#181: Submarine 707R (2003)

 

Director: Shoichi Masuo

Screenplay: Hiroshi Ohnogi

Based on the manga by Satoru Ozawa

Voice Cast: Akira Ishida as Goro Kusaka; Ben Hiura as Youhei Hayami; Daisuke Sakaguchi as Senta Umino; Hideo Ishikawa as Ichiro Suzuki; Hiroshi Yanaka as Hayato Nango; Kensho Ono as Kenji Minahaya; Unshō Ishizuka as Admiral Red

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Adapted from a manga first started in 1963, and adapted once already for a 1997 one-shot OVA, Submarine 707R is another title from the transition of Manga Entertainment into the early 2000s, where there would still be OVAs over the decade but eventually television shows alongside theatrical features would dominate their catalogue. Released by Geneon USA in the United States, that company (an off-shot of NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan) would fold in 2007, with the added fascination that this is also an Aniplex title. Aniplex are more known in the States, and are more controversial from the 2010s onwards for distributing their titles for physical media under prices closer to the Japanese market, which means very expensive and limited print runs, managing (unlike Bandai Visual in the 2000s) to actually succeed. This is almost quaint to look back on, with this two part OVA, before they were ever that company and merely one of the producers of such titles as Submarine 707R, perverse to consider.

Submarine 707R is what is says on the tin, about submarines, all that entails with eluding attacks from other submarines and ships above water, all with the danger that if the lead vessel is destroyed, the crew cannot escape the bottom of the ocean. The one touch which you may not gather even if you read the synopsis is that this is effectively set in an unknown future, a war between the world above the ocean on land, united despite frictions, and the USR (the Undersea Silence Revolution), an underwater civilisation where members like Admirable Red in his submarine attack boats and ships above to stop the surface civilisation exploiting the ocean. A lot of anime has had villains fighting, even wishing to destroy humanity, to protect the Earth's ecosystem, always a fascinating conundrum. That we see Red's family - his wife, three daughters and one infant son - shows an alternative to someone who can be seen as a cartoonish figure here otherwise, and enticing lead in for moral complexity.

Contrasting him is Captain Yōhei Hayami, captain of the 707, originally an older diesel ship not held in high regard until, whilst being taken to a conference for all nations, appears when everyone is being attacked with ease by Red, Hayami sacrificing his vessel to protect others after most were decimated beforehand. With the first episode dealing with a lot of the narrative prologue, the 707 is resurrected as a new ship immediately afterwards. As a straightforward plot progression, that Hayami is to clash with Captain Red once again, this adds a nice touch as he contrasts as a portly man who yet, alongside a talented crew, has an incredible mind for tactics.

Here I must confess that I accidentally put on the second episode on first, before stopping a quarter of its length in and watching Episode 1. As an accident, this emphasised the disappointments with the OVAs greatly. Watching Episode 2 blind, before realising the mistake, I have a more enticing work in front of me of a science fiction world, set in media res revealed to actually by the underwater civilisation of the USR, with a dominant number of female characters, including three older women commanding battleships for the surface. The show suggests an atmospheric and distinct nautical story, barring one odd creative choice, especially in a work you could show to kids, of a female staff member having a pronounced bounce in her bust moving in her seat in a scene, which is crass to point out if not so abruptly and deliberately animated by a potentially bored animator.

In reality, the OVA proves to be far less interesting than this, starting off with the true leads being a submarine ran entirely by men, including a trio of male teenagers, who never really stand out. The exception is Hayami himself, as a commander who does not use brawn but his mind, but even then you do not get much with him. Odder is that, whilst it is good we get to see his home life with his wife and daughter, there is an uncomfortable and pointless interest in his child daughter as a moe character, including an end credits for the first OVA, all in spite of not being a real character of note at all.  

In the first OVA, the pair effectively making up a feature length narrative, a lot of plot happens, including the destruction of the original 707, but the show never really hits a high gear. Considering the villain is effectively an eco-terrorist, or gets into the whole issue of the entire ocean becoming its own sovereignty, the anime does not really provide enough time to flesh this out. The first episode does tell a lot, all mentioned in the synopsis, but also a bit of jingoism. That, when all other nations boost of their new ships and squabble over who commands as they are all being obliterated, a little Japanese submarine that could wins. It is cheese, never good regardless of the country which does it, but thankfully less of a concern after that when it is about one ship, for all the surface nations, with a good captain against another submarine in a game of whit. It is perplexing though that, devoting the second episode entirely to that conflict, it manages to last over forty minutes and yet feels like nothing happened which is the ultimate flat note in spite of the promise.

