#271: Cromartie High School (2003-4)

 

Studio: Production I.G

Director: Hiroaki Sakurai

Based on a manga by Eiji Nonaka

Voice Cast: Takahiro Sakurai as Takashi Kamiyama, Norihisa Mori as Tabata/Takeshi Hokuto, Ryo Naitou as Yutaka Takenouchi, Takaya Kuroda as Masked Takenouchi, Takuma Suzuki as Shinjiro Hayashida, Tetsu Inada as Akira Maeda, Norio Wakamoto as Shinichi Mechazawa, Youto Kazama as Noboru Yamaguchi, Megumi Hayashibara as Maeda's Mother

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Cromartie High School was an early series in my interest in anime, one of the many ADV Films licenses brought over the United Kingdom. The origins of Cromartie, even before the first chapters were being published in the year 2000 by its creator Eiji Nonaka, comes from the Japanese "yankii" (juvenile delinquent) manga of the 1970s and 1980s. Cromartie High School, without all the music references and surreal tangents, is a deadpan parody which images these archetypes if they were dense, clueless and/or were hung up on the littlest details even when considering whether to go to a rival school and fight the yankii there.

Our introduction to this titular school is Takashi Kamiyama, who is not someone meant to be there, but with the first episode explicitly telling the audience the reason for ending up in there has to be read in the manga. Suffice to say, he is not the sort of student to end up in Cromartie, a place of ruffians and hooligans. He has at least some intelligence, where in a world of doofuses he will be King, the lamb sleeping among lions (and a gorilla) as Shinjiro Hayashida, a fellow student who befriends him, states. He is the most imposing figure and can become a) the strongest delinquent in the country in a competition, all because of knowing in a quiz yogurt is made with milk, b) will defend his title by hosting a quiz himself to confuse his challengers.

Before you get to the gorilla, Mechazawa the robot student or Freddie Mercury - yes, that Freddie Mercury - the joke is undeniably the idea of the sixteen year old rebel who wins fist fights, or is supposed to if fights ever were to break out in this series, like those Takashi Miike made Crow Zero 1 & 2 about between 2007 and 2009, when they do not live up to these expectations. This is done with both absurd touches but also their own idiosyncratic personalities. Most people may have motion sickness on transport which they live with, but imagining the head of the first years, an imposing figure named Yutaka Takenouchi, having to hide this to keep his toughness status, and looking so even when struggling, is inherently funny. The innocuous undercutting a trope is one of the funnier types of humour throughout anime, and Cromartie provides this in many ways which succeed. This is before the show is also proudly strange, such as providing an entire one-off episode, each less than twelve minutes each with opening and ending credits, about a wise gorilla sushi chef who helps mend the wounds between father and son with a banana sushi. Without highlights like that episode, which goes so hard with the premise that you have messages on the screen reminding viewers this was still Cromartie High School, some of the funnier jokes in a pure matter of fact tone involve adding the banal and ordinary to heightened anime tropes. These weird characters, alongside how magnificently dumb and charming they can be, have to contend with ordinary things a viewer has to put up with, like whether they have gotten off the right stop on a train, only with the bombast of their reactions to these events being these archetypes the combination which adds different layers to the gag.

Kamiyama's friends include Hayashida himself, whose purple Mohawk has a mind of its own and more secrets to it; there is Maeda, who puts up being the one dismissed and also frequently kidnapped by rival schools; Takeshi Hokuto, who is introduced attempting a coup to rule the school with his lackey, only known as Hokuto 's lackey and not able to say his real name aloud, only to realise he transferred to the wrong school; and more characters including a figure, later on, who is an older man in a mask who, attempting to hijack a plane in one episode when introduced, hides among the students whilst wearing the mask still. Gorilla the gorilla is literally a gorilla, and Freddy, literally based on Queen singer Freddie Mercury, based on an iconic concert costume with him shirtless wearing red suspenders, is as close as they could get away with. Freddie in this interpretation is more a big older man with a magnificent moustache, never talking and with even his friends wondering of what transpires in his mind. Then there is Mechazawa, played by Norio Wakamoto, a prolific voice actor who started in the late seventies and has a very distinct voice. Mechazawa is a literal robot, who does not realise he is one as a student, but does get rebooted like a PC, and does end up crashing a motorbike and ends up becoming one afterwards himself, allowing multiple parodies of Kamen Rider heroes if imagining what would happen, rightly, if the police arrested the driver for not having a motorcycle license.

Kamiyama, a lovable goof who yet has more smarts, is our centre but in the twenty six episodes, this show switches to other characters a lot, and this is always a good thing throughout, even when it comes of a pair of actors in a fictional comedy show in the world, Pootan, who are deadpan in the humour whilst wearing giant cuddly bear-like costumes with their faces visible. My favourite character is actually Noboru Yamaguchi, the leader of a rival school with a giant afro, whose real passion is as a connoisseur of comedy who wants to become a comedian. His stuff is hilarious even if you have no real knowledge on the intricacies of Japanese comedy, including the language barrier, whether debating in internal thoughts the structure of a punch line mid-meeting with his underlings, who are misinterpreting his behaviour, or assigning a ventriloquist as his second-in-command, which leads to the issue whether he or the puppet is actually given the position.

The cast is all male, with the one segment about an all-girls' school just redesigning your original cast as "princesses" and the voice actors not changing their vocals, a really good final episode gag especially as it clearly references the music video for Queen's I Want to Break Free even by accident at one point. There are some cameos with female actresses in the cast, but Cromartie, as a story about young male delinquents being goofballs, is an example for me to rediscover, in showing how talented the male voice actors in this series, from Takahiro Sakurai as Takashi Kamiyama to Tetsu Inada as Maeda, are. Surreal comedy anime has been a genre where I have seen how talented a lot of female voice actresses are for the medium, entirely because they have to turn on a dime in terms of the bizarre scenarios the writers and directors provide them, so Cromartie is just as rewarding in the Japanese dub to see this for male actors, the subdued reactions from many in this case adding more to the moments for how they bat off scenarios that, rightly for a viewer, would be ridiculous if they ever transpired. Even this becomes a joke, with some knowledge of voice actors, in that they hired Megumi Hayashibara. By that point she would have been a megastar in anime voice acting, most famous for many in the West for Rei in the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise, but someone who would have been huge by that point for how many roles in leads and main cast in anime in the nineties, also a prolific singer and musician who would be heard singing the opening and ending themes for many titles she worked on like the Slayers franchise. They cast her, in a cameo, as Medea's mother, who only makes one sound; if you get that they choose such a prolific actress for just making a single noise, and probably how expensive that would have been to cast her, unless she did it as a favour or thought was hilarious, it is funny and one case, for a show which is mostly able to be gotten for its humour without context, able to even add little in-jokes to anime in itself once in a while for an additional layer.

