#174: Wonder Momo (2014)

 

Director: Yutaka Kagawa

Screenplay: Ayumi Inabe

Based on the arcade game by Namco

Voice Cast: Yuka Fujiwara as Momoko; Atsushi Imaruoka as Glooder; Atsushi Tamaru as Natsuhiko; Misaki Komatsu as Akiho/Amazona; Anju Inami as Yumi; Halko Momoi as Momo/Original Wonder Momo

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

But secretly eradicating aliens after school and not telling me?

This is an example of an extremely short anime, one whose back story is probably more significant than the anime itself. Wonder Momo is based on a Namco arcade from 1987 - a parody of the legendary Ultraman franchise, with a female lead, which involved playing an actress who played the heroine in a live stage show. It does predate the type of risqué stuff you would find in anime about female heroines, as it had a bit of fan service in pixel form; interestingly, whilst it suggests as much in the character designs and costumes, this anime adaptation is surprisingly restrained and not the title it suggests on the packaging. Instead, and more interesting, is that it was part of a project by ShiftyLook, a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings that was focused on revitalizing older Namco franchises, starting with web comics for the likes of this, Klonoa, even a less obscurer title like Katamari Damacy among others. Wonder Mono's web comic began in 2012 with Wonder Momo: Battle Idol by Jim Zub, Erik Ko, and Omar Dogan, also one of the ones before the company's eventual closing to get a hardback published release.

From there, we got an online net animation for Wonder Momo¹, which does have the immediate issue to deal with that, over five episodes long, each episode is only seven minutes long including opening and end credits, making the entire thing less than thirty minutes long. The premise is pretty obvious - a high school girl Momoko wishes to become an idol singer, but is approached by a weird green man who shots a super powered orb into her body in a subway. Thankfully, this is not for any nefarious reason, as he is one of the two aliens concerned to protect the Earth from another alien race. This abrupt intervention on Momoko's life allows her to be able to turn into a super heroine when the Putty Patrol, genderless goons in skin-tight black body costumes with red masks, terrorise the high school basketball players soon afterwards.

There is the inevitable problem of trying to review this when this is as short as it is. Even in mind to some of the bizarre short works I have seen you can cover a lot within, around this length, Wonder Momo at this length includes all the same opening and end credits footage you excise, followed by a lot of conventional plot moments you would expect in a longer version of this premise of a high school super-heroine. Suffice to say, if a long form title over thirteen episodes had existed, this would have been a goofy parody, where the super weapon is an energised hula hoop ("Wonder Hoop") and the monsters, in mind to this premise's clear debt to tokusatsu storytelling, look like weird creature costumes or toys. There is a potential love interest Natsuhiko, a student news photographer at her school who catches her first transformation and becomes a close confidant, and Akiho, a popular idol figure who is also Amazona, a loner super heroine who thinks Momoko butts in and is inept, the rival figure who together would inevitably have to team up to fight the big evil of the narrative at the ending.

Then there is the one character where Wonder Momo, if it had been a longer work, could have been inspired. Suddenly, in the midst of watching this, I had a thought about the magical girl genre, which this is also effectively a part of, a genre in which teen girls are able to become heroines like Sailor Moon. Sometimes the mind wanders and likes to imagine plot lines that would intrigue me, like whether an show or manga even as a joke imagined when any magical girl reached their thirties or even older, only for this anime the suddenly tease me with something brilliant in that similar idea. Actually revealed to be a sequel to the video game, it clearly read my mind when Momoko's mother Momo appears. Representing the original Wonder Momo from the video game, she could have been a central character to a premise herself, and in another longer title would have immediately delighted many anime fans if they have executed the character perfectly. An entire series of a mother who was once, or still is, a magical (woman) girl with her daughter now following her footsteps is a funny or even memorable premise in itself, barely covered here beyond getting her daughter and Akiho to stop arguing, and getting Momoko to do sit-ups at night to improve her cardio.

But, this is a short little titbit. In terms of its reputation, Wonder Momo was not held in high regard, but low expectations for me coming into viewing this title. I was surprised that this was not as bad as its reputation suggests. I feel as well Wonder Momo is excessively short to ever be able to shoot its own feet off with terrible creative decisions unless it did something insane bad, and that whilst we are on this decision, Namco with ShiftyLook could have done worse with a project. My mind went to Arcade Gamer Fubuki (2002-3), an OVA adaptation to a Mine Yoshizaki manga where Sega were perfectly happy to have their licensed titles shown in the three episodes. Some of it was actually funny, usually involving the figure of Mr. Mystery, a masked hero whose bravado is countered by moments like actually feeling the pain of jumping through a plate glass window. But it was also a show fixated on very young teen girls' panties among content which would make you embarrassed to be an anime fan, which makes Wonder Momo positively Shakespeare in comparison.

Wonder Momo's shortness is confounded by the fact it does not even have an ending. Even the recorded press conference for the series, included on the Crunchyroll streaming site alongside the five episodes, was over forty plus minutes long, double the length of the project itself. Even in terms of animation, I will argue there has been worse. Premise wise, it may have likely spun its wheels if longer but could have worked. Some of the humour means it would have been funny (even the Putty Patrol, actually called the Waru Soldiers, need to use pay phones to get backup). It could have likely indulged in a lot more fan service then it did, though it likely may have been tamer than most even when one of the gags was one of the good aliens finding a bikini photo of Akiho. (Dodging around one villain being a creepy octopus headed monster, a dime-a-dozen in anime, shows the series would have not likely have gone in that direction too far least to defeat the point of this reboot). Mom being an older Wonder Momo, with even her own retro attacks, is a funny idea especially as she is never mocked as being older, just as good if not the strongest of the three female leads who just has a cheery demeanour, with the unexpected thing (as no one probably thought about it) being her also being a single mother to Momoko. Even the show, for its modest animation and fights taking place under very cheap CGI purple haze, having the touch of on-screen sound effect text for attacks, even ones for "Victory" after battles, would have been fun to see if this had embraced its goofball antics and videogame origins.

That there is no ending or length means it is more a test run, and ShiftyLook themselves would be closed down by Namco only two years after its founding in March 2014, only a month after this show premiered in February of the same year. That proves a much more tragic and perverse ending for the series, than if we actually got to see the heroes, after entering an impromptu space portal, into the villains' headquarters, but it is memorable. Thus, we end this review with looking at a weird anomaly which blipped into existence and left; certainly, reading up on all this detail, this show has become a lot more fascinating just reading up this detail from when I was expecting this to be comically short as a piece.

