#198: Ping Pong the Animation (2014)

 

Director: Masaaki Yuasa

Screenplay: Masaaki Yuasa

Based on the manga by Taiyo Matsumoto

Voice Cast: Fukujurō Katayama as Yutaka "Peco" Hoshino; Kouki Uchiyama as Makoto "Smile" Tsukimoto; Masako Nozawa as Obaba; Mitsuaki Hoshi as Takamura; Shouhei Shimada as Yamada; Shunsuke Sakuya as Ryuuichi "Dragon" Kazama; Subaru Kimura as Manabu "Demon" Sakuma; Takanori Hoshino as Ota; Yosei Bun as Kon "China" Wenga; Yūsaku Yara as Jō Koizumi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Sports as a genre of story can have an appeal even beyond their subject to a universal concept which using the structure to explore them. For an example, chosen as I saw both of them for the first time within each other with today's subject Ping Pong the Animation, was Hanebado! (2018). Hanebado, set within all female badminton competitions, was a controversial show for drastically rewriting the original manga, but by way of more heightened melodrama, it dealt especially in its most controversial aspect, turning the lead into a much more emotionally destroyed character, of how being taught to become the best can cause harm, in a theme of parental neglect or the cruelty of competitiveness. Ping Pong is significantly more light-hearted, or at least whilst with one very tragic back story and another character with severe homesickness, one where no one is broken, only needing to find their real desires to become a better person. More faithful to its source manga by Taiyo Matsumoto, this may be about the sport of its title, with a lot of scenes of even casual spats between players in table tennis clubs, and treated with the respect and accuracy of getting into consultants, but it is definitely a drama first of young men finding themselves first. It is one which just happens to have their existentialism transpiring around ping pong tables.

Not surprisingly, from director Masaaki Yuasa, who also wrote the screenplay, this was going to be an integral part of the adaptation. This is fascinating in terms of his career¹ as, a year before with Kick Heart (2013), he needed to be funded on Kickstarter to create a short film, but in 2017, not only did the theatrical film Night Is Short, Walk On Girl came to be, which would become a film of great interest for many getting into his work, and a certain television series named Devilman Crybaby also came out in Netflix, which was the title which thankfully meant a cult director, held in high regards but difficult to access, broke through the glass ceiling to become a very busy auteur. After Devilman Crybaby finally gained his due, Ping Pong is interesting to see from just before that turn from an obscure and admired anime auteur. He is, as mentioned, also adapting the acclaimed manga author Taiyo Matsumoto here as well, with a work which even if unconventional as a subject matter has a lot of emotional depth within itself. 

Even as a show whose tone is eccentric, and very funny, this is very mature and thoughtful as a tale, clear when you reach the point no one is an antagonist or a villain, just very confused young men in certain cases. Two childhood friends are the leads, Yutaka "Peco" Hoshino and Makoto "Smile" Tsukimoto. Peco is the boisterous and cocky ping pong prodigy who will be humbled early in the show, needing to find himself and his skill in the game, whilst Smile is a quiet and extremely guarded young man, viewed as a robot by others. Smile is very good at ping pong but also incredibly isolated, turning into a cold and ruthless player. Even those against them are complex. Chinese player Kon "China" Wenga, who feels exiled in Japan, is a figure who is a tough player but openly misses his home, the games with a greater risk if he loses as it will mean he will be stuck from his homeland, whilst Ryuuichi "Dragon" Kazama, head of the dominant Kaio ping pong school team, has the most tragic back story despite his depiction in games being a behemoth who is larger than his opponents as he crushes them. A young man who has to play, and dominate, as much due to the failure of his father's passion in flower selling, that is implicitly likely to have led to suicide, as it is compensating from a background where he hides in the toilets whenever he needs to express emotion.

To try to describe Masaaki Yuasa's style following these characters is difficult, as always has been the case for myself as Yuasa's style always experiments with all his work. The influences on him are known, but he varies per show or film, with this having the added fact he is indebted to Taiyo Matsumoto's distinct character designs which provide their own personality. This show nonetheless, even next to the ambition of his debut Mind Game (2004), feels a high bar. For what is such a secretly emotional and quiet narrative, in terms of his experimentation it feels more distinct straightaway with the opening and ending credits, the former a highly detailed sequence that, in monochrome, feels like it is in chalk drawing at times, whilst the later is a bright almost expressionist look at a bright coastal town. Whilst the ping pong action when shown is lovingly rendered, and the drama is treated seriously, metaphor and blatant symbolism are embraced and exaggerated. There is style to burn, be it scenes telling the story within one shot between multiple images at one, to how even points of great drama have exaggerated symbolism to tell the material, such as Smile's literal robotic outer skin or how Kazama's weight is literally a masochism with a nihilistic edge, his battle with a certain hero of ping pong who finally comes to be ([Huge Spoiler] Peco when he gets his act together [Spoilers End]) is a man struggling up a mountain being forced to fly and enjoy himself in the game again, as the music becomes more chirpy and heighten.