The production also feels its age. Post the 2000s, this was created when digital animation took over. The notable thing for me is the clear use of digital models such as for the submarine, which would become common place into the decades after, but look noticeably separate from the normal animation in appearance with jarring effect. It is a work that, barring one scene in between its credit sequences, does not really stand out in imagination. That one scene, when I accidentally watched the first quarter of Episode 2, is Captain Red's wife on a giant industrial elevator with orchestral music playing, leading to her with her children in a domed room as outside is seemingly in Arctic tundra, completely masked in white snow. Even if the digital models for the elevator look aged, it all had an appropriate atmosphere which you do not find elsewhere. Everything else is pretty basic, and the irony is that the one really elaborate aspect of the production aesthetically, the best of the entire OVA, is the opening credits. Set to calm jazz, we see blueprints of the titular submarine being built and animation that is designed to look like sketch works as the submarine is created. That opening was directed by Hideaki Anno, of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), with Submarine 707R being directed by Shoichi Masuo, who worked on that series and Anno's own Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990-1) series, as a Episode Director, so it makes sense for Anno to be involved.

But it says a lot that the opening credits are the one thing I pick out but cannot elaborate further from. Submarine 707R is a case of an anime which, with all the potential there, is just average. Simple as that, and it is not worth elaborating on.

#180: Ocean Waves (1993)

 

Director: Tomomi Mochizuki

Screenplay: Keiko Niwa

Based on the novel by Saeko Himuro

Voice Cast: Nobuo Tobita as Taku Morisaki; Toshihiko Seki as Yutaka Matsuno; Youko Sakamoto as Rikako Mutou; Ai Satou as Taku's mother; Hikaru Midorikawa as Tadashi Yamao; Jun-ichi Kanemaru as Okada; Kae Araki as Yumi Kohama

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Ocean Waves is an obscurity in Studio Ghibli's catalogue, an experiment in producing an animated television movie, broadcast on Nippon TV, for a young adult audience. Involving neither Hayao Miyazaki nor Isao Takahata, this was instead helmed by a young figure at the time named Tomomi Mochizuki, meant to have been a quickly made and cheap production which allowed the staff to cut their teeth. It naturally went over budget and time, to the point that Mochizuki himself even developed a peptic ulcer as a result of the stress¹. It was a title few likely knew of in the West until decades later.

Ocean Waves is, however, a gem, and it holds tightly a trait that, for the reputation as Japan's Disney, Studio Ghibli was a lot more willing to tackle a lot of adult content, even if you did not take into consideration a title like Grave of the Fireflies (1988). Ocean Waves is a high school drama, set in Kōchi of the Kōchi Prefecture where two students, in a prologue bonding after being the two willing to fully protest a school trip being cancelled, become interested in a transfer student. The two boys Taku and Yutaka are intrigued by Rikako, a city girl moved to their region from Tokyo and transferring into the school, who keeps her distance throughout her school life as the narrative moves forth gracefully. At only seventy plus minutes, the drama is slow burn, the biggest event being as we learn that Rikako, her parents having divorced, is as much emotionally effected by this as she is uncomfortable with where she had been forced to moved with her mother. Said event, even in a film which briefly has a trip to Hawaii for the school, is her secret plan to go to Tokyo to met her father, Taku out of the two boys the one being drawn the closest to her despite Yutaka having the open crush on her.  

Knowing the origins, the film does not feel like a compromise in terms of production. One of the studio's more grounded films, it looks beautiful in terms of evoking this type of high school drama. What is unexpected, whilst played as a romantic drama with a happy conclusion, is that Ocean Waves gets quite grave in a lot of its story at the least likely of moments. I would not expect Disney, their apparent equivalent, to tackle this material like this, just from the open references to alcohol consumption. Not just the later scene as adults at a class reunion, where people confess crushes finally and one character gets ridiculously soused, but even a minor touch involving coke and hinted at alcohol in a hotel room involving the characters as young adults, not to get drunk but explicit in substance taking in a moment of needed help for one of them in a solace.

This is also in terms of characters not being always likable, where other narratives would avoid anything that made characters not always wise and make them idealised. In a lot of ways, Rikako is not an idea person, who looks down on Kōchi and is deliberately anti-social, only for her story of having been pulled from her home and friends to be more poignant; that, and when challenged by girls in her class about not helping in the school festival, for them to have an almost hive mind nature than anyone considering asking why she has been like this for all her school life there. Even Taku himself, a more interesting protagonist, is capable of ignorance or flip-flopping, a large portion of his arch (beyond being stuck sleeping in a hotel room bathtub) juggling whether he actually likes Rikako as a person or not when she is secretly getting money from him and others to fund her trip back to her father.

This is not a film populated by stereotypes like the tsundere, not easily distinct to filter these characters in such forms. It neither pulls back its punches, even as a family friendly story, which will surprise some. One male teacher in an off-comment, when faced with protesting students about a school trip being cancelled, will complain they are only acting up because their teacher being female, the film not touching up an idealised version of school life as teachers can say sexist things like this without anyone batting an eye, or that, her mother not seen but her father and a potential new girlfriend shown, Rikako's situation, is not with any side of the split family being idealised as she had presumed. One moment will make some even uncomfortable, when a scene involving rumours being spread leads to Taku and Rikako outside in a class room hallway slapping each other, the film not going to sugar coat its drama whether it works for a viewer or not.

