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Director: Kōtarō Ishidate
Voice Cast: Kaoru Mizuhara as
Tokiyo Himote; Satomi Akesaka as Kokoro Himote; Suzuko Mimori as Kinami Himote;
Asuka Nishi as Enishi; Aya Suzaki as Tae Hongō; Sumire Uesaka as Minamo Arai
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
On paper, I had great excitement
about Himote House - Kōtarō Ishidate, one of the creators of gdgd Fairies (2011-13), comes back
with another show about a group of women, three sisters and a couple of friends
living in the same house, with the added delight that the sisters are voiced by
gdgd Fairies' main cast. The trademark of that show, that the episodes
eventually turn into improvised sketches where the actresses will amuse and
bemuse themselves for real, is also to be found which promises a great deal.
The truth is that, whilst there are some gems in terms of the comedy and an
unexpected political commentary, this is definitely the case of a twelve
episode show that, like a lot of anime comedy, can feel erratic without any
structure.
Before we continue to the actual
work, that's a crux which has appeared with a lot of these
"micro-series", shows where the episodes are less than fifteen
minutes long which is becoming more available in the West through the likes of Crunchyroll. Any of them, as I have
found writing these reviews on this topic, is going to lead to the exact
questions stand out as those here, so this is a long gestation question about
their artist potential.
The initial premise is that Tae
Hongō, a quiet girl starting school, is invited by her friend Kokoro Himote to
live with her, meeting up with her sisters, another friend Minamo Arai and Enishi
the talking cat. With each episode lasting fifteen minutes, they are usually
divided between episode long skits and an ad-libbed conclusion where, with the
cast sat in the lounge at the night playing games, the voice actresses had to
improvise on the spot over idiosyncratic scenarios that the production team would
animated based on what they say. Animation wise, this is not necessarily the
best of productions, cel shaded digital figures, but the uninitiated gdgd Fairies deliberately was made with
the crudest of CGI digital models for humour, which makes a work like Himote House a noticeably more slicker
work on an aesthetic level.
The structure of the series this
is where Himote House falls into a
few problems. For starters its subtitle suggests a house of women with super
powers, even Tae Hongō (the de facto lead) accidentally discovering her own
ability to multiply herself at the end of the first episode by thinking hard.
But after a few episodes where it's used, such as finding the able to read
minds doesn't help with dating, and Hongō multiplying herself as a team for an
indoor game of very convoluted baseball, its sadly discarded soon after. Even
if I like the episodes found later, this turns into a disappointment as it's an
amusing premise, taking gdgd Fairies'
magic powers further into the real world. It also could've been used as an
excuse for gags to happen, as the magic of those aforementioned fairies was the
reason many of the funny gags with public domain digital models came from in
terms of logic to their world.
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To be honest, the cast really feels more alive in the ad-libbed sequences even if they still try to bring in their character traits into it, merely because the sketches do fall into stereotypes for the most part, all whilst the improvised sequences just allow the actresses to riff on the characters and silly things. In terms of the cast, the exceptions truly are Tokiyo Himote and Enishi. Enishi as she's a talking cat with a bit more than the annoying mascot role, even having two improvised endings where they went to actual locations around Jaopan and animate the staff as cats too for awkward (but funny) gags about going to a massage clinic. The other is Tokiyo Himote, who just perfectly follows the mould the likes of gdgd Fairies did of idiosyncratic characters, the oldest Himote sister whose distinct voice comes from the fact that, whilst Japanese, she's speaking in a broken Japanese accent. As a figure who uses quotations that go over everyone's heads and, is learned to be turned on by seeing Senegalese wrestling on her world travels and the idea of living near a volatile volcano like one village she references in small talk, she's the kind of person you'd actually want to date just befriend in real life just for the conversations that'd take place.
This is somewhat a shame as, when
you get to the improvised sections, everyone's on fire, causing one to wish the
whole character cast was as idiosyncratic or had enough time to grow. There's a
joy to have in these actresses pissing about between the worst things to hear
whilst spoken with a helium voice to imagining a former female otaku with her
boyfriend awkwardly meeting an old friend from the past. (They even have one
about a female employee trying to avoid a sleazy male member of management,
which seems quite a surprising dig at the industry). And yes, even the cat gets
a gem, a few times having hypothesized skits in humanoid form , playing out the
awkward phone conversation with another actress about a boyfriend wanting nude
photos, commenting on the fact with hesitance that she is quite hairy.
There are thankfully interesting
moments. Not just bitcoin, as probably the weirdest moment of the series is the
penultimate episode, a hot springs episode that leads to the voice cast, as
their characters bathe and do odd things (unseen) like "breast
massages", moan as erotically as possible to the point of fake orgasms
while promoting a pseudo-bitcoin to the viewer. To me, it's nonsensical, but
reality is stranger as apparently advertisement of anime girls promoting
bitcoin does indeed exist. (There's even a BitGirls
TV show, a Japanese show where ten young women are voted on by the audience
purchasing her personal tokens, known as "Torekabu", thus teaching the
concept of crypto currency and blockchain to a consumer audience. Thus, for
this review, I've also informed myself how irony is possibly dead). A personal
favourite is the cast in a strange cramped office environment, taking part in a
ritual that is never explained and with them playing new characters, such as ramming
paper violently through a slot at the other end of the room by running at it,
until you realise they're the inside of an office printer.
Then there's the Yuri Game of
Life episode, which begins (in playing the literal game) with begins with
parodying the yuri genre by every romantic longing between girls leading to turns
being missed to ridiculous number. Then there's the option of going to Europe,
as the women are split into pairs when they marry in the game, and suddenly Himote House for all its flaws suddenly
gets a crowning jewel by suddenly taking a shockingly honest and dark humoured
glance over the inequality of LGBTQ people in Japan. I normally find political commentary
simplistic and beneath art, but if you're going to do so, challenging your
country's attitudes to LGBT people, in the most abrupt ways and in a bluntness
rarely found in anime as its probably deemed inappropriate, is as ballsy as you
can get and incredible. It's surprisingly sad, even if it's still funny, and
throwing it in the middle of a sketch micro-series like this where you least
expect it is something to admire.
Unfortunately, the show does feel
too short, and whilst it thankfully ends in a fun way, an utter anti-climax
with the cast just playing a card game, the last episode is terrible, a clip
show posed as a game show which is painful to sit through. I don't blame the
show barring the fact that, as it was what they were apparently forced to
create when it wasn't their original plan, that just emphasises that sadly Himote House didn't plan itself as well
as it should've. And that is a huge issue with a lot of micro-series like this
in that, especially if many will be gag or sketch based rather than structured
around long form plots, they need to structure themselves well or they will
fall into passing on a flat note, never pushing for a memorable climax. And
this is going to be a deterrent for me as the idea of a show you can turn your
brain off to is an anathema for me. I'd rather have my fifteen minute long
episodes, or even shorter, stand out in a memorable way, so whilst there is
some gold in Himote House, it's a
slightly disappointing follow-up from someone, Kōtarō Ishidate, who did make one of the oldest and most rewarding
in gdgd Fairies. Considering the
invention of that older series, you could've run into some new and rewarding
concepts just from Himote House's
premise alone.
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