#186: Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan (2005/2007)

 

Director: Tsutomu Mizushima

Screenplay: Tsutomu Mizushima

Based on a light novel by Masaki Okayu

Voice Cast: Reiko Takagi as Sakura Kusakabe; Saeko Chiba as Dokuro-chan; Ayako Kawasumi as Shizuki Minagami; Rie Kugimiya as Sabato-chan; Akeno Watanabe as Zakuro-chan; Atsushi Imaruoka as Umezawa; Ayako Kawasumi as Shizuki Minagami; Daisuke Kirii as Seargent/Zamuza; Fumitoshi Miyajima as Nishida; Reiko Takagi as Minami-san

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

"It can't be helped that the class representative has been turned into a monkey, so Dokuro-chan may sit next to Sakura-kun."

Tsutomu Mizushima is someone I have developed a fascination to as an anime director. Arguably as much for wrong reasons as his stints in horror have been divisive to say the least, titles which among those I have dug up all have their virtues but so many perplexing aspects. Another (2010), a supernatural mystery, violently contrasts its serious tone with over-the-top deaths which you could even call comedic, such as the first being an unfortunate encounter with an umbrella. The Lost Village (2016), whose main composition was written by acclaimed screenwriter Mari Okada, was definitely divisive, which could be argued to have been an a satire of the genre but for many likely to have taken them aback which its absurd logic. Between a character named Lovepon, whose obsession with execution has made her this writer's spirit animal, and material that even for horror would be balked at like a giant monstrous silicon breast implant, it emphasised the really unpredictable nature of the director, in mind to anime as a collaborative medium, especially with horror stories. Mizushima's career is however diverse, including earlier having worked in comedy and still going into that genre constantly throughout his career. Some more wholesome, like the Girls und Panzer, but a streak of misanthropy found especially in his older work. Plastic Neesan (2011) was obscurer, an original online work about a group of model making schoolgirls which never got to model making, but there was also Magical Witch Punie-chan (2006-7), which envisioned a magical girl if she was the evil despot heir of a magical kingdom whose cute animal mascot was an indentured slave constantly trying to murder her. The most infamous, and arguably one of the titles Mizushima gained a record of accomplishment for at least in the West, was the straight-to-video work Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-Chan when it was released in the United States by Media Blasters.

Everything, even The Lost Village, makes sense in terms of his career, where he succeeds and fails, now I have seen this series and its sequel. It is a piece of lunacy and since both were also written by him, this really gives me a clearer picture now with its existence a context.

Dokuro-Chan herself is an angel from the future. With a halo and a giant spiked kanabō club called Excalibolg,  which she can use to both resurrect the dead unscathed as well as splatter a torso into chunks with one swing, she was originally assigned to the past to deal with the young teenager Sakura Kusakabe. When he demands an answer for the whole plot, he is foretold he would by accident defy God by giving women immortality...with the unfortunate effect that, wishing to have created a paedophile's fantasy world as an adult, he found the gift of immortality by accident by permanently stunting women from growing biologically from twelve years old. Dokuro-Chan does not play safe with its humour, though it does in its eight fifteen minute episodes place itself at times in regular slapstick with added gory violence, in context that Dokuro decides rather that, than kill him as assigned, that she will try to change him whilst becoming smitten with him. Sakura will die a lot at her hands and the Excalibolg, usually because of her reactions to his lewdness (or accidentally seeing her undressed), or even trying to get a mosquito off him at one point with the club, to the point permanent psychological trauma is likely from the many deaths and resurrections he has had. 

The resulting work, eight fifteen minute episodes compiled into four, is to be honest one you would not show a person if they are new to anime unless you knew their sense of humour or taste in the perverse was strong. A lot of it inherently would baffle or even make someone uncomfortable, particularly as these characters, with many of the sex gag beings about near nudity or perceived, are meant to be younger teenagers than you even find in other anime and manga. It is the kind of work, out of context, which supports all the clichés that give anime a bad name, and it relives one to know Reiko Takagi, who voices Sakura, is actually an adult voice actress who however manages to make Sakura sound like he is actually voiced by a young teen boy who will be battered and smashed into chunks of meat repeatedly by Dokuro.

Within context however, the really misanthropic humour actually softens the discomfort and a lot of it feels like it is playing up to clichés only to twist the knife into them. Dokuro is the lovable heroine if you can get into her headspace, but alongside the cliché of the female lead beating up the male lead for a perceived (even accidental) slight of perverseness being taken to an extreme, she is very much an anti-heroine, someone who can destroy for the sake of it. She will eventually even says very random and illogically things, and is evoked to have tortured a teacher to start a club entirely devoted to the sport of watching woodwork glue dry. In the wrong frame of mind, these characters including Sakura may put you off, but the clichés they are as characters meant to be on add the dark humour.

Such as the fact, when his class is informed he will eventually cause the entire female gender to be stuck at the age of twelve, they do not defend him in the slightest and were already going to beat him up or ostracise him beforehand. The sole exception is Shizuki, whose crush on him is countered by his to her, undercut by Dokuro blundering through, and their own chemistry, alongside another angel (with horns) called Sabato, who with an electric cattle prod powerful enough to kill a sperm whale is just there to murder him. All these characters exhibit the tropes of their archetypes - Sakura the "potato-kun" generic male lead, who is fighting against his puberty badly as a teenager whilst trying to be a good person, Dokuro with aspects of the tsundere (the female character who is stand-offish to the male lead) only in her tendency to violence but mostly the bright, light voiced ditz who happens to have a giant spiked club. The clichés of some anime and manga, the sex comedy, is contrasted by the hyper violence or the perverseness of some of the gags, even cruder ones like the fact that, in this series' dogma, if you remove an angel's halo (as razor sharp as a sword) it causes one to have continuous and life draining diarrhea.

