Sunday, 23 February 2020

#136: Tesagure! Bukatsumono Spin-off Purupurun Sharumu to Asobou (2015)



a.k.a. Tesagure! Season 3
Director: Kōtarō Ishidate
Screenplay: Kōtarō Ishidate
Cast: Asuka Nishi as Yua Suzuki, Ayaka Ohashi as Koharu Tanaka, Karin Ogino as Aoi Takahashi, Mikako Komatsu as Hina Usami, Natsumi Takamori as Yui Enjoji, Reina Ueda as Mobuko Sonota, Rumi Okubo as Kanon Izayoi, Satomi Akesaka as Hina Satō, Shiori Mikami as Rin Arisugawa, Sumire Uesaka as Tomomi Okonogi, Kaoru Mizuhara as Mio Watanabe
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

The Tesagure train finishes, and with a considerable risk in how it jumps up from fifteen minute episodes to full length ones. The other change is that Tesagure is invaded by an entirely different series, in this case bringing in the case of a manga series called Minarai Megami Puru Purun Sharumu, revolving around five personalities part of the radio program A&G NEXT GENERATION Lady Go!!. Effectively a spin-off than a third series, these new characters are only really defined as being five high school girls meant to train as cosmic goddesses, a detail which is quickly dismissed in favour of them joining in on long absurd discussions.

Whatever the case the length was necessary, as the show through the character Yua Suzuki, who now for most of the episodes speaks to the audience and her cast members in the openings of the show, is now openly as much a way to promote the characters in-between them organising what to do for each episode. They shuffle the cast members, or have full group events, but it's usually the Puru Purun Sharumu cast first, than the original Tesagure cast. Tragically the Mobuko family, the insanely numerous identical sisters, get put by the wayside as there's not a lot of activities anymore baring a couple. Thankfully, voice actresses Reina Ueda got the end of episode previews, which tell a strange Mobuko family tale rather than preview the main show, as compensation.

The show is mainly conversations now for Season 3 and continuing improvisation with the voice actresses, more about the casts coming up with new and wacky takes on ideas like zoos to dentists. Some of the more focused and sillier jokes, like a card game of constructing sentences which lead to incompetent zookeepers who still have jobs or having to complete a mathematic test as you get your teeth done, are legitimately funny. When the voice cast break character, or find the work funny in character, is when Tesagure succeeds.

Unfortunately stretching this premise to over twenty minutes per episode is with huge pacing issues, creator Kōtarō Ishidate's obsession with improvised dialogue one which cannot be extended this long without respite. The activities from the two series before sadly don't appear frequently as mentioned which causes a problem, a sense of malaise felt as cast are just sat around chairs for the most part, never necessarily building to a great deal as, whilst the original Tesagure characters have established personalities, the Puru Purun Sharumu cast don't stand out except in rare occasions. Examples like this, occasional, are such as one voice actress breaking character to explain to another heavy metal or a Russian speaking girl who has access to a tank but is tragically not as frequently used as possible, possibly in a fourth wall breaking joke due to her actress having scheduling conflicts.

When the activities do appear, like a musical theatre version of the show or ping pong with intimate questions needing to be answered as you strike the ball back over the net, its appreciated. Thankfully the production gets a much needed shot in the arm when it was decided to send the original Tesagure actresses off to real life locations, like a haunted house or a zoo, record the real exchanges and scenic sounds as they try to "stay in character" and animating the results. This does really stretch what is required of the cast to a virtue, also really getting into some unexpected things rarely found in anime, such as the one recorded on a Ferris wheel where unless she's acting Satomi Akesaka as Hina really doesn't like heights and shows it in that escapade. Also its sweet just to hear voice actors get easily amused by meerkats, even if the critters animated are caught about to get it on in the open.


