#268: Offside Girl (2007)/University Girls (2001)

 

Studio(s): MS Pictures (Offside Girl)/Obtain Future (University Girls)

Offside Girl based on a manga by Ippon Nagare

Voice Cast for Offside Girl: Nene as Miyajima, Kenkou as Akira, Nanami Natsukawa as the Coach, Ryoko Tanigawa as Nanami

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Attempting to cover what most know it as "hentai", alongside any self-consciousness you may feel in whether it presents a negative image of you to strangers or not, is confounded with how like some erotica, they focus on their subject, the act of sex, even if the story is very simple or pushed to the side. In a case like this, you are also confounded by the fact that, combining the two episodes together, Offside Girl makes up less than thirty minutes, and University Girls is only twenty two minutes as one single piece, neither being continued and leaving not a lot to work with. But there is something worth prodding even if you will get into NSFW content with how these works, and erotica in general, say a lot about people, more so as the reason I wanted to cover these was not really to cover hentai just by itself. I wanted to cover them as much because as of November 2023¹, these are the lowest ranked hentai anime on Anime News Network's list of lowest ranked anime, which means as per viewers of the site, this pair is in handshaking distance to notorious works like M.D. Geist (1986), Tekken: The Motion Picture (1998) and EX-ARM (2021) which have gained infamy. The hentai is itself is less likely to be as talked about as titles which could get a wider range of access without the restrictions on selling hardcore materials, which makes it interesting to wonder how they got on that list. Among hentai in terms of premise, when many I would even want to touch with a barge pole let alone ever witness, thankfully these two are tamer in ideas, even if Offside Girl gets into curious kinks, and all their notoriety comes from their production.

Truthfully, we watch action films as much for set pieces as much as the stories, horror films for the vicarious and gruesome moments, and erotica for their sensuality, and with outright pornographic content, in mind to all the issues of their gender politics and attitudes, the ideal is an idealised and in cases exaggerated take on human desire, even if dealing with fetishes and kinks which may come off as weird for some viewers, meant to deal with these ideas in a consenting construct between creator and viewer. That is one of the reasons "hentai" is a term I feel less happy to have to use as its literally the Japanese term for "pervert" and ridiculous to implement, when "eroge" for Japanese erotic video games is one I wish I could steal for this review but have to keep to the parlance we use in the West to avoid confusion. Animation has the advantage, even if it may cause viewers to feel weird to feel desire to figures that do not exist and can be un-human in look, to inherent emphasise a creative fantasy, something to bear in mind as Offside Girl and University Girls are ultra low budget works who struggle with this, and that is why they got the bottom ranks. One of the issues with eroge anime too is that, like live action pornography, the medium is pushed more for content than to try to emphasis artistic content, ostracised in society and with the medium a way for people to access them. This is not to dismiss the potential for this in the medium or manga, let alone live action erotica, as you can envision purely titillation in work made with authorial creativity and a wider scoop like LGBTQ themes, but in mind that it has become a genre, as much as live action where it has been attack and forced to be its own industry selling the sexual content, you have an uphill struggle in making a large budget an acceptable choice in terms of a market. The best example of this in hentai was when the acclaimed illustrator and manga artist Satoshi Urushihara co-directed a high budget hentai Another Lady Innocent (2004), a melodrama set in the period American South, only for one episode to ever to be created in his life time due to how its production, legitimately well made as an animation work, likely cost too much time and money to make when anime in the industry can be made quicker and sell the sex in a faster time. The two being covered today show an extreme which did not gather very well regarded reactions to them, in trying to make erotic anime for audiences in a compact time, but even if the artistic side of the genre should not be dismissed, so much is made and not really talked of that it is like a crap shoot trying to pluck something out, let alone two chosen here for this review as the "worst" for some of their kind.