 

======

1) A piece of a news announcement, which elaborates on the back story of this multi-media reboot, can be found HERE.

2) As disclosed HERE.

#173: My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)

 

Director: Isao Takahata

Screenplay: Isao Takahata

Based on the manga by Hisaichi Ishii

Voice Cast: Hayato Isobata as Noboru; Masako Araki as Shige; Naomi Uno as Nonoko; Touru Masuoka as Takashi; Yukiji Asaoka as Matsuko

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Returning to Studio Ghibli, what you have for My Neighbours the Yamadas is if the American comic, like Peanuts, was adapted into a feature film, but also happened to have a director known for pushing his work so hard, like the late Isao Takahata here, into something beautiful. This is not a strange parallel to make as this is based on a "yonkoma" manga or "four panel/koma", where like a newspaper strip, you have four equally sized panels ordered from top to bottom. Naturally, as has been an unfortunate part of his career, this film despite being a wholesome series of vignettes, about a regular Japanese nuclear family, was not a commercial success; Takahata, whilst the other huge figure with Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli, has always felt the cult director of the duo and here you have another example of why, because in vast contrast to the fantasies Miyazaki has done a lot of, Takahata did the equivalent of making a Peanuts film without even the fantasies of a dog riding a miniature Red Baron plane.

The one factor which does make Yamadas unconventional is that it has no plot, just vignettes of the Yamada family - Takashi (the father), Matsuko (the mother), Shige (her mother), Noboru (their son, a teenager), Nonoko (their daughter, youngest child, primary school age, and the occasional narrator), and in an occasional scene Pochi (the family dog). They are a family with no real crisis transpiring, no trauma or drama ever including in this theatrical film, just a series of follies and banalities of life they have, from forgetting your umbrella, or the father accidentally oversleeping for a business trip. It is innocuous and fun, though Takahata as the director and writer of the script does not sugar-coat this world. The world is full of petty things, like trying to find a missing sock for the washing, and one joke, like Only Yesterday (1991) explicitly tackling menstruation for teen girls, proves a reoccurring gag in anime may actually have real roots in reality, that our teen male Noboru is at the age to try to buy a nude modelling or art book at a store for naughty pictures, only for the unfortunate coincidence that a girl he has a crush on greets him in the bookstore there and then. This film does not hide, despite its characters looking cartoonish and broad, the fact that this is about a middle aged couple with two children, a grandmother who at one points meets a friend in the hospital with mortality evoked, and that trying to figure out what to cook each night is a pain.

To talk about My Neighbours the Yamadas means also talking about the art style. Unsuspected modern, like the unexpected use of drum n' bass in this film's score by Akiko Yano¹ when most of it is wholesome, this looks a deceptively simple production in its art replicating watercolour drawings, with simplistic character designs and even some of the background in scenes merely a colour. This, ironically, required innovation to animate this simplistic aesthetic, making this the first Studio Ghibli film entirely animated on computers to be able to capture this at all. This in itself is fascinating to even consider, although the film when it does become elaborate is extravagant. Just into the film, it already has arguably the most profound moment of its content as a set piece, a wonderful metaphor for marriage involving a bobsled ride down a wedding cake, and life represented by as an ocean one travels over. (Even referencing the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a Japanese folktale that would become Takahata's final film, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)).

It is also funny, contrasting Miyazaki for how silly this can be and the amount of belly laughs you get from the banality of life of this dysfunctional family, where something as normal as who washes the dishes becomes a sequence. You would be surprised if Disney ever commissioned a film like this, tackling a regular family as a comedy with no stakes whatsoever, merely humoured reflections of life which at times even directly quotes poetry from famous Japanese poets like Bashō in connection to the modern day. It also has no qualms with reflecting on a world that, honestly, looks old and even conservative without any insidious messages to the content, only that here in with family life, as Takashi tries to explain to a young couple in his wedding speech, there are challenges you have to put up with.

This is also not a film for children, despite having nothing within it that is very adult, which has likely been both part of Takahata's uniqueness but also been an albatross in terms of his films having a limited accessibility, as he does not try to ignore how much of the film is a reflection of ordinary life of middle aged couples like this family. It even goes as far as having a reference to Gekkō Kamen ("Moonlight Mask): with Go Nagai's lewd parody Kekko Kamen of the character a weird bedfellow, Gekkō Kamen was an early pioneering Japanese superhero if not one of the first, with the first adaptations in 1958, he was a masked vigilante who wore white and rode a motorbike, the patriarch of the family turning into him in a dream sequence where, contrasted an elaborate and playful pastiche, we have a softly sad comparison that he cannot say boo to a trio of surly male motorbikers in real life just beforehand.

The film is a gem, so quiet and restrained that it could be forgotten due to how low its stakes are, how quiet the drama is and that there is none at all to be honest, which even next to other Takahata films like Only Yesterday is itself an extreme considering how quiet that film was. Again, in mind to its origins, about a look at the eccentric life of a family who love each other regardless, this is a world where the most dynamic scene is accidentally leaving a member of the family miles away in a store which is more of a joke about their worrying. Knowing as well that there is a 2001-2 animated series based on Nono-chan adds an additional bow that, if it was able to be seen, you have an enticing contrast in wanting to see, over sixty episodes, how that show adapted material which works perfectly here. Revisiting the film, it has just increased my admiration in Isao Takahata more as a result.

 

=====

1) Akiko Yano herself is now a figure of interest, even with a miniscule amount of credits in anime where the most significant work after this is the obscure Rintaro OVA Take the X Train (1987). Once married to Ryuichi Sakamoto, her musical career as a singer and musical by herself is a long and very productive one, where even if it was proven to be a patronising comparison, the reference to her musical style to Kate Bush immediately entices.

#172: Gakuen Handsome (2016)

 

Director: Toneso Kiashi

Based on a video game by Team YokkyuuFuman

Voice Cast: Natsuki Hanae as Yoshiki Maeda; Kazunori Nomiya as Renji Kagami; Ryohei Kimura as Sakuya Mitsurugi; Satomi Akesaka as Yū; Satoshi Tsuruoka as Shingo Shiga; Taiten Kusunoki as Jirō; Tetsuya Kakihara as Takuya Saotome; Yuuto Suzuki as Teruhiko Saionji

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Newspaper headline] Michupero goes mad! Popular amateur model sumo wrestles on the runway...

