#239: Pop Team Epic Season One (2018)

Studio: Kamikaze Douga

Directors: Aoi Umeki and Jun Aoki

Screenplay: Jun Aoki

Based on the manga by Bkub Okawa

Voice Actors for Pipimi and Popuko:

As Pipimi: Akiko Yajima, Akira Ishida, Akira Kamiya, Asami Imai, Atsuko Tanaka, Ayana Taketatsu, Azusa Tadokoro, Banjou Ginga, Bin Shimada, Chisa Yokoyama, Daisuke Namikawa, Haruka Tomatsu, Houchu Ohtsuka, Jouji Nakata as Pipimi, Jun Fukuyama, Kaito Ishikawa, Kaori Fukuhara, Kaori Nazuka, Kenichi Ogata, Kensho Ono, Kikuko Inoue, Koji Yusa, Kotono Mitsuishi, Kousuke Toriumi, Mamiko Noto, Nao Tōyama, Noriko Hidaka, Norio Wakamoto, Rei Sakuma, Satomi Satou, Shigeru Chiba, Sumire Uesaka, Suzuko Mimori, Takehito Koyasu, Yousuke Akimoto, Tomokazu Sugita, Wataru Takagi, Yū Kobayashi, Yui Horie and Yuuki Kaji

As Popuko: Aoi Yūki, Emiri Katō, Eriko Nakamura, Etsuko Kozakura, Hikaru Midorikawa, Hiro Shimono, Hozumi Gōda, Junko Takeuchi, Kana Hanazawa, Kappei Yamaguchi, Mami Koyama, Mariko Kouda, Masashi Ebara, Masaya Onosaka, Mikako Komatsu, Nana Mizuki, Nobuo Tobita, Rikiya Koyama, Ryusei Nakao, Sakiko Tamagawa, Satomi Koorogi, Sho Hayami, Showtaro Morikubo, Sōichiro Hoshi, Sōma Saitō, Sora Tokui, Sumire Morohoshi, Takahiro Sakurai, Tesshō Genda, Tomokazu Seki, Tomoko Kaneda, Toshihiko Seki, Toshio Furukawa, Yōko Hikasa, Yūichi Nakamura, Yuji Mitsuya, Yukari Tamura, Yūki Ono, Yuko Sanpei and Yumiri Hanamori

For Bob Epic Team: Toru Adachi as Pipimi; Shunsuke Itakura as Popuko

For Japon Mignon: Christine Bellier as Pipimi; Fanny Bloc as Popuko

Viewed in Japanese and French with English Subtitles

 

If I am to be truthful, Pop Team Epic is as scattershot as a musket round exploding from a gun, but that comment itself even feels absurd knowing the creators of this made the series with this intention, and that the work based on a manga mocks itself as being “shit” throughout the first animated season multiple times. Already as time has passed, until 2022 when the second series was unleashed, references this has cracked have become more obscure or less current to that moment the show was released, and the amount of censorship just of certain images, due to how Japanese parody laws work, means there are some curious insights to be gleamed as a time capsule, such as how in the first episode (for the Crunchyroll version) the Pokemon parody stays intact but they felt blurring the My Neighbour Totoro (1988) one was wiser in fear Hayao Miyazaki might frown at them. By now the parody in the first episode of Your Name (2016), Makoto Shinkai's blockbuster success of an anime film, is now a canonical hit rather than the sudden shock surprise, and yet at the same time, even as a show with a lot of parodies, it makes a joke about a viewer writing a disgruntled letter to Pipimi and Popuko, our leads, about them relaying too much on parodies for the jokes. This show always had the sense of being deliberately irrelevant, knowing the jokes could be cheap, and this also, especially for the video game parodies, gets really esoteric. How else do you explain a parody of Death Crimson (1996), one of the most notorious video game productions for the Sega Saturn console, a perfect example of the labour this show puts in for what is, to be blunt, a thirteen episode shit post disguising itself as a sketch anime comedy like gdgd Fairies (2011-13).