Offside Girl was the more interesting one because of its premise, and to pull back the curtain was meant to be the single title covered until University Girls turned out to be lower in the rankings, in which its lead, a female student, is smitten with a guy far more interested in being on the men's soccer team at their school. Soccer is as popular in Japan as globally, and imagining a tale of a young woman having to work around his obsession is interested in any genre. You can have a sex comedy premise about this in Britain, where it is called "football", and there is in fact a film called Fever Pitch (1997), a romantic comedy, in which actor Colin Firth played a man obsessed with the sport, based around a memoir by Nick Hornby and set around the team Arsenal's First Division championship-winning season in 1988–89 and its effect on the protagonist's romantic relationship. It is a far more curious premise though to mix porn with sports, just to imagine if you let the soccer nerds get away with references to the sport, and parodies of franchises like Captain Tsubasa, one of the biggest in terms of Japanese manga and anime for the sport, without getting into copyright trouble, against what is effectively a tale of two people who discover they like each other very quickly physically. He tricks her into becoming the manager of the team as part of its comedy tone, effectively the dogsbody who cleans the uniforms and keeps their spaces clean, but when they are forced to hide in a cupboard, soon into the first episode their crush becomes a physical one, and baring in mind aspects of this I would understand being criticised and viewed as sexist, this effectively suggests as a premise two young people, around the sport of soccer, realising they love each other but in a very kinky and polygamous way. The immediate issue is that, if you were expecting the soccer references, be disappointed as you do not even see a soccer ball, barring a musty one in their main team building, nor any sports, as this barely has any content beyond the set-up.

Neither expect more than this. You get barely any context beyond the basic interactions, and most of this is actually depicted in close-ups where you do not see many feet let alone soccer appropriate footwear on people, and it is here the true reason this got so low a rating really comes in on Anime News Network, in that Offside Girl also at times feels like a motion comic or actually a manga if the speech bubbles are replaced by the voice acting. Some of the illustrations of the cast, mostly drawn in minimal close-ups, do look wonky, our female lead finding herself eroticised but also distorted physically in a work which had few resources to work with. The studio behind this, MS Pictures, have made anime beyond this and before, titles with evocative names like Fleshdance (2007) from the same year as this, and yes, that is clearly a pun on Flashdance (1983). They were not going to lose sleep over this production, one where it feels as if the production became less a priority or was allowed to fall down, as this is insanely raggedy for any level of budget.

It actually emphasises the commitment the cast have to put in, even before we get to the absurd dialogue, the voice actresses especially having to go from nought to up to eleven to get this exaggerated form of eroticism over in their bellows. This is where, if I had been worried as a viewer being viewed as a perverse covering this, or anyone was to be put off the subject, you cannot dodge covering the sexual content itself as the driving force of the animation. You have to factor in with both of these works that, with millennia of objectification and oppression of women, this factor will always effect a person's reaction to a work that is geared clearly for a male heterosexual audience, in its eroticisation of the female figures even as mere drawings; like the two female leads in University Girls this follows a fixation on larger bra cup sizes, here with the obvious concern that this is a figure in school despite age being vague this never dares get into, and to how when the second female character is brought in, they can have sexual relations in a fantasy scenario for men, but this would have not teased with male bisexuality too. In mind to all the issues surrounding erotica for their portrayals of the subject, it is clearly exaggerated and unless one is documenting one's own real sexual experiences, the bigger issues alongside confusing this with the reality of sexual relationships is when they forget that people (men and women) are fully formed people, and even if the issue is a bias towards focusing on certain audiences and stereotypes, it is also in mind that many do not play to this to their better in letting the cast even in a fantasy for a heterosexual male audience feel like they are in on the pleasure as the male character/audience. This is more of an issue here as, whilst I would utterly understand someone labelling Offside Girl sexist, it is pretty tame baring touches, and the greater issue alongside the like of time and budget this had is that you do not get characters even as broad stereotypes. Especially with the female lead, who should be the focus on the character dynamics and journey in this tale, where she comes to appreciate soccer and also discovers her own sexual desires, this should be as much where she gets to have fun as the lead, not just go through the motions. Clearly, because this barely establishes the story let alone actually tells one, you cannot tell the direction this went unless you go to the original manga by Ippon Nagare, but even here, you could have had a few more touches to her in what little time you have.