That the film still has a happy ending makes sense in the maturity of the narrative, as it naturally comes after everyone has graduated and is an adult, with time healing even wounds. The film is altogether compelling, calm and matter-of-fact as a drama, able to crack open a lot of emotion from these being ordinary teenagers who are not perfect and capable of ill thought-out behaviour. That Ocean Waves does conclude with reconciliation is not felt like a compromise. That is not even considering that viewers, for a film which is not necessarily held in high regard in the Studio Ghibli canon, have even considered a queer subtext to the film by way of Taku and Yutaka's bond, which does add layers to the film even with its finale about the love of Rikako².

The last paragraph to this review should refer to Tomomi Mochizuki, in mind that this production was meant for others in Studio Ghibli to create a film, befitting for a review of this underrated production to think of him. Ghibli, for the love they have gained, has had an unfortunate problem in terms of trying to find directors aside from Takahata and especially Miyazaki. Mochizuki's filmography in the nineties to the modern day is full of idiosyncratic sounding productions, now standing out with interest and happiness, despite the literal stress he went under, that he became a hard working man in the industry. He also helmed Pupa (2014), notoriously not well regarded as a horror micro-series about two mutated siblings, one male and one female, where the younger sister has to overcome her flesh eating urges by eating her indestructible older sibling. It is hilarious to think I can end a review Studio Ghibli review, of a worthwhile and under seen tale of school drama, with a reference to that, or maybe I have a weird sense of humour. It also shows how weird a person's career can be, in direction, regardless of what the occupation is.

 

=========

1) Referred to HERE.

2) As talked of HERE.

#179: Judge (1991)

 

Director: Hiroshi Negishi

Screenplay: Katsuhiko Chiba

Based on a manga by Fujihiko Hosono

Voice Cast: Kaneto Shiozawa as Hoichiro Ohma; Daisuke Gouri as Enma-Oh; Issei Futamata as Koji Kawamata; Keiko Yamamoto as Junko Asami; Miki Itō as Nanase; Hideyuki Hori as Ryuichi Murakami; Junko Asami as Keiko Yamamoto; Shinya Ohtaki as Susumu Yamanobe/Watanabe

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Now we have past the era when DVDs where the main source of viewing for anime fans - where streaming has taken over predominantly and physical releases are the source for connoisseurs to collect titles - I wonder what will happen to the history of the OVA (straight-to-video) market. Titles have been released again, many from upscale of video masters which adds another concern in their preservation over celluloid. The bigger concern is just the preservation of the large mass of titles created; the eighties boom which began this format into the Millennium churned out so many that, even if they still exist in some form nowadays, it is a history in itself perilous in being forgotten about. Especially as many were one-offs only around forty to sixty minutes long, fragments in themselves, with complicated rights issues as time has passed, to contend with in trying to re-sell them to an audience. It is a history for all this full of terrible work, and we will not lie to ourselves about that fact, but it is a compelling and fun history too alongside all the legitimately great titles created, especially as so much was churned out and strange concepts were explored.  Before television series were more commonly released in the West, companies like the American distributor Central Park Media made their bread and butter getting OVAs as they did theatrical work as well, even up to their closure for bankruptcy in 2009.

Also in mind to CPM's mascot, and one of the key titles, being M.D. Geist (1986), which is not a great anime in the slightest, the OVAs they released as for other companies had their own personalities and were part of their reputation, bringing up many obscurities not including their porn sub-label Anime 18 that should not be forgotten. Many OVAs, such as Judge here, were never full stories, just adaptations of manga never released in the West as tie-ins. Judge, based on a two volume manga, is such a title, of Hoichiro Oma who by day is a bumbling but charming salary man, but by night is the voice of the judges of the afterlife who, on behalf of the Twelve Gods of the Underworld, is targeting and punishing corrupt businessmen. Unlike Government Crime Investigation Agent Zaizen Jotaro (2006), a late animated series about an independent anti-corruption organisation where the titular member has the power of unlimited money to combat embezzlement, Hoichiro here would just follow the Buddhist Hell tradition of horrible torture fitting the crime followed by death. Who needs a designer black gold card as the titular Zaizen Jotaro required, saying "Da bomb!" randomly as he deals with a corrupt middle manager, when Judge's lead despite his meek normal personality dons a costume, with wig, and nails a man's tongue for perjury, whilst topping the ultimate unlimited credit card with a book made from human flesh, magical powers and just killing people.

Barely a fragment, the plot follows his next target after that, another high figure at the company he is currently working at as a lowly member, Koji Kawamata. I will say, whilst this may just be me, most premises no matter how silly always intrigue me to want to see an anime from them, this no different as a supernatural story which is yet fixated on business corruption. One which takes from supernatural lore, with loosely reinterpreted mythology, and could have been a morbid slant on a crime show from the West with trials involved. Like many OVAs, the pleasures are not found in the story, which sadly is only around forty minutes and can do little of this I imagine. Instead, it is by the little touches like the premise. Despite Hoichiro's no tolerance policy to crime, when it introduces an unnamed Defence Lawyer, who offers his services at an expensive price for anyone targeted by the underworld, you get something unconventional in this premise having an actual defence lawyer for the villain, even if he has to use magic himself or even his own magical gloves, able to slide off and choke people by themselves, also made from human flesh.