Gakuen Handsome, if you were to look at the screenshots, would require some explanation as you look at the bishonen ("beautiful boy") character designs and their pronounced chins, sharp enough to open envelopes with. Yes, this is a parody; originally, a BL (Boys Love) video game, first I have to explain that this is a parody of the Yaoi genre, a genre targeted to women about romances between men. The genre is different from actual storytelling about gay men for gay men, such as the bara genre. Also, Gakuen Handsome's existence can be emphasised that there is another BL game in existence called Gakuen Heaven (2002), a romance between male high school students which this is clearly taking the piss out of among others.

Micro-series, a twelve episode production here with three minutes per episode, do seem a place you can get away with some crude animation or barely move the images at all for humour. The end credits for this show, for emphasis of this, has the main cast distort their limbs like worn out rubber dolls in time to the upbeat J-pop song. One aspect of the joke here, which many including myself may not appreciate, is that this is also a parody of some of the worst qualities of the yaoi genre even in aesthetic, the character designs being terrible on purpose for a genre where the term "yaoi hands" is a meme, where aggrandized hands (or them accidentally grow enormous in the next panel) has been a common issue in the art. This particular show's trademark, referring to this, is obviously a love of glamorously over-the-top chins.

Beyond this, you can get most of the humour even without context as a surreal piece. Lead Yoshiki, who stands out because he is not even drawn with eyes, is your typical anime male protagonist starting at Baramon High School, an all-boy's school where immediately he is flirted with by his new teacher Teruhiko, which in another context would be deeply problematic, as is the principal being blunt encouraging him into romances, but here is thankfully not going to go in that direction for the humour. Instead, in mind of parodying the genre it is based on and thankfully never crossing a problematic line, here the only joke in regards to this is that even Yoshiki's own little sister, drawn better than anyone else with actual eyes too, asks him why he has not started a romance with a fellow student from the first day. Neither is the joke ever about the characters being gay, as this show, for all its silliness, is definitely earnest with all its manly crushes even if proving this involves blowing a building up on purpose to escape an idol contract.

You do not have a lot of time in this world, as is expected with many micro-series, so instead the narrative is a series of bizarre vignettes surrounding these handsome bishonen figures, clichés taken to their extreme. The buff sports player; the strict school council member; the best friend; the other new student, a gruff voiced outsider who is tough....and secretly loves cats, to the point he dies once due to the cuteness of stroking one in a cat cafe in the best episode. Even if the show is slight, only twenty four minutes long altogether, you get an eclectic cast which thankfully leads to the bizarre. You learning flying is illegal at Baramon High School's sports day, already a curious competition with abrupt boiling curry bun eating and pit holes in the race course. You learn that true fashion according to Sakuya, who gets a two part story as a result, is just a sumo loincloth in public, gaining him an immediate modelling career as a result. That if you go by interpretation, in the second best episode after Shingo's adventure to the cat cafe, all representations of yourself in art class by fellow students is accurate, even if it turns you into a squiggle or playfully includes better drawn versions of the cast. That the best way to welcome a student to the school is to dress him as a disco-ball, and hang him off the roof for his own welcoming party, after previous attempts and having random costumes laying around does not work.

Like a few of these micro-series, this will be a short review but it does say a lot that, even if a parody, it still has a lot of heart. Heart that, even involving a few buildings being blown including by accident, these are still characters who eventually bond in their own man crushes, none of the humour mean or gross or at the expense of the characters, beyond them being a bit dumb or Renji the strict school rep's ill advised (but eventually successful) attempt at a part time job at a bakery. Heart because, with each episode ending in fan art, the fan base of the show was really in love with the franchise, to the point they even helped crowd fund to get the series for Team YokkyuuFuman, the original game creators, with stretch goals to increase the scope of the anime's release¹. It is a reoccurring trend to micro-series when they work, that even due to their length, they are so distinct and charming they all have personalities, more so as you learn in this case that they gained a fan base like this willing to help the show even exist.

=======

1) As referred to HERE.

[Re-Review] Another (2012)

 

Director: Tsutomu Mizushima

Screenplay: Ryou Higaki

Based on the serial novel by Yukito Ayatsuji

Voice Actors: Atsushi Abe (as Kōichi Sakakibara); Natsumi Takamori (as Mei Misaki); Ai Nonaka (as Yukari Sakuragi); Hiroaki Hirata (as Tatsuji); Kazutomi Yamamoto (as Mochizuki); Madoka Yonezawa (as Izumi Akazawa)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

What made me wish to re-evaluate this horror anime from the early 2010s? Curiosity to be honest and an undying obsession with horror anime that means even the worst are compelling. Another is not a terrible horror work; in fact, seeing the opening credits animation was in itself a nice piece of macabre bubblegum for the eyes. Set to Kyōmu Densen ("Nightmare Contagion") by ALI PROJECT, a montage of dolls, usually being broken and disembodied, set to lyrics of a very horror themed sort of romance, and setting up for a show with a complete lack of subtlety but with style to burn. In hindsight, as we will get into, having  Tsutomu Mizushima directing the twelve episode series, including one bonus prologue episode that was straight-to-video, in itself explains some of the more infamous moments of this ghostly tale.

In 1998, high school student Kōichi Sakakibara starts late at his new school due to a deflated lung. To his surprise, there is a girl in his new class, already standing out for her mysterious nature and an eye patch, called Mei Misaki who is completely ignored by everyone else in the class even by the teacher. Like many Japanese horror tales, it revolves around a curse, specifically that Class 3-3 itself is cursed; back in 1972, a student died only for the class to pretend they were still alive, their ghostly image appearing in the graduation photo. Sadly in this case for anyone in this world this is, in the proceeding decades onwards an extra person always appears in the class list, a dead figure who can be random, whose entire existence means that if the curse is set off, leaves the students and their loved ones to likely die in violent fashions. The show holds this premise off from the viewer for a couple of the first episodes, barring that by accident, Kōichi by meeting Mei and becoming interested in her, central to a way to ward off the curse, has seemingly started the ball working for it all to get ugly.

