plot also brings in an enticing twist in terms of a Body Snatchers concern, that the JAM are replacing members with copies to infiltrate their higher ranks. Even without the central relationship with James and Rei, the psychodrama of a plane’s A.I. being able to understand Rei more, this could have been an anime that could have knocked it out of the park as an intense sci-fi drama, set with some realism, where the war in the alien world has a greater paranoia as more members are said to be “taken”.  The anime can also be batshit with some ideas. I can just mention the character who has a plutonium powered atomic heart which prevents him from entering certain countries, never mentioned again after his episode, but the kind of idea out-of-nowhere that wins me over as well in terms of how imaginative this could have been.

The issue with Yukikaze is that it is neither fish nor fowl. The post digital animation look of the time, a muted realistic one of grays, is a contentious aesthetic touch to consider in itself, but the show also lacks energy, crossing over from a mood piece with an unintentional level of what you can read into it, with James’ fears for Rei in safety and psychologically the one thing keeping this for me from becoming sluggish. The aerial battles themselves are also the weakest segments of the entire production. Aging is less than issue with them but that, expensive to produce, they are not interesting and there are times where you will struggle with whom is who in the alien skies without combing through the scenes, not telling the plot visually well. Flaws creep in more and more into the script, and it is clear the show, with episodes two to four being thirty minutes long each, that the span of time was a bad sign to how it was moving along, only being fully released between 2002 to 2005 rather than taking a lot quicker to complete.

Basic explanation of the premise is not done, such that whilst it is explained at the beginning this is set on an alien planet, you forget in the seemingly normal desert this is set in an alien world, and a lot of characters are left with not enough given time to stand out. Rydia the female chief or Edith the psychologist (who is also her niece) are two examples, but more jarring is a figure who gets a lot of time for herself back on Earth, Lynn Jackson the journalist and acclaimed novelist who we get the back-story of. She is the face of the normal person who witnessed the JAM invasion as a child, by the news on Christmas with her parents, and devoted herself to researching the events when an adult. She has become the figure now standing out as someone who devoted her life to documenting the JAM invasion which many are wary in believing in nowadays, an enticing concept in how human beings do not learn from the past and become complacent. Her story is closed abruptly on Episode 4, when the story returns to Earth fully, and how her tale is a candle randomly snuffed out shows the problems this project had, considering how much time was devoted to her with one or two prominent scenes by herself. It shows one of GONZO’s biggest flaws as mentioned, not being able to finish a work without struggles in the plotting and pace.

Episode 5 is weird as suddenly the production trying to become The End of Evengelion (1997), where everything goes to hell, whilst everyone is having tea and cakes on the veranda as everything explodes. It is not this truthfully in a twist, which abruptly brings in fictional reality when never evoked before and makes this episode even messier in execution. It is by this point, whilst Yukikzae became entertaining for many reasons beforehand, why this production was forgotten, where even by this final episode there are key details it has to suddenly explain, the heavy burden also with the disappointment that this also includes tantalizing ideas it will now not be able to flesh out, such as that the portal would have been closed long before to the JAM if it was not for human greed, and the JAM’s ability to both tempt humanity with possible resources and to complete manipulate reality. It is a work which fascinates throughout its length but also left so much on the table. Even the unexpected sense of platonic love between your two male leads, arguably one of the few things that reaches a proper conclusion, could have been fleshed out even further then what we got.

Yukikaze got released through Bandai Visual, an ill-advised off-shot to Bandai Entertainment started in 2005 for the USA, and merged back into Bandai in 2008, which tried to bring Japanese pricing schemes to the West, which only Aniplex in the United States have managed to get away with, i.e. much more expensive cost for physical media like for Japanese anime fans. In Britain, Beez Entertainment, Bandai’s late European division, released the series. Sold by itself, despite being less than thirty minutes long, is a tie-in production called Fighting Fairy Girl Rescue Me Mave-chan which should be brought up too. This follows in a genre of anthropomorphizing non-sentient objects, like vehicles to even soda cans, into characters with a trend for cute girls if occasionally cute guys too. This is an early one, and it is a slight production, an ode to otaku promoting both Yukikaze and Stratos 4 (2003) to an audience who would have likely bought the DVDs in Japan beforehand.

A nervous teenage boy, braving himself to go to an anime convention, steps into a bathroom to calm a panic attack only to end up on Planet Fairy from Yukikaze, where the sentient planes are now young women who can fly and fight aliens. It is slight, though promises sequels and like Yukikaze, this has an abrupt aspect to it which is explicitly part of itself in script and meaning. This is not likely accidental thought, and is explicit in this case, as it has a very cynical idea that these characters know they are merely characters from an anime, brought to life by fans but knowing that when they are constantly under threat of obscurity. Once the fans are more interesting in a new show, they like other characters (like a blurred out parody of Lum from Urusei Yatsura) are to be forgotten and to disappear from existence into a literal void. It feels like Toy Story if you envision the toys discarded in the attic, and it is a bleak idea to centralize in a one-off episode, even if having a happy ending. Though it is clearly made to sell Yukikaze, even by cynically having a busty blue haired female character the most prominent even over the one (Mavi-chan) named after the show, you also cannot help but read into the creators through this premise. Made by GONZO too, it feels like a response to how for all the work into Yukikaze that took three years, a work to celebrate GONZO itself, it was going to disappear and be discarded by the new shiny animated production afterwards. It feels abruptly frank from the production team even if meant to be a cute tie-in.

It is even more ironic now as poor Mavi-chan is forgotten, whether the homicidal one who attack strangers with knives or the plane in a deep bond with its male pilot, a deeply flawed and messy production that was meant to celebrate an entire studio not one of the titles you bring up talking about GONZO. GONZO themselves, as mentioned, are still producing titles but are no longer upfront in their name being promoted alongside their anime productions, and it is perversely a review like this which talks of the deep flaws with Yukikaze which will also however nod to it out of respect too. There were ideas here which worked and some which probably hinted at a level of unconventionality it never likely intended. It managed to have the least expected psychodrama one would presume from this title, between two people in a bond and the combat plane which divides them, and I only wish that I could have said it managed to be this successfully. What could have been legitimately great in terms of its production and storytelling, if it had taken some radical steps to focus, is instead just a curiosity.