Pop Team Epic, and its school girl leads Pipimi and Popuko, closer to goblin personifications of ids than teenagers, were birthed into the world in 2014 by Bkub Okawa, creating the 4koma manga for Takeshobo. Pipimi (taller and more sedate) and Popuko (shorter, more prone to violence and flipping the bird) are less characters in a sitcom than forces of misanthropy in a series of strange and even nonsensical gags. Openly preferring surreal jokes or moments which are weird without an apparent punch line, imaging these two with more "conventional" designs is actually one of the jokes the series keeps coming back too. There is even a joke that, set up in the first and last episode as the closest to a plot, the evil cabal behind the show (parodying Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995)) regret their moe schoolgirl show with more cute designs for the pair turned into the equivalent of taking a dump on viewers’ television. In fact one of the funniest jokes, one I admire, is that the next episode previews are not for Pop Team Epic in season one but for Hoshiiro Girldrop, a show which does not exist which is parodying a stereotypical one, about a schoolgirl who is also an idol singer in her other life and has a crush on her male senpai. [Spoilers] The joke is funnier for the abrupt punch line, that this even has the abrupt tonal shift out of nowhere for the final preview that our heroine died and the male love interest resurrected her afterwards, as abrupt to what is a cute idol programme as what may actually happen in an actual thirteen episode show or two. [Spoilers End]

The first series was divisive for me when I had first seen the episodes, and even now, it is a show of what does not land, what does and what hits with complete success, completely unpredictable in where it is in either of these categories even in just one episode. The first episode, still, is weak, more of a series of parodies which does not fully get to the weirdness the others from the second get to quickly. One of its best virtues, which grow returning to the series, is how to even depict the dumbest of jokes, this brings a murderer's row of talented and imaginative creators and animators in a variety of formats, even crafts with sewn felt dolls, to depict them. To mock itself as merely shit again for a joke is not enough when this can parody Isao Takahata's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), his last film and an incredible animated production which used incredibly lavish digital animation to depict watercolour-like images. Not merely to pastiche it is enough for a joke but, knowing even for a minute or two it would take a lot of resources, copy the exact animation style from that film's lavish production.

The collaborative nature is a huge virtue of Pop Team Epic. Barring the first and last episode having a story, the episodes baring one prominent segment, usually a parody, is a series of small skits of a variety of different art styles and tones. There is also only fifteen minutes of them including opening and ending credits, as one of the strangest touches, which I was first pushed away back but watched properly finally, is how this replicates the same episode to make up the full twenty plus minute length. There are differences between them - usually tiny touches, some major one offs which are different to the same scenes, and subtitles for the Japon Mignon segments about French culture - but the biggest differences are is that different voice actors in Version 1 and 2 are used for Pipimi and Popuko. And they can be male and female, over the two versions of the same episode and allowing a huge variety of prominent figures in voice acting to try even ad libbing, not even taking into consideration the English dub took the same attitude. For a great example, if you wished for the titular Madoka, of Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), to play Popuko, then Aoi Yūki is one such figure here, in a parody of a high fantasy anime which has not even been finished where Popuko/ Yūki is forcing the voice actors in character to perform impersonations upon threat of grievous implied harm.