Many moments in this, some of the funniest, are about taking strange and elaborate tangents within an idea. Many times, the joke begins with Kamiyama and the cast debating the logic of a scenario, with layers suddenly being added to jokes that would be funny in another show already, such as Maeda trying to imaging himself as a cat for a week, to the point of wearing cat's eats, when Kamiyama argues no human being really knows how to fully communicate to a cat, even when it comes to petting them. Even with some cultural differences to consider, such as the references and debates to Japanese stand-up comedy tropes, a most of this works without the context needed because it is entirely about characters over thinking scenarios and/or being idiots. Some jokes are just punch lines to pure weirdness, like the only logical reason a train announcer would require a green grocer and a sumo wrestler to help in one of the carts.

It is a series that could have continued, ending without a dramatic climax or a tearful send off, but it manages to be consistent, feeling right when it closed out without any moment it stumbled, with no weak episodes or having petered out. I roared a few times, chuckles or snorted many times, and ultimately the best take to describe why you should watch Cromartie High School is that this fully succeeds as a comedy on a gut level.

#269: Maris the Chojo (1986)

 

Studio: Pierrot

Director: Motosuke Takahashi

Screenplay: Tomoko Konparu and Hideo Takayashiki

Based on a manga by Rumiko Takahashi

Voice Cast:

Japanese: Mami Koyama as Maris, Jouji Yanami as Murphy, Junpei Takiguchi as Colonel, Sumi Shimamoto as Zombie Sue, Toshio Furukawa as Koganemaru Matsushita

English Dub: Sharon Holm as Maris, Dominic Taylor as Rogane, Harry Ditson as General, Kerry Shale as Murphy, Stacey Jefferson as Sue

Viewed in English Dub

 

Rumiko Takahashi is one of those huge names in Japanese pop culture, a huge author in manga since her beginnings from 1975 under the guide of Kazuo Koike and 1978 professionally, and like so many like Go Nagai to Koike himself, there are the titles which became her calling cards and other obscurer ones which also managed to get animated adaptations due to the status Takahashi gained. For Takahashi, obvious bigger hitters include the Ranma ½ and Urusei Yatsura franchises, whilst Maris the Chojo, also known as Maris the Wonder Girl or Supergirl, was a one-shot manga from 1980, part of titles which would be collected under the Rumic World reprinted sets of short stories years later. A beautiful looking opening in outer space introduces the titular Maris, causing one to presume this is a serious action sci-fi story in which this figure, a space bikini wearing space cop who has to stop crimes across the galaxy in this well animated eighties production. What it also turns out to be is a comedy as Maris has the worst of luck despite her talent for terrorizing evil doers.

Maris does have a tragic back story, a riff on Superman to befit an alternative title for the Central Park Media release when they sold this on VHS, where her surviving species were forced to become intergalactic refugees when their planet imploded, but mostly this follows a trope that works exceptionally in anime when it succeeds, that of the hero/heroine who is hopeless and out of luck we sympathize with. With the strength of more than six humans, as all her species, the choice of bikini is less of note than the bindings she has to remove to be able to use her full strength, allowing her to kick alien goons to the other side of the room and causing villains to literally urinate themselves in fear, but also leading her to accidentally break her entire ship when she forgets to put the restraints back on. With a talking seven tailed fox helper named Murphy at her side, able to transform into anything if in sevens only, and amusingly given a broad Irish accent in the English dub, this is clearly more playful in tone when the story proper begins, and I find it sad this was never expanded beyond its one-shot nature originally, as these characters immediately have a lot to work with.

Including two extended music video sequences, the first on an intergalactic beach resort with a Jaws parody and a bandaged mummy enjoying their sunbathing, this is a farcical action comedy where our space cop Maris is sent after a kidnapped son of a billionaire. It is more of a character piece as this is a trope as old as time in anime, that of the hapless hero constantly in debt, her family all having restraints which they forget to keep on, leading to property damage their daughter has to pay off alongside her mother’s shopping sprees, whilst her diminutive (i.e. pixie sized) boss has debts from every spaceship they have lent her she keeps breaking or letting get destroyed. Maris is sympathetic, even if her fantasies of marrying the kidnap victim are less romantic but for all the money he has. She is someone forced to take other jobs on vacation because she is constantly broke, even tricking horny male customers with her good looks to actually pay for a human taxi service where she just carries them, and even in her imperfect form, she is the kind of lead you get so much sympathy from as a lovable goof. This is added to by both being ahead of her time as an ultra strong female character and also because, metaphorically, characters like this in anime even in fantasy settings cannot help but suggest their real life counterparts. More so this as the daughter and sole breadwinner to a family constantly being hassled by phone calls from her parents needing money, Maris is s single woman having to put up with debts, even with the equipment for her job that gets damaged by pure accident, and finding it sucks like if for anyone else in a less fantastic job who could have read the first ever one-shot manga.

She is of that time as well as, visibly, another influence on this story was female (joshi) professional wrestling, which was a previous job for Maris alongside the villainess making the reference explicit; stuck with a broad southern accent in the English dub like too many did, this figure of Sue is noentheless another sympathetic figure from the same planet as Maris, who for her scheming just wants to buy her own elaborate lair, a former in-ring rival to Maris who also like to get payback from previous loses likely involved in their history. This has aged like fine wine as a joke, as the legacy of women's wrestling in Japan has gained more recognition and burns brightly still decades later, but it also plays to the fact that, as another eighties franchise Dirty Pair was explicitly inspired by female wrestling too, when coming up with two female space mercenaries, Maris also shows when this spectacle in Japan was a huge pop cultural phenomenon too that was influencing other mediums too. There is a rematch in the squared circle in the climax between the two female figures central to this story, and what little we get here from Studio Pierrot is clearly them having fun. A studio with a long history in the medium, the creators were indulging here in the positive way like so many of these one-shot productions, getting in references like to Star Wars characters in the background you would not be allowed to get away with in later decades, due to the stricter copyright practices that would come in, to the end credits having faked outtakes, all of Maris and other characters tripping, getting injured or even blown up. As a one-off OVA, sadly, you cannot go further than this in speculating where this could go with the central character, and in this case, there is also the knowledge Rumiko Takahashi only wrote and drew one single manga story for this, not a vast volume of chapters. As with so many of these titles we could have gotten a longer OVA series if not a TV series, only with the knowledge that the material this adapts was not as long either to consider, there is enough to admire, but it leads to feeling like a taster to a work you can only imagine the vaster adventures of.