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1) Anime World Order Show # 81a – Rei Fukai, You Are Worse Than Michael Jordan, published on July 2^nd 2009. I will warn that aspects of the podcast from this time, in humour and tone, have dated badly or may offend, which the hosts, who have started from 2005 into the 2020s, have admitted to. They have become a significantly better podcast into the 2020s just in terms of the quality of the reviews, but if you can step beyond some of the humour, older episodes like this one are still rewarding and in this case are apt to refer to. Listening to this episode over years perfectly sums up the lowered expectations until I finally saw Yukikaze myself.

#244: Eiken (2003)

Studio: J.C. Staff

Director: Kiyotaka Ohata

Screenplay: Tomoyasu Okubo

Based on the manga by Seiji Matsuyama

Voice Cast: Akeno Watanabe as Densuke Mifune; Miwa Oshiro as Chiharu Shinonome; Emi Yabusaki as Yuriko Shinonome; Mai Kadowaki as Kyoko Morooka; Marina Ono as Komoe Harumachi; Masumi Asano as Kirika Misono; Touko Itou as Lin Grace

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

J.C. Staff are a prolific company who have worked on some acclaimed titles - the TV series Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) and Azumanga Daioh (2002) spring to mind - but they are still a company who worked over the years, leading to an eclectic catalogue which includes legitimately curiosities, ones you may have never heard of and others that you will scratch your head about. The straight to video work is a great example of this.  You can have Cat Soup (2001), a highly regarded and surreal avant-garde animation based on the work of manga author Nekojiru. You can however also have Garzey's Wing (1996-7), a notorious Yoshiyuki Tomino work, and they are a company who have put their hands into a curious number of tangents. Probably one of the most infamous, least in the USA because Media Blasters released this two episode work and the manga, is Seiji Matsuyama's Eiken. Eiken, if you just look at the screenshots, will lead to many running far from it as far as possible. Hell, the still images may even cause problems for those who maintain free blogging sites, unless you have the warning page for sensitive content up. Eiken, with fair warning for someone expecting this to be a review just viewing it as a gross perversion of anime sex comedy tropes may be mortified that this review, dare I say, may even become pretentious. Not to defend the anime at all, but from someone who viewed it only in mind to a morbid fascination, and left finding it a sexual nightmare tale masquerading in cute clothes with a lot to unpick. Even in terms of Matsuyama's accidental contributions as a manga author in real life Japanese politics, Eiken is a perfect example, whether a good anime, a bad anime, or an infamous one, you could write so much about even if entirely personal opinion, and it is all worth having written down.

This all also stems into the past. Let us not kid ourselves, even if the later sentence will sound crass, but anime and manga over the decades has had an obsession with the female bust, and this leads to the term "bakunyu", literally "exploding breasts" and means "enormous breasts", when you take the fixation found in many cultures for heterosexual males to its most extreme level. Eiken is infamous, even when larger busted characters have become commonplace within anime and manga, for being the one title to bring bakunyu to Shonen manga as, yes, this was targeted to adolescent boys in Weekly Shōnen Champion. The story is complicated knowing that its most notorious creative decision, the bust size of a lot of its female cast, was not from the get-go, but a decision made with the editor (with the author's interest) to redraw the characters from volume four in the manga tankōbon onwards, which is also notably where, in the US releases, Media Blasters' publications had to switch from an age rating of 16 plus to 18 plus¹. Even if I advise caution against anyone watching this without warning, I came to this anime fully aware of what I was getting into, and finding rather than feeling dirty, as I will warn most will, the anime adaptation fascinated for what it inadvertedly became. The entire thing by pure accident comes as an adolescent male sexual neurosis onscreen even if that is clearly not the intention of the production at all, all with a perverse air to it that is more interesting to have witnessed for myself than the shock many would have with this title. 

It is not a parody, as it was clearly made as a tale with sex appeal if one with a kink or two few have, and as we will get into later, Seiji Matsuyama created a manga much more controversial, with wide scale effect on Japanese censorship, which is likely to be less defendable and place a more damning eye on this title too with hindsight. Coming to this, Eiken has all the tropes of other anime and manga which can be questionable and clichéd, the high school romance a common story line which can be done well and has questionable aspects to challenge, including the obsession with having so many and the idea one's high school life in a fantastical form is more worthy of anime over the worlds of adults. The difference is that this is anime high school if filtered through an adolescent hormonal nightmare. Our lead Densuke Mifune is so bland, like so many male protagonists in these in terms of his meek inability, that he is immediately set upon by the notorious Eiken club and its leader Kirika Misono on his first day at Zashono Academy, a place which is literally located on a blatant Freudian landmass. It is not redeemable as an anime, but the stereotypical clichés over these two episodes are here and they find themselves being more scrutinised due to how tasteless this show gets, exaggerating them to an extreme whilst still disguising itself as cutesy. The clichés are found in other shows - cute love interest Chiharu Shinonome, who is shy and Densuke crushes on, the school competition that could bring them closer, the former student who studied in the USA who is a threat as another romantic interest, and Densuke's own unfortunate curse to stumble into every clichéd moment of anime sex comedy at the worse moments. The differences beyond its lewdness could almost have been notable changes that the show never actually winked at, in that the most notorious part of the show, the breast sizes of several key female characters, could have just been shown onscreen and everything about the plot could have played out without ever raising the character designs as the anime actually does constantly, forcing one to register it and react with how even a crass choice undercuts everything. This anime is not subtle in the slightest so instead with Chiharu, the bakunyu change forces her to become distorted, the change turning these characters into hyper exaggerations that for a viewer may be a step into the off-putting. And some of the characters are younger and more ridiculously proportion, which makes this even moe perverse let alone more dubious in general before those aesthetic touches. 

If it was not obvious this was a bizarre product beamed from a specific series of circumstances, the alternative world version of this, which was more focused on being a twisted little parody, would have been inspired if off-putting for someone. Even in this dubious form it is in reality, I cannot help but view it like a two episode nightmare from another television show, censored for television censorship, where our lead dreams all of this in a state of delirium, representing all of his sexual anxieties and hang-ups as a teen boy, before he wakes up and encounters these characters with sensible proportions and with less lewdness onscreen. In another context, this would have still be uncomfortable viewing, but could have been a really twisted satire less on these tropes but on teen hormonal anxieties. This is more so considering how many anime sex comedies already have the curious "reward-punishment" trope that I find more and more curious to witness. Far from embarrassment, when I get older as an anime fan, watching work with fan service content, a lot of it is now, if not defendable as good sex comedy, becoming more psychologically compelling to unpick for how they represent sexual hang-ups and relationships. Whether the lead deserves it or by pure accident, any encounter with the opposite sex in terms of something lewd or sexual usually involves a male lead being humiliated and/or beaten up afterwards, something which has come off as more an anxiety of sex in general the more I see it in these stories, whether they are defendable or not.