The premise in its nature has quirks. Having a defence lawyer, also a villain but still demanding a fair trial for defendants, is an interesting note as, whilst never given a name, he is clearly the mirror image to Hoichiro as in many anime. That this defence lawyer's one trademark, rather than smoking or lollipops, is that he always has children's juice boxes with plastic straws was an amusing touch. That human flesh is apparently the ultimate material needed for super-magical objects is a more gruesome, if silly touch, Judge very much part of the horror genre too as Hoichiro will terrorise the guilty with the dead they have wronged, be it a female co-worker emotionally manipulated into embezzlement who committed suicide or, for the main antagonist, a friend he has disposed of in South America in the opening scene. Even this becomes part of the humour as, used to assist him in his endeavours, Hoichiro even as a hellish demon parrot as a pet, creepily drawn with giant eyes but one scene just as capable of mimicking people's speech. Unfortunate as, with Hoichiro is in a romantic relationship with a co-worker Nanase, it can mimic sex noises from the night before for an awkward morning's breakfast.

And some touches are unexplained, like Judge's antagonist, Koji Kawamata, having giant eyes almost bigger than his head, like frog's, which is never explained or mentioned, just a curious touch to the OVA. One which, in quality and plot, is just okay in reality but sustained by a lifelong viewer of this medium because of these curious touches scattered through many titles. It would have not been able to be defended were it not for these at all aspects talked. Thankfully as well it takes a different direction with the ending that, unlike most anime, the finale is not resolved in a conflict but an actual trial with twelve gods of the underworld, witnesses from the grave, and a giant mirror at the back which cheats by having one's reflection confess your guilt if you touch or look at it.

Production wise, it was one of many titles like this made in its era, the thing of note being its director Hiroshi Negishi, someone who was very prolific in the nineties but has, despite working into the 2010s, been a forgotten man in himself. The OVAs like this are an obscurity of the past, but one of Negishi's productions was Saber Marionette J (1996), an anime series which managed to get three follow ups but has been forgotten as time went. Even in terms of history, Judge is just one of the many odd things that Central Park Media were distributing (or legitimate masterpieces like Night on the Galactic Railroad (1985)). With the manga not even a known quantity in the West due to scanlations, Judge could tragically be forgotten for simply being okay, a shame as, even if not the best, these curiosities are fascinating too.

#178: Birth (1984)

 

Director: Shinya Sadamitsu

Voice Cast: Ichirō Nagai as Bao Luzen; Kaneto Shiozawa as Junobel Kim; Kazuki Yao as Nam Shurugi; Miina Tominaga as Rasa Yupiter; Fuyumi Shiraishi as Mongaa; Jouji Yanami as Grandpa; Noriko Tsukase as Baby; Reiko Suzuki as Grandma

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

The eighties are held as a time when, with the Japanese economy riding a high, money was freely available to fund esoteric projects in the animation industry. The OVA released film Birth, for better and for worse, is a title you could only have gotten from that era as it exists today. Set on the planet Aqualoid, a magical sword known as the SHADE floats through space and finally lands on the planet, to be picked up by a young man named Nam who is immediately attacked by the Inorganics, a race of artificial figures who, threatened by the sword's power, are the opposite of the natural state of existence, the Organics, and would remove it from existence if possible.

This is a pretty simple plot, including a female friend Rasa being caught up in this, whilst trying to delivery breakfast to him from their village, and two figures in a spaceship, friends, known as Bao and Kim who were following the sword. The Inorganics themselves, robotic, change from humanoid figures on bicycles to giant machines storming the mostly desert environment the film is set in. One is immediately aware, however, Birth will be eccentric when, in its original uncensored form, it instead starts not with set up but with a yellow blob creature, which Rasa will befriend, being chased by a bigger blue blob creature with full appendages and armed with a trident. This lasts a while, a cartoon chase to begin our film here, setting up that Birth in context is tonally all over the place.

What is a very simple premise, an extended chase over the entire length, becomes an erratic mess alongside the fact that, even at just eighty minutes, it extends its content on to the point it has a strangely elongated pace. It is undoubtedly gorgeous to look at, Birth at a time when a weird production like this, whilst not to everyone's taste in its visuals, could at least have some quality to its gorgeous and distinctly cartoonish animation. It however also feels like it was made with a lot of absent mindedness, or was the result of many talented figures brainstorming what was on their minds each day.