#267: The Ribon Double Bill (2001)

 

Good Morning Call (2001)/ Time Stranger Kyoko: Leave it to Chocola! (2001)

Director(s): Masatsugu Arakawa (Time Stranger Kyoko: Leave it to Chocola! (2001))

Screenplay(s): Fumihiko Shimo (Time Stranger Kyoko: Leave it to Chocola! (2001))

Based on the manga by Yue Takasuka (Good Morning Call)/ Arina Tanemura (Time Stranger Kyoko)

Voice Cast:

Good Morning Call:

Eiji Moriyama as Hisashi Uehara; Yuka Tokumitsu as Nao Yoshikawa; Chiaki Shiino as Rumiko Ooizumi; Maki Saitou as Marina Konno; Masami Kikuchi as Kenji Asai; Masami Suzuki as Haruhi; Mayumi Honda as Nanako; Michiko Neya as Yuri Uehara; Ryo Naitou as Jun Abe

Time Stranger Kyoko:

Jun Uemoto as King; Rumi Shishido as Chocola; Taiten Kusunoki as Widoshiku; Eiji Takemoto as Subordinate B; Junko Takeuchi as Subordinate C; Keiko Toda as Akino Jiro; Makio Inoue as Toshito Kutajima; Mitsuo Iwata as Shinichi Hasegawa; Ryo Horikawa as Ranmaru Mori; Shigenori Yamazaki as Subordinate A; Takeshi Aono as Hokubei

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

So much animation exists in the Japanese industry that you can dig up real obscurities, helped considered when they are being preserved online, factoring in the independent work, ephemeral work and animation done as one-offs and/or promotional content for manga. For today, the following two pieces are based on manga published in Ribon, a manga founded in 1955 for the shōjo market for young women and adolescent women, with the following two incredibly diverse and representing two different sides of the coin from the monthly magazine in terms of genre. The first, Good Morning Call, is a one-off nineteen minute story adapting the work of Yue Takasuka. This manga, interestingly, was able to return after its first arch, published between 1997 to 2002, to both have a sequel manga, but also a wider potential audience with a 2016 television series adaptation, one followed by a 2017 sequel series have been both available through Netflix, allowing for people unaware of the source to see this story in a form.

Alongside free promotion of a PSOne controller at one point, the male lead Hisashi constantly dying in that scene in an RPG to a frost dragon, this was as much a work clearly made for the fans near the end of the first manga's final chapters in 2001. It would have been a chance to see this story of a female teen Nao onscreen, finding herself living with Hisashi in an apartment due to circumstances, becoming a couple as the story proper begins. Nao is convinced to help a male friend practice his hair dressing skills on her, having forgotten the actual date of Hisashi's birthday by ten days, becoming what would feel like a single episode in a whole series we never got as she tries to get an apology for her blunder. It is a very fluffy romantic comedy where the jokes lead to the characters, especially Nao, being comically distorted (especially in diminutive "chibi" forms) for cute reactions, including reacting to good clothes and the realisation of how much an item costs. It is a very silly and light hearted toned work, with some ultra cartoonish content, such as a few female characters, such as the elderly landlady, who are insanely short next to the rest of the cast. The composer also has imported guitar solos from the nineties, varying between a 32 bit era video game score to even flamenco guitar that feels New Age.

The short's length sadly means you cannot really gauge where this could have gone, especially with the other adaptation Time Stranger Kyoko: Leave It to Chocola. It is based on a manga by prolific author Arina Tanemura, which was a fantasy sci-fi set in the 30th century. Its titular character Kyoko, the daughter of the King of the entire Earth here, is placed to the side, her story in the manga more explicitly a fantasy tale with heavier stakes, whilst this is entirely about the character of Chocola, a tiny cat girl android who had this eleven minute short all for herself. Still feeling a mere snippet to a longer work, this however shows the premise of the world, where after their anniversary dinner of their meeting, seemingly missed by the King, Chocola leaves the castle to find a new life. The world set up is an interesting mass of western fantasy tropes but said to be in the far flung future, where Chocola is seen rescued from a landfill of discarded androids by Earth's king, and yet has horse drawn carts to be attacked by thieves. It is a very silly work too in its own whimsical way, introducing clear characters from the source, the Smasher bandits the most prominent who have a member named Cream Soda. Chocola attempts to help them out, though she is not to be trusted as a cook unless, needing chocolate to power up, you want everything including curry to have chocolate as a main ingredient.

There is not much to say beyond this, though Time Traveller Kyoko has the more vibrant looking world whilst Good Morning Call is set in the ordinary world and would have to rely on the characters, if you were able to live with them for a while like in the manga, to carry the emotional weight. The transition to live action television for Good Morning Call makes sense with hindsight, even if I could have seen and hopefully enjoyed a version with its comedic animated slapstick, whilst Kyoko including its barely seen lead has a world seen in a glimpse to help its favour. There are many obscurer titles in danger of being lost, and whilst feeling like fragments of series which never came, it would be a shame to not see these titles preserved too. Quality wise, I preferred Time Stranger Kyoko, but the pair together are rewarding as historical titles.

#260: Nyanpire - The Animation (2011)

 

Studio: GONZO

Director: Takahiro Yoshimatsu

Screenplay: Natsuko Takahashi

Based on the manga by yukiusa

Voice Cast: Ami Koshimizu as Nyanpire; Jun Fukuyama as Nyantenshi; Noriaki Sugiyama as Masamunya Dokuganryū; Yuko Goto as Chachamaru; Nozomi Maeda as Komori-kun / Mōri-kun; Shinnosuke Tachibana as the Vampire; Shion Hirota as Misaki-chan; Shion Hirota as the Narrator / Katsuo

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

To be continued, meow.

Nyanpire is tragically slight, a cute premise for a longer series which is only four minutes long per twelve episodes, not allowing it to stand out let alone burn out a silly premise to the point it does not work. A kitten, as explained in the pre-credit prologue, was left abandoned and hungry, only for a male vampire to show empathy and save it from death by giving them eternal life, thus creating a "Nyanpire". Thankfully a human girl Misaki took him in and is aware of his need for blood, as she is able to talk to him, one who is precocious and can find, whilst not a suitable substitute, that ketchup is delicious even if Tabasco sauce is to be approached with caution. Baring the final episode playing on a sad idea, Nyanpire considering his friends' mortality against his immortality, this is a fluffy show which plays on skits involving our undead cat lord in his misadventures with mostly cat friends. It is absolutely as silly a premise as it sounds too if adorable.

Surprisingly for me, this is a production by studio GONZO, made after a time when they were a huge producer of titles as I was getting into anime into the 2000s. They still exist, producing titles throughout the 2010s from this, but by 2008 and 2009, they had huge financial issues which lead them to be absorbed into their parent company, GDH K.K., in 2009. There is a brief melancholia to Nyanpire because of this, despite its cuteness and GONZO's sporadic track record in quality, in how they are making this micro-series under the shadow of those events, a company who seemed to be everywhere prominently in their releases from ADV Films when I was getting into anime, even making a music video for Linkin Park, only to be less prominent in their status as an animation studio. Beyond this however, there is a sense the production was made with fun and that history means little barring the recognition of their name on the end credits, one which went out of its way to be a full live action band musical number with cat puppets, Gothic Lolita costumes and a blood I.V.

