#255: Alice in Cyberland (1996)

 

Studio: Vega Entertainment (Episode 1); Kyoe Sung Production (Episode 2)

Director: Kazuyoshi Yokota

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka

Based on the videogame by Glams, Inc.

Voice Cast: Yoko Asada as Alice; Kae Araki as Lena; Kikuko Inoue as Rucia; Yūko Miyamura as Juri

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Once ago we envisioned entering an isolation tank full of water to enter cyberspace, to defeat hackers masquerading as monsters, as explained here in the opening credits animation to this obscure production. Alice in Cyberland in this particular case this is a tie-in to a videogame which came at the same time. With the scenario worked on by Chiaki J. Konaka, better known for his work on Serial Experiments Lain (1998) and The Big O (1999-2003), the game was a Japanese-only adventure game from Glams, Inc., who also co-produced the anime. They have unfortunately not a prolific list of titles under their belt, and I half suspect with the tale of Alice in Cyberland, just in terms of the second of the two episodes having been M.I.A. in existence, that they took a risk at a time where many groups who had never made games jumped onto the original Sony Playstation bandwagon. With the game and anime released in 1996 together, they unfortunately burnt out, not releasing a lot more else barring a couple more games including for the Sega Saturn.

Twenty years into the future, from this anime’s release, and the titular Alice is playing virtual reality games with her female friends. Establishing a multi-media franchise, the first twenty-plus episode cannot do much but establish her, that with an estranged father, she is a stereotypical anime female lead but one with a talent for computers and dealing with hackers. This is useful in a future, for all its technological advancements, that has greater concern from hackers. Ironically it is the second episode, which was once presumed lost as we get into, which explained the context to make sense of all this, that like Serial Experiments Lain, the internet has become a huge entity where people can exist within it as virtual figures, predating the reality of advancing technology in its own exaggerated way and with the potential to be relevant still. In this case, the concern for episode one is cyber-anarchists from Eastern Europe. It is an odd choice, and it does show a cartoonish air to it, where in causing anarchy to important technology in Japan, they are focused on sabotaging school pools by hacking the disinfecting system for the water, and playing music through people’s headphones to cause violent memory erasing amnesia. The other clear influence on this is clear as a magical girl story, only with an internet theme, so there is an air of complete fantasy to this premise still, trying to make a version of this genre that is decades old into a new era of technology.

There is a virtue to this, where we can literalize cybercrimes with a data eating tentacle monster, alongside providing me with my favorite trope of surreal unearthly worlds the protagonists are sucked into. With its title this is nodding to Alice in Wonderland, the later aspect could have been embraced further, as Alice has received emails from a mysterious figure name Lucia who comes to her aid and provides her the ability to freely enter Cyberland, emphasizing this as a more cartoonish take on the subject than the metaphorical and abstract nature of Serial Experiments Lain’ symbology. As with a lot of anime, it is a premise that has a lot of promised, its take on the magical girl genre of its time, especially with the crowbarring of terms like “disinfection sword” to combine the two, but lovable as an idea. Even in a work which does have fan service, such as the female leads looking like their idealized and most attractive ideals in the online world, it also has a cool female lead as for all her goofball moments this is a very smart and computer savvy protagonist able to get the hints to snoop after cyberhackers, which is progressive in its own way back at a time when the internet was a new and exciting concept alongside virtual reality in the west and the east.

It is however a teaser, which means a lot was left off the table, particularly as in the version I was able to see. Alongside the goofier slapstick in the game cut scenes you see previewing the other part of this production, there are preview to other Glams Inc. games including for the Saturn, emphasizing this anime was always going to be an advertisement for the game. It is here that there was also the issue that the second episode, previewed too, was not readily available to see. Only really becoming available online from October 2021¹, you become aware that something went very wrong with the production of this anime for the worse, not surprising as Glams. Inc has very few releases after this period in the videogame console generation. (According to Chiaki Konaka himself, they even went bankrupt²⁾. The first episode is nicely animated, with original character designs by Daisuke Moriyama, the author of the original Chrno Crusade manga later adapted into the 2003 series from Gonzo. At first nothing is seemingly amiss with the second episode, starting with how episode 1 ends with repeated footage, and explaining a lot of the context of the world, only to reach its first original scene and everything to be clear. The production dropped in a way I have not seen barring some of the most notoriously disregarded anime I have gone out of my way to see.

Knowing how the later episode was seemingly lost to time, that likely explains why it has not gained the infamy for its animation quality. Starting with the amusingly dark opening where, at a children’s fantasy zone, a figure is deleting anything in his path and traumatizing them online, with no pink dragon or princess safe from disintegration, soon my attention was drawn to the animation quality even in terms of the faces of the leads being differently drawn. Animation faults, especially TV series where one has to get the episodes done quickly, have existed with similar issues, of less than stellar depictions of characters’ face, like they are melting off their necks, and the artistic quality visibly having to take shortcuts, which are usually not this frequent and are removed in the modern day for physical media releases. With absolutely respect for the animators on this, it is obvious that this was a) rushed and/or b) undermined by an unfortunate production disaster, neither helped that this is a promise of a story that is slight. There was a prominent change between two different studios for animation production between episodes; episode one was by Vega Entertainment, whose most prominent work is throughout the Doraemon franchise, a huge one in its homeland, but even with the second company hired for the second episode, Kyoe Sung Production has a prolific career into the decades afterwards³. It instead offers the sense that, having to help finish the second episode, no one is to blame but an unfortunate circumstance where people were forced to produce and release a final episode with this level of quality to it.  

With both written by Chiaki Konaka, the second episode still offers a fascinating premise, of artificial intelligence being able to blend in with humans, but with the danger that this one can replicate infinitely and will need to be deleted to prevent significant damage to cyberspace, even if through a potential skuzzy premise of a young boy one of the secondary female leads is smitten with. Alongside the sense of this being a dry run for Konaka to take this premise further, and that the ideas are simplified here through a monster of the week scenario, thus preventing it from getting more elaborate, the drop in animation quality is so surprising it undercuts the interesting ideas. Even if you do get a giant talking turtle, which is funny especially as it is a nonchalant and rude programmer named Bill in disguise online, few would get past however pointless the episode is by its end, and how you cannot get pass the quality drop in production to the first episode.