The music here is a huge virtue to Ping Pong in Yuasa's catalogue, such as that sequence where, as Kazama is given light, it becomes more chirpy and heightened. Considering Yuasa's use of music in his previous work, such as having Seiichi Yamamoto of the Boredoms score Mind Game, he has always had good music, and composer Kensuke Ushio (who would work with the director onwards) adds a great deal to the material. Here it is a huge virtue among many, and in truth, the entire show is fascinating in that, for all the more dramatically elaborate work in his CV, Ping Pong among them hits so hard with its emotional depth. In just eleven episodes and only two tournaments, quickly getting through a lot without hassle, the show alongside its elaborate production style does stand up in a career that already had big surprises among them. In just eleven episodes and only two tournaments, the show quickly gets through a lot without hassle, alongside its elaborate production style it does stand up in a career that already had big surprises among them. Yuasa in the beginning with Mind Game lived up to the notion of throwing everything including the kitchen sink into his work, and likely a huge factor in his favour, by the point of The Tatami Galaxy (2010), was how he was focusing this material carefully whatever genre he was in.

And in areas here he, and the teams he worked with, still should levels of grace here with one show you normally do not get. Replicated in the English dub, they went as far as casting Kon and his coach with actors who fluently speak the characters' native language, which is rarely done when, honestly, you usually have native Japanese actors trying to work around a second language phonetically or with random words brought up in the script. Even the show's sense of humour, following from its source material, feels more mature, a playfulness of banter, bickering or Smile's mentor, a retired ping pong tournament player and an elderly man, starting their love-indifference relationship to improve him like a crush trying to be noticed in a high school romance, all done with an amusing air.

And as mentioned, this only is eleven episodes, which is curious when they are traditionally around twelve or so, but in mind that this was screened for Fuji TV as part of their Noitamina block, of "alternative" anime (including some of Yuasa's) which stretches the storytelling type and targeted audiences, this varying episode length and how idiosyncratic these shows could be is a common trope from their screening block. Ping Pong manages in quite little time, able to be binged in a day or two, to encompass a lot more existentialism in episodes than some anime have at all, boiled down to its basics a narrative of trying to find oneself. A random male character, a random opponent who loses, is even treated with a journey of renouncing the game, feeling he is not good enough to compete, only to find he has literally having wandered the world only to return to his mistress in the last episodes passionate for the game again, little details like this among the many that make the series as good as it is.  

Ping Pong the Animation altogether is an exceptional work, which considering Masaaki Yuasa has quite a few gems in his catalogue, from before this series and after, also shows how the series has managed to stand out for me as well considering the strength of his other work. Again, as stressed in the first paragraph, sports narratives can be as much metaphors for other themes as they are the subject, and especially in this case, you have the reward of a very idiosyncratic narrative premise but one you can also connect with. Certainly, it is a hidden gem for its creator for me.

 

=======

1) Yuasa did direct an episode of Adventure Time in 2014 too, so this was definitely a sign the tide was turning in his favour.

#117: Sarazanmai (2019)

From https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/sarazanmai-kunihiko-ikuhara/images/
2/23/Sarazanmai.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190526195430

Directors: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Nobuyuki Takeuchi

Screenplay: Kunihiko Ikuhara and Teruko Utsumi

Voice Cast: Ayumu Murase as Kazuki Yasaka; Kouki Uchiyama as Toi Kuji; Mamoru Miyano as Reo Shinsei; Shun Horie as Enta Jinnouchi; Yoshimasa Hosoya as Mabu Akutsu; Junichi Suwabe as Keppi; Kenjiro Tsuda as Chikai Kuji; Mariya Ise as Otone Jinnai; Rie Kugimiya as Haruka Yasaka; Takaya Kuroda as Otter; Teiko as Sara Azuma

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

[Some Major Plot Spoilers]

Kunihiko Ikuhara's weakest? Well, no that's a first sentence designed to bait a reader, but also in context of Ikuhara's career as a huge fan, I have to weight it against his career so far, which means that Sarazanmai in any other anime auteur's CV would be a great production, but here has to weight itself against a lot.

