#267: The Ribon Double Bill (2001)

 

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

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

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

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

Voice Cast:

Good Morning Call:

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

Time Stranger Kyoko:

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

#228: Darkness of the Sea, Shadow of the Moon (1989)

 

Studio: Visual 80

Director: Tetsu Dezaki

Screenplay: Koichi Mizuide and Sōji Yoshikawa

Voice Cast: Mayumi Shō as Lumi Kobayakawa; Rei Sakuma as Luka Kobayakawa; Toshihiko Seki as Katsuyuki Tohma; Ryusei Nakao as Mr. Kobayakawa; Seiko Nakano as Mrs. Kobayakawa; Tesshō Genda as Doctor Kaibara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I had never heard of Darkness of the Sea... until searching for horror anime, but this three part OVA is tantalising when you begin it. It is a shoujo story, a story of young women which combines romance against horror and over-the-top melodrama, all directed by Tetsu Dezaki, Osamu Dezaki's brother who can be credited for helming They Were Eleven (1986), a great sci-fi story from a legendary female manga author Moto Hagio, but also Mad Bull 34 (1990-2), the infamous and at times difficult to watch Kazuo Koike tale about New York City cops with all the ridiculous clichés and distortions you could imagine. Darkness of the Sea... starts off over the top in its own way when twin sisters Rumi and Ruki, already in a romantic triangle over Touma, the popular boy at school, go on an all-girl's trip to the coast with their school. Tragically, during a storm, they find a secret grave mass in the caves, and with everyone baring the sisters being killed by a strange air to the underground environment.

Ruki survives, but Rumi is distant, and now part of the only surviving girls of the sports team due to the horrible tragedy, the three remaining girls have to train with the boys. The third girl will die soon after, as Darkness of the Sea... does waste time with its plot, in which Rumi is now a psychic supernatural being, able in later episodes to infect people and turn them into her slaves, wishing to kill anyone who gets in the way to her and Touma. Even her own sister Ruki, the most melodramatic of sisterly rivalries possible transpiring as the core of the premise, whether it is trying to throw her off a floor on the emergency stairway, or turning their parents into brainwashed ghouls to do the job.

It is sad Ruki is an ineffectual protagonist, despite the inklings that she has supernatural powers too, even in mind that it befits that she is an ordinary person caught up in the most nightmarish of sibling rivalry, "Tutankhamen's Curse" a key reference to the plot exposition, referring to when in 1922 the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen, those involved having mysterious deaths afterwards helping a legend of a curse transpire. Most of the time, Touma is the one who has to save her, which is a shame even if the point that, helpless, she is (baring the unnatural ability now to float) a bystander in trouble, arguably the best protagonist for a viewer to be in the shoes of. Largely the repetition of Rumi's attempts to kill her over the three episodes is the biggest cause of this issue.

Truthfully, there are many silly aspects to the show, and so much of it, even in mind to what I have said as criticisms, does not detract from how entertaining this became. The real problem becomes that, even at three episodes, this sadly ends abruptly when it starts to reach a new melodramatic point. By the time the story ends, where the sisterly tragedy is greater, people have died, and Ruki is starting to fight back, only to not have a follow up, feels like a gut punch of the most abrupt kind as this became a rewarding film to watch. This is a shame as this, even when logic starts to fall away, is delightfully over-the-top and macabre. It also befits as a story with a romantic edge, as it is about a female protagonist, who is stuck in a nightmare, yet in a scenario intermingling her growing confidence, as she and Touma start to come closer as people, her own sister the threat adding to the symbolic drama. There is one dubious moment, where Touma briefly comes off as non consensual in the gym closet in terms of getting more intimate with Ruki, which is the one sour point, but most of this is the right kind of melodrama, even when someone stays almost comically stoic in spite of their parents just being killed, the exaggerated tone appealing.

Even the aesthetic tone of the show befits this, the contrast between its character designs, by Setsuko Shibuichi, prolific in the industry from key animator to director on titles from The Rose of Versailles (1979) to Space Adventure Cobra (1982), befit a romantic show in the characters' elegance but contrasted by the macabre (and openly gory) incidents that transpire, to even the countless demonic faces Rumi has trying to off her sister. The sense this was even one episode off a full narrative does suck, more so as, even as pure pulp, it does stand out as a delightful surprise, as obscure as you could get for an animated title. Like a grotesque fantasy tale, even its opening credits are more fantastical, with its echoing of the sisters being nautical entities, and its title (depending on how you translate it) was absolutely one of the reasons I picked it out due to how evocative it is. There is pure cheese, like explaining overtly supernatural powers to ancient bacterial mutation, but that befits the tone as well. As something with no context, this hit with the right impact, only making its obscurity sadder. A Bandai production, at least with their involvement, one can only hope that it is preserved somehow as this, even without the ending it should have had, stands out.