At first it seems like Birth is going to be a very wacky comedy alongside being a sci-fi action story, with a lot of elaborate machines involved, but in its first half this gets into odd tangents already, even oddly sombre moments like an Inorganic, impaled on the SHADE, suddenly talking of the impermanence of life before its dissolves. An extended chase scene with Rasa, distinct in her red cat suit and getting the unfortunate nickname of "Jiggle-Butt" from a sexist Inorganic chasing her on a motorbike, suddenly has a tinier Inorganic on a bike the size for a small toddler try to help only to breakdown. This character ends up being a reoccuring figure, and suddenly you cut to a tangent of comedic existential angst including a lot of out-of-context scenes, like being at train tracks where a giant head of Rasa passes by, or a scene at a beach, with a lovingly rendered snail crawling past a drink with ice, and a cameo by a cartoonish giant pink octopus straight out of Parodius (1996)¹. It makes no sense, as neither cutting to Nam's grandparents, just to see them talk of tea or food for no reason, repeatedly even in the midst of action scenes.

If Birth had stayed a comedy, I could have expected a deeply silly project like this. It looks exceptional as a production, and whilst his career was mainly in storyboard and animation, the director Shinya Sadamitsu also directed an OVA like Dragon Half (1993). A beloved and incredibly silly fantasy spoof where one joke was a character having to watch a VHS tape of the first episode, all because the motivation for his revenge was a deleted scene excised from the narrative, you can see where the absurd humour comes from. It makes sense to have this level of comedy here as a result in mine to his future career, even if there is a flaw that it extends actions scenes for too long at times, to the point it has tonal problems. Also you have, of all people, Joe Hisaishi as your composer, a frequently collaborator with Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki, having worked on the score of the latter's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, released the same year as Birth was. Considering as well future director Hideaki Anno is credited as an animator on this project does also show Birth's web of connections to many talented people.

And as a result, no matter how haphazard this was, Birth did provide a few moments that even its own languid tone could not dampen, when you encounter a giant Inorganic that shouts "Asparagus" when launching a rocket punch against a horde of yellow blob creatures. It is as bizarre as it sounds and also, because this OVA feature film had the budget and staff, it looks exceptional as animation lovingly renders yellow blobs of Play-Doh with eyes charging on mass and glomping on a giant grocery obsessed Inorganic.

Where Birth gets even more peculiar is when it wants to become more serious but still has the comedy. It has lore, of the Organics versus Inorganics, leading to my beloved trope of an out-of-body realm where one of the members of the cast witnesses the death of a star. It also loses me however, whilst still being compelling, when it gets to the last half, the leads travel to a wasteland that was cordoned off due to being radiated over the decades. With comedic beats still there, you have a set piece in a ruined metropolis underground, with husks of buildings, abandoned cars and piles of skeletons everywhere. It involves a doomsday weapon, the shape of a red toy rocket launcher, and....well, never would I have thought you have so much comedy even up to an ending which is actually tragic. [Major Spoilers] How many anime, mostly set up as a comedy, end with an entire planet and the cast disintegrated, existing afterwards as spirits made into a new star by cosmic feminine figures that eat cakes in the galactic rainbow kingdom? An ending, for added emphasis on its randomness, only happening because they could not convince a child Inorganic not to fire the doomsday weapon, just out of spite, by offering to take him out for soy milk? [Spoilers End]

Birth is bizarre, a tonally erratic mess whose viewing experience was compelling, but I can understand why this title is not well known. Again, returning to the first paragraph, even if titles like this still exist in some form in the modern anime industry, how this one is was made would not be possible outside the eighties and all the money thrown around.

 

========

1) I usually explain obscure references. Suffice to say, despite never really being a gamer, I had the niche Sega Saturn console as a young boy with Parodius one of the few games, a parody of shoot-em-ups by Konami where normal spaceships or eccentric characters like a bunny girl on a carrot missile shot at penguin ran pirate ships, giant showgirl dancers, and a lot of penguins and octopuses in general. It makes as suitable a tangent for an anime this tangent laden.

#176-7: Animation Runner Kuromi 1 & 2 (2001/2004)

Director: Akitarō Daichi

Screenplay: Tou Nagatsuki (OVA 1) and Aki Itami (OVA 2)

Voice Actor: Kaori Asoh as Mikiko "Kuromi" Aguro; Reiko Yasuhara as Hamako Shihonmatsu, Yoshiro Matsumoto as Hassaku Hozumi, Eiji Ito as Mizuho Tanonaka, Kazuya Ichijo as Seiichiro Haryu. Akemi Okamura as Aoi Fukami, Mayumi Misawa as Mai Horiguchi, Masahito Yabe as Masato Oppama; Koji Ishii as Rei Takashimaidara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

An early 2000s OVA, Animation Runner Kuromi sadly, for all the cheerfulness and ska instrumental theme, does have to be spoken off separate but still in context to its director Akitarō Daichi. He is famous for many titles especially in the early 2000s and including in the West, such as the original 2001 Fruits Basket series, but sadly we have to separate the man from his work due to allegations of sexual misconduct brought up in 2019. It comes from a "tell-all story" from voice actress Hiroko Konishi where she talked of being coerced into going to a mixed bathing spring alone with her manager and an anime director, and that she was blackballed for refusing to get into the bath with the director at the time, the director identified as Akitarō Daichi¹. This sadly, as someone who got into anime at the time fo the likes of Fruits Basket, has not been a pleasant thing to realise; as someone who does believe in seperating the art from the director, I am not however ignorant of the fact some will find it impossible to do so, and does not stop me from lamenting a person staining their talents from objectionable behaviour.