The shortness of the show, like many micro-series, leave a lot on the table for a Halloween appropriate series, Garfield for the Goths, in how this is a motley crew of characters surrounding an impulsive but adorable lead. This breaks from a lot of vampire traditions, like the fact he can go in the sun, but many are for jokes, like his love of garlic ramen, or how there is a theory the vampire that turned him may be an obsessive collector of cats who keeps them in a void in his person. It is a fun cast around him too, beginning with an ex-angel cat, kicked out of heaven and a little cad, making up stories of being thrown out for loving a female angel, to the adopted and more sensible little brother to Nyanpire. Two bats, more like trolls in their behaviour, make up non-feline figures, but the character of interest is Masamunya Dokuganryū. Likely a parody of Date Masamune, he is an unexpected joke to include if for a figure even played by Ken Watanabe in the 1987 historical television series Dokuganryū Masamune among many other appearances in Japanese popular culture: Masamune in reality was a magistrate, tactician and a regional ruler of Japan's Azuchi–Momoyama period through early Edo period who was known for his missing eye, dubbed the "One-Eyed Dragon of Ōshū". It may be a stretch, but considering Masamunya is a cat with an eye patch too, I would not be surprise if the joke is revolving around a real Japanese historical figure of a similar type. More unexpected is that the samurai cat is initially introduced trying to banish Nyanpire, only to end up with a smitten crush and realises he is gay when he learns Nyanpire is actually male. I was not expecting, on the bingo card of anime, a positive gay character within a show about a cartoon cat vampire, but with Nyanpire, here we go, and whilst Masamunya is the butt of jokes, the only ones in regards to this is Masamunya struggling with trying to express his love to Nyanpire, who is oblivious and his jealously that the angel cat does feel any harm if Nyanpire bites him for blood.

Micro-series, unless we are talking about gdgd Fairies (2011-2013) or Teekyu (2012-17), which got many series, unfortunately feel like the equivalent of old school forty minute OVAs, enticing little snippets of a premise which, in the most rewarding, at least present something interesting with a personality of its own. Even something more questionable in its production quality, like Sparrow's Hotel (2013), a micro-series about a female staff who uses her ninja skills to keep a hotel at five stars in quality ratings, can still entice with a ludicrous premise. Personality is something I can attest to for Nyanpire. Nearly forty minutes, the equivalent of an old straight-to-video project, this shows enough to appreciate the content but also leaves me wishing it had more to the project, both a real positive, but sad in that as a 2011 project, this never had a follow up throughout the 2010s.

#257: Zone of the Enders - Dolores, I (2001)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Tetsuya Watanabe

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

Based on the Zone of the Enders franchise by Konami

Voice Cast: Tesshō Genda as James Links; Houko Kuwashima as Dolores; Mitsuru Miyamoto as Leon Links; Narumi Hidaka as Noel Links; Chō as Baan Dorfloum; Fumihiko Tachiki as Sameggi; Yumiko Nakanishi as Rebecca Hunter; Takehito Koyasu as Nathph Pleminger; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Dr. Rachel Links

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

The opening rock theme proclaims the lead may be able to defeat God for all he knows, and this pretty much establishes the tone for what Zone of the Enders the series is. In contrast to the straight to video prologue which began this television adaptation of the Zone of the Enders video game franchise – Idolo (2001), which was a more serious set up for key plot points to this twenty six episode series – Dolores is a much more light hearted, more overtly comedic work whose serious moments are more in tone to an action film. Certainly, whilst with key plot lines also tied to the first 2001 video game, which are not needed for context but appear, this feels a tone different from the other works in this franchise, introducing us to James Links. As a lead he is one you would encounter, as a middle aged man nearing his fifties in futuristic times, piloting his space ship drunk and eyeing up the women. He is however someone with a tragic back-story, with adult children disconnected from him and his wife missing, with the fact he is from Earth and she from Mars part of the world building, as this is a world where the planets despite being both with humans hostile to each other in contrast to their love which crosses literal space. There is also the fact that he is a transporter whose secret cargo will drag him into finding his wife Rachel, said to still be alive after the events of Idolo, and on the run for a murder he did not commit.

It is awesome to have an older male lead, when the joke even for video games from Japan let alone that someone near their thirties or so qualifies them as a grizzled veteran, making this character voiced by Tesshō Genda, a veteran from the seventies who became Arnold Schwarzenegger’s official Japanese dubbing voice, a nice change of pace. It is one of the touches to a story, whilst with clichés, that manages a lot of great things just in terms of a memorable lead, not shy from James being ridiculous with a kitten for an estranged daughter Noel Links’ birthday and a mysterious cargo, pulling him into a conflict between planets, which introduces the titular Dolores, an orbital frame mecha with great power, sentience…but the mind of a teen girl with flights of whimsy who starts calling him “uncle”. Whilst humorous throughout, this with the Zone of the Enders world premise does set up key plot points  - of a racism against Martian born humans from Earth which has caused Martians to secretly plan an extreme coup de trait which will harm both planets, the orbital frames of immense power – even if one of your primary leads is a robot who acts like a naïve niece of the lead, even crushing on him, and a forty nine year old male protagonist who, in attempting to reconnect with him adult children, forced on the lam eventually with him, reads a book of becoming a better father over and over like a sacred scroll. Tragically some family dynamic is lost – Noel, in contrast to her stuffy and gullible brother Leon, is set up as the tough one of the pair, working at the construction site, despite loving her new kitten, only to be sidelined in this factor at some moments – but this show is helped considerably by its characters. A huge virtue coming into this production, with no knowledge of even the games, was that it manages something as simple but difficult to pull off as actually having interesting characters and a world to work with, even if there are plot points here found in many other productions.

In terms of video game adaptations, which are notoriously not well regarded, this is a surprise to see virtually forgotten as, whilst it does play to tropes of this genre, and from Sunrise, a studio behind the Gundam franchise and a lot of mecha shows, this does actually manage to be a solid adaptation. It manages to be respectful and actually create an engaging show even if it clearly takes liberties with the source, in having the comedic undertone, and the idiosyncratic take on sentient artificial intelligence where, alongside the trope of a duality between a wholesome side and the destructive alter ego, your titular lead, especially as she does all the episode preview narration, is a whimsical figure of flights of fancy even if capable of destroying everything in sight. This is more so when she learns the virtue of reading books like Cinderella, and tries to learn by herself how to dance as in episode nine (Lost in Space), or her way of hacking data files envisioning herself in a dress, James in a pink bunny suit, and the hacking interpreted as a fairy tale dream of stealing eggs.

As the story goes, searching for Rachel Links, a key character from Idolo, is of importance, as are the cops after James back from Earth, one of them explicitly a racist against Martians who will even deprive a child of her helmet and oxygen in his psychotic obsession with chasing James down for a murder he was innocent of, as is a character returning from Idolo, becoming the main villain if with the baggage of how they came to be and the problems this world has explaining how he became this villain. There are also requisite child pilots, though thankfully they make sense in context. They are part of the story in which we see, as a result of Earth’s iron grip on Mars and their cruelty, those wanting to find their independence have also unfortunately created those who just want to see Earth burn, even if it destroys Mars by proxy, among the teen trio Rebecca the one member pilot whose only “father” figure is challenged by seeing James’ more heroic fatherly actions, and is the one who represents them fully in character dynamics.