The one lasting legacy to Alice is Cyberland is the tantalizing realization this was a predecessor to Serial Experiments Lain itself directly. There were plans for a sequel to the video game with Chiaki Konaka² which never came to be, but alongside Serial Expeiments Lain coming in its place, the protagonists of Alice in Cyberland returned in an entirely different context. There is an Alice Mizuki, one of the main characters, also voiced by Yoko Asada who plays the original Alice, in Lain as an important character to the titular lead, alongside a Juri and Reika like the two other female leads from the older work in other roles.  It is a lovely discovery that this forgotten production, the game and the anime, managed to relive again as clearly Konaka found something he wanted to push with the premise. Serial Expeirments Lain, whilst of its era, has lasted as a relevant and startling series that has lasted, whilst Alice in Cyberland is a fascinating nineties obscurity. The production problems with episode two are tragic, but even that raises so many questions to what happened to Glams, Inc., one of the many who came at both a fascinating time in Japanese videogames and in the anime industry only to disappear so quickly afterwards. Their tale would be fascinating to learn far more of, but what we got at least was this curiosity.

 

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1) Quoted from the review of Alice in Cyberland, published originally on September 2nd 2018, from the blog Collectr's Blog and one of its later blog revision updates:

“Update October, 2021: the complete Alice in Cyberland TV broadcast showed up on YouTube, episode 2 intact. The quality is not as good as the laserdisc, but it's good enough. Now to find a translator...”

2) From the page on Alice in Cyberland 2 Seventh Protocol, from Chiaki J. Konaka's site on his career, Alice 6, written 2nd September 1999. It mentions as well that that subtitle “The 7^th Protocol” was inherited by Serial Experiments Lain, which does indeed connect the two, as it becomes “Protocol 7”, a key McGuffin to the narrative.

3) Anime News Network’s page on Alice in Cyberland, which is the encyclopedic page for the anime to refer to been two animation production studios on the project, Vega Entertainment for episode 1 and Kyoe Sung Production for episode 2.

#233: Angel Links (1999)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Yuji Yamaguchi

Screenplay: Jirō Takayama, Masaharu Amiya and Yasuko Kobayashi

Voice Cast: Ryoka Yuzuki as Meifon Li; Atsuko Tanaka as Valeria; Hikaru Midorikawa as Kousei Hida; Kazuo Hayashi as Leon; Kenji Utsumi as Duuz

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I came to Angel Links with no knowledge this series from Sunrise had never existed, that this was a work set in the same world as Outlaw Star (1998), a series with flaws but one with a huge amount of virtues that I admired, able to overcome those flaws to become something special and see why it gained a fan base in the West when it came to the Cartoon Network Toonami slot. Sadly, adapting both a one volume manga by Takehiko Itō, the original creator of Outlaw Star, and a light novel by Ibuki Hideaki, I can see now why I had never heard of Angel Links, but not wishing to just damn the production. For whatever reason, the production does not gel despite nothing being inherently amiss in the plan of how this goes on. The one immediate issue, and a huge one to its detriment, is a really simple mistake, that thirteen episodes, whilst it should be long enough, really is not in the context of a series, which you need to carefully use.

The titular Angel Links is a giant ship of a private escort and protection firm who provide free outer space defence from pirates, headed by a sixteen year old girl named Meifon Li, taking over from her late grandfather as a group with comrades. Two of them, a Dragonite (a dragon humanoid of a combat species) named Duuz, and a human woman named Valeria, made a cameo in one episode of Outlaw Star, episode 19, with no additional context for them barring being on the side of security forces against pirates, which makes this a fascinating mirror to have created. This is Meifon Li's story however, entirely hers as the centre of its main narrative thrust, and a figure vastly different from how Outlaw Star, fully an ensemble cast, nonetheless had a cocky fiery male lead, whilst Meifon Li is marketable for a different reason.

It is creepy she is explicitly sixteen as, frankly, her costume design and her silhouette is explicitly with sex appeal, her design exaggerated (and sometimes) depicted with an eroticism, alongside the fact that, including a cat-bat thing named Taffei as a pet which can turn into a sword, even her character design stands out alongside having the most plot, leaving everyone else decidedly the background side characters despite some background narratives for a couple. Meifon's past is marked from the first episode, as there is a grave in a cemetery there marking her death at seventeen whilst she is still alive, progressive a sword of Damocles over her head. The show for its first few episodes though is very lightweight and comedic, Angels Links an example of how the last episode is alien to the first in progression and tone.

It takes a lot of build for just thirteen episodes to get ahead with this plot, very episodic for the first quarter. It starts as a broad show, if with the touch that, unlike Outlaw Star, the crew of Angel Links are more inclined to obliterate space pirates into dust with their super beam cannon. It has cartoonish villains for episodes, where the rival president of another protection firm, hiring mercenaries to snuff them out, is a stereotypical evil large man with a pet pig, or one joke which was funny in episode 2 with mob bosses, one eating sundaes and the other spaghetti, where their minions are eating the same in unison on mass before an explosive argument transpires. The one figure who does carry over from these first episodes though, introduced in episode one, is Leon Lou, who becomes very important as a business man rescued by Angel Links. There is a potential romance with Meifon Li, all in spite of the obvious issue with her age and that her back-story, and its secrets, is interlink with him and become central to the proper drama.

Honestly the rinse repeat nature of these early episodes, very episodic, do reveal the huge problems with this show, that for all the animation budget still there, the bombastic opening and closing themes, and that the story of Meifon Li is meant to be eventually a sombre one where she even questions who she is, Angel Links takes too long to get anywhere. The tone of the first half going into the more serious later half has a lot to get through, [Huge Spoiler] that our female protagonist is an android, built from the real her by her grandfather who was killed, given the memories and the function as a figure with a temporary lifespan to kill Leon Lou, who is a space pirate connected to him in the past [Spoilers End]. The issue is that it is absolutely undercut by this feeling like it should have been twenty four episodes like Outlaw Star was, but even under thirteen episodes, most of the episodes of this do not feel structured to make this work, or that this even with the episodic episodes do not stand out.

And, honestly, most of the drama just being ordinary in how it was executed, saying a lot that the stand out episode from this entire episode for me was none of the drama but episode 4, LiEF〜Living Ether Flier〜, the one which feels like an Outlaw Star episode or, to give Angel Links a chance outside its shadow, one which feels like an exploration of the world itself. It follows "LIEFs", either absorbing living spaceships which are effectively sci-fi space whales, an endangered species protected and watched by tourists when they travel with their young as incredible ethereal behemoths, but are targets for poachers for dragon stones in the body, a fuel source, or in the episode itself for a presumed immortality remedy. This episode works, as a more comedic story which yet expands the world beyond the stars, with a completely unnatural form in the centre, and with space action still a central part, action set pieces which stand out against a legitimately fantastical concept that it compelling.