Even the obsession with breasts, exaggerated here to an incredible extreme and an obsession for many men, filters through this anxious accidental tone; the idea that, whether any psychological or sociological reasons this part of the female anatomy is an obsession for many heterosexual men erotically, a large part of this likely as much due to an integral part of adolescence being how we all go through significant physical change. When one goes through puberty, male or female, your body physically changes and these changes, even if you suddenly become taller or stay short, become the aspect which others take in as they themselves physically and emotionally change, sometime they exaggerate in how they perceive you; this is including those who become attracted to you, and what they may take into consideration, as they themselves suddenly feel attraction to the opposite sex unless they go through the discovery of being gay or bisexual. All of this is amateur observation, so heckling in the comments is acceptable, but it is apt that, if this was a parody, Densuke's nightmare distorts the most prominent features of the girl he has a crush on. These are her shyness, with the Japanese vocal performance from Miwa Oshiro, a model whose only voice acting role is this show, exaggerates through the timidness in her high voice, and her figure, which if this was a sensible show, and not a fetish work, would be through the mind's eye of how one teen boy views her through this over-the-top physicality as the other female characters with similar proportions. Considering the hair styles of the female cast, regardless of figures, is just as exaggerated with how large they are, it befits this distortion. Someone like the leader of the Eiken club Kirika Misono and others are even more exaggerated in their proportions, and even with those which are not, their seemingly sexual openness, whilst not subtle and well done, could have been in a satire his fears of girls he is attracted to but are absolutely more aware of themselves physically and in desires then he and most of the males in the school ever can. The crass phallic food jokes do not help among many moments in this show, particularly with Kirika's obsession with things like bananas and not eating them conventionally, sight gags that you the viewer will hope no one comes into the room (with the whole work) when you are watching this; even those though would make sense if this was an actual satire if still crass. That being Densuke a case of someone with a sudden desire for the opposite sex but is terrified of them as confident, hypersexual figures in his view of them.

This is all death of the author logic, but I am coming to this title with its legacy being hyped, that I had heard for years this was to be approached with caution, a title you would scratch your eyes out in immediate contact of. Instead I watched Eiken only to find myself admitting I was not affected by it at all, even with some of the worse jokes that appear between the two twenty plus minute episodes, even finding a sick sense of humour to this with distance for how unintentionally un-erotic it is. My tastes for readers is also one that, appreciating the best of art, is also being someone with the taste for the weird, even a cinematic trash panda who can try to wonder what formed work that is never going to win many people. Again, let sanity come and point out this is all a viewpoint to a work proudly, and brazenly, perverse on purpose, but still I find one of the stranger moments in this anime was not sexual at all, that among the duo of female commentators on the sports events, both classmates, one of them decides to hold her finger to her top lip like a moustache and talk in a faux deep male voice to sound like an expert, which is stranger than anything else that is lewd and sexually symbolic. Far more disturbing for me is that the male student returning from the States is a predator, someone claiming to be Chiharu's knight in shining armour but emotionally twisting her, and forcing her to be intimate with him in the sports games in a non-consensual way as a team. That content is more problematic over the years in anime, making his punishment (even with the cheap joke at bald people) actually justifiable. 

This is all in mind that, even if you manage to get through episode one, episode two is going to be more off-putting for some. The first has a yoghurt water slide as a challenge, which is sexual innuendo giving up subtlety, but the later has a chocolate waterslide, which is unfortunate in what it looks like instead, and one off jokes, including involving eels, which will cause even those who got through that first episode to give up the anime broken. Yet it still feels like the sexual nightmare of Densuke, causing me to wonder why Seiji Matsuyama for his manga made most of the humour, if accurate to the manga in the adaptation, a male lead who is the butt of these jokes. There are moments when Densuke has some very kinky fantasies of his own about Chiharu, but they truly feel adolescent and are constantly undercut by how at a disadvantage he is in every situation, like a guy whose learnt of these in a dirty mag but would be in the deep end in an actual relationship with another human being. This is probably the one thing in this entire anime arguably close to real life even if I do not want to give Eiken credit for being smart. Even jokes that it has which are eyebrow raising, such as Chiharu's younger sister being openly flirtatious with him, are a) jokes we need to critique in other anime for having too, and b) itself another of the moments this show accidentally feels like one poor boy's hormones being his own enemy. The entire "gag" (with air quotes) of Densuke  being forced to wear a woman's swimming one piece (with ponytails) for the chocolate water slide challenge is loaded in itself, and would be still the same even if Seiji Matsuyama was to have admitted, if from the manga, he never considered anything more to it beyond thinking it a "gag" to casually include for one chapter.

A weird amount of sexual anxiety comes into anime even when it is playing to questionable tropes of girls being seen undressed or nude in changing rooms for a joke and titillation, not forgetting hot springs episodes or when by pure accident a slip of clothing in a pratfall transpires. There is likely afterwards to be the scene of the guy being physically injured in the transgression, or in this case Densuke constantly at the end of humiliation and belief from others he is a pervert. The Japanese voice performance, unlike the one from Bryce Papenbrook in the English dub, is a female voice actress Akeno Watanabe who plays him uncomfortable young in how high pitch he is, like a middle scholar including in his short height, but it adds to the sick joke of the poor lad trying to wrap his head around this world of hyper-figured women even taller than him let alone with a few wrapping him around their fingers. Suffering at the cruel hands of the writers (and manga author Seiji Matsuyama) falling back on the dated tropes of sex comedy, that this still feels like a conventional comedy barring its lewd details adds to this adds to this twisted nature. With its early 2000s look of bright colours, its nineties mah-jong videogame music score, and how cute it is all meant to be, the idea this is all meant to be like a regular anime comedy is weirder than any of the perversity onscreen. There is even a bear creature no one raises questions about being in the Eiken club with everyone else just to toy with any viewer who can tolerate how extreme it is, finding a new way to baffle.