And bear in mind, I am a fan who has only been able to see his 2010s work, where after a decade of absence throughout the entirety of the 2000s, (baring some storyboard work on productions like Diebuster (2004-6)), Ikuhara finally came back into the director's chair with Mawaru Penguindrum (2011). This does mean I still have Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) and its 1999 theatrical film, huge parts of his career, as well as his entire work with the Sailor Moon franchise left in front of me. This does however mean that there's Penguindrum and Yurikuma Arashi (2015) to be compared to up to the release of this 2019 production, which are as insanely strong and unique productions for the 2010s as you could get. Against them, Sarazanmai is definitely a more streamlined and, for his standards, conventional production. This is still a strong and idiosyncratic tale of three boys who are turned into kappa^, a cucumber obsessed mythological creature, to stop kappa zombies so he hasn't thankfully become boring.

Notably, when his career has mainly dealt with female protagonists and with Penguindrum prominent female cast members in key roles, this is a show about men, which bearing a couple of female characters of note is a huge creative change for Ikuhara. It's also a show, eleven episodes for Fuji TV's Noitamina block, known for unconventional anime, which is about explicitly gay themes as well, interlaced with his ideas of emotional connection and stabs about the modern world. If there was any issue with the show, it is that with deliberate repetition involved, it's streamlined in comparison to the director's previous work I have seen, felt symbolically as this is a co-created work with Nobuyuki Takeuchi even if the later has been working with him since at least the Utena years. But it still has a lot of great reward.

The three leads represent ultimate three potential breaks from human connection. Kazuki is the normal kid, a talented soccer/football player, who is however revealed to not be the biological son of his family and thus having existential crisis which leads him to "no beginning", more so as drama involving this led to his younger brother being left disabled, the guilt leading to various behaviours to try to ask for forgiveness. There's been concern as one such act, masquerading as a female celebrity who does predictions and news reports on television, which has been called "trans baiting", presenting a potential transgender character only for this not to be, something I'll disagree with. There's a difference in gender binaries, which makes it inherently problematic to merely perceive a person dressing as the other gender as transgender, which needs to be taken in account in real life let alone in fiction, especially as being transgender is more than in terms of the physical appearance and dress, especially as the issue of cross-dressing in manga and anime where it was very common in the medium over the decades. Sarazanmai's only possible flaw here, looking at this character, is that it didn't have the time to explore Kazuki's decision to do this as there's clearly a pleasure to be found in it beyond text images to his brother to help him believe this famous figure is talking to him. That is not necessarily the flaw of the series but merely a practical problem.

Enta, his bespectacled friend, feels Kazuki is drifting away from their friendship, which is explicitly a romantic longing for his friend too. It is covered fully thankfully, even to the point that fearful of losing him, whilst ultimately a good person, does lead to him falling into petty actions beneath himself alongside showing clear love, left in a scenario of "no end" as this ending is only possible with Kazuki ever showing affection back. Having "no connection" whatsoever is Toi, the younger brother of a yakuza member who ended up murdering someone in childhood, scarring him, and in his teens is already cultivating marijuana plants to sell, an even bigger taboo as a crime in Japan with their extremer punishments for drugs, alongside other criminal activities. With a brother who told him the bad only survive, Toi is the one with the biggest issues of the trio.

The words "no beginning", "no end" and "no connection" are important as, without revealing everything, their opponents are literally controlled by an entity, portrayed as an evil shadow otter, who calls itself a mere concept and is a representation of despair. (Not as strange as a choice as you'd think as, if you research Kawauso, otters are shape shifters in Japanese who fool humans like foxes and tanuki, continuing Ikuhara's obsession with animal mascots for his shows). The kappa zombies are explicitly humans killed for their desires with the issue that, when exorcised, they are literally removed from memory and existence. Adding to these themes are the two otter cops, two minions of the evil otter named Mabu and Reo who have a tragic story of their own. As a result these two men who romantically love each other are caught in a Faustian trap which involved them literally picking up fresh subjects constantly - men who long for women for the most part - to turn them into the zombies which steal anything from cats, pouch bags and even women as brides around the central city of the story.