Some would argue, if they saw the second episode where a female coach is introduced with a fetish for managers of all kinds, male or female, that it crosses a line when she could be seen as molesting the lead, and then is "punished" by a male member of the soccer team. In context, the scene is frankly evidence of the production's flaws, vague and confused, and a huge issue with erotica in general where, unless you are dealing with something legitimately misogynistic in tone, you are dealing with fantasies without the appropriate sense of the construction of a consenting world between characters, and between the work and the viewer, where arguably the issue here is also one you need to challenge anime outside of hentai in general for the same issue, as unfortunately that type of scene is one found as the "joke" for many works even into the Millennia. The rest of it comes off more like a really kinky four person fantasy scenario despite nearly edging the line too closely; the "punishment" moment surrounds everyone on the team being aware of their female coach's interests and one of the other players being in a relationship where this is played to, whilst in a scene which did not feel uncomfortable at first, it would be our female lead role-playing being "helpless" to the female coach, rather than play it as what comes as the one really problematic scene in all of this. Whilst not a lot is here, a moment of tone-deaf writing comes in to emphasise that no one was thinking through how to not make a scene nearly become gross.  

There is also the surprise inclusion of a lactation fetish, but with mind that the female coach is not an older woman who has had children, nor there being any other female characters until the last scene of the final episode being introduced. It involves the titular protagonist herself, where her love interest even asks when he discovers this of her whether she is pregnant. It is a curious inclusion, a kink which may put off some, or cause others to roll their eyes as it is a young female student where the fetish comes in, as in reality, it is rarer outside of childbirth including chemically induced methods for this to physically be possible. The fact that it is separated from motherhood, whilst could be accused of a fetish not accepting the reality of human life, also factors in how it is nether for the pleasure of anyone else but the "Offside Girl" herself, where there is a kink about being touched and caresses whether by herself, as in the first scene of the first episode, or by others. These quirks, even if this is porn not thinking hard at all about the accidental symbolisms, can be read into for how you could have gotten something that fully embraced a more bolder, progressively kinky tone even if the reality is alien to this and not helped by its complete lack of budget. A heroine with the discovery of how tactile touch is central in her fantasies is a premise with a lot to write about, seriously and comically, even if you are not going to more here baring a nod to the idea, which is the problem in general with all anime, let alone hentai, where you have one-off or stray episodes to a premise never allowed to ever grow into a full narrative.

University Girls, also known as Joshidai Ecchi Sōdanshitsu, is a more conventionally plotted tale, a one-off erotic story. Madoka, our female lead, is also a student, despondent when she barges in on a male teacher she is attracted to on the university campus mid-coitus with another female student, later to get advice from her friend Yokko to be more confident with him. The set up, with student-teacher relationships, has become more taboo over time even between adults, and this short anime is not going to pass the Bechdel test for how the leads talk mostly about sex and men, but it is a surprise even when this comes to the final scene punch line where it goes, in that this story is about sexually confident women in charge. This is in mind, with most erotica targeting heterosexual man, you are dealing with work that plays this with the female as figures of fantasy, but this still gets into how Yokko, helping her friend, is in a BDSM relationship with the psychology teacher where he is completely the submissive, to literally be walked on, to pleasure her and Madoka when invited to be an additional dominant, and leading to that aforementioned punch line where to Yokko's dismay the hot male teacher wants to be a willing submissive to her after a trip to the love hotel.