Set five years after the “Deimos Affair”, what is the narrative of the Idolo OVA, this continues the world of Z.O.E., in tiny details which do add character and making one able to invest in this story and producing ideas, even if never seen again, that feed the imagination as sci-fi should. Moving “voice” photos to space catapults that allow fast wormhole-like travel between worlds, or the Sargasso, space garbage dumps for illegally dumping materials by companies around Mars’ orbit. It is all fascinating even if for one episode stories, especially when we get to Mars. Attempting to make Mars habitable is one of the more interesting things, even fantastical, for this think piece burst of imagination, such as Earth creating seaweed which is enormous and producing giant air bubbles to create a breathable atmosphere, famers of giant corn, but also environmental normalists wanting to return Mars to its normal state. An entire new show just looking at Mars would have been compelling from the little we see here, such as a brief section about an abandoned Martian theme park with stereotypical “aliens” as decaying decorations. Sunrise also has an obsession with space elevators, something returned to with Gundam Reconguista in G (2014-15), a maligned and not well regarded entry if for me an entertainingly weird one, as one for Earth in this story is the huge McGuffin in terms of Earth’s peril, one of the more over-the-top science fiction pieces of the show, alongside a fabled ore on Mars which is magical in its abilities in building combat robots, that nonetheless still entice in what they bring up in ideas.

There are layers of cheese at times here – with the cheesiest way to stop Martian and Earth soldiers fighting each other – and until the last episodes, comedy does prevent the story from getting too serious for what is a studio, in Sunrise, used to mecha stories to the point they could produce this one effortlessly. There was clearly a lot of fun here on the production, with just the references alone, from the Martian racist cop figure of Baan starting to call James Links instead “John Carter” after Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ seminal Mars jumping pulp hero, or the person who clearly wanted to name episodes after films like “Total Recall” and “Die Hard”. I highly doubt one episode is named after the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Red Desert (1964), even if I wish that is the case, but episode twelve is literally Die Hard (and has that as the title) on a Martial colony ocean lab; the difference is that it has Bruce Willis replaced by a man trying to save the day with a mecha who has a platonic relationship with him and a cat, even joking about it not being set at Christmas.

Individual episodes really do stand out here, even if the whole builds the story well. Episode four, Final Countdown, has the family attempting to escape Earth with the help of a former astronaut, in his old age still wanting to get to Mars on an old NASA spaceship, set at Cape Canaveral at Florida in an abandoned museum, whilst Family Game, episode seventeen, finally brings James together with the man behind the parenting book he has been learning from, a fun episode with the obvious twist being James has to be the one to offer the parenting advice. The tone even by the end is lighter hearted despite with the raising of its stakes, with comedy beats in-between the impending threat, like a gag to cut through the tension before returning to it. With no expectations whatsoever for this it is really strange, tragically damning, that barring ADV Films releasing this back in the day in the West, this show disappeared with a whimper. It was a production I had never heard of, despite the video game franchise still having good regard especially for Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (2003), making its vanishing act from the list of Sunrise releases from this era, and mecha series in the 2000s, a real surprise.  I can guess that tonally, with what this does, this would not have necessarily won fans over for the games, but as its own creation, this manages the one thing that so many video game anime do not succeed with, which is actually be solid in a form in quality and managing to actually stick out to be a good show over its twenty six episodes.

#247: Makura no Danshi (2015)

 

Studio: feel., Assez Finaud Fabric

Director: Sayo Aoi

Screenplay: Ayumi Sekine and Yuniko Ayana

Voice Cast: Natsuki Hanae as Merry; Ayumu Murase as Hareto Enokawa; Daisuke Kishio as Yonaga Sagiri; Daisuke Namikawa as Sōsuke Tanaka; Kousuke Toriumi as Shirusu Mochizuki; Nobunaga Shimazaki as Nao Sasayama; Shinnosuke Tachibana as Yayoi Sagiri; Sora Takahata as Eiji Kijinami; Toshiyuki Morikawa as Yūichirō Iida; Yoshimasa Hosoya as Kanade Hanamine; Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Yū Maiki; Yuichiro Umehara as Ryūshi Theodore Emori

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Your butt gets tense...

Using that quote because I am incredibly juvenile, I was hoping to come into Makura no Danshi as a curiosity, not like any anime I have yet encountered, and with a significant change of pace in terms of its gaze being entirely on men as attractive figures which I deliberately wished to sort out. Even as not the target audience as a heterosexual man, this was a deliberate choice to place myself into the position of another audience, apt as when I get into this mini-series, it is entirely from first person. Sadly I have to damn this micro-series, twelve episodes and four minutes each, for one episode which is incredibly insidious and undefendable, and honestly, and as an anime series I had heard of as it appeared on lists of one of the strangest ever made, I also felt disappointed with the rest of the episodes as it completely misses the intended goal.

Broadcast summer 2015 originally before Crunchyroll brought it to the West on their streaming service, Makura no Danshi has a very idiosyncratic structure. Each episode presents a new male character who directly talks to the viewer, helping them to sleep in the end. Until one of the later episodes, the gender of you the viewer is never mentioned, only making the faceless protagonist female in that later episode, opening up an entire spectrum of perspectives for this show. The unfortunate episode undercuts this, but the point is that whether it is a male librarian to the slightly dim-witted hunk in school, you are to crush on this representations of archetypes animated and voiced by male actors. The title translates to "Pillow Boys", the idea of men who help one to sleep just by talking to them or as you never hear your own dialogue, just one half of a conversation, them talking to you. There is clearly a fetishishtic side to this, but is also something which in itself here is not a bad thing at all as a concept even with that attractive allure of these characters, especially as the opening credits are more explicit then the show itself in having some of these characters, drawn with abs of pure steel, with their shirts almost dissolved off in a dishevelled sexy look. This premise in a form already existed as well as a Japanese live action drama series Shima Shima (2011), in which a business ran by a divorced woman sent handsome men to help female customers sleep, sending them over for the night not as sex workers but a form of emotional conform for those suffering from sleeping issues.

The anime itself is very idiosyncratic as, with mentioned, the other character is you the viewer, and most of the conversations are half one communicating to the viewer from the first person. The anime, in one of its flaws structurally, does break this continuity for no particular reason, which adds to the strangeness of the premise but does undercut the illusion. In terms of the "boys" themselves, they follow archetypes, be it the intellectual one, to the miscreant outsider who broads on the roof of the school like a cat who is unaware he is now human. There is also unintentional creepiness in the flower arranging twins. Their episode is an accidental case of creepiness in which their playfulness, including the game of find the flower in their clothes, feels less erotic and more the viewer trapped about to be killed. Also, it is about here we get to the contentious episode, the one which frankly as a viewer makes me wary to return to the series. That is Episode 7, which is about Hareto Enokawa, who is a five year old boy. It is creepy, even though the dialogue is the equivalent of having to babysit the son of someone you know, obsessed with a sentai show and the pair of you feeling tired as he wears you out as your charge, but in context, when these characters are meant to be fantasies, this is an alarm bell moment. Considering the point of each is that these are meant to represent various forms of guy of interest, it raises uncomfortable questions, even if accidentally distorting something innocence, of what the target viewer for this episode takes from this kid. It is a terrible creative decision for the studio feel. and Assez Finaud Fabric to have made as, yes, whilst others are teenagers, which is just as dubious, this in itself is the kind of thing even with the cheery context which has uncomfortable implications whether a pure misguided decision or intentional, which would be even worse to consider.