From http://www.allyouranime.net/wp-content/uploads/2
019/04/Sarazanmai-PFI.jpg

Ikuhara likes to mix dark and adult themes with strangeness like this, even humour as Penguindrum even in its most serious moments; implicitly dealing with the 1995 Sarin Gas attacks on the Tokyo subway among other details, late episodes of that series when it got completely serious still had anthropomorphic penguins prating about in the background without it ever feeling inappropriate. Sarazanmai, initially vague in what is going on, ultimately becomes the theme of choosing between love or desire, which becomes itself the theme of despair or connection, even if to symbolise this the otter uses a giant factory which boxes victims, to extract their desires, and then shreds them. Surrealism for Ikuhara is a template for him to tell stories of emotional existentialism, though with "Kappazon" boxes everywhere and the otter's kingdom boxing victims before using them, he also clearly wants to take a dig at modern, cold high tech society with a swift punt. Thankfully, Ikuhara, working with Teruko Utsumi here, has never been a "political" creator, of obvious shallow takes on political and social themes, but someone who thankfully fleshed out such ideas in greater detail, be it challenging the patriarchal oppressions of gay women in Japan and their storytelling in Yurikuma Arashi to this with its swipes at Amazon. He has never shied away from difficult subjects, and the fact that he wraps it up in such colourful, idiosyncratic pop symbolism is why he got the auteurist name tag and deserved it.

And that's because he is wonderfully vibrant, subversive and colourful. It's noticeable, and dangerous to ignore, that he co-created this series with Takeuchi, which might explain the more streamlined approach, but this is still Ikuhara's themes and ideas. It's dangerous in anime, and frankly with any medium with auteurs (barring literature), to just say one person is responsible for a great work, especially as to even exist as an auteur Ikuhara had the help of an entire production staff on each of these shows I've referenced of his. But he is idiosyncratic and you can tell it's his work; he's thankfully someone then who has always had a damn good production staff, and his own past career in the industry before he got to helm whole projects, to work from. It's strange, having only known of his work from the 2010s, as his older work isn't really available in the British Isles at all, he skipped an entire decade of the anime industry and negated the difficult transitional period from hand drawn to digitally assisted animation of the 2000s. Even the late 2000s, if in subtle ways difficult to describe, looks very different from the type of anime in the 2010s which is vibrant and distinct in its own way, the style his work fits like a perfectly sized glove.

Nothing in Sarazanmai is aesthetically disappointing, the use of repetitious symbolism common in his work one of his prominent trademarks. Football becomes a symbol of friendship. Kappa good, otter evil. Boxes and conveyor belts oppressive. The idea of exiting existence, cutting all connections, reduced to a two dimensional diagram of a ball pushed into a black void like a pinball machine. And I have not even mentioned how Ikuhara snuck past the producers that to exorcise desire, never mentioning it and then adding it afterwards, is to absorb the force out of the anus, or if the figure is large enough to climb up its rectal passage and extract a giant orb of desire to bring back. It's amazing that this can be gotten away with, as it's very graphic, but I guess that the inherent comedy of the scenario completely separates it from anything too much for TV. Of course, Ikuhara never mentioned it, which is dangerous to have done but also awesome to know as a detail.

Neither have I mentioned this is a musical for large portions of the series. Music has always been important to Ikuhara's work, but this is another different change of pace for the director. Many of these details, when you are used to Ikuhara's style, makes sense in his own logic, the musical numbers expressing the themes and characters' motivations a lot more poetically than exposition. Even the butt obsession, with the knowledge of the custom of kanchō, a prank performed by clasping the hands together in the shape of an imaginary gun and attempting to poke an unsuspecting victim's anus, befits the idea that, if you have a vulnerable area of the human body, you'd presume it to be the weak spot. Especially as the desires extracted, including wanting to be someone's dog to quote Iggy Pop and the Stooges, are explicitly sexual or about the conflicts of romance and desire in the first place, it isn't a surprise if he took a risk here too. The man who ran with the flower symbolism in Yurikuma Arashi to the point it was just openly sexual wouldn't shy from this either here, and with the erotic caressing of a robot heart involved too, he gets away with this type of material on Japanese television, makes it nonetheless approach and even sensual, and never feels crass for it.  His style, of bright colours and yet layering it with this type of explicit subversion, has always been a commonality for him and these details are just examples of this.

A complaint can be made that the show, as mentioned, is very repetitious, reusing scenes and playing as a monster of the week story over half its length, repeating these events mentioned in the last paragraph over and over again. Thankfully the show builds to a huge climax in the final four episodes, a huge risk were it not for the fact the episodes before built towards detail and characterisation being spoon-fed slowly to the viewer. Forced to work together as the desire souls will provide them a "dish of hope" that grants wishes if they collect enough, the process of exorcism leads to accidental leaks of the central trios' secrets to each other; it feels already a better spin on this type of material, that such paranormal/supernatural work would lead to leaks of thoughts, but it also builds a lot of the drama, especially as these characters to find happiness will have to sacrifice their desires and find love instead. That the "villains", baring the otter, aren't truly evil, a commonality also for Ikuhara, and eventually grow in plot exposition means that once the show fully escalates, it deserves the patience you had for its repeating narratives.