Based on a novel published in 2009, in 2012 too there was also a live action feature adaptation of Another co-existing with the animated series. As already mentioned, it takes its time to actually explain what the rules of this story are, a slow burn to the point the first two episodes are very sedate. Not long afterwards, things get gristly with an unfortunate incident with an umbrella. Returning to Another, you have a show which is a conventional character drama, a mystery as eventually it boils down to who the dead figure in Class 3-3 is, and the horror content itself. The show is far more interesting when it is the characters trying to cope within context of the curse, even as archetypes. Kōichi is your typical quiet male protagonist, although the emphasis that usually the female characters are far more interesting is dispelled in this case by the likes of Naoya, a jockish figure who is a little dumb and cocky but kind at heart among others, and that eventually even Kōichi himself gains personality as the series goes on, a significant virtue compared to other animated series. Even in mind that a lot of this cast will be there just as meat for the grinder, there are figures to be interested in despite being cliché. In Izumi for example, the countermeasure group leader with giant red haired pigtails, even the vague colour of the tsundere in her personality, there is a female character who hides a slowly growing affection for someone through a cold and even aggressive personality, only modified here by the fact her coldness is from concern of protecting her classmates.

Then there is Mei herself who, if there ever was a character in anime who really could have been in a Tim Burton film, is this particular figure. Baring an odd detail straight out of a fantasy story or The Garden of Sinners franchise, of a doll's eye in place of her real one that can see death, this seemingly closed hearted character with pale skin and a mind firmly in an entirely different reality is both playing out to tropes to appeal to a (male) viewer yet, as someone who hates mobile phones and speaks with an incredibly distant intonation to her voice, actually manages to be the most interesting character you care for. It helps the production, with a complete lack of subtlety as mentioned, went as far as have her living with a mother at home that is also an exhibit space for macabre and realistic dolls, even down to having the episode titles named after the processes to create one. As much meant to evoke "the uncanny", a term originally coined by Ernst Jentsch but taken further by Sigmund Freud that anything which looks close to us but is not will cause discomfort, it also upon returning to the series adds a moody yet perversely twee nature to the content to go overboard with this aesthetic. Whilst a lot of the show is very conventional to the anime around this time, from the character designs to the look of the world, sprinkles of the macabre like this help considerably.

In terms of miscreants in anime, Mei is a lot more interesting than many male protagonists, and it was actually will-they-or-won't-they romance between she and Kōichi in the early episodes which became the most rewarding episodes in Another for me. The best episodes are when it is decided to also make Kōichi non-existent in Class 3-3 and ignore him, in itself which could have been a strange anime narrative by itself. This light moment, in-between the ridiculous deaths, where they bond, from a fantasy of them suddenly running around in the class and dancing, to the reality of them just being closer as a result, is something which is great especially as it means even Kōichi gains personality as a result.

Not surprisingly, the OVA Episode 0 is entirely about Mei. Never released on the British DVD release from MVM for an unknown reason, it is just a back-story episode in regards to Mei and her cousin Misaki, tragically having already died before the first episode [Spoiler Warning] especially as a later plot point reveals they are actually twin sisters, Mei having been taken in by her aunt as a surrogate daughter. [Spoiler Ends] It does not add a lot at all, and it has the absurd scene of someone dangling off a Ferris Wheel alongside sudden leukaemia as a plot point, but it is appropriate to say she become the figurehead of the series and the franchise, the figure adorning the posters even of the live action adaptation. For a character who was quite cryptic and near moroseness, seeing her actually laugh was interesting for levity in this episode, especially as the one extra we got in the British release, a music video with a chibi version, feels deeply inappropriate for a character you could imagine getting on with Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice (1988) swimmingly.

But this is a horror show, not an unconventional romance of people ignored or a drama about an introspective teen girl who lives in a house full of creepy dolls. The rules for the curse does get complicated, eventually turning into both the Final Destination films, where Rube Goldberg machination transpires, and aspects which are stranger, like the fact that even if you leave the town of Yomiyama to escape it, either you perish trying or something happens in the town beforehand (like a concussion) to make sure you die outside the town. Here is where I have to bring up Tsutomu Mizushima, who started his career with very dark comedies like Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan (2005/7) and has made a name for himself for the likes of Girls und Panzer (2012-13). His stints in horror are divisive though - Blood-C (2011) is infamously, as a spin-off of Blood: The Last Vampire (2000), a misanthropic and hyper-gory production and then there is The Lost Village (2016), a bizarre mishap of a television show where in compensation for the lack of violence in that show, a lot of bizarre characterisation (hello Lovepon) and a lack of subtlety at all in the horror was shown. Another can be very gruesome in its violence, like the first involving a person tripping down stairs with a umbrella with a sharp point, eventually to the stage these scenes feel a bit cruel to these drawn characters. Others are just unintentionally comedic, even late into the final two episodes a random unknown student being crushed by a pillar which comes off as a gag.

Their hyper-bloody nature, even in mind to TV standards, and their silliness clash against the series' serious tone, especially as many could have been prevented if the students stepped in to help their classmates rather than stand there dazed. Let alone imaging the trauma many seemingly overcome with ease, even when someone in their classroom decided to just slash themselves to get the curse to continue. This is why the quiet moments are more rewarding as a result. Even the stereotypical beach episode, really an excuse for female characters to wear bikinis in anime, is a soma to appreciate here as, up to another absurd death at the end, its playfulness is rewarding as a nice episode with interesting character. As for the mystery, the final two episodes happen, where even if this has clues filtered through beforehand about whom the dead person is, it arguably cheats by including flashbacks and plot points never seen before. It is also set in a backdrop of, learning that to end the curse they have to kill the dead person, everyone suddenly goes insane in a resort building, where not only random background  students on mass are slaughtered, but even side characters we have seen in the foreground are all abruptly killed or turned insane abruptly.

This ending does have its pleasure but it does get long past the horror tropes we were introduced to, especially when it is comes to a show building slowly to its own premise in the characters having to uncover old archive materials or getting assistance from the original teacher of Class 3-3, now there as a librarian to help. The show's contrast between this slow burn and traditional horror, and the drastic escalation in the finale episodes, are strange bedfellows. [Another Major Spoiler Warning] Also the reveal of who is dead, Kōichi's aunt who is also the teacher's assistant, whilst with clues throughout that are seen from the beginning, does have to rely on flashbacks as mentioned you never had hints to, so the show even if these were actually buried in the first episodes does relay on details it was not fully hinted at. [Spoilers End] Mysteries are also less interesting to me as a whodunit as turning a premise into a guessing game only works for the first viewing, when a story should last for many retellings. A far more compelling narrative is rushed to, when a cassette tape is found that informs the students that they have to kill the dead extra person, which could have been fascinating for all the paranoia involved, and people accidentally killing classmates with the guilt that involves. That the show ends with the curse likely to happen again, as it is never the same ghosts twice, does add a neat irony even if never spoken of, but it never fully takes advantage of this.