The work as well is missing a lot of potential. This is a curious premise, notwithstanding that episode I feel comfortable bringing up, but one which is missing that one touch to make it something far more rewarding. None of these pillow boys barring one ever stand out, the one who does managing in less than four minutes to show you could have done a whole series about him, set in his setting, and still keep the first person perspective where you the viewer are interacting with him. That being the one old guy, Yūichirō Iida, proudly calling himself the creepy one despite being the perfect dad fantasy figure, the oden food stall man who drinks on the job, reads shoujo manga for inspiration (shoujo meaning targeted for girls), shows off his appendicitis scar like a fight wound, and admits his body is breaking down despite looking (even as a drawn character voiced and animated) like the ultimate fantasy of the bumpkin some anime fans (of both genders) would want to sweep off them off their feet. The dialogue in this episode is actually funny, and I give full credit to their voice actor for the episode too, voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa, who at even this show was a veteran of the industry. He is also a veteran for the video game industry, and among the characters gamers will see as iconic he has voiced, anyone who has a passing interest in the legacy of Final Fantasy 7 (1997), in its tie-ins in animation and other games, will have heard Morikawa as Sephiroth, one of the whole Final Fantasy franchise's most iconic characters. In terms of how a seiyuu can make one appreciate even a show that is dubious and/or not great for their commitment, Morikawa in less than four minutes provided a memorable episode in what is, frankly, a weird curiosity which does not really get the potential of this show. As mentioned in this paragraph, imagining if this entire show as about the relationship between the unseen protagonist, you with possible narcolepsy, and the booze loving oden food stall man is an acquired taste not all viewers would like, but would have been a compellingly odd and enticing title if it had been pulled off. Even if they had made a show about a variety of "pillow boys" but had extended it out to multiple episodes with a few, and Toshiyuki Morikawa and this character were kept, we could have still gotten a good show regardless of its purpose and the target audience if the production focused on both a sleep aid but one disguising a set of character dramas.

Makura no Danshi even ends on a strange note with the first pillow boy bookending the show, the one behind the quote starting this review in his awkwardness, seemingly able to change ages and seemingly a sheep plush on your bed you imagined was a cute boy. This type of anime I admit fascinates me, when it is not just a narrative work but, with plot or not, it presents itself as deeply unconventional or with a purpose you rarely find in Western animation, in this case a sleep aid which is also depicts the various fantasies of men to gaze at as they talk to you. Unfortunately, one of these episodes means that I really cannot really recommend this, as it will be as creepy for many viewers as it was for me. Ultimately, as well, this is not a great anime too, a low budgeted affair which, even for its premise, even in terms of breaking its own cardinal rule of being entirely from first person, does not fully take advantage of its form and minimal production value to be something memorably quirky or a good sleep aid. It stays as a curiosity, from what I would call the "Crunchyroll era" of strange anime which you only get nowadays, when once it would have been fan made subbed releases, that only becomes available through that streaming service and others needing content. Stuff like this, especially these micro-series, are fascinating for what they are, even if as in this case, they are not always going to be great and even miss potential.

#237: Patlabor - The Movie (1989)

 

Director: Mamoru Oshii

Screenplay: Kazunori Itō

Voice Cast: Miina Tominaga as Noa Izumi; Daisuke Gouri as Hiromi Yamazaki; Issei Futamata as Mikiyasu Shinshi; Kouji Tsujitani as Kataoka; Michihiro Ikemizu as Isao Ohta; Osamu Saka as Seitaro Sakaki; Ryunosuke Ohbayashi as Kiichi Goto; Shigeru Chiba as Shiba Shigeo; Tomomichi Nishimura as Detective Matsui; Toshio Furukawa as Asuma Shinohara; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Shinobu Nagumo; You Inoue as Kanuka Clancy

Based on the manga by Masami Yuki

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I feel like I’m playing computer games against God.

Patlabor gets the time frame wrong – the film is set in 1999, and we have yet to get to “Patlabor” work mechs even knee deep into the Millennium – but this follow up to the 1988-9 straight to video series is still very relevant in its themes. Getting very good distribution back in the day through Manga Entertainment with its 1993 sequel, this Mamoru Oshii helmed work, with screenplay by Kazunori Itō, still comes with a lot of salient points decades on with the context and exposition raising many ideas. In futuristic Tokyo, the Babylon Project has been set up to reclaim land in Tokyo Bay, to overcome lack of land in the country and overcrowding, alongside the goal to turn the capital into a cosmopolis. In this world, as mentioned, it has giant bipedal robots but, even if there are some combat machines and a division of the police force, this is a reality where the “labor” is seen as the equivalent of farming and construction machines, the advancement of a bulldozer for a new age.

The film does presume you have seen the straight-to-video series before, but that never becomes an issue here, and as the Manga Entertainment release in the United Kingdom came for VHS and DVD, this was a rare case of a title where the lack of context was never going to be an issue. The film presents the world in a way anyone can quickly catch up on its set-up, in that, after establishing this context of a Japan which uses giant robots for practical use, there is the issue that they can malfunction, and that the police naturally also needed their own, and even divisions to deal with issues involving them, whether abused or out of control. Division 2, our lead team, are unfortunately the cartoonish group in their police force, and it shows their status when they strike fear into a construction worker they are trying to save from his labor going out of control. The recent spate of labor rampages, opening the film, is alarming for them especially Asuma Shinohara, the hot headed young police member, and his seniors, leading them to dig up the cause. It is Patlabor 2, the sequel, which is held the highest, as it became a far more serious political thriller, but this even as a lighter toned work has its pointed moments of relevance. Mamoru Oshii and his screenwriter Kazunori Itō here also have passages of introspection which would be seen in Oshii’s work before and especially grow in the time after Ghost in the Shell (1995) caught peoples’ attentions. Itō was not a stranger for the unconventional and the cerebral, future screenwriter for both Ghost in the Shell and Patlabor 2, as well as live action films such as one of the last of Seijun Suzuki's films, Pistol Opera (2001), an unsung and bizarre crime pastiche, to the late nineties Gamera reboots, and his name deserves to be nodded to for his talents with the narrative too.

This is also however a comedy too, which may surprise some, as until Vlad Love (2021), Oshii’s return to television anime, a large period of time in his directorial career in live action and animation, in mind to many titles of his never leaving his home land, focused more on cerebral and somber existential tones post Ghost in the Shell. The humour here from the previous stories in this franchise, following the misfits of Division 2, including female lead Noa Izumi and her beloved police mecha, does help this film greatly, especially as when the introspection does appear. It means a lot more when brought in when we can also appreciate these characters being ordinary police and even doofuses, especially in mind to the Division 2 leader Captain Kiichi Gotō, held in high regard as talented officer who ended up there for being too good, someone who turned this band of misfits into a family who fish in their off time outside and grow tomatoes on sight when not dealing with the labor rampages.