And Ikuhara always balances out the darkness of his tales with happiness, even stories which have bleak endings still bitter sweet. Arguably this has the happier ending of the three shows that will make Ikuhara's 2010s work, though it's not without some drastic changes in pace and plot revelations throughout. His style, due to how unpredictable it is, allows for this to fit altogether for these major changes especially in the final episodes, and it's clearly the work of a man who is a hopeful person who champions love and virtue. He thankfully comes from the school of having to earn that happy conclusion, showing as much the heroes' futures likely to not always be good, and playing with a clever structural trick with the opening and ending credits for the final episode for a dramatic build.

Kunihiko Ikuhara's weakest? Of the 2010s, yes as the two previous anime series he's helmed are so good this finish of this decade's trilogy had a lot to compete against in expectations. But the series itself is better than most from the last few years anyway from what I have covered. His weakest is still thankfully excellent, so it was a wonderful experience to see him again, especially as in this particular case the world of streaming anime means you could catch up with it the same year, only months after, it premiered on Japanese television. Time before I would have to wait impatiently, and that's as much because, annoyingly, he's a cult director who isn't a huge mega selling star; as we wait impatiently in the United Kingdom for Revolutionary Girl Utena to actually get a release here, my view of his work from these 2010s trilogy is still so unique, their conclusion unless he suddenly snuck a fourth surprise by the end of the decade a perfect one.

From https://i2.wp.com/anitrendz.net/news/wp-content/uploads
/2019/07/Article-2.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1

#93: Samurai Flamenco (2013-14)

From https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/
samurai_flamenco_1705.jpg

Director: Takahiro Ōmori

Screenplay: Hideyuki Kurata

Voice Cast: Tomokazu Sugita as Hidenori Goto; Toshiki Masuda as Masayoshi Hazama/Samurai Flamenco; Chie Nakamura as Sumi Ishihara; Erii Yamazaki as Moe Morita; Haruhisa Suzuki as Haiji Sawada; Haruka Tomatsu as Mari Maya; Jūrōta Kosugi as Joji Kaname; Kenn as Anji Kuroki; Kōji Ishii as Shintarō F. Okuzaki; M.A.O as Mizuki Misawa; Satoshi Mikami as Akira Konno

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: By day, Masayoshi Hazama is a model, by night (fixated since a child on superheroes) a wannabe crime fighter helping to fight even against littering. Thankfully with the help of Hidenori Goto, a policeman he bonds with after a chance encounter, his work starts to become more meaningful. Starting with the idol singer Haruka Tomatsu wanting to join in however, the story of his secret identity as Samurai Flamenco is going to get a life that is more elaborate, threatening and strange as he becomes a media sensation.

Spoiler Friendly Review

Samurai Flamenco is a gem - I'm surprised to learn it has been divisive for many. One detail that influenced this opinion, the notorious struggles the production had on a low budget and a deadline to animate each episode, leading to some notorious gaffs on the broadcast version, is just the unfortunate nature of televised anime, someone clearly cleaned up for the Blu Ray version I saw. The other issue is that Samurai Flamenco wrong foots its viewer, abruptly doing a hairpin turn from its modest, amateur vigilante beginning into something over-the-top and changing the reality of the world depicted onscreen.

I know where, in episode seven to be precise, the series "jumped the shark" for many, but from the beginning Samurai Flamenco is a tribute/meta commentary/pastiche of tokusatsu storytelling, in which even the West will recognise the imagery of a colour coordinated team that appears in various forms through the Power Rangers, a series adapted from the Japanese franchise Super Sentai and still chugging along in Westernised versions since the nineties. As a result, the idea of a character like Samurai Flamenco, and the various ones that pop up, can be grasped and even then, with some noticable differences from the American superhero, even that get briefly referenced in a character, and exists within the concept that, for all the times Flamenco gallops proudly through every clichés and plot twist it can sometimes pull out of its backside, it's also playing with the trope of imagining these heroes as regular folks and the world around them as a banal one, the titular Samurai Flamenco, Masayoshi Hazama, still having to work  as a model alongside the growing pains of his awkward first attempts to stop crime. He doesn't even begin the series with fighting abilities and how he finally does is as much because he ended up with a crazed showboat, posing as him, as his mentor.

Screenwriter Hideyuki Kurata is known for some hyper imaginative work; I know him warmly as the premise creator and writer on Read or Die (2001), an inspired smash hit which combined superhero action based around unlikely (real) historical figures for such a work like entomologist Jean Henri Fabre and aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal. It's not a surprise, in lieu of this, he'd go for this series' whiplash inducing shifts and ambition.