I have softened to Another considerably since I first saw the show. It is definitely flawed, and in my fascination with Tsutomu Mizushima as a director, even if the likes of screenwriter Ryou Higaki are as responsible for the quirks, this just emphasises what peculiar and twisted things he has a tendency to reach for, even if horror to him is clearly a genre where his touch is like a square peg being violently forced into a round hole. Another is not exactly scary either, instead a curiosity with a lot to like but with many guilty pleasures to be found instead.

#171: Futari Ecchi (2002-4)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

#170: Always My Santa! (2005)

 

a.k.a. Itsudatte My Santa

Director: Noriyoshi Nakamura

Screenplay: Koichi Taki and Shoichi Sato

Based on the manga by Ken Akamatsu

Voice Cast: Aya Hirano as Mai; Jun Kamei as Santa; Tomo Sakurai as Noël-sensei; Yu Kobayashi as Sharry; Yukari Tamura as Maimai

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

We did it! The pile of saury has 30% of full power!

Christmas is found in a lot of anime, usually themed episodes¹, but actual Christmas themed anime is rare. Based on a one volume creation by Ken Akamatsu, who would later create Love Hina (1998) a year later from this manga, arguably his most famous creation for how popular it was including its anime adaptations, Always My Santa is a rare festive anime, two OVA episodes, although it is not one that is talked of greatly. I am surprised, by how I had a very negative reaction to this OVA when I first ever saw it years ago, that it is not as bad as I remember it, but it is still not that good, just rushed and average.

Premise wise, a male protagonist christened Santa and born on Christmas Eve would have an axe to grind in terms of hating the holiday, especially as his parents, being war photographers, never were around when he was a child for his birthday/Christmas Eve. The premise, to be honest, is not different from the slightest from a Christmas movie from the West in where this will go, where he will learn the true happiness of the season in a very syrupy and sentimental way. The difference here is that, alongside cramming a whole narrative into one twenty or so minute episode, a sexier Santa Claus in a girl called Mai from a country of Santa Claus is here to help him find his Christmas spirit.

One has no time to breath for a prologue as, set up why he hates Christmas, Santa is already pestered by a girl named Mai coming up to him, randomly as a stranger, asking him to spend the night with her in a crowded public square and then hitting him with a fan when everyone else around them thinks this is lewder then she realised as a suggestion. Being dragged off by two policemen, she claims to be Santa Claus and have happiness granting powers, although there is a lot of evidence to prove this, despite most of the premise for this episode being that he does not believe in the reality of Santa Claus. When she can produce giant piles of raw fish from the air, and summoning trucks of saury fish proves a good crowd control technique against a male gang you have accidentally antagonised, by causing their cake to fall on concrete, she is definitely not bluffing about the powers. She is not exactly a character, immediately, easy to engage with in terms of a hyperactive female caricature you barely get fleshed out, especially as this is the type of comedy where male characters will be beaten up not for being actual perverts, but presumption of in spite of doing nothing wrong, like accidentally seeing someone naked rather than being a letch trying to.

Lore wise, I will give this title credit for some logic, as in a world you have an entire magical country of Santa Claus, taught the magic craft to deliver presents around the world in their own districts. It is a premise you can make a whole manga series or a television series, playful and silly if you wished to expand the content out. This is as much an excuse though for a sexy female Santa, with Mai even having a magical girl transformation sequence, with nudity, where the thin brunette character with a high voice even gets blonder, fuller figured and with a deep voice, even her magical plush reindeer Pedro getting beefed up as an actual giant flying one. Again, this is not a character you can really latch onto, especially because of the slight length of this series, when (in mind to the source material only being one volume) this is still an interesting premise but none of these two episodes cover the intricacy of a Santa Claus student learning her craft and becoming a Claus. That would be the one thing that I would rather have for these two episodes over what we actually got, the only really interesting aspect of her character being that, not that adept at her craft, she can only conjure things beginning with the letter "S". Likewise, her brethren, introduced fully in the second episode, are one note female archetypes, and Santa himself is a bland and meek male protagonist as I have found in other anime.

The first episode also hurdles along so fast I cannot help but imagine the practice (and hard work) to speak this fast in high pitched voices as for Aya Hirano as Mai², the intensity realised as much as in how relentless this first episode was despite nothing actually happening. For the second episode, we manage to cram in the beach episode...even though it is a Christmas themed show. Now, having the premise of a person who works on Christmas Eve and following them all year is actually interesting, but here particularly that is not the thing of interest, more an excuse of drawn characters in bikinis. The second episode also attempts to cram a romantic drama in little time. In the first episode, Santa and Mai have only just met but you get the breakup and drama, followed by the reconciliation, in a rushed time. The second has you, for a character in Mai you have not really be accustomed to, meant to feel tragedy as she has to leave Santa eventually to go back home in little time.

This presents the real problem with Always My Santa, even recreating the same jokes again in the second episode (including Mai being dragged away by the police), that it is not an ambitious title in its humour or story, just a manic batch of jokes and emotions which you do not have the investment in. [Major Spoiler] It even pulls the rug under you by showing Mai will not be going back to her homeland in the post-credits stinger. [Spoilers End]. It says a lot that the end preview to a third episode that never happened, The Third Christmas, is funnier than most of the series as it involves a giant reindeer robot fighting a monster in a Japanese cityscape.

 

========

1) Aragami SS (2010), as an unconventional multiple narrative romantic comedy, made Christmas an integral part of its multiple stories, usually ending at that part of the year for the protagonists on Christmas Day or so in all the narratives. Individual episodes for different series and franchises have done this too: for me, growing up with Chrono Crusade (2003-4) as a gateway anime means I saw its Christmas themed episode, whilst a very unconventional spin was when the first 1999 season of The Big O, a Batman-inspired giant robo story in a dystopian city, had a Christmas episode of its own.