Again, this is not a series to introduce to someone new to anime if any of this is going to be off-putting even in its light hearted tone meant to make the jokes more striking. It is however fully aware of how weird it is, and plays to it well a lot. For all its crassness, there are moments which are deliciously peculiar. No series, in one episode, is just dumb when it inexplicably references Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, only with the protagonist Gregor Samsa waking up to discover, in a surreal dreamscape of a bedroom, he has grown a bug in terms of morning wood with sexual anxiety apt for Kafka. The class rep, in the first episode when Dokuro is introduced to class as a student, is turned into a monkey, with a real stock image of a howler monkey used for his head in jerky stop motion, a joke paid off in a hilarious moment episodes on when she turns someone into a dog. Little oddball flourishes, such as cutting to two wild bears looking nervously briefly watching at the carnage Dokuro is playing on Sakura in a river (with sweat drops signifiers for this), show even if the humour is crude and playing to vulgarity, it does so with a wink. That the opening theme is a light hearted ditty, feeling like it is about a magical heroine, only to get into Dokuro both describing various ways to torture Sakura and a blatant sadist-masochistic vibe, is enough to explain the transgression of the tropes here.

This explains so much about its director Tsutomu Mizushima for me, even if all his productions are animation made by staffs of various collaborators. Working in comedy greatly, he likes broad and heightened extremes. When this applies to horror, even a goreless work like The Lost Village, the exaggeration is there and a dichotomy can arise. Certainly as well, he does eventually lean further to absurd comedy through the first season, something to bear in mind even if still with the twisted logic of the original premise. The explanation is now there now of why, whilst compelling in themselves, broad is definitely a way to describe a work like Another despite being an atmospheric horror mystery for large portions only to almost be comical when death arises. It emphasises that, if you have any leanings of authorship on your work in any position, the issue of how to work within different genres has to be considered, especially when horror in anime has always been a divisive one to actually pull off for everyone's tastes.

Rather than talk of this at the end, it is best to mention that, two years later, a sequel of four episodes (leading up to an hour's length) was created. It is, in honesty, bonus material. Set after the first series, with new characters fully introduced like Zakuro, Dokuro's nine year old sister who is yet in voice and appearance like an older sibling remotely not of that age, and little changes like Dokuro's hair being turned blue. It has funny moments, including Dokuro trying to get Sakura is eat living chocolate versions of himself for Valentine's Day, but it thankfully is left the equivalent of the bonus gag pages of a manga. It mostly jettisons the dark humour, barring the tragedy of Sabato being a homeless and hungry vagrant, and fully strays into the traditional of strange anime comedy with a lot of sex humour. To an outsider it would be weird without prior knowledge, but as an anime fan myself this is tone is pretty innocuous even if a few moments are deeply weird, such as the Valentine's episode leading to recreating an old folk tale (and a barely covering mermaid costume) being the solution to a hyper sensitive body. It loses the twisted and dark humour, mostly jettisons the classmates who, even if only one stood out as a character, were as much part of the joke and forgoes the premise of the first OVA, that this all comes to be due to Sakura's future self being a pervert. It is entertaining, but contextually it belongs to sequel and bonus animation which, whilst good for fans, is merely bonus, stranger especially as it took two years to be created.

The original, even if the sequel still has Sakura being smashed to bits by Dokuro constantly, is in itself enough, especially if there was a sense of losing its misanthropic attitude. In truth, this leads to the most subversive moment where the show ends on a dramatic conclusion, the cliché of the magical figure being forced to leave for her world which the show plays straight and has had enough time to have built up to. Knowing the premise is based on clichés, which tarnishes them for sick humour but still lets you like the characters if you can catch with the humour, eventually works in its favour as it is mixing the cute with the lurid. (More so, in the least expected scene, when the final episode even has a sombre and strangely ill-eased sequence of Sakura without memories of before and feeling he has lost something whilst spending time with Shizuki at a cafe). It is still a comedy, one whose desire to be both earnest but also have this humour is more stand out. And the entire running gag that this is effectively a male protagonist who is a submissive among more stronger and openly sadistic female figures, with the women in their twisted ways lovable and he the butt of the jokes, is pretty striking, so much so that it reveals another flaw of the second series. That the female characters are also, sadly, toned down in the second series from their almost dominatrix sadist playfulness into more submissive fan service figures, which is no way near as entertaining.

Whether you could have actually gotten this on to a further longer work, in mind to it likely needing to be censored for the television screenings, is merely a guessing game. A title like this however presents, even in its own ballpark, the idea that you can parody the clichés of your genres but still be earnest in them, especially as this manages to skirt around a joke far less palatable as the show aged, that Dokuro wishes to change Sakura because his older self would have lead half the world's population to being permanently twelve years old, and still like these characters. It proved in itself to have been a worthy experience to have, and I say this as something clearly with a very sick sense of humour too.