Even details like this, whether accidental or not, make something like this which most would not sit through more interesting. In terms of BDSM, with one man being stepped on in shoes, a whip used in multiple ways, even when it comes as an improvised prostate examiner, it is strong if you have never seen a depiction of this, but is also tame when one is aware, with careful rules in place in the BDSM community between the dominant and the submissive, you can get into things like blood play, piercings, confinements etc. in a healthy way, making this look vanilla. Hentai is not a topic I want to cover mostly because of the stuff that would even challenge my belief in the freedom of art, by way of permanent banishment from record with fire, and sadly Obtain Future in their short existence did tap into themes which I am creeped by myself, but it also comes with this sense of them literally throwing anything at the way to see what sticks, leading to University Girls inexplicitly being about strong women in control for their pleasure even if, in context, I suspect no one was necessarily thinking about that as the driving force of the title, just the fantasy of men being dominated by men plus some more conventional sex scenes. Most of their work is also on the bottom list of Anime News Network, and in this case, we cannot ignore the animation elephant in the room as, even if trying to be positive, even I have to admit to thinking Offside Girl looked like a step-up in animation in comparison. Best way to describe it is early Flash animation, homemade, which managed to be released on DVD in the USA by Adult Source Media. Adobe Flash animation was able to let some very talented creators make both animation and web browser games from them, from the likes of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (2004–2009) to the game Frog Fractions (2012), allowing anyone to show incredible talent, but it was also a way to let anyone animate regardless of resources, and undeniably, flash animation on the likes of Newgrounds also includes pornographic work, capable as much artistic quality but also something like University Girls. The voice acting at times even feels like friends or people the creators knew earnestly trying their best next to the performances in other work, especially the actress playing Madoka when she has to cry in one scene. In a work which inexplicably references Sigmund Freud at one point, this feels like with hindsight a work unfairly forced into daylight as an actual DVD release, which unfortunately put in its the crosshairs of anyone gathering the hentai releases from that time.

This review has to factor in how, yes, these titles do come off as crass at points, more than sexist or even misogynistic. Works like this as it stands, even if you could get past their lack of animation budgets, has the issue too with a lot of erotica with how ridiculous the dialogue is, which could be embraced for the exaggerated humour but here feels like it was trying to be serious. The moment in Offside Girls the lead is complimented in having "amazingly indecent breasts" was where this managed to get absurd, only to manage to top itself later on, and in University Girls Madoka is asked about her cup size mid-coitus, which shows as well the obsession with bra sizes in the fantasies of anime in general, let alone these more explicit titles. Ideally, porn if not trying to be serious should embrace a hyper-exaggerated form where, with balance in depicting everyone male and female, it images the idea of everyone being happy with sex so proudly lurid and passionate. Even if merely drawings with voices here, the characters should be symbolic of real people and representing what viewers would be able to have with their own significant other(s) in real life even if it also means screaming the roof off, embracing bodily differences and fetishes/kinks in a consenting environment.

Offside Girl is based on a one shot manga but never gets beyond the prologue to a larger story, where the previous female manager of the team is introduced never to get anywhere further, so it is really impossible to say whether the premise would have gotten to this ideal, instead the anime if you ever watched it being something you cannot pass the animation and production of. University Girl, which is not more than a short erotic tale, an original narrative, is just as stuck with this problem, and between them is the ultimate issue that, even if one was to argue with the noble idea of positive sex wanting to be depicted, these merely help think of the ideal whilst they even struggle with the animation. They do not feel like the "worst" anime ever, if because neither is uncomfortable to watch barring awkwardly rendered sex scenes, University Girls the more likely to break someone for this, and together at an hour as a double bill, barely any life feels wasted away. Neither, thank God, ever got into content I would regret watching, and if it seems strange to have such a long review speculating on what-ifs to what are, frankly, titles most would mock for the animation, it is because sexuality is a topic that is so diverse and expansive in human culture whether we want to be proud of it or not. Between them, University Girls is the one rightly lower in the totem pole, but it feels mean to mock these, when more repugnant hentai unfortunately exists, and there is entertainment here between them even if they get so much wrong.

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1) Anime News Network's Anime Top 100 Worst Rated (bayesian estimate).

#180: Ocean Waves (1993)

 

Director: Tomomi Mochizuki

Screenplay: Keiko Niwa

Based on the novel by Saeko Himuro

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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1) Referred to HERE.

2) As talked of HERE.