Considering the stuff I have sat through where I have found more disturbing content in more inappropriate places, I find Eiken just perverse. Anime with uncomfortable levels of non-consensual eroticism like VS Knight Lamune & 40 Fresh (1997), a straight to video work which presents itself as a sexy action show only to be nasty in misogynistic ways in tonal whiplashes, make Eiken a lesser of two evils, more curious to prod as an oddity. It is tasteless and one I understand the reactions to, that it is gross and deserves the most negative reviews; the only things are that I have suffered through worse, and that this is a weird artefact too loaded with psychosexual aspects and unintentional weirdness that are compelling. It is not pleasant to watch the anime, but it was compelling in its own way. If someone like Guy Maddin made a story like this in live action, imagining now the perversity and surrealism of the Canadian filmmaker of Careful (1992) adapting this story, Eiken would be a film that would put people off, but it would one damn curious trip, considering that a film like Cowards Bend the Knees (2003), one of Guy Maddin's more transgressive films dealing with sexual kink, was a film about male sexual neurosis if by way of ice hockey. The fact this has no actual nudity either adds to its tone too. It is tame in what you do not see, but has content kinkier here than in actual animated porn, which will make people feel very filthy for watching this but adds to this perverse feverish idea even if entirely from this viewer's perspective. There is a lot of anime and manga which is entirely with this tone, meant to titillate with having sexy schoolgirls with ridiculous proportions and near undress, which has its own moral and gender issues rightly to unpack, but also usually come with a need to punish its male characters as if to punish the male viewers.  It is fascinating to watch what is held as one of the most notorious straight to video anime for many people and, rather than take it as it is, imagine what Sigmund Freud would have thought of it. Even if Freud's ideas on sex and women were always dubious, just to see him trying to figure it all would have been something I wished happened.

The one sobering point though, and this is something I have been wary to reach, is that the history after this for Seiji Matsuyama would let to him get into legitimate controversy with another of his works, a title called Oku-sama wa Shōgakusei (My Wife Is an Elementary Student), which, yes, does raise alarm bells as a premise even if a gag comedy. This controversy over this manga and others in 2011 was connected to a revised bill to amend the Youth Healthy Development Ordinance², one that not only restricted those manga³ but was marked with concerns, under its new revised guideline, to restrict the sales of materials that were considered "to be excessively disrupting of social order"³. Bill 156 as the final revision became, through failures and revisions beforehand, was controversial, and whilst the material it targeted includes work which for many is difficult to defend, including manga that involve sexual relationships with minors, unfortunately one of the men who helped this revision finally get passed in 2010 was then-Tokyo governor Shintarō Ishihara. Ishihara, until the end of his tenure in office in 2012, is an incredibly problematic figure, a former novelist whose beliefs have been slammed as racist^4a, misogynistic^4b, and pertinent to Bill 156, included openly homophobic comments from 2000 that homosexuality was abnormal^4c. The problem with Bill 156 at the time was a conundrum; that the materials it targeted would be incredibly difficult for many to defend, such as work in the lolicon and shotacon genre, minority genres of manga yet ones that challenge what freedom in manga as art is, but that it could have been abused for censoring LGBTQ voices under the auspices of protecting children, alongside those promoting views on controversial subjects done with intelligence and grace. Especially as difficult work for many, even those who believed in the freedom of art, could be pointed to as evidence to justify the censorship, the bill could have had great lasting damage, and considering it was Seiji Matsuyama's Oku-sama wa Shōgakusei that was shown on television by Tokyo Vice Governor Naoki Inose as corrupting and needing to be restricted⁵, part of a campaign leading to the birth of this bill, Matsuyama got his fingers burnt by this and it does reflect back on Eiken. Whilst it is its own perverse little thing, least in this short anime adaptation, the tone of Eiken if accurate to the manga does show a lewdness, including that it was sold for teenage boys, could have gotten more confrontational if he was allowed to push the envelope. It was a different title of Matsuyama's which got him in hot water, but he could have raised controversy from certain groups even from Eiken if remotely like the anime. 

Eiken itself managed to return, least the anime adaptation, when Media Blasters came back from a long hibernation in 2020. Media Blasters, who were founded in 1997, are fascinating as the little independent distributor in the United States who has never refused to give up the ghost, and despite a long period of absence, founder John Sirabella has kept the company afloat, coming back with a vengeance in 2020. The manga arm of the company is gone, but Eiken got a Blu Ray re-release that year^6a and would be made available to watch on Crunchyroll for streaming by the end of 2020^6b. I would not be surprised , whilst Media Blasters sells actual porn anime and lewd ecchi anime, that Eiken's re-release comes with the knowledge of its notoriety after the passing time. Eiken is the title which, after its first release and its manga being published in English in the US, could be seen as the ultimate infamous title to dare to watch for some, the one too weird or perverse for others to see, and in my case the notorious title I spied with the aforementioned morbid curiosity. It is to be approached with caution, and if this had been a full television series of just thirteen episodes, my comments from these two episodes may have lead instead to me becoming a husk of a demoralised anime viewer after my initial cockiness. Considering the manga had eighteen volumes, even my perverse interest in the title may not want to know where it went with this premise beyond these sixty minutes, and knowing full well this is loaded with innuendo, sometimes something shorter is less painful over something significantly longer in terms of watching anime. As I have found, short anime, even those considered the worst, do not have that much power for me because they do not take too longer to sit through. At sixty minutes, Eiken is the kind of show John Sirabella's Media Blasters could re-release and take advantage of even negative legacy, and honestly, I admire them for taking advantage of this even if other people may not, probably regretting watching this even if they ignored warnings like mine in this review. 

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1) Who Was Responsible For This Anime?, an insanely (and applaudably) detailed and intelligent YouTube documentary on Eiken from Hazel ("@hhhazel"). The video here and the channel here.

2) Full Tokyo Assembly Passes Youth Ordinance Bill, written by Egan Loo and published by Anime News Network on 15th December 2010.

3) Akamatsu's J-Comi Site Posts Adult Manga Restricted by Tokyo Law, written by Egan Loo and published by Anime News Network on 3rd October 2011.

4a) Alternative Report to the First and Second Periodic Report of JAPA on the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Section "3. Control of expression, incitement and violence related to racial discrimination", under "(2) Absence of provisions regulating and punishing discriminatory expression by public officials", under "C. Position of the JFBA". Written by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations  (JFBA) in January 19, 2001 and published online by Nichibenren.

4b) Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, The Third Consideration of Japanese Governmental Report: Proposal of List of Issues for Pre-sessional Working Group, written by the Japan Civil Liberties Union and published on 27th January 2003, archived on 23 November 2012.