Thankfully, director Takahiro Ōmori was hired too, the man who made Baccano! (2007) - a show difficult to reveal a lot of too in case of spoilers, but an ultraviolent  gangster farce in 1920s America with a non-liner plot structure for most its length - perfect for keeping things together. And he's helmed other work like Princess Jellyfish (2010), a complete tonal shift as a comedy about female nerds and a young man who dresses as a woman who befriends them, so he's as capable of dealing with the grounded, everyday banality Samurai Flamenco has in character building and for comedy.  

He's turning into a director of an underrated virtue, especially as he comes off in a work like this as an all-purpose figure able to work in any context. The production crew in general, in spite of the known issues with getting episodes completed, were also clearly inspired with a desire to make a great work, right down to the right soft jazz piece in the score to contrast the abrupt and bombastic sentai theme tune to proudly appears halfway though, everyone involved humanising the material. The series, as a result, is absolutely worth tracking down; any further detail would be spoiling it for the reader of this review.

From https://caraniel.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/commie-samurai
-flamenco-06-a38f6e35-mkv_snapshot_19-54_2013-11-16_13-00-19.jpg

Spoiler Heavy Review

Not bad for a series where, when episodes even introduces actual monsters after just ordinary hoodlums, Samurai Flamenco goes into full blown villain of the week twists with breakneck plot twists, but also contrasting it to ordinary life in a Japanese city. Even in a series where Masayoshi Hazama later encounters God, effectively so in the form of the voice of the galaxy who points out (with a literal shelf of Samurai Flamenco DVDS in a metaphysical store) his life as a hero is itself a story to be viewed by other dimensions, the unpredictability is contrasted by the bureaucracy of dealing with this even when they celebrate the heroes like Samurai Flamenco. Even the conspiracy plot point of government corruption is skewered in what can only be described as poll powered super armour. That sense of the banality behind the story is a risk, alongside having episodes which then switch between actual deaths and injury taking place against humour, but it works as it imagines how, even when a monster is vanquished, the police still have to do the paperwork. Where the final plot line, after literally invoking reality itself, is based on our hero facing the idea of love for himself and others to fight another figure.

And its kept together because the characters in the centre of it all are sincere and deep, potential one joke characters having newer layers to them as the series progresses with the advantage that, playing off the averageness of the world in spite of the plots, they have ordinary internal lives and all the emotionally baggage that comes with it, just in the midst of dealing with crazy (frankly silly) monsters.

Alongside Masayoshi is his friend and grumpy straight man Hidenori Goto, not only an implied homoeroticism played upon throughout, but with the added fact they are utterly lovable figures, Goto as a cop having his own right plot trajectory, both where his law enforcement changes depending on the circumstances of heroes and monsters appearing, alongside a huge subplot twist about his girlfriend and his mobile phone that turns Samurai Flamenco into even psychological drama. They're followed in tow by various great side characters - Sumi Ishihara, Masayoshi's strict but ultimately caring female manager, Joji Kaname, his mentor and eventually revealled as the leader of the Samurai Sentai Flamenger, a group of sentai heroes who (introduced halfway through) could've been too many additions weren't it the fact they all have fascinating aspects to them, from the stereotypical hot blooded anime lead if he was now nearing his thrities, and the open animosity between the sole female memeber and Kaname's wife visibly from a previous adulterous relationship. Even the Q of this series, Jun Harazuka, is working in stationary, basing Samurai Flamenco's tech on office supplies.

And then of course there is my favourite characters Mineral Miracle Muse, an idol trio who starts with main member Mari Maya, growing up with magical girls, deciding to become one by way of a magical wand/cattle prod/spike mallet hybrid and kicking men in the testicles a lot, eventually roping in Mizuki Misawa (serious minded) and Moe Morita (shy, explicitly romantically attracted to Mari). Their plot trajectory, even when they are sidelined for a chapter, are a great example of how the series in general succeeds; immediate jokes about them subverting magical girl tropes into violet interpretations, alongside the explicit yuri references and Mari's uniform fetish, give way to Mari's own existential crisis, some of the darkest material in the show, and the complex relationship between the three women that, in them being just as complex and diverse, keeps the viewer on their toes.

