#58: Sparrow's Hotel (2013)

Director: Tetsuji Nakamura

Based on a manga by Yuka Santō

Voice Cast: Daisuke Kishio as Misono-kun; Haruka Nagashima as Tamaki Shiokawa; Minori Chihara as Sayuri Satō; Asuka Yūki as Yū Kojō; Shūta Morishima as Sakai

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: When one has runs a hotel and has to deal with drunk customers, beds needing to be moved and general unruliness just outside one's premise, who do you call? Most wouldn't expect the beautiful and voluptuous Sayuri Satō, a new and sweet hearted new staff member, to be the heavy one chosen if she didn't openly talk about her martial arts skill, have kunai secretly kept on her person and may have once been an assassin in her young life. When you're manager has a strange relationship with her brother, the hotel inspector's terrible at her job, and the sanest person is a bell boy who has existential wonders about what people think of him, than Sparrow's Hotel is wasn't an ordinary hotel in the first place.

What is Sparrow's Hotel and why does it exist? Well, it was adapted from a manga, so it came from somewhere. Arguably, it's the modern equivalent of all those strange, cheap anime released on video for the OVA market we in the West uncover, only this one was made in the 2010s and was licensed for streaming on Crunchyroll instead. Anime is an industry and there's material we'd never know of, and would scratch our heads if we found the existence of, churned out as much as there is production we churn out in the West. This is pertinent here as well as its been asked whether this particular example is deliberately ironic or just a garish, cheap animated production. For me, next to the likes of Inferno Cop (2012-13) or gdgd Fairies (2011-13), which play with deliberately cheap or limited animation for their humour alongside general weirdness, I suspect Sparrow's Hotel is a sincere production in spite of glaring aesthetic issues I will get into. When your main voice actress plays a major character in the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya franchise and there are other prolific actors in this tiny cast, I suspect instead this is merely an obscure production so paltry in budget its developed some fans in the West for how unintentionally memorable it is. (At least one, Anime New Network columnist Mike Toole, and his referencing of the show in his own column, is why I even watched the series).

There's also the fact that the premise is not that bizarre in anime, aware of how idiosyncratic and unconventional anime and manga can be. When there's golfing manga, or competitive bread making stories done as Dragonball battles of one-upmanship, what seems to sincere to deliberately silly in anime and Japanese comics can be as varied and far less predictable than in the West. I'd want to invest in the idea that there's a hotel based manga this was adapted from even if that wasn't the truth. That it is the truth, I'd hope this work was actually good and eventually becomes a cult hit here in the West its inherently amusing for the most innocuous of jobs to be ever depicted in this way. Hell, when the creator of Golgo 13, Takao Saito, set a story in a manga called Doll The Hotel Detective, it was still a tale of a female detective trying to catch a potential assassin of the president in a hotel. Sparrow's Hotel has none of this, and is instead about the running of a hotel without that drama. It just happens to be deliberately silly and with the Doll-like figure a complete caricature of a female anime character - big eyes, big hips and curves, an air head - who also happens to have assassination knowledge and can power lift a regular hotel bed as if they are nothing. Someone cheerful and optimistic to help every guest, but  who can suddenly switch into assassination mode when the hotel inspector stupidly suggests she's a spy in her vicinity. It's a silly premise - the kind another show like Excel Saga (1999-2000) would create a one episode parody from - but one I think was funny and had material to work with.

From http://www.nerd-age.com/wp-content/
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The issue with Sparrow's Hotel is that its three minutes per episode and cheaply put together. The result for many is that of scraping at the bottom of the barrel, entirely up to the individual viewer if they like the series or not as. Regardless of the production reanimating the first six episodes for DVD, or sprucing up the series for the final six episodes, it's not the pinnacle of television anime and shows. With only three minutes to work with including credits - the first six an opening credits, the last six an end credits - there's no time for chaff, jokes and moments rapidly piled on per episode based on the characters' quirks. Sayuri Satō, a superhuman killer in the body of a sweet natured pin-up. Tamaki Shiokawa, the diminutive female manager of the hotel who's older brother, Shiokawa the business manager, has a troubling sister complex which embarrasses her. And Misono, the quiet bellboy.