4c) FEATURE: Ishihara's homophobic remarks raise ire of gays, written for Japan Policy & Politics and published April 3rd 2000. Archived on the Free Library.com

5) 4,000 Protest Takashi Murakami's Versailles Exhibit, written by Egan Loo and published on Anime News Network on 30th August 2010.

6a) Media Blasters to Release Eiken, Jungle de Ikou!, Jubei-Chan 2 Anime on Blu-ray Disc, written by Crystalyn Hodgkins, and published by Anime News Network on 21st February 2020.

6b) Crunchyroll Adds Eiken Anime to Catalog, written by Rafael Antonio Pineda and published by Anime News Network on 25th September 2020.

#243: Ninja Gaiden (1991)

 

Studio: Studio Junio

Director: Mamoru Kanbe

Screenplay: Tomofumi Nobe

Based on the video game by Tecmo

Voice Cast: Keiichi Nanba as Ryū Hayabusa; Norio Wakamoto as Robert T. Sturgeon; Yumi Touma as Irene Lew; Daisuke Gouri as Jeffrey Hammond; Saori Suzuki as Katherine Friedman; Shinji Ogawa as Prof. Bucky Wise; Unshō Ishizuka as Dr. Ned Friedman; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Sarah

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

An eighties straight-to-video title at heart, though finding itself published in the early nineties, this is an obscure anime adaptation of a video game. This particular one has a fascinating history, as many may know this video game franchise first through a reboot series from Team Ninja, which were released entirely for Microsoft's consoles, part of their history of attempting to make the Xbox successful in Japan against stiff competition, starting with Ninja Gaiden (2004). This is adapting from the first era, of the Nintendo NES/Famicon era though with the original game a 1988 arcade cabinet. This anime was released at the time between Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (1990) and Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom (1991), a franchise which had already established Ryū Hayabusa, a figure you may also know from the Dead or Alive beat em up game franchise, as Team Ninja developed those games and brought him from his own franchise to become a key member for that one, which is interesting as a rare case of someone not being a cameo character. It is also in knowledge that game series got a live action adaptation, DOA: Dead or Alive (2006), which means Hayabusa has also been played by Kane Kosugi, son of Japanese martial arts film star Sho Kosugi, a huge figure of the ninja boom of pop culture in the eighties which lead to Ninja Gaiden and Sega's Shinobi video game franchise existing, which is a deliciously intricate web of influences and crossovers.

The story here is very simple off the back of this franchise, good ninja versus an evil group in a forty plus minute anime, connecting to a previous demonic villain being defeated and the aftermath with the threat of their return transpiring. The feeling of this being an eighties anime in tone was a legitimate mistake, not realising until later this was released in the nineties, as it feels from the get-go from the same lineage of eighties straight-to-video titles, even the lower budget ones, which still had a style to them. It begins here with a shot, set in New York City, at night in the fog covered streets where our lead finds him being accosted by two masked assassins in suits and arm hidden blades, which shows there is some creativity that sparkles at times throughout. This is still the era you could get away with recreating the exact poster to Les Misérables, the 1980 musical version of Victor Hugo's novel, in the background to establish the location where Ryu the ninja is drawn closer to the Friedman Corporation, up to no good as with other corporations, with their head Professor Ned Friedman behind diabolic human experiments of a biotechnical kind. The gore in the work as well, and the weird monsters thrown about, regardless of the era it was actually made in feels distinct to at least the time when straight-to-video anime from these decades.

Anime straight-to-video titles were once so prolific that numerous ones like this existed, likely never had a Western release anywhere, and were entirely unknown of once time had passed. It is a generic story with only some drama in Ryu's love for a woman, working in a store with him, who forces him to confront the duality of his life, but this is an action work with a slant into horror first-and-foremost. It does evoke the most curious and enticing video game from this period you wish you could play with this horror slant, inexplicably evoking Castlevania if with ninjas, when you will have freakish white fish men or goons who have skinless faces with just eyes under their masks as antagonists, casually introduced in the character designs for a scene never to be seen again. (Let alone the human headed wolf in a motley crew of them in the final skirmish at the Friedman Corporation). It justifies the idea of how much creativity was burnt up even on a moderately interesting title like this one from the time, let alone one of the future classics of this medium of anime.

Studio Junio is a more obscure studio, one which has collaborated with other studios in areas like in-between animation. Their own work is a curious mix, from Amada Anime Series: Super Mario Brothers (1989), an obscure Mario tie-in in which the Nintendo characters reinterpret fairy tales, to Saber Marionette J (1996-7), likely their biggest title in terms of how it developed sequels and was once a huge title in the nineties. Founded in 1970 by Takao Kozai, their last title in animation was the 1999 film Gundress. Infamously an "unfinished" version had a theatrical premiere in Japan, this work based on the work of Masamune Shirow involved test animation and animatics being used for the ninety minute length in a story¹. It was infamous for how customers were greeted with an apology note from the producers ("This film isn't finished at all") and a form to be sent a free finished VHS copy upon its release². Tragically, this was how Studio Junio finished in the animation industry.

 Ninja Gaiden itself is not something to convert people to, one of the virtues also a flaw to these many OVAs from the past that so many of them were made, to the point that you will encounter ones like this that can have moments of virtue but also may not entirely be the best of its genre. What this is a generic story about guys with the tropes its small plot usually have,  one which eventually becomes macho, with a band of male soldiers who, unfortunately, when their female reporter friend wishes to help in the last raid, tie her at the base on a chair for a joke scene. Admittedly, there is also the moment where one of them named Jeff, mid-gun battle, talks of how military man like men as much as women and alcohol, so I also give credit for unexpected progressiveness in this anime too.