There are reoccurring segments, and one of the season's best aspects is that, even if jokes do not land, this let anyone create idiosyncratic segments in their own ways. The most infamous is the "Bob Epic Team" segments by AC-bu. The creators Toru Adachi and Shunsuke Itakura, who also do the voice performances, created these garish and surreal splatters of visuals with carte blanche, and these works for all their notoriety in their ugliness were intentional aesthetically. A duo who was working in commercials and music videos since the late 1990s, they came to this production knowing what to do, and getting some of the strangest and funniest moments as a result even if also replicating material from the original manga. (Such as finding an alien in the cat bed, posing as one, and having none of it.) The parodies of numerous obscure video games (and some big hitters like Undertale (2015)) in exact pixel styles, were done by an amateur pixel artist Makoto Yamashita who was still a student at the time of the production¹, and UchuPeople, who use a variety of different multi-craft tools, are stop motion specialistis responsible for the felt and knitted versions of one collaborator provided coquetted versions of Pipimi and Popuko, used for music numbers (including a Earth, Wind and Fire parody) that usually are sweet sounding songs about wanting to kill the subject being sung to. This becomes the best aspect of this deliberately scattershot production, which embraces a variety of figures and allows them to be creative, something attesting to how one entire reoccurring segment Japon Mignon, was handed to French born 3D animator Thibault Tresca², living in Japan, who was allowed to create (mostly) wholesome 3D animated stories with fluent French speaking voice actresses about the clichés of French culture.

Its scattershot nature is its biggest vice, as surreal comedy in anime is something that is bountiful and in a variety, meaning that there are many others in this format including with more elaborate stories to embrace and compare to. Its scattershot nature however too, when it lands, leads to some brilliant moments. “Hellshake Yano”, a talented guitarist and originally a joke character from the manga itself, is probably the thing that will be brought up for Pop Team Epic’s first season, enough that in 2022, Stephen Lee "Thundercat" Bruner, a Grammy Award winning bass guitarist/singer/producer/musician, is proclaiming his love for the show and him by rocking out on a paper craft guitar designed like Yano’s on social media³. AC-bu were tasked in season one to use kamishibai, a form of street theatre and storytelling from between Japan in the 1920s/1930s to the time television became popular, even as far back as 9th-century emaki (picture teller) scrolls⁴. Telling stories with paper images, with a storyteller voicing the characters, this format even past the growth of television in the 1950s found its way to continue. (Ujicha, the cult film maker of the likes of Violence Voyager (2018), is effectively doing paper theatre himself with his cult and sometimes shocking work). AC-bu, when approaching this tradition in their own way made an utter epic by itself which could even outlast the rest of the show, the duo operating a painstaking put together, drawn and cut sketchpad depicting Hellshake Yano having to appease the crowd at a concert as they voice the performance onscreen. It was an incredible production which won me over back even when I was cold to the series, and it stands out still but as a gem in a show which had a lot of inspired moments. Even then, I have to also credit that, returning to the series, countless other jokes are just as funny: the ghost story parody where a group of young adults rent a cabin which suspiciously have a pair of guns and axes mounted onto the walls, and end up killing each other; the second version of this with a seemingly random man doing audio commentary that, whilst not fully successful as a joke, is bold and does have the hilarious moment where he finds them having a watermelon out of season suspicious; that sudden attempt at a sad ending, using the repeated episode format on purpose, which is resolved by Shōta Aoi, voice actor and singer, looking like a cosmic pixie as he puts everything right again through his dapper dress sense and ability to travel back in time; that one random time, whilst acting out orgasm, one of the actresses uses “Marilyn Monroe” over and over, or the abrupt shout out by a male actor to neoclassical metal guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen; and way too many else to count.

There is one which fully encapsulates the show and its entire attitude, which is that aforementioned parody of Death Crimson, faithfully recreating its entire opening full motion video even with a fuzzy image of a red door. A game never released outside its home country, though the sequel did, Death Crimson was an attempt by the company Ecole Software as part of their transition into video game software as outsiders. A light gun game, it is held as one of the worse games ever released for the Sega Saturn, but instead of destroying the company it was loved by those who played it, sold very well when eventually the notoriety started to be passed on, and developed a cult around them. Proclaimed “Emperor of Kusogē”⁵, and something those who made the game are proud of in spite of its notorious low production qualities, bear in mind “kusogē” does mean “shit game”, even if the term is for notorious Japanese productions in the medium which are loved even without irony; that in itself makes the perfect encapsulation, for good and for moments which do not work, of Pop Team Epic itself, proudly calling itself shit, made with complete love of the art form of anime through the talented people in various positions on the production, and spending its resources, including a large portion of the climatic episode, parodying a notorious Sega Saturn light gun game.