The episode afterwards however, The Rain upon the Stars, manages to reveal so many of its flaws, including its weight on importance on Meifon's tragedy, instantly in just the episode afterwards. Episode five introducing a female space pirate named Jesia, and leads to the male left hand man Kosei Hida and his habit of winning women over becoming a flaw he is meek enough to feel guilty about, especially as it is explicit he is smitten over his captain Meifon. Episode five pretty much has Kosei bumping into multiple ex-girlfriends when trying to appease Jesia, who is fixated on him, but the episode's twist fully exposes the problems with Angel Links in its lack of weight, in that Jesia after being introduced is killed in the same episode, which is more out of place when the killer looks like T-Hawk, a Street Fighter beat-em-up character, undercutting the emotion fully. It emphasises, back with Outlaw Star, how that earlier show had a surprising lack of characters that died in that show, even grunts, and those who did had impact. There is also the fact this tries to cram a dynamic narrative into its length with Meifon which is as equally rushed.

There is enough here to stand out - between episodes 6, trying to tackle the back-story of Angel Links itself, which is interesting, and includes the dangers of attacking with ruthlessness, and episode 7 where Meifong's secrets even unknown to herself become more prominent. There is even another interesting candidate for the best episode, another lighter hearted one involving the Outsiders, vagrant pirates without ships who formed a mercenary group underground ran by a figure named Cyrus, again another which is expanding the world and the universe in interesting ways. By its ending however, it is fully the melodrama of Meifong's life, but as much as it has enough drama to work with, it does not have the time to stand out. [Major Spoiler] None of the existentialism that Melfina in Outlaw Star, a bio-android having to accept her fate, is here, and ending your villain by him abruptly falling into his own trap on purpose seems abrupt as it is ridiculous, alongside an unexpected escalation involving a virus he will unleash. [Spoilers End] It feels as well, to continue as a work without the cruel weight of the previous title, a science fiction story which does not have a lot which really stood out. Those episodes which did are outnumbered by those once the drama of the serious story fully begins which feel squandered, whilst those previous humorous stories fleshed out the world. Meifong's tale, despite taken centre stage, ultimately could be told in another science fiction setting and does not stand out.

Angel Links was excessively long to finish. It is strange how this production, a Sunrise developed series which still has a considerable amount of budget, can be reduced to this review which took less time to complete than the protracted time between episodes, but it was entirely that this struggled to actually reveal good moments, most of it did not win me over. This is entirely subjective, knowing the hard work which is put in any of these productions,  but Angel Links does feel average, and for reasons which are obvious for my personal tastes but with plenty that could have been successful with structural changes.

#225: Ayakashi - Samurai Horror Tales (2006)

 

Studio: Toei Animation

Directors: Hidehiko Kadota and Kouzou Nagayama (Tenshu Monogatari); Tetsuo Imazawa (Yotsuya Kaidan); Kenji Nakamura (Bakeneko)

Screenplays: Yuuji Sakamoto (Tenshu Monogatari); Chiaki J. Konaka (Yotsuya Kaidan); Michiko Yokote (Bakeneko)

Tenshu Monogatari adapted from the drama by Kyōka Izumi; Yotsuya Kaidan adapted from the play by Nanboku Tsuruya IV

Voice Actors:

a) Tenshu Monogatari

Hikaru Midorikawa / Kirby Morrow as Zushonosuke Himekawa; Houko Kuwashima / Willow Johnson as Tomi Hime;  Saeko Chiba / Tracey Power as Oshizu;  Yui Kano / Anna Cummer as Ominaeshi; Kappei Yamaguchi / Alec Willows as Kaikaimaru; Masaya Onosaka / Samuel Vincent as Kikimaru

Yotsuya Kaidan

Hiroaki Hirata / Brian Dobson as Iemon Tamiya; Mami Koyama / Nicole Oliver as Oiwa Tamiya;  Yūko Nagashima / Rebecca Shoichet as Osode Yotsuya; Keiichi Sonobe / Samuel Vincent as Gonbei Naosuke; Ryō Hirohashi / Lalainia Lindbjerg as Oume Ito; Wataru Takagi / Michael Adamthwaite as Yomoshichi Sato

Bake Neko

Takahiro Sakurai / Andrew Francis as Kusuriuri the Medicine Seller; Yukana / Kelly Sheridan as Kayo;  Tetsu Inada / Trevor Devall as Odajima; Chikao Ohtsuka / Scott McNeil as Clan Lord Yoshiyuki; Naoki Tatsuta / Paul Dobson as Lord Yoshikuni; Seiji Sasaki / John Novak as Lord Yoshiaki; Yōko Sōmi / Alison Matthews as Lady Mizue; Kozue Kamada / Tabitha St. Germain as Lady Mao; Yuu Shimaka / Ken Kramer as Katsuyama; Eiji Takemoto / Andrew Kavadas as Sasaoka; Yurika Hino / Tabitha St. Germain as Miss Sato; Kiyonobu Suzuki / Trevor Devall as Yahei

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Commissioned for Fuji TV's Noitamina block, highly regarded for its artistically and narratively different anime shows - where Masaaki Yuasa's The Tatami Galaxy (2010) or Princess Jellyfish (2010) came from - Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales befits the slot early in its existence, as it is three different horror tales between three to four episodes, of period set folktales and yōkai I am fascinated by. Two of the three are adapting classic authors for their tales too, adding to this an air of artistry, and even when the Noitamina started over the decades, from their 2005 inception to step away from a stereotypical young male target audience, to have more action and pulpier productions, this was not a bad thing either. This has led to shows like Samurai Flamenco (2013-14), and  with well regarded productions like The Promised Neverland (2019-2020) getting popular, the block can still claim respect for producing some of the best and most interesting in animated television series. My interest in Samurai Horror Tales beyond just horror anime would have been cemented by its connection to Mononoke (2007), another Noitamina block member and one of the most unique looking series of any genre, having been a spin-off from of the Ayakashi stories itself not based on a classic tale.

The three tales are very straightforward in what they are about, each taking very different directions to how to tell them however. Depending on how you watch this, the Discotek Blu Ray release, released on October 29th 2019¹, oddly has it that you can watch the second story's episodes, for Tenshu Monogatari, first before the others, but the structure was set up for broadcast as Yotsuya Kaidan (four episodes), Tenshu Monogatari (four episodes), and Bakeneko (three episodes). Going by how I had watched this, Tenshu Monogatari as the first watched is a supernatural melodrama, adapted from a drama by Kyōka Izumi. Izumi was a prolific novelist, dramatist and writer, who I am aware of for Demon Pond. It is a play even one of my favourite filmmakers Takashi Miike, in one of his many idiosyncratic leaps into any type of filmmaking he has wanted to try, tried his hand at filming, in a very good 2005 theatrical production he recorded, based on a Keishi Nagatsuka re-adaptation of the source material. It is a work too also adapted to cinema by Masahiro Shinoda in 1979.