#160: Otogi Zoshi (2004)

 

Director: Mizuho Nishikubo

Screenplay: Yoshiki Sakurai

Voice Cast: Fumie Mizusawa as Minamoto no Hikaru; Kan Tokumaru as Abe no Seimei; Kenta Miyake as Watanabe no Tsuna; Shinichiro Miki as Mansairaku; Kumi Sakuma as Urabe no Suetake; Ooki Sugiyama as Usui no Sadamitsu; Shinichiro Miki as Minamoto no Raikou; Wasabi Mizuta as Kintarou

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

[Major Plot Spoilers Throughout]

Otogi Zoshi is of note, for me personally, as this is from a period where Manga Entertainment, still going strong in their home country in British even into the 2010s from the nineties, changed as an anime distributer considerably in the early-to-mid 2000s. Just purchasing the rights to multiple animated series is a change as, beforehand, they rarely did baring the curious decision to buy Virus Buster Serge (1997), a very unpopular Masami Ōbari helmed show, and focused on OVAs and films instead in their initial heyday in the nineties. This period Otogi comes from has, up to the 2020s, never been fully re-released from those original Manga Entertainment ones, probably with the huge technical issue that, tragically, most anime by this time for television was not made in high definition or on film, in the transition era of digital drawn animation from handdrawn. This means that a lot if in Standard Definition that, unless piled onto Blu Rays as the American company Discotek is want of doing, leaves them ostracised in the world of high definition even over the quality of the work on the discs.

Baring Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002-5), a very popular show spun off from an original 1995 film, this has left a lost sector of the company's slow and eventual change to a changing audience fading into the past. Imagine picking up Neo Magazine, which started in Britain as a publication in 2004 and devoted itself (alongside other Asian culture) to anime and manga, and seeing the titles the company once behind Ninja Scroll (1993) and Urotsukidôji: The Legend of the Overfiend (1989) had now acquired - She, The Ultimate Weapon (2002) (an odd mix of body horror, war and tragic romance with an abrupt finale), Tetsujin 28-go (2004) (a 2000s reboot of the 1960s series which Discotek did release as a Standard Definition on Blu-Ray set¹), or Heat Guy J (2002-3) (a hyped series which instead became a running gag by accounts on the defunct podcast ANNCast). And also among these is Otohi Zoshi, a period chambara action drama on the surface which does throw back to the older titles Manga Entertainment had released. Still action based, also by Production I.G., a big gun in anime as a studio because they worked on Ghost in the Shell. This period was, in hindsight, a tentative step still with the action and science fiction of yore, but eventually as the market changed and the audience, edging close to one day into the 2010s titles and genres they released would dynamically change.

Ironically, Otogi is a very idiosyncratic creation, because it is literally two very different thirteen episodes shows which just happen to share the same characters and plot. The first half is how I knew of the show and the only way people likely knew of Otogi Zoshi in promotion. In the Heian period, the sister of (real life figure) Minamoto no Raikō, Minamoto no Hikaru, has to pose as him for a mission, accompanied by her aide and samurai Watanabe no Tsuna, in a quest to protect the capital of Kyoto by acquiring magical objects, five magatama that represent the five elements (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth) scattered across the country. It becomes clear that she is in a plot of greater machinations, on her quest and acquiring other allies, based on real figures or folklore ones - Usui Sadamitsu (a noble ladies man samurai), Urabe no Suetake (gender swapped into a mysterious woman sent with them they are initially distrustful of), and Kintarō (a super strong boy they abruptly meet who is obsessed with food, based a folklore hero). The first half of Otogi Zoshi is very narratively straightforward as there are three magatama left to collect the series, with the only other details being a growing bond between Hikaru and Mansairaku, an acclaimed performer travelling the country too, and that everything is under suspicion the more they travel, and the more people they encounter in their quest to acquire the magatama back whose perceptions cloud her initial one.

It is for the most part grounded within the logic of a materialist world, at least in mind of a super strong young boy in the cast based on Japanese folktales. When one character abruptly turns into a demon in a fight, it does set up how, eventually, the show will fully embrace the supernatural. In terms of the look of the show, it is very realistic with the character designs defined as such, alongside the aesthetic naturally befitting a period chambara tale with extensive research involved by the production. Learning that the figures in the show are based on real people for the most part from this era, who became folktale figures with various interpretations, provides the series with a greater weight to where it virtues will eventually lay. Personally, for me though, it is difficult to talk about Otogi Zoshi without spoiling it immediately, as this show only can be explained with what its structure is meant to be and what the goal of the project was. Narratively the first thirteen episodes charge through this samurai narrative very quickly. It is engaging when watched, but in all honestly, if it had been all there was, Otogi Zoshi would have be immediately forgotten.