Central to its main plot, as more labors are going berserk, is the connection to new hardware software for them, its creator a mysterious man we never see a clear image of and is already dead in the first scene, having committed suicide, but we learn so much of regardless of this. He is the Harry Lime figure that Gotō has detectives from other police sections learn of, his tale emphasizing so much philosophy and existentialism Oshii and Kazunori Itō get into. Even spiritual ideas are there as explicit Old Testament references are rife throughout, including the Tower of Babylon, the building which God was said to struck down when humans dared to make a tower reach Him, re-contextualized in an existential debate here of Japan losing its consciousness as industrialization and capitalist grow progresses into the future. I dare not claim any true knowledge of Japanese culture, but even as far back as a film like Stray Dog (1949) by Akira Kurosawa, made just after Japan lost World War II, destroyed and forced to have to build back up over the fifties and sixties, that film touched on these ideas found here a long time after. Existential concerns beyond the film itself are found of the old Japan being lost as more metropolises and advancement leads to more of their consciousness being lost, something anime has covered greatly, and Oshii would get into the nineties further with even the consciousness of human beings. The sites the mystery man at the center of lived in, creator of a diabolical plant for countrywide labor rampages, turn out to be old buildings which are being demolished when the detectives reach them, emphasizing for the characters as much as the audience these grave concerns of old districts and communities disappearing without trace in the march for progression.

The reveal, full spoilers, also is uncomfortably realistic, that this is all due to software from a major business and tied to the government which has been coded with a deliberate hack to cause these rampages, which the government would happily like to deal with without hassle. Actually, and it says how more positive Oshii and Kazunori Itō especially were, or a drastically different attitude from Japanese business culture, that Patlabor could be seen as less realistic, all because of how quickly this is dealt with. No one pretends this has not been revealed, wishing to still have their boatload of cash from the deals, and deny malfunctioning hardware that could cause deaths ever came up, but that could be me merely being cynical.

There is a lighter touch to the first Patlabor film, especially as Patlabor 2 was a drastic change in tone even in terms of the character designs, but there is a lot to juggle which is a huge credit to the production. This is still an action film and a comedy, but one which has a mind to it, and even with the humour, you see the creativity Oshii had and could be neglected. The introspective scenes, including the symbolism of empty birdcages and abandoned old derelicts, are shown with incredible cinematic style through the animators of Studio Deen and Production I.G., and there are unexpected production choices here which caught me off-guard returning to this film. One of them, one of the best of the film, is the unexpected and inspired use of a fisheye lens for a comedy scene. A fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens that produces strong visual distortion intended to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image, and for obvious reasons, this would be something you had to animate, and back in this hand drawn era, it makes this an incredibly ambitious visual choice, especially as it is for a moment when a character snaps and gets into an argument with his senior officer, which makes the scene funnier.

Patlabor 2, as mentioned, is the big one of the films, the third film WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3 (2002) not connected to the Oshii films with different collaborators, but the first film does deserve considerable praise.  It has to juggle the comedy and the moments of contemplative philosophy, really pertinent ideas of Japan’s technological advances, which is an ambitious task in itself within a film that is beautifully cinematic. This is before the personality is shown in how the film is made, let alone with its idiosyncratic visual touches, including a hair-raising moment evoking Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), and action scenes with elaborate mechanical animation, including the finale involving storming a heavily guarded location. The resulting film, all beautifully put together, is exceptional, and whilst this is absolutely a case of a film where multiple figures who are important to its virtues, this in context for Mamoru Oshii is also a good film to return to bring a perspective to him. As a person who I view as an auteur who brings his own voice to the work, Patlabor is fascinating to return back to in showing his flexibility.

#235: Hantsu x Trash (2015-16)

 

Studio: Hoods Entertainment

Director: Hisashi Saito

Screenwriter: Keiichirō Ōchi

Based on the manga by Hiyoko Kobayashi

Voice Cast: Maaya Uchida as Chisato Hagiwara; Yūma Uchida as Yōhei Hamaji; Kenta Matsumoto as Nakajima; Saki Yamakita as Maki Hayami; Shizuka Itou as Manami Miyoshi; Yurika Kubo as Mai Shinozaki

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Hantsu X Trash is not really defendable. It is neither a full work, as these are three episodes (two over twelve minutes, the third over fourteen) are part of a trend of creating tie-in anime that comes with the manga, the first bundled with the 8^th volume of the manga on October 6^th 2015¹, the second bundled with the 10^th volume of the manga in June 6^th 2016², and the third and final one bundled with the 11^th volume of the manga on November 4^th 2016³. Together, they are not politically correct a sex comedy about the high school male water polo team who is more interested in the female water team, though maybe it is my cynical nature, but considering some of the far more tasteless and sexist content I have unfortunately come across, the less of two evils argument is here. It is still indefensible, as jokes include spying on the female team bathing, which is sexual harassment in real life, but somehow pales next to worse content.

It feels like a throwback, the source manga published originally in Weekly Young Magazine, a young men’s publication which published the likes of the original Akira magazine, but also in the 2010s with this published titles with names like Does a Hot Elf Live Next Door to You? (2019–2021) by Meguru Ueno, sex still something which sells as in the past and still now, only with this one feeling like it has inherited clichés that came from decades earlier. Episode One introduces Yōhei Hamaji, a poor guy doomed like many male protagonists in these sex comedies to have constant head trauma, a young man who has one clear love, his senpai Chisato Hagiwara⁴, one of the committed members of her team, even if like the other men in his team, he is also one with a fixation on breasts, as those making these shorts clearly were. Hoods Entertainment made their bread and butter on titles like this, whether explicit in content or implied. From them are the likes of The Qwaser of Stigmata (2010), infamously the animated show about breast milk powering one’s super abilities, or Mysterious Girlfriend X (2012), a truly bizarre series for me to experience in that, for all its sex comedy, it is actually a sweet romance between a guy and an unconventional introvert of a girl, which however involves her saliva having addictive qualities to it. They are an animation studio who has no qualms in the slightest to even unconventional fetishes let alone lewdness, this in comparison tame even if it does not help defend the content either.

These are part of the modern OVA movement, the straight-to-video era into the 2010s involving for more tie-in extra episodes or specials for existing shows, or tie-ins to manga we never get over in the West, rather than adaptations or unique titles we were still getting into the 2000s but have dwindled out. A lot, as here, are also entirely for the sake of animating nudity, these three episodes not even lewd ecchi, neither hentai, but devoted entirely to bared animated breasts. TV series are censored for television, they sell their physical releases for this content being uncensored, in this case only the sense this was a far obscure work which someone felt was not able to sell for a full television series. What is also is, even if of a different culture, is the equivalent of the American high school sex comedy into the 2000s, like Road Trip (2000), tame works baring their brief scenes of nudity, and with all the potential issues of sexism and their tones to consider upon actually watching them.