2) Aya Hirano was still early in her anime voice acting career here, only a year off from playing the titular figure of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006), a phenomenon back in the 2000s anime fandom. That said, with a career also in music, voice acting for other mediums like video games, and even theatrical work in the likes of Spamalot and Les Misérables, I will actually view her work here as the one great thing to take away as it showed her talent.

#169: Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (2003)

 

Directors: Kazuhisa Takenouchi (with Daisuke Nishio, Hirotoshi Rissen and Leiji Matsumoto)

Original Premise by Thomas Bangalter, Cédric Hervet and Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo

Music by: Daft Punk

 

In the early 2000s, we had quite a few moments where anime crossed into the mainstream. Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001) won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards. Quentin Tarantino one day knocked on Production I.G.'s doorstep, and thus they contributed an animated sequence to Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003)¹. The Animatrix (2003) was also commissioned, where Japanese animators (alongside figures like Peter Chung) worked on short films based on the world of The Matrix, with the added weight that the Wachowskis were anime fans, which influenced with their work but also meant that, directly working on the project, they would have allowed the creators they were inspired by to flex their crafting muscles. Another, sadly becoming obscurer, is when the French electronic music duo Daft Punk, in the midst of one of their most well regarded albums Discovery, was coming up with a narrative and ended up collaborating with a childhood hero Leiji Matsumoto.

France has had a healthy relationship with Japanese anime and manga, as Daft Punk themselves Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo) came into this project having grown up as children on the likes of Captain Harlock², which, whether the 1978 or 1982 animated television adaptation of Matsumoto's original manga, was a character exported to France and given the name Albator. Just the fact that Matsumoto, in 2012, was knighted in France made a Knight of the order of Arts and Letters by the French government, a title gained by the likes of Bob Dylan to fellow manga author/anime director Katsuhiro Otomo among many, says a lot of how his work came to the country and left an impression³. 

Matsumoto's history and reputation just in his own country, in manga but also direct interaction with anime productions, is a huge one not only for characters he created like Harlock, but also for shows like the famous Space Battleship Yamato (1974-5), a cultural monolith to say the least in Japanese culture he was an original creator and director on. Note that Leiji Matsumoto is not the director on this project - those would be Kazuhisa Takenouchi as the main director, with Daisuke Nishio and Hirotoshi Rissen as unit directors, and Matsumoto himself the visual supervisor. His trademarks are still visible in Interstella 5555 even just in terms of the character designs, one of his biggest trademarks.

Coming up with the premise early into the album's origins, the pair does co-exist as they embrace an openly over-the-top plot which is entirely told visually without any dialogue. That on their alien home world, a band is kidnapped and shipped to Earth by the evil Earl de Darkwood, transforming and even brainwashing them to blend with the human populous as the band the Crescendolls. His plan is openly ridiculous - a centuries old prophecy powered by 5555 golden records won at award shows for smash hit singles - but in a world where another alien, Shep, commands his guitar shaped spaceship to rescue the band, this is the house music equivalent to a rock music, suspending conventional reality as it has to also work entirely on visuals provided by Toei Animation, which they pull off.

The music is, well, entirely dependent on your love of Daft Punk or lack of it. Discovery was a huge album at the time it dropped in 2001, and also worth mentioning is that even before Interstella 5555, the enigmatic duo who dressed as robots were already smart with providing the right visuals to their music from working with Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze among others. All their albums have distinct personalities as well, and whilst it was a long time from having listened to the Discovery, just starting this film, that is the length or so of the album and has all the tracks, reminded me of how much I did listen to Discovery. How even the melancholic instrumental piece Nightvision stayed in memory, and that, still to this day, Face to Face is an underappreciated song from the album. Especially for Digital Love, where Shep (in love with the female bassist Stella) has a fantasy of them flying through a psychedelic dream sequence, you have a perfect matching of visuals to audio full of life, the projects intertwining to the point that the singles for the album had sequences from the film as their music videos.

It helps Matsumoto's character designs are uniquely his. Not of any era but very distinctly his, his female characters especially (based on actresses like Marianne Hold, Eleanor Parker, Danielle Darrieux, and Kaoru Yachigusa⁴) like thin ethereal figure than human beings, a style which is helped by the amount of adaptations of his work that exist in anime. Even if the likes of Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (2012-2013) updated the designs, he lent himself a timeless aesthetic to his work even if Interstella 5555 was also meant as a nostalgia piece. He was happy to weave in themes meaningful to him alongside this openly exaggerated premise, of self sacrifice and heroics alongside a film involving such pulpy details like cyborg bodyguard and a Gothic castle full of hooded cultists who push musicians into a volcanic hole. Even in spite of the violence that does transpire through the film, and one very tragic death, it ends on a reconciliation of Earth with the aliens by helping them back home, including the amusement of a world having to explain in the news that aliens do exist in the first place. And the final images, of a boy in a bedroom dreaming all this film, do really gain a power knowing that the musicians who created Daft Punk were able to make a work like this with their childhood hero. It also makes sense that, a decade on, they purposely stepped away from the electronic music they helped solidify by making Random Access Memories, an album stripping back as much artifice as possible and working back to seventies ideals of music without being delusional rose tinted glasses. The likes of Giorgio Moroder and even Paul Williams appearing on that album in itself was them managing to find more childhood heroes and giving them a platform to stand out too.

Contextually, and even now, this film looks gorgeous and was an achievement, a bright and elaborate work whose ability to tell this tale entirely without words, and only breaking from the musical tracks with some ambient noises, shows how much you can pull off in animation just in said visuals. Out of its directors, naturally many of them, working for Toei Animation, worked on Dragonball properties among the many properties the company hold. It is hilarious as one final note, but with a charming weight, that main director Kazuhisa Takenouchi early in his career helmed Vampire Wars (1990), a lurid OVA title that is not fondly remember. I did not know this until writing this review, very familiar with both of them, making this as charming as it is amusing that one man can go from such a title, an old Manga Entertainment license which ended up with vampires from outer space as a plot twist, to something like this a decade later which he can take completely pride in, in collaborating on this impressive production, and has a more positive image of visitors from outer space as two planets in the final scenes get to rock out across space and time.

 

========

1) According to Production I.G.'s own website on the subject (as can be read HERE): "Reportedly a fan of Ghost in the Shell and Blood: The Last Vampire, movie maker Quentin Tarantino personally asked Production I.G to produce the animation sequence included in his world-hit Kill Bill..."