Normally when you have twenty six episodes, the thirteenth is the time of the second act, plot twists changing the show considerably if they had not already. Well, Otogi Zoshi takes the biscuit as by them most of the cast is killed off and the capital is left a burning wreck by conflict. What happens is that in the next episode preview, you the viewer are informed that next story is set in modern day Japan, with reincarnation meaning the cast all returns in the shadow of their past lives. By itself, the first half of this show would have been a frankly generic show for me. Where things get potentially controversial, but interesting for me, is that the second half is now an entirely different genre and tone, as the cast have to deal with the results of centuries before for karma's sake.

A breezy modern day aesthetic, even Hideki Taniuchi as the main composer replaced by the legendary Kenji Kawai, brining in New Age influenced smooth jazz, and an episodic structure of Hikaru, with her friends, now a teen landlady who helps investigate supernatural phenomena around Tokyo whilst looking for her missing brother. Arguably one factor in my preference for this, honestly, is that one of my favourite types of plot structures are supernatural/horror ones involving figures investigating weird incidents and folklore over episodic tales, building sometimes to a main narrative. The show completed changes tone from it action heavy tale of sword fighting and intrigue, with an energised opening song changing to another over real footage of Tokyo street life, rotoscoped, whilst the cast are animated mouthing the lyrics to a lighter hearted song. The only real detraction, by accident, to this change is that Hikaru arguably is a less proactive figure as a result. Forced to be her brother in the Heian period, handy with an archer's bow and having to fight, you can make the argument she is a weaker figure in the second act, the one major flaw which personally could have been written better.

It does feel more interesting however as a series through the modern Tokyo setting as, for all the research, the first act charged on so quickly with the plot you do not have time to really absorb the world. Here, every episode is named after an environmental location or landmark in Tokyo. Real ones, turning this show into a geographical tour as one episode can actually be about Kourakuen Hall, the famous arena, where a character comes across the ghost of his late boxer father, or at Shibuya, a district where a giant ghost dog is wandering about disrupting ATMs and cash machines in lieu to the folk believe of wolf figures representing good luck in economy. This becomes, if all real folk and anecdotal tales, an actual snapshot of Tokyo painstakingly researched and drawn onscreen. If some of them are spiced up, they do not feel contrived and out of place. As the characters' past literally haunts the modern day, the ghosts and supernatural realms can be found even in the underpass of the Tokyo railway, or how, near the iconic Tokyo Tower, the urban legend of white noise on television showing the dead is explored in one episode, entirely in lieu to the tower being just above a cemetery and caused by disgruntled ghosts.

It as a turn offers a problem mind in how to sell the show as, not able to spoil such a major direction in the whole narrative, it also means Otogi Zoshi is no longer an action samurai show with a steady pace, but becoming a different genre with a sedate and even playful tone. I half wonder how viewers reacted to this, especially as these were the days every anime distributor, in the United States and Britain, followed an insane distribution method of releasing individual discs with a handful of episodes on them separately rather than whole series (or a couple) of box sets. Imagine those who were buying each DVD release for this, full price per disc, and I wonder how many liked this change or not. Otogi Zoshi by accident also feels like a symbolic eye at how Manga Entertainment was at a cross roads. Perversely its first half is like those older titles they licensed, the second like the titles they would be more open minded to as the market place changed. In fact, the later half feels closers to something the late ADV Vision would have licensed, or frankly MVM Entertainment, one of those titles they might release, having survived into the modern day, alongside the type of titles which would become popular in the 2010s.

Just the show itself, without any other context, is imperfect but I liked quite a bit. Not the best of the genres it is tackling, but this type of story by the second act is that I gain great pleasure from. As a structurally risky work, it also does deserve praise for the experiment, especially as it embraces by the final act when a supernatural train that floats in the sky needs to be ridden, a reminder in itself that now I have least seen the 1985 animated adaptation of Kenji Miyazawa's Night of the Galactic Railroad, I would not be surprised if I keep falling over explicit references to it over these reviews and even anime I grew up with. It even negates a need for a villain as, in a poignant touch, said villain of the first half now returns in the second as a changed man, wishing to alter a history caused by him to protect Tokyo.