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1) The Alternative Faces of Pop Team Epic, or How a Shitposting Cartoon Became an Experimental Animation Stronghold, written by KViN for Sakuga Blog, published on December 20th 2022

2) The About page for Thibault Tresca's personal site.

3) Thundercat Won't Let You Stop Thinking About Hellshake Yano, written by Kim Morrissy and published on Anime News Network on January 5th 2023.

4) Kamishibai - A Brief History, written by Tara McGowan and published on Kamishibai.com.

5) The (loving) article on Death Crimson's production history and legacy, including the Pop Team Epic parody, from Bad Game Hall of Fame.

#238: Patlabor 2 – The Movie (1993)

 

Studio: Production I.G.

Director: Mamoru Oshii

Screenplay: Kazunori Itō

Voice Cast: Jinpachi Nezu as Yukihito Tsuge; Ryunosuke Ohbayashi as Kiichi Gotoh; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Shinobu Nagumo; Daisuke Gouri as Hiromi Yamazaki; Issei Futamata as Mikiyasu Shinshi; Michihiro Ikemizu as Isao Ohta; Miina Tominaga as Noa Izumi; Naoto Takenaka as Shigeki Arakawa; Osamu Saka as Seitaro Sakaki; Shigeru Chiba as Shigeo Shiba; Tomomichi Nishimura as Detective Matsui; Toshio Furukawa as Asuma Shinohara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Moving on from the first 1989 Patlabor film, a great deal changed even in terms of character designs, the original character designs of Akemi Takada from the first film (with Masami Yūki contributing here) moving to a notably more realistic tone alongside the mood of this sequel. That is not to say all has changed – humour is still here, as this franchise follows Tokyo Metropolitan Police Special Vehicle Section 2, Division 2, consisting of a large lovable nitwits kept together by Kiichi Gotoh.

This film’s story however feels like a proper start to director Mamoru Oshii’s serious era as a director, in mind to the likes of Angel’s Egg (1985) in-between his comedies beforehand, with a huge emphasis needed to for how screenwriter Kazunori Itō is an integral part to the film’s virtues and deserves his credit greatly. The tonal shift is noticeable though, in mind that over the three films for this franchise, let alone the OVA series and the other entries, the Patlabor project created by Headgear - a group consisting of manga artist Masami Yūki, director Mamoru Oshii, screenwriter Kazunori Itō, mecha designer Yutaka Izubuchi, and character designer Akemi Takada - the franchise has juggled multiple tones over the multi-media formats it has been adapted into. There has been an emphasis on different characters in Division 2 over these different tiles. Noa Izumi, the plucky female member who loves her Patlabor manga, was central to other entries, whilst over the three films you have Asuma Shinohara central to the first 1989 film's action mystery, and WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3 (2001) focusing on police detectives Kusumi and Hata in what becomes a monster film. Patlabor 2 follows Kiichi Gotoh himself with Shinobu Nagumo, the female captain of Division 1, as the central leads in a political thriller.

A cerebral political thriller, which just exists in a future 2002, this begins in a prologue set in South America for a military skirmish, where a man named Yukihito Tsuge as the last survivor of his squad who intends his revenge a long time later on his homeland of Japan. This revenge is a terror campaign on Tokyo which, in its many stages, exploits all the flaws in the bureaucracy. How this is show is startling and where the themes come in, dealing with a post World War II Japan which has lived in peace, Goto representing this and Tsuge becoming a figure who wishes to bring the terror of war to the Japanese public. Tsuge's plan uses something as seemingly simplistic as exploding a car on a bridge, without casualties, to start the domino effect where everything starts to collapse to his advantage. There is a heightened piece of melodrama as, disgracing her early in her career and undercutting her ability to progress, Nagumo had a romantic affair Tsuge when he was married and teaching her in the early stages of her career, causing a drama in how she will have to be the one to catch Tsuge when possible, the emotions hanging over her head.