The subversion of the genre tropes allows Samurai Flamenco to get away with its whiplash inducing plot threads, a fleshed out world with ordinary characters that merely exist in this particular realm. It also, in among ridiculous villains who look like children's show rejects, a lot of serious moments and questions made of the tokusatsu genre itself. What it means to be a hero and fight for good, enhanced by the fact that not only is there real deaths, and even torture and psychological damage, but that two of the main villains throughout were even influenced by these heroes, one from growing up with sentai shows wanting to instead become a villain, the other inspired by Samurai Flamenco himself to become his ultimate nemesis. Even the humorous aspects of the jokes have weight to them, an early episode where a ransom being made on the internet to unmask Flamenco leads to one night becoming a nightmare for him, another in the From Beyond chapter, about such an evil group, eventually leading to so many monster fights in the metropolis that everyone becomes bored and apathetic.

As a result, I loved the series, an utter spectacle which was cleverly written and with a sense of its hecticness deliberately used to keep it being inventive and never slacking like many anime series, especially in their middle chapters, can get. Major plot threads in this series get finished in one episode in a way that's almost hilarious, and yet I never dismissed anything throughout Samurai Flamenco as anything but inspired.  

From https://caraniel.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/horriblesubs-samurai
-flamenco-08-720p-mkv_snapshot_13-10_2013-11-30_14-41-48.jpg

#48: Mononoke (2007)

Director: Kenji Nakamura

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka; Ikuko Takahashi; Manabu Ishikawa; Michiko Yokote

Voice Cast: Takahiro Sakurai as the Medicine Seller, and various others

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

Synopsis: A series of different stories, mostly set in Edo period Japan ], following a mysterious, nameless Medicine Seller. Found wherever there is a mononoke - when a supernatural spirit (a ayakashi) is corrupted by the worst of humanity and starts to interact with the human world in violent ways - he can only be able to exorcise them with his magical sword when he finds out their shape (form), truth (truth) and reasoning (reason in the English subtitles).

A series I had always wanted to see, Mononoke was actually a spin-off from a 2006 horror anthology series Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales. Both came from the Noitamina bloc, a syndicated time space on Fuji Television which has started to broadcast more mainstream anime, or to be more technically honest anime that will appeal to stereotypical otaku more, but has always been a place syinominous with experimental animated programming and shows which strayed away from the stereotypes of modern anime. It is where Eden of the East (2009) came from or, for the perfect example, Masaaki Yuasa's The Tatami Galaxy (2010) which shows how these shows, original tales or adaptations, are idiosyncratic both in look and the storytelling they have. Ayakashi was a series of three stories told over multiple episodes. Two were adaptations, of folklore and a play, whilst the third was an original story by Mononoke director Kenji Nakamura with a co-writer for the spin-off series Michiko Yokote, the original tale introducing the world that first introduced the world to the Medicine Seller, a figure in his own series the exact definition of what Wikipedia calls an "Occult Detective" story, a sub genre where figures exist to investigate supernatural and paranormal mysteries.  

From https://i0.wp.com/www.silveremulsion.com
/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Mononoke_2.jpg

The Occult Detective genre is more common than I once thought - John Constantine of DC Comics one of the most well known characters from the sub-genre, but it's a trope that especially thrives in anime and manga if you step back and see how much it's been used. Just in anime, there are works that I've seen (The Garden of Sinners (2007-2013)), to those I've yet to see (Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective (1998)). Even anime with different genre tropes brush up with this subgenre - like Chrono Crusade (2003-4) and the original 2001-2 version of Hellsing - because their set ups follow organisations that deal with strange cases even if they're more likely to use firearms than detective skills to deal the mysterious involved. All of them usually have enigmatic figures, male or female, in the centre for which everything paranormal circles around them, be they on their own and with a team behind them. It's a great trope to use as, if the character has a drama, it can be built upon from episodic tales beforehand until they fully take centre stage. If they are like in Mononoke, with the Medicine Seller an aloof and even sarcastic figure between the mortal and supernatural world, then the characters and tales that they encounter if done well are engaging by themselves but with a constant onlooker between them that can drive the narratives to their ends.

The series, from the first (two episode) tale Zashiki-warashi, immediately stands out as a beautiful production. The tale's pretty obvious in which a pregnant young woman on the run stays in a brothel with a sinister past, but the way Mononoke presents it is entirely unique. It's an exceptional looking show which appears to have been made with cut outs or even with paper used as animation cels, making the fact (as behind the scenes footage on its US DVD shows) that it's a computer animated production which layered this two dimensional look on top of computer drawn sketch lines a perfect marriage between the two styles. It argues, if used as a lecture tool, the balance between the old hand drawn era and the new digitised era perfectly, having aged without fault from 2007, and that some of the best anime of the 2000s onward made a conscious decision to marry the two sides or embrace the expressionistic. The use of colour as well is also significant in how bright and vivid a show with such morbid subject matter is, something that was lost in Western appropriation of Japanese "J-Horror" a decade back. Even with stories which had intentionally dank, dark  looks, the visual and colour palette significant with a lot of these stories in terms of aesthetic detail when with the absence of colour, used to signify details carefully.