Beautifully as well, this slight work still introduces director Mamoru Kanbe back in my writings, who I knew original for the notorious Elfen Lied (2004), a television series whose flaws cannot undercut, for its lurid and transgressive content, the ideas which did stick out for me. He went on with The Promised Neverland (2019), the first season at least acclaimed at the time, and it is cool to stumble on this early production he directed without realising it; there is nothing here which could suggest a trademark, but when he was not directing comedy like Robonimal Panda-Z: The Robonimation (2004), which is literally about a giant panda robot, Kanbe throughout his career lent into horror and you can see it even here, a genre he would return to or be the right person to bring in for the likes of The Promised Neverland to a Go Nagai adaptation Demon Prince Enma (2006) which took the source into a much more adult version. He is becoming the unsung person I admire the more I find his work, and whilst the screenwriter only has a few credits, and the studio had a tragic ending, this also an obscure title for its animation director and character designer Osamu Horiuchi. Horiuchi would go on with a healthy career from this with the likes of the Full Metal Panic franchise in similar roles, making them a figure of note to pick out too if not a more prominent one. Figures already working in the industry at the time, and those who would be working into the 2000s on, crossed paths on this obscurity in a variety of roles, and yes, the fact that Ninja Gaiden would get a significant reboot in the original video games cannot be ignored either. That franchise would struggle into Ninja Gaiden 3 (2012) which adds its own tale-within-a-tale here too; with the controversial figurehead of Tomonobu Itagaki leaving, those in Team Ninja attempted to take a franchise into a more accessible form, originally designed to be hardcore difficult in gameplay, leading to a divisive inclusion. Alongside the Dead or Alive franchise slipping alone in later sequels, Ryū Hayabusa has found himself in a fascinating number of tales, even when they have been disasters or part of the unfortunate nature of any industry where your next title can fail or be released unfinished in the cinemas. This anime is one of the minor tales from his career, be it commerce or evil demon warriors, but it is an enticing curiosity which, at forty minutes, is too short and with enough within it to not watch.

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1) Shirow's Kids, part of The Mike Toole Show series of articles, written by Mike Toole and published for Anime News Network on July 3rd 2011.

2) Do Movies Experience "Production Crunch" Like TV Series Do?, written by Justin Sevakis and published by Anime News Network on June 12th 2019.

#242: Pop Team Epic Season 2 (2022)

 

Studio: Space Neko Company

Director: Jun Aoki

Screenplay: Jun Aoki

Based on the manga by Bkub Okawa

Voice Cast:

Aki Toyosaki, Asami Sanada, Aya Hirano, Fumihiko Tachiki, Hiroya Ishimaru, Ikue Ōtani, Junko Minagawa, Junya Enoki, Kazuhiko Inoue, Kenyuu Horiuchi, Kōichi Yamadera, Kumiko Watanabe, Mayumi Iizuka, Megumi Han, Megumi Ogata, Nobuhiko Okamoto, Nobuyuki Hiyama, Romi Park, Takaya Kuroda, Tasuku Hatanaka and Toshiyuki Toyonaga as Popuko

Akio Ohtsuka, Atsushi Abe, Hekiru Shiina, Hidenari Ugaki, Inuko Inuyama, Kōichi Yamadera, Kumiko Nishihara, Kyoko Hikami, Mariya Ise, Minako Kotobuki, Minori Chihara, Mugihito, Rie Kugimiya, Ryo Horikawa, Shintarō Asanuma, Toshiki Masuda, Toshiyuki Morikawa, Yū Mizushima, Yuki Kaida, Yūko Miyamura and Yūma Uchida as Pipimi

Shōta Aoi as Shouta Aoi, Shunsuke Itakura as Popuko (Bob Epic Team), Toru Adachi as Pipimi (Bob Epic Team)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Why don't we settle this peacefully with some violence?

It was four years, notwithstanding a TV special, before the pair of Popuko and Pipimi returned for a second series. Less anime schoolgirls and more personifications of pure id, their return to television naturally within the first minutes of the first episode befuddles the audience by being a live action parody of a tokusatsu show. Starring everyone favorite time travelling pixie of a male idol singer Shōta Aoi, ever since the last season heroics, it is a straight-faced opening credits sequence using up all the budget, and it will return by the final episode with a vengeance. The fact this was set up with TV special back from 2019, and you see how this series, and the franchise in general, has played with expectations from its beginning.

Speaking of that TV special, it deserves its own review, but it does feel like a necessary aspect to cover as it feels like the gateway between seasons, showing what has changed. That special says goodbye to the sprite based video game parodies from pixel artist Makoto Yamashita, and French animator Thibault Tresca. They are missed, and missed for myself is Hoshiiro Girldrop, one of the strongest candidates for the best anime show to only exist through end of episode previews and one opening. It also marks the first glimpses of Square Enix, in a tie-in that would continue with the video game publisher working with the production onwards in season two, and the tokusatsu parody, which was first hinted at within it. It is own weird beast that can be viewed as Pop Team Epic season 1.5, only imagine a forty minute double episode, which is technically two episodes repeated twice, that repeats four times and has a recreation of a scene from First Blood (1982), the first Rambo film.

Those sadly missed for season two are honored by the new season's tone, as by the second episode Pop Team Epic has broken out a super robot parody. Already they are cracking jokes about going over the budget, with co-producers King Record tolerant again of being joked as being the villains, and the nerdiest of anime references comes in with “Obari'd”, openly making a humorous tribute to Masami Obari, who whilst an anime director is legendary as a key animator and robot designer too, someone who was brought in for said parody because he is that capable of doing robot sequences, and does indeed show (even with the character redesigns for the segment) his talent. Pop Team Epic is still a show of obscure references, jokes which does place it in the reference comedy anime which could age greatly into obscurities in the time passing, if one where the sense of being weird for the sake of weird was also a huge part of its attitude. The references are so prominent they even have to beep many out to keeping on the right side of Japanese parody law or standards, and that will always be a factor which, to an outsider, will put them off this franchise.

For those that viewed this like pure catnip to them, season two does carry a swagger, even if the same as before in structure, of a victory tour from the first season succeeding. The Obari robot parody, with one of the first jokes depicted of Popuko and Pipimi resigned in other character design styles (and genders), is very much alongside the live action tokusatsu parody of the first episode the immediate signs of this. Like before, this follows the template of a fifteen or so minute episode repeated with a female voice duo, and then a male one for the repeat episode, voice actors here including some big names, from the Yakuza videogame franchise from Sega to Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) alumni, meaning Shinji (Megumi Ogata) and Asuka (Yūko Miyamura) for those who know that series have a very weird reuninion even next to times in their original franchise. As we will get to, the voice actors for the Japanese dub, even if you do not know their best work, prove a huge virtue for me this time round, but for those who know them, this in itself a big aspect for the series, especially as it leads to the surrealism of voice actors iconic for many for the Yakuza games, playing gruff men in the criminal underworld, playing a schoolgirl being tickled to death by her friend.