In Tenshu Monogatari, a falconer named Zushonosuke, thanks to his evil feudal lord, has to retrieve a prized falcon only to find a mansion of forgotten gods, housing all women who as immortal beings, figures who succumb to hunger and consume the life force of any mortals who wander there. One, Tomi Hime, starts to fall for him, which has the issue that the more she is drawn to humanity, that will mean she loses her immortality, which is sadly also infectious to everyone else there in the mansion. The evil lord eventually catches wind of this, which leads to him sending his soldiers to take the mansion by the final episode, a tragedy of figures doomed to love each other despite them being different entities, or that at home Zushonosuke has a fiancée named Oshizu who is naturally heartbroken by all of this, becoming involved. This is the most conventional of the three narratives, but as a bittersweet story, that in itself is a curveball. It still has a ghoulish edge, and there is the fact that there are two monsters as a comedy duo and Greek chorus, two thieves who only help Zushonosuke out to steal from the mansion if they can. 

All the stories have their own distinct looks. Also of note is that, throughout the series, they have their own opening credits, with their own visual motifs and designs, even if they all have the same opening theme song. It is probably the least expected in such a context, HEAT ISLAND by Rhymester, a hip hop song with backing by a koto, a traditional Japanese string instrument, which is as strange as that songs but is yet an inspired choice, befitting a production which is idiosyncratic. It befits how, whilst Tenshu Monogatari is a very emotional drama at its heart, even the traditional ghost story, Yotsuya Kaidan, is not conventionally told at all, all the narratives here standing out with their idiosyncrasies. All the stories have their own authors, Tenshu Monogatari's Yuuji Sakamoto, who only has that one credit in their career strangely, Michiko Yokote for Bakeneko someone we will get to for that story later in the review, and a figure I know very well for Yotsuya Kaidan, Chiaki J. Konaka.

Konaka, someone I admired for his work, sadly has to be taken now by me as a fan with a pinch of salt in recent years. A divisive screenwriter for how obtuse he could be, from Serial Experiments Lain (1998) to one of the strangest narrative arches of Mononoke itself, I admire how esoteric and experimental his work is, even when, such as a live action film like Evil Dead Trap 2 (1992), figuring out what is transpiring and in what reality can be lost entirely even on multiple viewings. For a live reading of a script for Digimon Tamers, a follow up to the show that many of us (including myself) saw episodes of as a kid, he had a villain, which took on the form of "Political Correctness," that threatens the real and digital worlds, and had a special attack called "Cancel Culture"¹. Thankfully nothing from this raised concerns of far greater and more problematic ideas he has had, but at a time where his own personal blog expressed questioning views on COVID-19's reporting in worldwide news², sadly it did paint a picture for me of someone undermining himself when, if brutal to say, his work in screenwriting usually, even if frustrated viewers, was a lot more nuanced even with some of his hardest the grasp scripts in anime storytelling. When watching Yotsuya Kaidan even this came up here, as this is a really meta and clever retelling of the titular tale, which feels alien in comparison, originally written as a kabuki play by Tsuruya Nanboku IV, as Tōkaidō Yotsiya Kaidan, which becomes a story in itself as this version tells.

Nanboku himself is the narrator, and the play itself, as much as a new retelling here, is the subject. The story itself is about a woman Oiwa who, when her husband, Iemon Tamiya, is complicit in a poison she is given, which disfigures half of her face, and the disposal of her body after her death, taking revenge on him from the grave Iemon Tamiya is already established as a unscrupulous rōnin, who even killed Oiwa's father, pretending bandits had done so, to win her hand in marraige, before another woman wished him for her own and concocted the plan to disfigure and disgrace her. This is a morbid melodrama, where there is also her sister-in-law, lied to in a deceit by another man who kills her suitor and pretends bandits also did it, and the story takes on additional angst and wrought drama with its betrayals, seductions and heartbreaks. Konaka's take goes further in how the finale becomes Kaidan's lasting legacy, Tsuruya Nanboku IV revealed to have passed his mortal form and existing in an afterlife on the Earth, considering his story and how it has lasted in Japanese popular culture, even developing a curse around the plan where people adapting it have been maimed or even killed. Were it not for a certain tale coming afterwards which is clearly the gem of this entire anthology, I would hold this as a perfect piece in itself worth seeing. All three are, and Yotsuya Kaidan does feel like a perfect retelling of folklore in dissecting the text, something also for me to show Chiaki J. Konaka as a talented writer even if the real man stumbles in some bad ideas too in his thought process.

However it was Bakeneko which became a spin-off show in itself own right, and alongside that spin-off Mononoke, no anime looks and feels tonally like this these stories about a mysterious "Medicine Seller" at all. Bakeneko, alongside its distinct art style and character designs by Takashi Hashimoto, looks like it was illustrated on glossy waxed paper, done with digital animation as I aware of with Mononoke, but absolutely distinct in its composition. It is a horror story which yet uses bright colours, has a precise use of environment design (patterns, illustrations, even setting out locations), and where, clearly indebted to art styles from Japanese history, such as Japanese woodblock prints, it brings it into the modern era as a digitally animated production in movement. Even in mind that the series got Yoshitaka Amano to do the original character designs for Yotsuya Kaidan, and have his illustrations on the opening credits for that tale, one of the most iconic designers in anime and light novels who an acclaimed artist outside of the mediums, Bakeneko is an artistic masterpiece just in appearance, even in mind that this is a prototype to what became Mononoke the series.

It is also, with fair warning, a bleaker narrative than Mononoke could get, bearing in mind that the later series tackled heavy subjects, its first arch surrounding the ghosts of aborted foetuses of brothel workers. It says a lot in context however that Bakeneko manages to have the bleakest narrative of this world, introducing us here to the Medicine Seller, a figure here and in the later series whose job is exorcise demons, a magic sword on his person (alongside other tools) which can only be open when three criteria explaining the entity's existence come to light. A bride is killed on her wedding day in a proud samurai clan, and whilst suspicion comes on him, the Medicine Seller is quickly the only person able to deal with the problem, the Bekeneko. This is a "goblin cat", cats of supernatural form in Japanese mythology which are not necessarily as extreme as this, a monster claiming vengeance, but symbolically meaningful here with the context. This story will be uncomfortable for some, so fair warning is recommended, as this is the case as was in Mononoke that, as the truth and cause of the demon is revealed, it involves showing up the wrongs of human beings, alongside this explicitly dealing with how people lie, forget details or view it in a different perspective. Michiko Yokote was the screenwriter for this story, and whilst multiple writers all contributed good work to Mononoke, Chiaki J. Konaka, this is a great time, with the virtues she shows here, to praise Yokote. She is not someone I have frequently encountered, but I am aware of her, whilst not the only screenwriting contributor, for series composition, the person putting everything narratively together, for Princess Tutu (2002-3), an exceptional and unique fantasy tale about around ballet and fairy tales that, again with Konaka getting briefly involved, was a meta-text on fairy tales which was also a beautiful gem. Here, dealing with an incredibly umcomfortable subject exceptionally at the heart of this tale, the only not adapted from another source, I see another example of her talent.