What has probably not helped either, but by accident, is that for a light hearted tale of a young woman named Mikiko, nicknamed Kuromi, working in a small animation studio is that, whilst it does deal with the hard work and strain of the career, it still sugar coats an industry which has been revealed to be much more problematic in its treatment of staff. This is all a bleak way to begin a review for what is actually a fun pair of OVAs, but the same year of 2019 was when Madhouse studios, for an example that comes to my mind, were accused of having staff working over 200+ hours of overtime². Suffice to say Animation Runner Kuromi looks like a title from a different reality, but let us not forget these details beforehand even if what I am going to talk about was a joy.

Let us now step away from this grim reality, as if two OVAs could do with a rediscovery, even in spite of its director, these were a fun pair worthy of that. Mikiko is established as not even being an anime otaku either, having seen when she was younger a show in this world, a pastiche of the Lupin III franchise, that encouraged her to train as an animator and want to work at a small studio. On her first day, in this exaggerated tale of how difficult the career is, a key staff member is hospitalised for a stomach ulcer and she is shoved into the role of the animation runner without any prior information of what to do or warning. Her work, the first OVA her grinding through and overcoming even lack of confidence in herself, is to manage the schedule for the production of an animated series they are working on, specifically there to manage the creation of key frames from the animators and collect it, a reminder even in this softened take on the industry a reminder one episode around twenty four minutes will require so many painstakingly illustrations to be drawn. And this is not even the end of the production, which she needed to collect, because they may need to be corrected for any mistakes and then shipped overseas to the company (likely South Korea as in real life) to actually be animated.

It softens the blow, but Kuromi does still show the nitty-gritty of this career even after the industry switched to computers than hand drawn animation. Imagining Animation Runner Kuromi itself, a forty minute OVA, you have to think of the animators having to draw each shot, each moment and transition needed to make Kuromi herself have an elasticised and exasperated reaction to her stressful work. All the key frames and animated transitions needed for this show would have to have been many, which needed to be compiled and created into the final animation. Paranoia Agent (2004), Satoshi Kon's sole television series, had an episode showing the agony of the anime industry which was incredibly dark humoured in its exaggeration, in a story where the production staff were literally dying off or hospitalised one-by-one, parodied with an agonised humour the pain of working on animation. This OVA does have a more positive conclusion, of the hard work paying off and to be proud of, but poor Kuromi, dragging herself home each night on a bicycle, has to drive around in the company car and deal with the animators, all stressed themselves. They are exaggerated but the joke is still there, between one freelancer hired for a motorcycle scene more interested in surfing than doing the work, or that one guy who is handsome and well dressed that, despite getting so much work done, is also so bad at drawing a child could do better.

The first OVA, with its shorter length, is more of an establishment of the world and its characters, as the jokes tend to lean on Kuromi in her stressful new work, what between an otaku animator who gets distracted in his home by his walls of games and merchandise, or the newly wedded female animator continually stressed by her day-to-day. Whilst the second OVA really pushes this, offering what feels a more concerted exorcism of the difficulty of the business, the first if it was the only one made still had a profoundness that, whilst the reality is more horrible as a career with very little pay, the ideal is that no matter how arduous animation is, one gains pride when it is completely. Kuromi even in her role, still vital, feels the weight but also the encouragement to help. The one person she looks up to is the director, a woman Hamako who was in her shoes once before. Narring in the second OVA where her attempt to quit chain-smoking leads to anxiety and accidentally trying to light a pencil, she is cool and collected even in the more harsh of moments, a friend to help Kuromi through.  

You can argue that this sweetened, funny take sadly has been marked by the reality being as harsh and awful as it is, as well as the philosophy that no little pay and too many long hours is not justifiable even for the pride to work on a larger project, especially if you were an animator rather than the director. Animation Runner Kuromi is not a show to attempt to tackle this unfortunate real issue. Even here though, even as incredibly bleak humour, there are still jokes that the real pain is found in the producer and their managers on these productions than this animation team, especially when the second OVA is entirely about them being told to make three shows at once (once a horror zombie show, one a superhero parody, the other a cute girl fantasy comedy).