2) As documented in a review HERE.

3) As referred to HERE.

4) As revealed in an interview HERE.

#168: Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman (1994)

 

Directors: Iku Suzuki (Episode 1), Hiroshi Yoshida (Episode 2)

Screenplay: Yū Yamamoto

Based on a manga by Masakazu Yamaguchi

Voice Cast: Yuri Shiratori as Mari Amachi; Miki Itō as Saori Minami; Tomokazu Seki as Ryo Tobishima; Akiko Yajima as Hibari Misora; Kenichi Ogata as Buddha; Kenichi Ono as Kyoshirou Inemuri; Kinryuu Arimoto as Vice Principal; Kouji Totani as Pope; Ryūzaburō Ōtomo as Dark Vader; Tomohiro Nishimura as Mutsugorō; Tsutomu Kashiwakura as Scary Newspaper Man

 

What's Buddha doing here?

From the ultra obscure realm of anime OVAs, a two part straight-to-video work, Gautaman is a title which has only been available in the West up to the 2020s on German DVD and only known to anyone if they have found it online. It is, after years of wanting to see both parts, upon finally seeing it a work which lived up to being utterly insane but also something with two aspects to consider. One is that, unfortunately, it has content as I will get into which people will find inappropriate and uncomfortable for good reason, as this belongs to the area of anime where jokes and scenes about women being forcibly undressed and molested are found, especially feeling bolted on to a work which could have just stayed as a weird and kinky parody of superheroes with some sex comedy without this content. The more positive thing of note, and the reason why I would actually recommend people track this down if they can pass the former concern, and why I wish this had a proper Western release, is that it is compelling. It is shambolic at times, skirting copyright precariously with jokes which are just strange, but managing to juggle genres and even have emotional whiplashes. There is nothing like Gautaman even if the premise is not original, in which to protect a school for all future religious leaders, a shy Catholic girl has to dress in a stupid hero costume because Buddha of all deities rather than the Virgin Mary answered her prayers. One which manages in two forty plus minute episodes has a lesbian (yuri) subplot with a fellow Hindu roommate, henchmen like "Dark Vader", and even a bitter sweet ending.

At this school, where all major religions coexist in harmony, naturally it has an evil cult known as Black Buddha among them, who indoctrinate members by kidnapping students, to the point they even develop new personas with masks in case they need henchmen. Mari Amachi is a Catholic and a new student, insanely shy having been brought up in a Catholic school before, and having not been around men baring her father and school principals beforehand. Gautaman for all its dumbness has virtues, including a lead character I wanted to follow and wished had more stories about, someone who is the zenith of stereotypically awkward yet cute figures, with her big red hair in a ribbon and long dress. Adding to her character with another interesting figure, Mari immediately finds a friend in Saori Minami, a practicing Hindu student she shares a room with and is eventually hiding a romantic crush from Mari.

When the Black Buddha decides to kidnap Saori, because she stopped a member indoctrinating Mari by intriguing her with religious discussion, Mari's prayers on her knees does not get the figure she would presume. She gets Buddha of all people, and if you have knowledge on the religion, it is not actually Buddha himself but someone who people confuse the Buddha for she receives for help, the jolly rotund figure, here a gold talking statue who floats, who was originally Budai, a 10th-century Chinese monk who, unlike Siddhartha Gautama who is Buddha, is a different figure honoured in Chinese and also Japanese Buddhism. He is still a figure of high regard, getting the name of "the Laughing Buddha" even if it might be confusing, which is why he is parodied here in a way which is a bit crass and profane. I would prefer to call this Buddha neither Siddhartha Gautama nor Budai, even if Budai is referenced and the name "Gautaman" Mari's alter-ego is called is clearly based on the former, as it makes more sense in this bizarre comedic anime to have this parody be his own thing. This is an incompetent deity who, floating in the background abruptly when unexpected, gives away her weakness to the villains continually and leads to a sentence of someone hitting Buddha taking place in dialogue, something that would not make sense anywhere else expect here.

Contextually this anime has a lot of similarities to the 1991-2 OVA adaptation of Kekko Kamen; Kamen was a Go Nagai creation, which managed to spin off into numerous live action films too, a concept meant to have been a joke he sent to his editor only for them to actually like it. Kaman shares this show's unfortunate interest in non-consensual sexual content in a jokey, eroticised form although was far more extreme. The titular Kekko Kamen herself, a girl with a secret persona to protect her fellow classmates at the evil Sparta Academy, was a mask with a scarf, gloves and shoes with nothing else on, completely naked beyond this. Mari as Gautaman, protector of religious freedom, is covered in costume but is more ridiculous - wearing a turban, wraparound shades, a sports bra, and Mari's power source, a sumo belt with nothing underneath.

The show, to be crass for once, is from the same well as Sir Mix-A-Lot found his inspiration for Baby Got Back, the ode to women's behinds even though this show has none which are rendered as large. Black Buddha do attempt to find out her real identify from a plaster cast at one point in the first episode, of her behind left on an unfortunate victim as a result of her special move; leaping in the air and moving herself in a jack knife with her legs to her head to do what we, in professional wrestling parlance, sometimes have called the "thump" with the gluteus maximus to the chest at high speed. This is, again, crass, but just in all I have put, you could have easily removed some of the unpalatable moments, like a Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles parody with squid tentacles molesting the female students, and easily turned this premise into just a sex comedy parody of superheroes instead. It would have improved even if still juvenile. Particularly as, whilst not nuisance and with her religious beliefs never really coming into play, the premise of Catholic schoolgirl, from a very restricted upbringing, being stuck having to become this very sexually upfront super heroine, because she does want to help people, is still amusing especially as the character is interest and the Black Buddha clan is full of oddballs and parodies in terms of the opponents.

Split into two separate OVAs, the first which is just called Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman, is merely an introduction but does show the two sides. One that unfortunately the production had to fall into perverse content that is not palatable today, such as following Kekko Kaman a little and having Saori in compromising positions including being whipped. Thankfully it also emphasises that, with some re-adaptation, the story could have easily jettisoned this content entirely unlike Kekko Karman¸ which is work that is far more problematic even if managing to be released on DVD in Britain in the 2000s. It also emphasises already how odd the OVA is, the sense Gautaman was never meant for an international audience beyond Japan. Our two lead characters Mari and Saori are named after famous female idol singers who were still very much alive at the time, which causes you to wonder how those real women might have reacted, and for a future release they had to censor the real name of the school this story is set in, suggesting immediately that the writers crossed a line in terms of Japan's copyright laws even for parody, something which has been an effect on older titles which were more flagrant in referring to real life pop culture¹.