And that is true as a warning for anyone interest. [Major Spoiler Warning] The cause of the bekeneko here is that the samurai patriarch kidnapped a woman, kept her in a cage as a sexual object, a peasant girl who was raped, beaten and left to starve to death, which is as grim a narrative reveal, too real for some, to consider. [Major Spoiler Warning]. All three tales to their virtue, but especially Bekeneko, show why I came to love these type of horror anime about folklore and figures like the Medicine Seller, stepping in to resolve supernatural entities, as they become morality tales and dramas with one-off characters, examinations of human beings which the Bekeneko pulls no punches in. Among them, for its artistic innovations, and how impactful the narrative in its centre is, clearly Bakeneko is the masterpiece of the entire set, though it is to the credit of the three tales altogether that they all succeed.

 

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1) Discotek Media's announcement of Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, dated on Facebook on August 13th 2019.

2) Digimon Tamers Writer Chiaki J. Konaka Responds to Overseas Backlash Over 20th Anniversary Stage Play, written by Kim Morrissy for Anime News Network, dated August 9th 2021.

#214: Azumanga Daioh (2002)

 

Director: Hiroshi Nishikiori

Screenplay: Ichiro Okouchi

Based on the manga by Kiyohiko Azuma

Voice Actors: Chieko Higuchi as Tomo Takino; Houko Kuwashima as Kagura; Rie Tanaka as Koyomi "Yomi" Mizuhara; Tomoko Kaneda as Chiyo Mihama; Yuki Matsuoka as Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga; Yuu Asakawa as Sakaki; Akiko Hiramatsu as Yukari Tanizaki; Aya Hisakawa as Minamo "Nyamo" Kurosawa; Kōji Ishii as Kimura; Norio Wakamoto as Chiyochichi; Sakura Nogawa as Kaorin

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Azumanga Daioh has been a long time to return to for me, fond of this series originally, but returning to this now as an adult. Azumanga's source material, a manga by Kiyohiko Azuma, has been published in the West, and was originally for Dengeki Daioh, a manga for teen males, thus undercutting any preconceptions of a target audience. Some sex jokes aside, and the idea the all-female leads are "cute" for the target audience, this is incongruous to the "moe" genre which would emphasise cute school girls doing things. In contrast, this series is a much more whimsical work for the better. The best way to start with Azumanga Daioh is actually to look at the adaptations before. Azumanga was gauged with a tiny little short, an ONA very early in that medium, called Azumanga Web Daioh (2000), clearly a taster to see if there was an audience for this. Baring some very dated school corridors made in early polygons for the medium, Web Daioh is fascinating both in how it is far less common than the other tiny short work. Alongside all three having different looks, it is just a snapshot of what would be entailed, but with a plotline which is not referred to in a form in any of the full television series. Namely, that the main have been given a film camera to record what will be a time capsule, in a short which, if anything, does not have as much of the humour as would come later.

Far more striking is Azumanga Daioh: The Very Short Movie (2001), a short originally made for theatrical screenings¹, which ADV Film's included in the last of their DVD releases when anime, in the early to mid 2000s used to be split up per episodes in sets over multiple DVDs. It is a strange work to experience in how, whilst the series for me has a memorable, this is J.C. Staff as a studio (before they worked on the series) flexed in a huge level of quality animation for what was a taster. Characters look thinner than they would be in the series, with more dark highlights on their designs, and whilst a strange choice of words to use, this feels even atmospheric for what is a high school comedy about a troupe of female students which, whilst capable of being very surreal, is also matter-of-fact and gentle in its pace. It is fascinating to see this short, as with any television series of note, in terms of seeing its theatrical reinterpretation even if this came beforehand (see Escaflowne from its 1996 television series to the 2000 theatrical reinterpretation). It is also good the short was made available, as whilst this replicates jokes that would be expanded with the series, this has one imaginative reinterpretation of one later used, exclusive to this and flexing the animation budget, where Ayumu "Osaka" Kasuga imagines her classmate Chiyo Mihama, a child prodigy who is a ten year old moved up into high school, searching for her pigtails which ran off on a journey where carrots grow as giant tress in mysterious lands.

The animated series proper, produced by J.C. Staff and aired from the April 8, 2002 until the week of September 30, 2002 - on TV Tokyo, TV Aichi, TV Osaka, and AT-X - was also different from how most in the West would have experienced it, as it was originally five minutes segments shown every weekday, than repeated as a 25 minute compilation that week, leading to a 26 episode collection most of us know this as now. Azumanga Daioh in whatever form is a series of vignettes tied by its cast, spending the three years in a high school for the five (and quickly six) main female students in one class with a few side characters. Chiyo, as mentioned, starts as a ten year old girl so smart who was moved into high school past a few grades. She is the closest character to the "moe" archetype, that jokes include her being adorable as a child in this adult environment, a later episode running with how sticking her in a penguin costume even causes the hardest of hearts in their school (even their boorish homeroom teacher Yukari) to melt seeing her. This is also a show, able to get away with this in animation, which finds humour in her being knocked about in violent slapstick. Sakaki is the quiet and thoughtful one, the most adult of the group in how, to her classmates, she is the elegant and cool figure, beauty and great at sports, taller than everyone else, but is obsessed with animals and cute things with a lot of eccentricities, including imagining back stories to plush toys she owns. This includes the repeated issue, with her mother having allergies, she cannot have pets of her own and, with the repeated joke about this, cats or at least one particular grey one on her way to school have a tendency to bite her.

Tomo is the hyperactive tomboy with very impulsive behaviour and lack of whit, including learning that reindeer do exist, whilst Koyomi "Yomi" Mizuhara, who comes off as the most generic of the initial five until later on, is there as the despondent straight man putting up with Tomo, clearly loving each other in their love-hate relationship even if they do bicker a lot. Introduced properly in episode ten, when she is transferred to their class, Kagura is the athletic sports figure, stuck with the "bone heads" group with Tomo due to struggling with her grades, but is more sensible and just enthusiastic with what she does. The other member of the boneheads' trio is Osaka, who is the one more likely to be a meme from this entire franchise. She as well emphasises that, whilst this became a show which translates to the West well, was very much a work meant for a Japanese audience. Osaka, nicknamed as such for coming from that city, is the ultimate extreme of someone on an entirely different wavelength or picking up signals from a different dimensions, baring one running joke that works more for those who understand Japanese, even if they translated, of her being God-like with puns and jokes about kanji in the Japanese language which can look like other words.