The Japanese Self-Defense Force is a target of the film, the film created in the aftermath, in 1992, when the National Diet, the legislative branch of Japan’s government, passed the U.N. Peacekeeping Cooperation Law that permits the JSDF to participate in U.N. operations under strictly limited conditions, which led to the JSDF participating in U.N. peacekeeping and monitoring operations in Cambodia and Mozambique¹. Oshii and Kazunori Itō's film clearly viewed this in a very negative light, as the prologue is set in such a peacekeeping operation where, not allowed to directly attack the enemy, former JSDF member Yukihito Tsuge as a captain found his entire squad wiped out, and his revenge involves using the resulting power struggle he creates between the Tokyo Metropolitan PD and the JSDF to his advantage. This story, and how it becomes part of the discussions on war as a concept against peace in Patlabor 2, is more meaningful when one is aware of this history footnote.

How the plan Tsuge has goes is fascinating, including the film still tapping into salient details of how organizations can make huge mistakes, all timeless in spite of this film being set into the 2000s. Hubris and a terrorist group able to exploit this come into mind here, such as deliberately bringing suspicions to the military for the car explosion, or having the police and military at each other’s throats in a misguided power flex from the police’s leaders. Other tactics, like blowing up bridges or finding a way to take out military vehicles with ease, i.e. causing martial law to have to be brought into place so they are on the streets like sitting ducks, are uncomfortable realistic as tactics if there were enough resources for someone to use. Even more overtly tropes from action films, like blimps which fake out mock chemical gas attacks when shot down, come with the theme in this of Tsuge to cause terror on a public who have never seen conflict. This is obvious but prescient in mind to how, when in a war back in the 30s and 40s, Japan was utterly destroyed and required to be rebuilt from the ground up decades, leaving lasting scars anime like this have tackled as a theme decades later.

It is an Oshii film as an auteur, his focus on contemplative scenes and dialogue exchanges fully here. Even the one playful touch of including a Bassett hound in a cameo throughout his career at this point onwards, a breed of dog he is obsessed with, appears here near the end. This is however a team effort and screenwriter Kazunori Itō just with this film would have won currency from fans of the medium for how well done this is. Production I.G. is on top form here, and whilst there is a noticeable change in the character designs, it is not as drastic as presumed. The characters are far more realistic in appearance, but it is credit to the film, alongside some of the intricate mechanical animation here, that it feels not as abrupt a change between two films. Again as well, there were three films, and the third film, not involving Mamoru Oshii nor Itō, looks just as different as a film into the 2000s where the switch to digitally animation techniques is noticeable on productions, so the franchise has always had an edge of letting each of the stories, least for these films, be different. The music by Kenji Kawai, as with the first film, shows as well why he was as integral to the image of Mamoru Oshii films, or more aptly also how they sound, adding an additional depth to what has gained significance as one of the best anime films from the nineties with considerable reason.

This is more so as, in another team’s hands, it would be still a good film if done well, an action anime which could still tell this story but in a more overtly comedic and over-the-top fashion. This could work as a more pulpy narrative, and still could have been a great anime, and it says a lot that when the humour is here, such as the sudden mission to buy everything edible in a store from Division 2 members, it still matches Patlabor 1 because the characters were established as a team of miscreants who just happened to be a police force. The decision, even with these characters, to take this cerebral tone which Oshii himself would run with from Ghost in the Shell (1995), the lengthy contemplative visual scenes, the extended philosophical discussions between characters, and match it with action scenes, when they happen, which was distinct and effective at its best. Together both films are admirable in their virtues, and it is not a surprise as well how greatly regarded the sequel is just by itself.  

 

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1) Patlabor: The Movie 2 (1993) Movie Review, written by Erick Kown for Beyond Hollywood, published on October 11th 2004.