Episode One warns of this in the content, though as I will get to, this is following the trope that, whilst still objectifying the women, the men are punished painfully for comedic effect, which has always been a curious side to Japanese anime and manga in their sex comedy in that they constantly undercut their male characters, in work targeting men in their gazes, in being completely immature figures. Even what could be seen as a gay panic running gag undercuts itself in presentation, where Yōhei keeps imagining erotic fantasies of Hagi-chan, whilst recuperating in the nurse’s room, only to keep envisioning Nakajima, a team member looks in his late thirties with sunglasses permanently on, because of the strange tone to it. The main joke for that first episode, whilst Hagi-Chan is the woman he loves, Yōhei is someone clearly who has both an obsession with large breasts, and that due to the tone of this joke, far from homophobic it comes off like he is denying his bisexuality. If not latent desire to buff his team leader’s nipples, his super ego denying his sexual desire is a really unconventional, a mind which envisions Chisato being seduced by one of her teammates Shinozaki, someone who is very physical with her friends, and in a more complex show than the fragments we got would have been compelling, even if tasteless, for imagining the sexual id of a guy who is confused in a lot of ways about his sexuality even if there is one girl he loves dearly. That is as much trying to stretch out a sex gag which most would roll their eyes by excusing it through a layer of amateur interpretation, but that becomes the most interesting thing, even if by accident, how much of this does become a curious gag anime about the strangeness of the male libido, even if the work is not great.

This is still an anime about the male water polo team being perverts, even with episode three having them trying to spy on the female team so Yōhei learn the nipple colour of the woman he loves, words I cannot believe (or defend) recording as dialogue. This follows however clichés common in anime, including that this always leads to the men being punished as already mentioned, one going too far in his delirium seeing one girl naked he even gets a baseball bat up a painful area. It is a strange paradox of getting away with behavior in real life with these fictional characters which would not be (rightly) justifiable, more problematic by the time these episodes were being released, with explicit nudity here shown to the viewer, only to punish the male characters for their libido. The female teacher for both teams is neither helping in breaking teaching ethics too. In Episode Two, she even made a promise to let the male team touch her breasts if they won a match, three seconds only each, and has a desire for Yōhei beyond the boundaries of teacher-student relationships, only with the issue that he loves Chisato and wants to keep his virginity except for her undercutting this.

None of this has aged well as, least in the English speaking world, content like this is considered more and more taboo even if this title is from the 2010s and was an obscure title which is not commonly available. Most would rightly not want to watch this, which comes up just past the thirty minute mark only, but it is here too though, so I do not come off as a hypocrite, where I admit I did laugh. Every time it was entirely when a clear theme was up front as the joke, of how every male character here is as thick as a brick, even Yōhei, whose obsession entirely to breasts is to the point they all believe touching them is enough for an orgasm for a woman, which is comical and in an actual relationship would been the most embarrassing reality check they all could have. It is the kind of premise which, for all the content here with is clichés from previous anime and not aging well, still hits close to home as a joke at mocking the male heterosexual libido. More so, as I have seen titles which have casual edged into sexual violence and far more misogynistic content, this feels more antiquated and with this Super Ego slant to how the joke always punished the male characters, even if the plots here are not defendable and yet reward with their explicitly topless nudity, Here there is a scene of all the swim team on the floor just from touching their teacher’s breasts, or that she has beaten them all up for not following the three second rule, the exaggeration here of these male character coming off as something itself ridiculous to laugh at, that image in itself the encapsulation of what is clearly the joke but also unintentionally the theme, even a neurosis, running through this.

It is sexist? Yes, though this crude OVA accidentally nods to this paradoxical tug of war between titillation and punishment which is interesting if perverted. A story is also here if there ever was a sense of trying to tell one out of this, the romance between a sex fixated Yōhei who yet wishes to be a good person for Chisato, a romantic triangle set up in the finale episode with another girl on the water polo team with a crush on him. Not many of the cast are set up beyond this, though the premise of a sap like Yōhei trying to balance between water polo and his libido is a premise that could be good, as most could, is focused and were trying for more than clearly here. That this is not really a water polo genre story, and likely is not in the source manga, is itself disappointing because, as a genre hybrid, a sports show combined with absurd sex comedy and romance would work, or least be something really original.  

What you get here, just over thirty minutes, could have been a pilot if released separately into three parts. Its content, even if I found aspects funny, does come with my own guilt that, absolutely, and that episode two does at times look rough. It is fascinating though, as a lot of shows still had this tone of sex comedy, even the badly aged content, over the decades before into the modern day, this one fixated as much on the stupidity of its male leads as much as clearly exist to sell its titillation. I cannot help but contrast this too, back to the concern of the lesser of two evils argument, in mind to other anime I have seen which have more problematic content, where this is still not the place I wish sex comedies were in, but with far worse out there. I think of the first season of High School DxD (2012), which I once watched to cover for a cult film blog I wrote for anime rated for eighteen year olds in the British Isles, where alongside one of the female characters (at least one) being uncomfortably young looking, there was an extensive Pokemon parody within one episode with tentacles that I could have done without. I think of the shock of an obscure series like Sakura Diaries (1997) when I returned to it; for the most part a sweet natured toned sex comedy even if about cousins, it abruptly (including its ADV Films English dub) enters some horrifying misogyny and the male lead nearly considering raping his cousin, only to brush that aside for the rest of the premise. No, the gag of spying on the female water polo team bathing is not justifiable as a joke, but it is antiquated like an American Pie film inexplicably appearing in the cinemas in the 2020s, rather than just uncomfortable to sit through.

Instead this evokes Colorful (1999), a micro-series anime. Whilst the question of whether its content is defendable means revisiting it, its humour was less sex humour, vignettes about men trying to see women in their underwear, or the garments under their clothes, but the jokes entirely about how ridiculous these men were, and the punch lines making them look like egits. Whether that has aged well or not is to debate, but you look to these works which are as much the joke is a guilt reflex of the creators, and they are fascinating even if Hantsu x Trash is very conventional even in the genre. In the perfect world, these types of sex comedies would not involve this type of sexual harassment humour – where even Hood Entertainment with Mysterious Girlfriend X, with its fetish some will find off-putting, managing to have at its center a pair who really liked each other and embraced this quirk of the relationship. Yet that is the only sin of Hantsu x Trash, a slight production, one which will likely be forgotten as an actual anime production, but managing to produce far more here on paper than what these thirty plus minutes should have produced because there is stuff here of note it accidentally spells out. That, and because one wishes there was an erotic water polo sex comedy out there which was more wholesome and progressive with this tone even if still breast fixated.

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1) Hantsu x Trash Manga Bundles Original Anime DVD, written by Karen Ressler and published by Anime News Network on August 23^rd 2015.

2) Hantsu x Trash Risque Water Polo Manga Bundles 2nd Original Anime DVD, written by Karen Ressler and published by Anime New Network on April 24^th 2016.

3) Risque Water Polo Manga Hantsu x Trash Bundles 3rd Original Anime DVD, written by Rafael Antonio Pineda and published by Anime News Network on September 9th 2016.

4) Maaya Uchida and Yūma Uchida, the voice actors for these lead characters, are siblings, which is somewhat an odd casting choice as romantic leads. That is not a slight against either of them, Maaya the older sister, both prolific in their careers, just an odd choice which I hope they found funny in hindsight to what happens in the show.