Even in terms of the opening credits, with its mind boggling take on multi verses of Popuko and Pipimi, and a head banger of an opening theme (PSYCHO:LOGY by Shota Aoi) which you would expect for a far more serious show, Pop Team Epic is gunning for more elaborate and weirder spectacle. The hugest advantage this series already had, like the most interesting of these referential comedy shows, is that even if you do not get ninety per cent of the references, they linger and can last beyond their popularity in worth for how the non sequiturs and ambition is as much the humour. Case in point, I have no idea what playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (2017) is like, a first person shooter game which is entirely centered around multiplayer elimination death matches, baring an inkling of its content and that it was the likely influence  on one episode's main segment. The joke still works however because, alongside all its action beats, the punch line is that Pipimi will punish cheaters with the ruthlessness of a contact assassin.

The humour when it works and I think is truly ambitious is not the parodies, such as the Final Fantasy parody which comes part of a clear licensing agreement with Square Enix; it does lead to the show parodying deep-only released cuts from their video game history, which has to be still admired, and those who get the Final Fantasy parody should enjoy it with mirth. The more ambitious joke in a fantasy parody though comes without needing even the obvious references, and is absolutely ambitious and ridiculous at the same time, being a recreation of an English language education show that diverges into a power metal music video following the exploits of “Shining Shoulders”. Effectively Pipimi‘s heroic knight alter ego whose shoulder armor gleams brighter than the sun and whose feet smell of citrus, it is hilarious even in the one reference to something that went out of pop culture relevant in the four years from the first season, fidget spinners, that joke becoming funnier with less relevance in a mere name drop at the strangest time.

Sadly there are fewer experimental aspects in certain areas, such as the complete lack of stop motion this time round, but thankfully, the segments in this series become more elaborate to compensate, even an ending credit becoming charming when the main theme is joined by a recorder for a one-off remix. A parody of a romantic visual novel (specially a franchise called Tokimeki Memorial), in which a nameless boy enters high school, takes the joke even further in how, for the repeat of the episode, it drastically changes far more than other examples within the series by turning into an otome, a genre of visual novel video games with female protagonists and male love interests, gender swapping the entire segment, changing the faceless lead to a woman, and even changing jokes for the punch line which involves name checking the original manga Bkub Okawa's romantic life. That is not even mentioning the parody of boys-love/yaoi anime, with gender swapped Popuko and Pipimi; already showing a level of closeness throughout the series that manages to be sweet, even as characters meant to be sarcastic and irrelevant, this obviously plays to the idea of boys romance with recreating old jokes in a new content.  Even the cruel joke, early into this season, that the segment is cancelled mid-segment and will never appear again hits perfectly, particularly as they at least take a building with them.

There are a surprising amount of surprises to be had here – one for me is how a French illustrator and animator famous for his work on his Twitter page, Kéké a.k.a. Kévin Gemin, gets to recreate his style of bouncing cute animals in a cartoonish form with more censored hand gestures here one of the end credit animations. There is also the actual endings where, whilst they are choreographed around the same text, the voice actors working together can sometimes go off script; the best of these proves to be the two actresses from Hunter x Hunter (2011-2014), Megumi Han and Mariya Ise, who openly admit they were hired because new material was coming at the time, deliciously cynical without undercutting either property. Voice actors Junya Enoki and Yuuma Uchida in particular for me, for episode 3 part b, manage to out power even actors from Neon Genesis Evangelion, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Horiuchi Kenryu and Otsuka Akio, voice actors famous from the Metal Gear Solid games, for completely going off script at times including the penis trauma references. You can see the talent in the voice actors on display, more so for me this season with a huge level of the laughter, even in stuff which makes no sense in any context, coming from how the actors say or shout the line out. Even the fact that there is significant more cursing in the English subtitle translation suggests a sudden energy to this series even next to the magic of the first one.

Then there is Kōichi Yamadera and the AC-Bu, who steal the show even next to great competition, the later duo artistic team of Shinsuke Itakura and Toru Adachi the heroes of the franchise from both their Bob Team Epic segments, returning here, and their Hellshake Yano segment from the first series. AC-Bu, an animation team know for working a variety of fields, managed to top that segment by having the entirety of episode 7 being the return of the Hellshake Yano character, all depicted in sketchbooks with incredible illustrations, the duo voicing the still images and moving the sketchbooks, some cut and changed for certain moments. The fact the segment is also nearly in one take, starting with one member in a locked public toilet and returning to it in the end, with the exception of closing remarks of theirs, is in itself exceptional too. Adding to this achievement is how, for the part b segment, the entire story is told by prolific voice actor Kōichi Yamadera, doing every character in a variety of voices. From the Lupin the 3rd franchise to Donald Duck, and too many roles including dubbing Western actors to count here, Yamadera is a veteran, and his performance here is incredible in how one voice actor can produce so many voices as a single person. He makes the best episode even better, and that is not forgotten the virtues of the show before, after, and how the tokusatsu parody returns with a vengeance by the final episode. Almost entirely a live action episode with it very clear, in the production value, those who work on such shows, from the on screen fighting to the costumes to the CGI effects, were brought in and were gun-ho to commit to the joke, it is an incredible way to end a series. Baffling the viewer whilst presenting a climax bringing live action and animation together in a way that makes Marvel Cinematic Universe films seen bog standard in comparison, this is what Pop Team Epic always was, the pretext of for self-referential, sardonic and reference heavy jokes really an excuse to be as ambitious and ridiculous as it can be. The littlest jokes, not just that final episode, like a Bob Team Epic segment where the leads mock an alien for a terrible crop circle from their UFO, made the series better and anything too strange for me was still that, deliciously bizarre. As someone who really felt cold for the first season, even for its virtues, returning to it allowed me to appreciate the show, and by God, they managed to improve and top themselves with the content here.   

