#117: Sarazanmai (2019)

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Directors: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Nobuyuki Takeuchi

Screenplay: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Teruko Utsumi

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

[Some Major Plot Spoilers]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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