Kuromi is anything is on the side of the people who punch their cards and animate the material, the broad tone charming and earnest. Details like the ska theme, a very idiosyncratic and catchy instrumental, come like medicine to prevent this story from getting too grim. Personally the second OVA, made two years later but set just after the first when the animation team succeed, is better. Our cast are established and, slightly longer, the new detail being that, dealing with three shows at once and the strain that is causing, the head above hires another producer to get involved. He brings in two elderly animation veterans, one who hates highlights in character designs and removes them from the art, but also has the idea of cheaply producing the work quickly and without checks, even without actual director involvement, which produces awful work.

When a lot of anime reaching physical media is perfectly cleaned up, you forget (unless you watch direct streaming premieres) that as programming screening usually every week, television anime has a quick turnaround and mistakes have appeared. Most are probably not due to cutting corners, but you can get infamous examples. One like My Sister The Writer (2018) because notorious for it, whilst one of the infamous for being cheaply made was Musashi Gundoh (2006)³. Even with great shows, however, you could find a mistake that sneaks into the original broadcast which, if you were to see or find a screenshot of before being untouched, would be striking in seeing how flawed the conveyor belt is due to no one's fault. If anything, a veiled metaphor can be made for how unrealistic expectations are in terms of how much has to be made; Animation Runner Kuromi was making three shows for a tiny studio a major plot point when animation production was increasing per year in the 2000s, only to get more larger into the 2010s.

It would be a disservice to ignore this as a comedy. Sadly as mentioned Daichi has become a figure difficult to accept for good reason, which is tragic as his type of comedy in his work was a distinct and effective one, broad but never becoming obnoxious. An anime like this in general, whilst looking of its time in the transition to digital animation, has a whale of a time in the cast having to perform vocal gymnastics and the animators finding new ways to show Kuromi's exasperation or Hamako's meltdown trying to give up smoking, daydreaming of cigarettes in the midst of a hellish schedule. Running gags also thankfully never get old, no matter how repeated they are, never get old, so we find new ways for the animator Mizuho, who as mentioned dresses very professionally but cannot draw, to not be one note among everyone else. The length of a theatrical film altogether, Animation Runner Kuromi was a fun blast to see finally.

=========

1) The full story is talked of, alongside her other damning comments about how voice actresses are treated, in mind to the #MeToo movement, in this article HERE. It does not paint a good picture in the slightest.

2) As reported HERE.

3) A Monkey Punch adaptation so bad in its animation quality, among other details, the Japanese audience ironically feel in love with it and bought the original broadcast versions with mistakes in their physical release. This show's bizarre story, finding this fascinating article whilst working on this review, can be found HERE.

#175: Detonator Orgun (1991)

 

Director: Masami Obari

Screenplay: Hideki Kakinuma

Voice Cast: Kōichi Yamadera/Roger May as Tomoru Shindo /Orgun; Emi Shinohara/Katherine Devaney as Yoko Mitsurugi; Nobuo Tanaka/Justin Thompson as I-Zack; Yumi Touma/Joanna MacInnes as Michi Kanzaki; Bouya Ueda as Bannings ; Hiroko Kasahara as Kumi Jefferson/Mhiku; Kenji Utsumi/Bill Roberts as Zoa; Kiyoyuki Yanada as Wedge; Masashi Ebara as Virgil; Norio Wakamoto as Lang/Simmons

Viewed in the English Dub¹

 

Detonator Orgun, from the era of OVAs' heyday, has many interesting factors. A solidly made three part sci-fi story with elaborate mecha designs, it naturally has Masami Obari, known as much as a talented mecha/character designer and animator, in the director's seat long before his career went into tangents such as fighting game anime and even hentai. Susumu Hirasawa, in the first time he composed a score for an anime in its entirety. Also in its very nature, Detonator Orgun's world itself is an intriguing one to step into especially in context to how anime science fiction changed or altered the type of tropes and clichés it would have over the decades away from this.

Set far in the future, at least past 2100, Orgus can be argued to be set in a world of both great advancement but also a dystopian is you found the world cold and disheartening. In a world where his city is just called City 5, Tomoru is a young man who is not interested in the modern day, he fixates in the 20th century especially the early decades of aviation and heroics during the World Wars. The only thing of any real interest to him of the modern day, dressing clothes considered gauche due to them looking more 20th century, is that alongside humankind having expanded into space he also has access to technology to record dreams or have artificial ones where he fantasises of heroics of the past he feels he will never take part in.

Beyond this, Detonator Orgun is a pretty easy to follow narrative. There is a biomechanical alien race called the Evoluders fixated on war and conquering the galaxy, their single minded goal they have been taking part in all this time, only for one of them called Orgus to defect and on Earth to protect it. By luck, and contact through the dream technology he uses, Tomoru is picked by this figure, a being whose body is mostly a robotic form that, whilst effectively sacrificing himself, lets himself by a machine for Tomoru to be fused into the defend his planet, his memories intertwining with Tomoru's and revealing where this invading force is from cryptically. Not a lot of this series really movies in very different tangents from this - but that is interesting in itself as, in its conventions, there is not a lot that is similar to work decades later with the same premise. Even though Tomoru is your stereotypical young male lead, this without a high school student involved is alien and immediately different; once probably because of the type of anime distributed in the West by the likes of Manga Entertainment, you seemingly had a lot more adult male protagonists alongside the teen ones, which even if artificially constructed as an illusion really time stamps this to a different era.