Very simple gags, usually about Sayuri's buxom, kind countenance being contrasted with her being sent to quiet rowdy patrons by knocking them unconscious or performing William Tell knife tricks at the company picnic under the cherry blossom trees. The breakneck speed catches the viewer off, in-between abrupt turns in gags in the first episode to a sustained micro-story in later ones which last until their end credits. It has been viewed in light of the worst anime OVAs released in the nineties, the first six episodes (before Hotline, their creator, re-animated them for DVD) cheap, colourful and nasty. Harsh looking character designs, comically large eyes, minimal animation. It's a crude looking work and yet, if it had been better animated, it may have lost its charm. In fact a lot of why it's enjoyable, barring my amusement in the premise, is how utterly blatant and garish the series is in style and story.

From https://www.fandompost.com/wp-content/uploads/
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This is bearing in mind that, likely to put people off, as much of the humour is based on fan service, a mammary fixation which whether you find offensive or not is rife in this type of anime. In general your view on fan service of all kinds is whether its leering or not, to which Sparrow's Hotel to its credit manages to avoid for the most. You're opinion on that will vary on whether the sexualisation of Sayuri, including an end credits sequence for the last sex episodes where she is asleep naked with a bar and a belt of kunai above the duvet, is problematic or not, but you'll have to put up with it in-between the funnier jokes about her alarming talents in weapons and combat. The same applies for the other characters, like Shiokawa's unhealthy fixation with his younger sister, to her horror, a creepy fondness to her he doesn't keep quiet about. Material which is actually common in other anime, for better and especially for worse, which can be funny or at least equal opportunity in the better circumstances. What differentiates this from other anime is entirely due to this presentation, crushing such absurd characters into a brisk amount of time. There are as well, abruptly in those last episodes, mid episode eye catch breaks with the characters dressed as anything from squirrel girls to Misono wearing a dog dollar, the obvious question to why a three minute episode need an eye catch break not lost to me. One episode is entirely about manga convention patrons hording the hotel, emphasising the kind of audience who probably watched this anime back in Japan.

It is purely playing to the audience for cheap pops, which is where fan service has become an irritance, but thankfully this is a premise where as much of its slim amount of time is devoted to your protagonist's obsession with shopping for gym weights and the other characters' contrasting opinions of her being a stereotypical figure of femininity against the real person who probably sits in bushes with a rifle shooting targets. This, alongside the depiction of trying to run a hotel if the series lasted longer and elaborated further with the material, would've been golden. A fun skewering of gender stereotypes of an inane subject matter made interesting in the best of circumstances.

From https://theglorioblog.files.wordpress.com/
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Is Sparrow's Hotel, rather than the hypothetical follow on I'm thinking of, actually good even through irony though? File it into one of those curiosities that appear in an anime season that managed to catch some traction. Unexpectedly picked up, speculation of whether it is ironic on purpose or not is to debate. Certainly there's not enough time in the series to get a lot done, which is ultimately where the series suffers. It's still interesting, but with awareness that for many, the slightness of the series (at only over thirty minutes) is going to make the worse aspects detriments rather than part of the experience. It's way too short to get far enough with the premise, and even with an OVA in existence, at three minutes long, you have to milk the existing material hard, too hard for many, to get more reward from it with such paltry material available. Enough is there that the production decided to change the title sequence, really more an excuse for another electro pop song to be played. Enough for the vaguest of additional details added over the episodes - like Yū Kojō, the former hotel inspector who becomes a staff member, and Billy, a martial artist brought in the help renovate the brand new bathing area only to be a potential sparring opponent for Sayuri. But there's very little time due to the length of the episodes to really get a lot further with the material beyond this.

There is, for me, a funny idea behind it all imagining a series entirely about running a hotel, the kind you'd only get in Japanese pop culture. The kind where a plot point is a significant rainfall drastically improves the number of guests for the better or the additional premise of having a sweet mannered killing machine on staff being mainly asked to subdue the drunk or the rowdy instead of anything life or death. The issue's entirely that Sparrow's Hotel, even if I got behind its cheap and cheerful silliness, is too short to fully invest in its trashy nature or for it to become significantly better in quality or the stories. The result of which is that, even if I revisit it, it suffers because there's barely anything to work with baring the latent absurdity of its existence, which is a shame.

From https://cdn-static.sidereel.com/episodes/1349988/
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