Bonus #16: Wonderful Days (2003)

 

a.k.a. Sky Blue

Director: Moon-saeng Kim

Screenplay: Moon-saeng Kim, Michael Keyes, Jay Lender, Jun-Young Park, Sunmin Park (adaptation), Yong-jun Park, Howard Rabinowitz (English Language adaptation), Jeffrey Winter and Micah Wright

Voice Cast: Andrew Ableson as Zed / the Digger Leader; Cathy Cavadini as Jay / Young Shua / Cheyenne; David Naughton as Commander Locke / Dr. Noah; Bob Papenbrook as Goliath / Governor / Typon

Viewed in English

 

A Korean production, I wish I could more enthusiastic out of respect for a country's animation industry, especially as this was clearly an ambitious attempt for wider recognition. Sky Blue, as we got it called under in Britain, is as far further than you could get from Blue Seagull (1994) and Armageddon (1996), two Korean animated films which are strange and risible productions I admit were the first two from this country I had seen, which I admit I found enjoyment in but are two titles which struggled to come into existence. The former is an erotic thriller made recognisable in the internet era, the later one of two Manga Entertainment releases of South Korean animation in the VHS era that managed to get a 3DO Multiplayer Interactive game in its homeland, they are films I feel sympathy for the staffs on, especially as Blue Seagull ends with behind the scenes production footage over the end credits. They were titles which would have been dogged on by cruel reviewers, especially as Blue Seagull had some questionable content. South Korean cinema is a rich vein in itself to be admired, whether art cinema or genre pictures, and whilst there have been some prominent and well regarded animated work, such as The King of Pigs (2011), there is an entire culture of television and theatrical Korean animation which is not as readily available still. Sky Blue, or to use its original name Wonderful Days, was a prominent title to appear even in a trimmed down form with an English dub back in the 2000s, and could have been a chance for wider recognition if it had succeeded, certainly coming with a significantly bigger scope in visual design and animation than the two films I have mentioned.

There was even a theatrical push in Britain when it was licensed by Tartan Video. Tartan Video, when they existed, were a big name, especially when it came to helping the push for cult Asian cinema, the people who brought us in Britain the likes of Takashi Miike's Audition (1999), Ring (1998) and Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003), a huge proponent for how we learnt of South Korea's rich genre and cult cinema, introducing the likes of Park Chan-wook to us in the West. Even with the DVD release of Wonderful Days, as I acquired cheaply second hand, it was sold on two DVDs, in a deluxe set with a three hours worth of extras on another disc, in the same way they had with the likes of Oldboy, pushing it as a big title in the day. It has a premise which has been readily sold before. Still evoking uncomfortable issues about climate change, Wonderful Days is set in a post apocalypse where the environment collapsed, toxic rainfall and all. The first and only living city, the Echoban, was built to protect civilisation from this, but even as it stands proudly in the midst of this as a bastion of hope, there is rife class divide, where the elite live in the Echoban, and everyone else is outside in the slums, workers to mine resources for the living metropolis and keep it alive. It is a story told many times before, and that is not a bad thing, with class war and a romantic triangle divided between sides, as Jay, a female law enforcer, is connected from childhood to the man Shua from the slums trying to activate a secret Echoban system meant to save everyone, all whilst her male superior Cade wishes to prevent this but also loves her since they all know each other from childhood before Shua was forced out of Echoban. Add in this a kill crazy superior from the elite in the midst of this, and everything here can be made into something great.  Truthfully, the biggest problem is entirely that this is just okay, something we will get into later into this review, that this just in terms of making a lavish production, and making sure it has a story which gets from A to B well, was a goal that it cleared but Wonderful Days does not get further from.

It is staying safe, so much so with its narrative it is within the slithers of this plot where you see something more dynamic occasionally appear. I find myself more concerned for the petty thieves introduced, especially when they are revealed not to be villains but merely denizens of the slum wasteland who can be sympathetic, like a tiny rat like member who I had sympathy for over the traditional leads, all because he was made less a thug but someone who can be scared, be brave, and when he went from a dubious figure to one with sympathy for when he laments for his fallen comrades. Whilst it has aged, the film's visual palette even with obvious use of computer animation is to be admired too. Attempts at blending this into interesting directions can be seen onscreen, such as a chase into the Time Capsule in the Echoban, one of the few moments where world building, which is not as fully seen as it should have been, appears; a museum presuming what has survived in human culture from before, it mixes live images with the likes of Roy Lichtenstein and Gustav Klimt's art for a set piece with idiosyncratic visual choices. The production team were clearly trying their hardest, and one sequence does suggest what could have been; in context it is still a curious choice, a nightmarish dream of biblical images and multi-eyed rams closer to a Ken Russell live action film, a British director acclaimed (and notorious) for this type of hyper intense imagery, including actual Biblical images with multi-eyed rams in Altered States (1980). That scene is disturbing and abrupt in Wonderful Days, but shows an attempt at characterisation, that for Shua it is symbolic in his fear for Jay's life, and the state of the situation for him, showing how the production team for this film, as they continued making films or animated projects in other formats, could have taken this further. In fact, prominently, the production was more than just animation of the 3D and 2D form, as additional work included filming real model sets which the animation was layered over, even using real shots of clouds and the sky, symbolically meaning for the film's story, and layering animation over them¹.

Sadly, beyond two short films after this, director-writer Moon-saeng Kim has not done anything else, and there is the unfortunate sense that Wonderful Days, even with its shortened length for global release, was a production with many issues in spite of these clear visual virtues. Even in mind to Tartan Video putting their weight behind it in Britain, even the esteemed Japanese animation studio Gainax creating a dub for the Japanese market which was less "alien" rather than merely adapting it to distribute it in Japan², Wonderful Days was always going to struggle with how conventional the plot proves to be. An expensive production¹, all the problems really come from the fact that its story is quite conventional and not even that particularly idiosyncratic either. With knowledge of numerous individuals being involved with the writing process, even unaccredited work by Micah Wright, a prolific American writer for the likes of comic books, and Jay Lender, a prolific American writer especially in the Spongebob Squarepants franchise, it was clear that whilst visually the film, even with its aged CGI, was ambitious and is still to be admired, the production's story needed that much strengthening of ambition. Especially when some of the more idiosyncratic touches, like the blind girl, are clichés which really are not that distinct when they have been seen before, this film whilst having so much still I appreciated also suffers from this lack of personality. Sky Blue as we got it in the British Isles is okay, a case of a production which just goes to show how much of a struggle it is just to get an animated theatrical film off the ground, where the challenges are not just the visuals but even making sure to have something in its story to tell to last.

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1) Take with a pinch of salt, as it comes from one perspective for a film, but this chronicle My Beautiful Korean Movie written by Micah Wright, for his personal website on April 9th 2003, does raise some poignant aspects that, if confirmed, do raise up a lot of the issues with Wonderful Days, as an unaccredited co-writer with Jay Lender, which undermined it.

2) Gainax to Adapt Wonderful Days, written by Christopher Macdonald for Anime News Network and published on November 5th 2004.