There are only a couple of additional characters. Kaori deserves to be mentioned as the classmate whose crush on Sakaki. Baring some mania in her love for, Kaori is blatantly with a gay crush for her female classmate which, barring the joke being her bad luck trying to enjoy the experiences, has actually grown in weight as a sweet side character. Hers is also a character who really emphasises the cultural distinctions of this comedy; her type of character comes from a perspective as far back as the 1910s, connected to the cultural phenomena of girls having crushes on other girls in schools in Japan known as "Class S"^2/3. A 1919 novel Yaneura no Nishojo by Yoshiya Nobuko connected to this is a romantic work about a lesbian romance between women in an all-girls school which, alongside a happy ending, has been argued to be the cultural spring from which the yuri genre of all-female romance in anime and manga took inspiration from⁴, Kaori even if a caricature finding herself part of this rich heritage in her own way. 

There are the two female teachers, who are important inclusions, their homeroom teacher Yukari, a good English teacher (in the original Japanese dub) when she is focused, but a tempestuous and impulsive figure of rowdiness, laziness and hangovers, contrasted by her high school friend and straight laced fellow teacher Minamo "Nyamo" Kurosawa, the P.E. teacher who contrasts her as another straight-man. There are very few male characters, barring Chiyo's dog Mr. Tadakichi and Chiyo-Father, the personification of Chiyo's father as imagined by Sakaki and Osaki who is a omnipresent orange cat humanoid which, in the Japanese is voiced Norio Wakamoto, a voice actor who through that I grew up with the Anime World Order podcast became a cult figure for a certain audience for his recognisable voice, especially as Chiyo-Father is as strange as he is funny to witness even for this show. Sadly, this also includes Kimura, who is sadly going to be the one aspect which undermines this entire series and may be off-putting for him, because his entire joke is that Kimura is a classical Japanese language teacher who lusts after schoolgirls. I half suspect he is meant to be a parody of this idea of a perverted male teacher, as the female cast (and the female teachers) are skeeved out by him, but he has not aged at all because, rightly, the idea of a male teacher creeping on high school/secondary school students is unacceptable in real life.

Daioh has some adult jokes, but barring those about breasts between the female students, usually for Sakaki to end up blushing, as the most "adult" of the troupe in figure, most of the jokes are cleverer and rarely sex related, one of the few explicit actually one of the best because you do not hear the conversation at all, when at the summer home Nyamo, drunk, accidentally teaches the teenagers the birds and the bees when commenting on her own sex life with a montage of flowers and other quant items cut too, and a lot of stern proud nods from everyone (barring a confused Chiyo) to her horror. Kimura himself is not subtle. I admit a guilty laugh or too finding a few jokes funny, including when his wife is introduced and, seen as a sweet (if clumsy) woman that raises questions from the cast of how on Earth she is married to him, but he unfortunately is the albatross that you have to get over for this series, especially when everything else is perfect as it is.

Because beyond this, I think Azumanga Daioh has aged like fine wine. Structured around the three years of starting in their first year to graduation, with the repetition of sports day, the cultural festival and summer, where everyone goes to Chiyo's summer home, Daioh has a lot of creativity surrounding its simple structure of five minute vignettes. The source material was a "4-koma" manga which used four panels per page, so the adaptation had the ability to improvise around the source in creative ways. It is incredibly whimsical, eventually fleshing every character out from archetypes and even devoting episodes to certain figures, like Chiyo or Sakaki. It even does so unofficially, Yomi even technically getting an episode, starting off as seemingly the weakest character only to emphasise her as the most ordinary of the group as a positive, a person who loves food but is conscious of her weight, clearly likes Tomo (as vice-versa) despite their antagonism, and unfortunately getting ill the day before she is meant to go with the group to a theme park.

The archetypes everyone begins as are funny enough, but everyone grows in titbits of them we learn, even Chiyo despite being the broadest character of the lot you can gleefully knock flying in the air as a slapstick gag. Contrast this with a later show, I watched back in the day as an ADV Films release, like Pani Poni Dash! (2005), which was a far more over-the-top and absurd, contrasting even Daioh's strangest moments, including its own cat that exists in a vending machine who claims is God, with a far more broader and frankly weirder cast of characters who were not deliberately fleshed out as people. Azumanga Daioh when it wants to be weird gets very weird, but contrasts with what is called the "slice of life" genre, of ordinary life depicted in animation, as equally. There is an entire episode, with too many good ones to choose from in their compiled version, about weird New Year's Day dreams, where Chiyo-Father is introduced, which stands out, as does Osaka's belief Chiyo's pigtails are sentient. There is also however one set in spring, where there is cherry blossom on the trees, which is entirely a calm character building piece, where Nyamo (being at the stage of wondering if she should marry) and Yukari bond, meeting a well-off friend from their school days, contrasted by clearly seeing Tomo and Yomi like each other when Tomo climbs through Yomi's bedroom window to hang out and tease each other.

Knowledge of the show's original five minute form makes its structure more admirable, in how running jokes are allowed to grow and cultivate perfectly throughout even for an episodic level. One of the best is the Yukari-mobile, that Yukari is not only a terrible drive but one, when originally hinted at early in the series, causes Chiyo to suffer permanent PTSD after the first summer house, and if eventually being paid off onscreen after so much build up off-screen. Sakaki's journey with cats, in contrast, provides a sweet conclusion after, during a school trip to Okinawa, they encounter a wild iriomote kitten.

The presentation is Daioh's biggest virtue. The show will pace jokes and even extend them to the point they become funnier in a proto-anti-humour. For parts, this even feels like a proto-version of decades-later series like gdgd Fairies (2011-13) which were entirely based around female voice actresses, usually with low budgets, in character having conversations and sometimes breaking out of them. The opening credits alone are magical - a prelude to events through the series whilst being visually dynamic, with a lovely and surreal song by Oranges & Lemons about magical cake to set the tone perfectly. The music by Masaki Kurihara throughout is as vibrant and playful for a show that can juggle sweetness with silliness. Sadly, their career is significantly short, which is sad barring the delightful strangeness that, among their tiny CV for anime music, it includes California Crisis: Gun Salvo (1986), a truly idiosyncratic OVA title from when money was plentiful for one-offs.

Azumanga Daioh is a series worth discover, even if nostalgia exists for the series. Barring the one unfortunate character in Kimura, I think the series is a success. It was released again after ADV Film's first DVD run with the 2016 Sentai Filmworks compilation in the United States, but sadly not in Britain, a shame as it is a delight to experience.