It is also very well made and distinct, a case of meat-and-potatoes storytelling, where it fully embraces a mechanical, manmade world of elaborate cityscapes, contrasted by the more mystical details which becomes one of the more curious touches. In this plot, eventually the relationship between the Earthlings and the opposite force of Evoluders (whose main lair is dubbed "Zoma the Combat Planet" in the Manga Entertainment) will have more complexity, and there is a female psychic named Kumi Jefferson who is popular on television and able to predict disasters, who also has an importance to the narrative as well. There are plot points which never are elaborated on further, such as the lead female character Yohko, a scientist, being bred from a special project, never elaborated on at all. There are also moments, such as Orgus' love interest, a female robot, appearing in the second episode only to ungraciously leave, which do show that this was not entirely firing on all cylinders in terms of the story telling.

It also is a production where the mech animators and designers were encouraged to push themselves, which is not a surprise considering Obari's talents in the field, and that does succeed. It is weird that someone as highly regarded as Obari, known for his craft in mecha design, did not direct as many mecha anime until into the later 1990s and 2000s, and deviated in video game adaptations games and porn. Here in his element, naturally the robots and combat scenes are elaborate.

This OVA, in truth, does feel like it is merely dabbling in very interesting ideas. Coming from a rich era of science fiction for anime, you find a bit of playfulness, including having a fake promotional commercial for the outer space military group "the Link Men", all bombast and even a cute female mascot asking viewers to join them. Its one virtue is presenting an elaborate world of sci-fi, where human beings are colonising the universe and where one of the side characters is actually I-Zack, the A.I. intelligence Yohko works with who even has a face from computer graphics on the screen. Even if it never really has the ability to expand even further, it is amazing how many anime, even these forgotten straight-to-video titles, can build up interest landscapes even from unoriginal material. Even if this is mostly an action story, of a lot of robot versus robot fight scenes, this is a huge factor to consider.

Also worthy of interest is this being the first time Susumu Hirasawa was the composer for an entire anime production, which would be the start after this show's three soundtrack albums' worth of music of a very interesting career. His anime soundtrack career however is surprisingly small, sadly more so since the passing of his regular collaborator Satoshi Kon, as Hirasawa's career as a musician is significantly larger than his work as a composer, the only other work he has really worked on being the Berserk franchise. Hirasawa himself has been documented as not being fond of this production, especially when with the third album, though finding it a building block for his work on the 1997 Berserk animated series¹. Here you can feel it as the early steps, with some very dated (if charming) synth of the time, but eventually by the end credit song Root of Spirit, which closes off the Manga Entertainment release, a little gem in itself is heard and you see immediately how significantly Hirasawa's career in the medium would be despite the small CV.

Detonator Orgun altogether is not a perfect work. It does feel conventional in context to other anime of the era, even if there has always been a reason (just for the Hirasawa's score and art style) which keeps bringing me back. The show definitely gets a bit peculiar when it reaches its final, a sci-fi tale which gets far more esoteric then you would presume it. This for me personally is actually fun. One of my favourite clichés, the out-of-body dreamscape, appears in all its delight, and whilst I openly admit a finale involving something using their psychic powers to move the sun is ridiculous, I am amused by this ridiculousness. The English dub is poor, which has never helped the title, additional swearing in the rewrite and all. Certainly, in the grand scheme of this era, it is not the best, but as someone with an interest, there was still so much to appreciate.

Even in context to Masami Obari as a director, this is interesting, as whilst Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture (1994), his next project which is held one of the better video game adaptations, his career in general as a director has been very divisive. Just his nineties work took an odd director for sure, with the likes of Voltage Fighter Gowcaiser (1996) and Virus Buster Serge (1997) not very well regarded. He also went further in more sexualised content, even with shows like Gravion (2002) and its sequel Gravion Zwei (2004), fun mecha shows, made at the same time as the hentai titles. Here, you do get a few showers scenes, but this is incredible chaste in comparison.  Even in terms of one of his most distinct and divisive trademarks, his very idiosyncratic characters designs which became more exaggerated over the decade, that is not to play here either as the character designer for Detonator Orgun was Michitaka Kikuchi, who under his manga pseudonym Asamiya Kia, alongside a career in the anime industry, created the series Silent Möbius (1989–1999). It is, in context, an outlier of all things.

 

======

1) The English dub for the anime, for the old Manga Entertainment release, who also put together the episodes into a feature length production for the 2003 DVD release, is bad to the point of affecting the film immensely, something worth elaborating beyond the little mention of in the main review. Just the amount of times characters are calling each other "bastard", part of the company's habit of increasing the language to raise the age rating in the United Kingdom, this dub has not aged well in the slightest.

2) As remarked upon by him in this interviewer HERE.