In fact, the second act is only eleven episodes. The last two are bonus episodes, one of Urabe, now a fortune teller who gets to do more here, before reencountering the group in a story of a haunted hospital and a cat. The last is a self reflective and philosophical tale of the former villain encountering an old man with greater wisdom then many of the nature of time and how Tokyo has existed as an entity almost immortal over centuries. A befittingly obscure conclusion to a surprisingly unique television series, worthy of rediscovery as a fascinating curiosity just for the tonal shift and how that changes the work.

 

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1) Sadly, a concept not brought over to British anime distribution. As always, we get barely a lot of titles over here as a result, which is a pain.

#88: Onara Goro (2016)

From https://www.asiancrush.com/wp-content/uploads/
2018/03/ONARA_GORO_channel_poster.jpg

A.k.a. Onara Gorou

Director: Takashi Taniguchi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: The tale of a sentient fart, Onara Goro, who helps people with sage advice.

With a premise about a fart in the shape of a man, coming out of another man, who helps people in their lives, you'd think alongside its limited animation anime lets any bizarre premise through the planning stage. You'd be right, but with some of the vocal performances clearly wooden on purpose to the ear, Onara Goro is in on the joke. Another factor to consider is that this is a creator of an independent creator named Takashi Taniguchi, who had already created this project (alongside Onara Goro appearing in merchandise and promotional material including his own underwear) before he was giving the chance to make this anime, even setting up a crowd funding campaign on the Japanese site Makuake which was successful. Regardless of the absurdity of the project, which is clearly in the premise, this is a creator outside the industry who managed to have a show shown in Japan and globally streamed on Crunchyroll, which is an accomplishment with the added advantage like all these odd micro projects that they allow new voices to appear. He has made work before this, and has afterwards, including Yo! Daitouryou Trap-kun (2017) whose lead character suspiciously looks like Donald Trump, so he could eventually become a cult figure in his own right if titles like Onara Goro catch on. Screenshots of his work suggest that the aesthetic appearance of this series is a trademark of his already.  

Consisting of twelve plus three minute episodes, Onara Goro gets tired of its premise quite soon into itself and introduces other humanoid farts along the way, parodying various genres too like horror (I smelt what you did last summer?) or high school romantic drama in which a romantic love triangle is decided on a penalty kick out, all the ordinary human characters replicated by humanoid replicas made by fart gas attached by the rectum through clothing and going through the drama instead of their human counterparts. Looking like the denizens of a Ghostbusters cartoon in their rotund shape, these characters are deliberately silly - Onara Goro becomes Dr. Goro in one episode, able to cure anything by gas related supernatural healing but believing an ordinary person's life is as precious as a major political figure's.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VsLpSECSVfs/maxresdefault.jpg

The limited animation plays to the deadpan nature, highly detailed visuals (with an etched drawn look) but with minimal movement. The absurdity is compounded by the automatic presumption of it being just another bizarre production from the anime industry, a joke reaching a madder point as the end credits is always a live action dance sequence between a five woman idol group and a life sized, plastic replica of Onara Goro himself, asking one to have psychic powers and be able to wonder what the idols were thinking having to do a choreographed dance sequence with a fart.

Like many of these micro series, Onara Goro is digestible and easy to finish quickly to the point of danger that they are entirely disposable; even if that was the original case, you look at one of the first of them to make a name, Gdgd Fairies (2011-13), and I am amazed (as someone who was already a fan of both its seasons) how that micro series has grown for me in quality, in comparison to all these I binge, and how many don't reach the point that one did, in how it managed with its second season to go beyond the original joke and get legitimately creative and even weirder for the better. This is not a detraction to Onara Goro, as it's clearly the work of a creator who can easily jump to another peculiar premise just through looking through a list of his of his creation. But in this case, it definitely feels like it was stuck at the moment it was either stretching the gag as far as it could go until it could go no further, or a fart humanoid dimension and becoming an action fantasy advantage would be the other way to have ended it....which it does for one of its final episodes, showing the possibility if this got a second season.

From https://www.watchcartoononline.io
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