Unfortunately, the attempts at new ideas do lead to two bad episodes, the two part "Yuriwolf" game. Ishidate likes having his casts playing games, felt when a later show Himote House (2018) ends with an intentional whimper of a card game for the last sequence. The game here is "Werewolf", in which two people have are assigned as werewolves and in trials the group have to try to vote out them to win, with the later picking off a person after each trial if not voted off and deceiving everyone else1. Changing it to "yuriwolf", in reference to "yuri" (lesbian or gay female) stories, has an unfortunate connotation someone didn't think too carefully of, though Ishidate to his credit with Himote House had the "Yuri Game of Life" episode, an episode that has stuck with me in a flawed series which was probably as biting about the problematic LGBT politics in Japan as you could get away with and then some. It doesn't excuse the Yuriwolf episodes, actually called Let's play with werewolves and yuri ((1) and (2)), being frightfully boring, painfully so as the two episodes drag. What makes it worse as, showing clips of another bonus game, the final episode tells use this can only be found on the Blu-Rays as extras, suddenly turning this series in an advertisement for material we cannot get in the West for added insult to injury.

The question of whether the entire three seasons of Tesagure ultimately works is a complicated one. Everyone clearly had fun, managing to get away with a clip show that's good at one point by having it redubbed, the cast sorted by categories as esoteric as who accidentally called their teacher "mother" for rounds where some may have to say everything in the verge of sexual arousal to shouting from outside the recording booth. With the original cast too, they have grown these characters into idiosyncratic figures over time. Or there's the further existential adventures of Karin Ogino, as the boisterous Aoi, who eventually becomes more puerile, biting and bored as she continues onwards baring her continued obsession with making all her jokes puns, culminating in the final episode where she's meant to play her character in a comedy competition against everyone only for baffled amusement at what mood she is in to take place.   

I will be blunt though in saying, if taken as a whole, the franchise doesn't succeed. Mainly this is because fifteen minute micro episodes are bite sized but as a whole, there's not as many successes as there should be even if the cast are admirable in personality. There is a lot of experimentation here which does indulge without enough risk or pay off, to which I will always go back to gdgd Fairies (2011/2013) which Ishidate worked on for the first season. That series did stand out for the improvised sequences but was both focused on one idea with rich potential (the magical "dubbing lake" of 3D models taken off the internet crudely animated), and also had many other segments which were great and became some of the funniest material by the season.

There's also not a lot of growth in Season 3 here, as baring the much welcomed sequences at public attractions the only aspects which succeed are the jokes that lasted ("worn panties" a reoccurring gag since season one that clearly caught on) or characters who have been able to evolving a little over time, such as the initial "protagonist" Koharu now the put upon and sympathetic butt of a lot of jokes. Neither most of the manga and anime references, nor many of the conversations in themselves, beyond this stand out. It is a surprise for me that the series got three seasons, as it's really peculiar. The likelihood is that, as I have found, there's developed a taste in these type of simple shows about esoteric con esoteric conversations and jokes which usually rely on puns more fluid in Japanese, but even then this franchise's a real curiosity in its longevity.

Arguably, as animation, it's always skirted on the seat of its (worn) pants by being very basic and improvised. Even in spite of how easily it must've been to produce, which is a thing to consider as the show is constantly joking in season three in some of the better jokes that the production is behind, even early on recycling sequences from before for jarring results. Even then, I look to the strange experience that was Virtual-SAN Looking (2019), a show I missed most of the humour of but still liked, as a show which sold itself on the hot trend of virtual YouTubbers and thus becoming a fascinating sociological piece in the making. Tesagure in contrast ebbed into something I am glad to have completed the whole of but may sadly disappear entirely from memory barring few highlights. Even in terms of Kōtarō Ishidate's career, which I want to continue and find as much of in interest of his very unique style, the good moments through two (and a spin-off's) worth of a franchise don't necessarily hit as high moments as other projects I've seen of his.

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1) According to history, it's been traced back to 1986 to a Russian named Dimitry Davidoff as a social deduction game originally called Mafia, befittingly with the Russian speaking character here the one that plays the hostess/narrator.

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