The antagonists themselves, led by a leader who is one of the male students Ryo Tobishima, are also a motley bunch of strange parodies and concepts, based upon students being brainwashed and gaining new personas to go after Mari (or in one case, "Frankenmuscle", never even getting to see action as, in a funny joke, Tobishima just bats him into a wall so his second in command, the vice principal of the school, stops interfering with his plans). When the first you encounter is literally "Scary Newspaper Delivery Man", whose secret weapon is a newspaper which is lethal to read, there is a lot of cultural aspects that have clearly been lost in translation to why that is a villain to have, either that or either the original manga author or the creators of this OVA went for something ridiculous. That is the case with an identical group of elderly students whose names are puns on Japanese numbers and whose main attacks are to impersonate animals. Yes, that is just the beginning of how peculiar this show gets, and this I would rather have than those aspects leanings towards Kekko Karman, which again is a much more problematic show considering its first villain was a Nazi dominatrix teacher. Instead here, just from the first episode, you have an explicit parody of the "Sleepy Eyes of Death" Nemuri Kyōshirō, a famous pulp samurai character known for his purple clothes who, replicating the samurai character in Kamen who cut women's clothes off, is here as a villain alongside the aforementioned Dark Vader, a giant sumo with a very suspiciously familiar looking helmet of a Disney owned property.

It does establish as well that, whilst not reinventing the wheel, there is a lot here I liked as well even if it befuddled me. There is a lot of comedy, with the usual trademarks of characters breaking from their usual forms for exaggerating which is always amusing, especially as the duality of Mari against Gautaman, who gets attention both as a hero in the school but also wearing very little, does leave the poor girl with a lot of concern and a lot of obvious jokes which still work. It also sets up the potential drama of how Tobishima actually meets Mari outside his evil persona and they fall for each other, despite neither knowing their masked identities. Episode two, titled Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman R, escalates the plot and just escalates the tone. With a different director on board, it increases in how bizarre it gets, how much more perverted the content can be, and how the emotional tone gets surprisingly serious somehow in spite of most of the work being unable to be taken seriously at all.

What was a light hearted sex comedy, with some unfortunately dated content, gets a lot more explicit, both with a scene of Mari and Saori sharing a bath with the eyebrow raising subtitle of "bottoms touching", and a parody of the famous Dream of the Fisherman's Wife ukiyo-e woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai, as that trope of squid ninja, a Mutant Ninja Turtles parody that gets the joke across with its own designs², have an expanding squid as their secret weapon against Gautaman. Again, the lewder content does put one off; the absurd moments, like a fantasy in Episode 1 of Mari being burned like a martyr on a pyre of butts rather than burning wood, is lewd and weird but comes from a more digestible and more entertaining in its weirdness rather than creepy. If it had just been as mad as a box of frogs, I would be less concerned with this review having to stress that it does cross the line a few times, where even some of the "WTF" levels of surprise would still be acceptable even if very dark in its humour. Like the likelihood one set of villains are defeated by being cooked on a giant pan in the middle of a class and being eaten by their fellow students, which I suspect was cannibalism³. A joke like that, from the second OVA, is at least tasteful in that it does not feel inappropriate, just twisted in a palatable way to surprise anyone with not datedness to its shock value.

It feels especially as if the production team were doing whatever they wanted with peculiar results. So the real final fight involves a Terminator parody, with a character design that really looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger with a T-800 underneath which perilously inches towards the copyright line. So, even when the story gets serious with Mari and Tobishima ultimately having to fight despite being unaware of each other's real identities, you randomly get the sight, whilst he is ritually preparing under a waterfall, that Tobishima possesses something the size of a tree trunk between her thighs which is never a plot point and is dumbfounding as a sight joke. What you get instead of what you expect for this light hearted and dumb premise is the surprisingly bleak conclusion, where Mari risks being removed from the school by her father if she turns into Gautaman again. How he is introduced, and reveals how he knew of her true identity, is uncomfortable and definitely part of that side I wished the OVA did not have, but where it leads to with the finale suddenly turning into a drama, with Saori the sympathetic figure in love with Mari sincerely, was a surprise. One in fact that actually left the anime etched in my thoughts as much as the bizarre content before.  

The two episode production is not that elaborate - distinct but certainly not one of the higher tier OVAs in terms of artistic quality - but it definitely shows just how unpredictable the format was. We thankfully still get anime like this, good or bad, in the modern day with television series, but the OVA era of the eighties to the nineties as seen here saw such unexpected combinations of genre released straight to video, both here the memorable in a bad way but also in a way which legitimately surprises. The original manga, Dengeki Oshioki Musume Gōtaman, lasted for six volumes, and is obscure despite its author Masakazu Yamaguchi having one of his works Arm of Kannon (1998-2003) available in the West through Tokyopop, so whether this adapts the work accurately or trailed off in its own direction is a question for another day. Something like this is not necessarily the best, and I could completely understand people who hated it, especially as some moments are cringe worthy. And yet I wish it was more easily available, not likely to perish outside of bootlegged digital copies, because it definitely is memorable in positive ways and for the moments you were not prepared for.

=====

1) Japan's laws on this and how it can affect anime can be summed up in a famous modern day example. For the 2015 update of Osomatsu-kun, a sixties comedy manga adapted into anime about sextuplet brothers, called Mr. Osomatsu, their first ever episode parodied multiple other work such as the insanely popular manga/anime franchise Attack on Titan. It was so explicit that the first episode has effectively been cancelled due to copyright, including for home media, regardless of it being for parody.

2) Knowing that Japan did try at their own licensed and official adaptation of the Ninja Turtles, in the 1996 OVAs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Legend of the Supermutants, adds an additional humour to the squid villains, especially when the official anime adaptation did not turn out well at only two episodes and was weird itself.

3) [Major Spoiler Warning] Those unfortunate squid ninja find themselves in that fate, and it definitely comes off as one of the moments of Gautaman you will remember, especially as they are clearly students wearing living squid masks, thus making it actual cannibalism [Spoilers End].