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BM
jA4Nzc0NjA4N15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTEyNTQyNzE@._V1_.jpg

The stories tread on well worn tropes but the unconventional look through the stories, alongside the time given to them over two to three episodes, gives them new personality here. The tone for Mononoke as a result, even with realistic character designs that are rarely distorted, is openly symbolic and surreal both for style and to tackle exceptionally grim subject matter, where the titular beings known as Zashiki-warashi in the first story are connected to unborn children, symbolic imagery blatant in meaning like red ribbon but allowing material that would be gristly to actually depict to be show in a heightened, meaningful manner. Sometimes it's useful for the limitations of a TV anime production whilst presenting an utterly artistic flair, such as the final arc of the series replacing moving crowds of bystanders with mannequins in costume.

A story like Umibōzu, in which there are a group of people on a boat in the midst of a haunted area of the sea, shows how all the stories are effectively chamber pieces, supernatural detective stories where the Medicine Seller is the judge of mortal sins as he has to figure out the cause of the mononoke to cleanse them away, the auditor who usually extracts the truth from all the characters with him in each particular story. Rather than laborious plot twists, its closure to peeling away the layers of an onion and using the stories to depict human fallacies, Umibōzu particularly poignant for this as its about guilt, the masks people in any stature wear and how cleansing it actually transforms a person for the better. This could also alienate the viewers in place expecting actual monsters, the next story Noppera-bō about a woman who might've murdered her husband and his family becoming an existential drama all within her own head, but constantly in these tales they are using conventional plot structure to tackle human drama through these folk creatures. That most folklore is naturally based on human behaviour and the acts we commit, than it feels more sincere to depict them as such than the (usual) Western model of such creatures being mere monsters outside our species.

From https://i2.wp.com/www.bateszi.me/wp-content/
uploads/2007/10/vlcsnap-5199554.jpg?w=840

Also as a result of this, openly existential and psychological tales using the wild and wonderful yōkai of Japanese folklore, the series openly embraces the strange even if it's by means of rewriting said creatures of Japanese culture for new meanings for the stories too. One thing that can never be denied is that the penchant for the strange in Japanese storytelling is embraced and is not just a "cute" thing for non-Japanese outsiders to be patronising about, but idiosyncratic creativity where the combination of the country's rich folk heritage and idiosyncratic creativity gives carte blanche for undead fish musicians and faceless mask wearing entities to wandering in story arch without needing to explain their existences to the viewers. One of my favourite stories, Nue, is openly weirder than the others, a literal chamber piece involving two dead bodies, four people including the Medicine Seller and a mystery to solve...only that its surrounded by an incense smelling competition between three of the individuals where, for one game, the answers have to be named after chapters of Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji (1021). Alongside writing the arc Umibōzu, naturally the oddest arc of the series, which includes visual clues that on future watches will immediately show the story showing its hand early, comes from one of my favourite anime screenwriters Chiaki J. Konaka who has made a career of this type of distinct writing. Both loved and notorious for his existential and abstract plotting, his goes from fan favourite Serial Experiments Lain (1998) to frustrating viewers of the second season of The Big 0 (1999-2003), a legitimate candidate for an auteur screenwriter in anime who just happens to be in a production like Mononoke where the scripts by all the screenwriters involved are all strong too.

From http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U5TOm3k18kQ/VE7i661qIoI/
AAAAAAAAEZ8/w2CwvLTlGG8/s1600/Mononoke%2B4.jpg

The only issue with Mononoke is that it could've been longer. A risky proposition as the future stories might've dropped in quality, but like the best of anime series, unless they have full conclusions with finite endings, they always leave you wanting more. Mononoke offers a tantalising conclusion by jumping forward abruptly in time to the 1920s, the story Bakeneko about a group of people trapped on an underground train who may have all been responsible for a death of a young female journalist. I actually find it to be the best of all the story arcs in the series for how far more bold in style it is even against the others, with moments of legitimately gruesome horror by way of expressionistic imagery and the nihilistic tone it has for three quarters of its length. It's a great way to have ended the series but with the obvious connotations, with the Medicine Seller ageless on the train, it does leave one gasping for more episodes that will never be about the character existing in modern day Japan, standing out in his appearance but still have a cool, humorous air to him dealing with mononoke still.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/d1KXxD4ClkU/maxresdefault.jpg