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1) The short, according to the Anime News Network entry for the short film, was intended to play in theatres alongside Slayers Premium (2001) and Di Gi Charat: A Trip to the Planet (2001) as a opener for Sakura Wars: The Movie (2001), as distinct a marathon of animated work as you could get.

2) Don’t Throw Class S Out Entirely by Zeria, published on November 20th 2017 for Floating Bliss.

3) Women-Loving Women in Modern Japan by Erin Subramian, taken from Yuricon.com among its older essays.

4) Yuri Novel: Yaneura no Nishojo, written conversation between Erica Friedman and Hafl published May 9th 2010 for Okazu.yuricon.com

#193: Akikan! (2009)

 

Director: Yuji Himaki

Screenplay: Hideaki Koyasu

Based on a light novel by Riku Ranjō and Hiro Suzuhira

Voice Cast: Jun Fukuyama as Kakeru Daichi; Sayaka Narita as Melon; Aiko Ōkubo as Yurika Kochikaze; Aki Toyosaki as Najimi Tenkūji; Aoi Yūki as Budoko; Mamiko Noto as Yell; Megumi Nakajima as Miku; Megumi Toyoguchi as Airin Kizaki; Nobuhiko Okamoto as Gorō Amaji; Ryotaro Okiayu as Hidehiko Otoyo; Ryou Hirohashi as Misaki Miyashita

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

If you want to drink me, tell me beforehand, idiot.

When I initially came to Akikan, it was under the auspices of it being one of the weirdest anime premises in existence, that of anthropomorphic cans turning into women. This is not the only time then or before of objects being humanised, and whilst in an occasional while it can be gender reversed, like Miracle Train - Ōedo-sen e Yōkoso (2009) that can even include train stations as depicted as cute guys, usually this is done with cute girls and women. Be they firearms, planes, even Sega games consoles. Akikan is definitely weird, though the initial concerns were both sexualising women as literal objects, here owned by those who first bring them to life (of any gender) by finding the right can and drinking from it, and the idea of anyone wanting to have sex with a Pepsi can in the first place.

The bigger issue, and not what I was expecting, was how bad Akikan turned out to be. Still a show, in spite of content that did actually offend me, and content which was just dumb, that I could get some pleasures from, but certainly a deeply misguided production which also felt rushed and had no idea what it wanted to do. That pleasure is honed from years, including within the time I even started writing amateur reviews, of willingly suffering through the strangest of titles as I can appreciate the truly great, which is a significantly different mindset to come to the actual show with than for most readers. The part never brought up in all the weirdest anime lists Akikan gets onto is just how bad some of the ideas turned out.

Here, the protagonist is Kakeru Daichi, who finds an Akikan he will dub Melon, a melon soda that inexplicably turns into a young woman his age when he drinks from it. In this world, what the set-up is presumed to be is a secret group, part of the Department of Economy, who are staging battles between Akikan across the city, those originally aluminium and those of steel, for a very violent form of product research as these magical women have powers. None of the Akikan in the anime are any other gender than women, though the owners can vary, as Kakeru's childhood best friend Najimi accidentally gains one, during a night where her ability to get drunk just on carbonated drinks leads to a sports drink becoming the severe and tough Yell, whilst a junior high school girl named Misaki acquired Budoko, a bratty grape juice based Akikan whose inability to beat Melon is not going to stop her sling shooting exploding grapes at her. None of this, premise wise, is actually bad. It is deeply silly, with the added factor of a lot of cultural idiosyncrasies which would make this a more curious take, that Japanese vending machines and their contents can be very different from other countries, meaning that, if this went any direction, Akikan based on canned coffee could exist and the original light novels has one based on a can of sweet red bean soup. No idea is stupid if the execution is done well.  Akikan tragically does not try.

I am trying to avoid everything, from episode one, that immediately made me realise this show was going to get painful at times, though in truth after the initial few episodes it does settle down or a tolerance came to be that helped me adapt to this production. Dramatically, this review will work better if all the awful content is left to hit the viewer as a warning by the ending, whilst instead I will start here with how, in spite of itself, Akikan is definitely weird. At first, you did not expect this to suddenly have very bleakly existential angst, from the first episode, from a young woman formally a melon soda can. Having to sustain her life-force from drinking other melon soda, which is a potential nightmare if the brand was discontinued, and even having to take cold baths than hot ones, the first days with Kakeru, when he is not one of the worst and scummiest male protagonists to put with as a true sex pest, are filled with the angst of a life of a metal drinks can usually thrown out into recycling or left to rust in waste, uncared for beyond a product. This is really twisted existentialism the premise probably did not realise, all when a lot of it is really the magical girl genre if everyone owned a magical girl, able to be turned back into a can if a tab eye ring is pulled, and with a lot of fetish in its apparently wholesome veneer blatantly there, such as the transformation back into human shape drinking from the can, effectively kissing.

Like an exploding can shaken up, it is not possible to hide from Akikan's many issues, which I probably had a higher tolerance to, but Akikan itself also meanders so much. It has very conventional characters and also a lot of additional weirdness. Something truly weird is felt when you realise the back-story between Kakeru and Najimi, who has her own crush on him, involves Kakeru having protected her in their youth from a kidnapping where he got the gun and killed the criminals dead in the classroom this transpired within, something brushed over in the show's bright tone without realising how tonally out of place that is. Some of the weird in contrast is admittedly funny, the male friend who literally becomes invisible to everyone when no one talks to him, or Yurika, who until the OVA bonus did her a disservice was arguably the best character here. Openly with a huge crush on Najimi, willingly to protect her from the sex pest protagonist by throwing razor sharp tarot cards from him and, born on Halloween, literally a witch who, gets something good in the show which her riding on an actual broom on her birthday.

Even she though, in her introduction, has a weird joke for one scene of trying to sustain herself on vitamin supplements out of curiosity rather than food, or literally distracting someone with her large bust during a baseball game. Then there are moments like how Goro the invisible friend, in the witch sequence previously mentioned, is inexplicably woken up from the bed shared with his sisters in dog hat bed clothes that even baffled me. Akikan, if it was not for all the many sins it commits, would be deliciously erratic and bizarre to experience at times. Eventually even the concept of aluminium and steel Akikan fighting each other is jettisoned, as everyone merely accepts each other existing, and no other Akikan barring one in the two final episodes are introduced.

You have a lot of melodrama and sex comedy, with the added and additionally jarring tonal shift for a major plot that, when Kakeru skips out on a date with Najimi, Yell takes it onto herself to nearly disembowel him, which is the kind of sequence I would have expected from the notorious School Days (2007) or a bad ending of a Japanese visual novel instead. This entire incident is skipped over - which is not surprising, what between Najimi herself having a fixation on a "waste monster" that will get her for not hording, and hair that is literally an antenna, even Yell behaving like a cat if a shiny thing is dangled in front of her, these characters do not act conventionally in the slightest even as caricatures. It is actually a surprise, barring a joke or two, the swimsuit episode, set in an indoor swimming pool, is actually tamer than what comes before. Well, barring the moment a certain character, whose joke is to be a perverted male character in a small sparkly thong, tries to get intimate with Goro, but that character is to still be introduced later here, instead here evidence that if this had been a more sedate and weird show, I would have been a lot kinder to it.

There is even a good episode, or at least for me a breath of fresh air. Episode 10 is actually a good episode, entirely about nothing. Melon with the perils of getting the laundry done with the weather being erratic, between bathing in an ice bath with melon soda drinks; Budoko with cats attacking her hair in her sleep; and finally Yell being distracted by a dragonfly during house cleaning. Many people would not like this episode, but it was such a surprise to have an episode, contrary to others, where there were no dumb jokes, no tasteless sex humour, none of the problematic side characters eventually to introduce in the review, and at the third to last episode not making much of an issue about how little has actually transpired throughout the show. So much so the introduction of an actual antagonist is absolutely rushed. The final two are about a figure created for the anime, a mixed juice Akikan who is absorbing others as a super villainess, replicating her victims as shadow clones in two episodes that are just average. Living with the show as much as I did meant, even Akikan for all it does wrong left some emotional investment, so these two episodes did have something even if the show goes to the obvious conclusion, the power of wishing invoked and inexplicably tying in the cats you find throughout the show into a back-story.

That goes without saying Akikan was also a brutal viewing experience, in that for a late 2000s show, it was amazing how much inappropriate content and bad ideas it had to. After three-quarters of the review biting my tongue, this is where I also confess the countless times, an incredibly amount, I was also cringing throughout. Kakeru, our lead, is immediately a problem as, whilst he tones down at times, he is both one of the worst of the generic male leads of an anime I could have encountered, entirely because he is just an id who says the most inappropriate things. When your lead, meeting Budoko, a young girl Akikan, for the first time asks whether she wants to date him, saying that he will wait until she is grown up to take her virginity, it is, yes, legitimately gross even as a gag and not expected. That is not even taking into consideration a figure more inappropriate, the head of the shady Department of Economy with his female assistant called Hidehiko. Hidehiko is, to be blunt, a walking gag of a predatory gay man who lusts after young men, first introduced with a young man fleeing his office with his clothes in his arms, which would have not aged even in 2009, and upon immediately meeting was an alarm bell of how bad Akikan could get. Much of the worst of Akikan comes in knowing, with no nudity within it, it is a sex comedy when the writers thought jokes about a man trying to molest teenage boys was good, offensive in multiple ways at once. And this is neither just being politically correct or social justice warrioring, but that this is also done with complete tone deafness, nor even getting to the point of the entire premise, which is barely used. Most of this would have been average harem fantasy comedy, with a very weird premise, for the moments which are truly strange is a lot of the premise never being used because the writer was focused on jokes really off-colour and wasting time.

Particularly as, released as a separate bonus, the straight-to-video hot springs episode is a cursed item. Nothing happens - it is a hot springs episode post-series which is an excuse for a sex comedy - but how it is done, in mind there is no nudity or sex, it is a twenty plus minute barrage to suffer through. Immediately you have the two youngest girls among the group, sexualised, which is gross and would edge the border to New Zealand banning this OVA, as they have done so for other anime in this area¹. Nothing within this, even in terms of the sex humour, is inherently problematic either barring that example, but again you witness how execution can be misjudged. That a strategically placed Tengu mask, with a long nose, is phallic; that there is body sushi for no reason, or that Kakeru is a perv. What happens is a barrage of bad and tasteless jokes, a lot of material which is just thrown out without though, like a joke on murder mysteries at hot spars, which, condensed into this bonus where there are not restrictions, is arguably even worse than the whole series. There is more problematic humour with Hidehiko, as a predatory gay male character, at the end, making up the foul cherry on the top, and even predatory lesbianism as a joke, for the unfortunate covering of all bases and ruining Yurika, throwing a fun over-the-top character under the bus. By the point the body sushi scene involves cats happens, that was the point, whilst you do not see anything, the OVA did slip into a rare tier for me, that of something we could have lived without the existence of from a viewer known for being able to find virtue even in the main series. When only one scene, of seeing Najimi herding cats on mass in a one scene joke, the only thing within this of interest, the OVA might be one of the worst things I have actually sat through.

Akikan was a mess to experience. Completely undefendable, and frankly not recommended unless you are willing to sit through something which is not going to be good a lot of the time. The inability to exploit the premise, the concept of soda cans as human beings and all the unintentionally dark existentialism involved, is the scathing thing above all else for me in this show never working, all its un-PC humour worse, not just out of a moral trigger, but that it wastes ideas that could have worked for jokes. You could easily remove all the jokes without ruining anything which says a lot about the work, such as another character (barely seen) that is drag queen, that runs a cafe but is also sadly painted as a broad caricature even if treated more kindly. Even little details - such as Goro not understanding that women can be gay and thinking it's wrong in his oblivious idiocy - comes off as more overtly dumb and really out of place, especially when one of the aspects of anime, in truth, was always its gleeful sense of sexiness even for the sake of titillation, be it embracing the lewdness, the playful fun, or proudly waving homoeroticism around, be it male characters or appreciating the busty gay female friend who is a hell of a lot more appreciated, especially as a witch, as a character in this strange premise than an obnoxious bland male sex pest lead.

Accidentally opening a Pandora's Box, the show is just dumb, and unfocused. To have salvaged this show, regardless of whether faithful to the source material, you would have to drastically rewrite it entirely, especially when knowing the end credits song, a silly attempt to have soda drinking as erotic analogy set to multiple vocalists and musical genres per episode, was one of the only inventive aspects² to a show which also looks visually bland. This is worse in knowledge this is on Weirdest Anime lists online, because for all its weirdest moments the show does not live up to that reputation like it should do.

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1) See Puni Puni Poemy (2004), which was banned in the country for sexual exploitation of children, one of a couple of anime that have been caught in the crosshairs in that country for this. And that was an OVA being tasteless to shock on purpose in the broadest and over-the-top forms, and released uncut in the United Kingdom in the day, so that attitude to the government's censorship is unwavering.

2) Every episode has a different spin on the end theme, including a guest star from artificial vocalist Hatsune Miku, which is surprising considering how generic the show is in look, and obviously how haphazard the work is in narrative and presentation.

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

Director: Akitarō Daichi

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

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2) As reported HERE.

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