#261: Inu-Oh (2021)

 

Studio: Science SARU

Director: Masaaki Yuasa            

Screenplay: Akiko Nogi

Based on the novel by Hideo Furukawa

Voice Cast: Avu-chan as INU-OH; Mirai Moriyama as Tomona; Kenjiro Tsuda as Inu-Oh's Father; Tasuku Emoto as Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu; Yutaka Matsushige as Tomona's Father; Chikara Honda as Kakuichi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Long ago, when Noh theatre was not even named as such, and Japan was split into two factions 600 years ago, one child is born in a performance deformed, an entity that is ostracized for being monsterous but will become a talented dancer. This child, INU-OH, will cross paths with Tomona. Tomona was the son of sea divers who search for treasure, and were assigned to find the artifacts of the Heike clan, lost during history, only for the sword that they find in the se to be blind Tomona as is disembowels his father when the later draws the blade. Thus begins a Masaaki Yuasa film, a historical piece based on a novel by Hideo Furukawa that will take an unexpected route. In its tale of these two helping each other with the curses around them based on the artifacts of the Heike, a clan that were decimated during the Battle of Dan-no-ura of April 25th 1185 on the sea, this serious tale of how the past will be interpreted and forced to tow the official line will be told itself by way of rock musical.

It is a wonderful thing to know Masaaki Yuasa was once an obscure cult figure, only to finally by the end of the 2010s to become an acclaimed animation director, with his work mostly available and with his growth in success from the 2010s without compromising his style. Inu-Oh continues this, with the studio Science Saru co-established by him in 2013 allowing the art style Yuasa has had with his productions to only refine here over two decades since his earliest 2000s works, cleaner here but having the flourishes still there when perfect for scenes, like using watercolor silhouettes for certain moments. The narrative itself is very simple with hindsight even if the real life history this is based upon being incredibly elaborate and to be more well understood for a Japanese audience. Contextually, this is dealing with how this important real life battle, the Battle of Dan-no-ura, has ramifications in the period setting a long time later when it is retold in song and stories, where Tomona, needing to free his dead father from the curse of that sword, one of a few artifacts connected to the Heike with supernatural power, encounters Inu-Oh, who is also as he is due to the curse of another artifact from the past, a demonic performance mask. Tomona, in his quest, joins the ranks of blind biwa players, those who tell through song the tales of the like of the Heike, whilst Inu-Oh, despite being banished by his father, still learns the techniques that would become Noh dance, his own curse with the touch that, the more he appeases the Heike ghosts around him, his limbs will turn into more human ones as he continues to perform. When the pair become aware, in a world where the supernatural is completely around humanity, of the Heike ghosts, Tomona becomes the hype man with his proto-rock star biwa playing to promote Inu-Oh’s renegade theatrical dance and song performances, where he is able to talk directly to the slain Heike soldiers, tell their tales in song, and rest their souls in his art.

This is where the film itself takes its most inventive turn as, with Inu-Oh only eventually needing to hide his face under a mask, and Tomona becoming a biwa god for the masses himself, this is deliberately anachronistic in tone. This predates Beatlemania by a good few centuries, in pre-Edo Japan rather than Liverpool, of screaming female fans, as there are also electric guitars in the soundtrack for these rock opera songs.  This is a real virtue to the film, as with music having played a good part in his earlier work – with opening and ending themes for Yuasa‘s television productions being idiosyncratic and brilliant – this is his first musical in his career, as it is his first ancient Japanese period story, and it really works perfectly. I can proudly write that, at one moment, a break dancing glowing samurai skeleton appears at one point within this, and that is not factoring in that the music itself, by Otomo Yoshihide, is insanely good. Not surprisingly, and wisely, one of your key leads to this playing the titular Inu-Oh is a musician, the lead vocalist and songwriter of the band Queen Bee by the name of Avu-chan, who is really good in their voice acting and performance. Mirai Moriyama, as Tomora, does as much a credible job in his role, singing and acting, with Avu-chan, Masaaki Yuasa, soundtrack musician Yohei Matsui, and the film's compouser Otomo Yoshihide creating the original songs' lyrics. Otomo Yoshihide is someone I know through the experimental rock group Ground Zero, and his work here as the main composer is just as perfect for this melding of rock opera, Japanese history, classic Japanese music, and even some songs you could get away with on a Halloween soundtrack, least the one (with a stage show in the film with Inu-Oh surrounded by fake severed hands) dealing with the poor unfortunate Heike soldiers, beaten and clinging to the enemy ships for dear life, having their hands cut off and leading to a tree to grow with them in.

This is all in reflection of a serious theme of this film, The Tale of the Heike, a huge epic account compiled prior to 1330, dealing with the struggle between the Taira (Heike) clan and Minamoto clan for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century in the 1180–1185 Genpei War 1180–1185. With origins blurred to history, and numerous different interpretations from an oral tradition, through the biwa playing bards Tomono here is part of, a theme here is the tale of Heike and trying to control it in power. Tomono and Inu-Oh bring the rich and varying forms of this story in all forms, whilst in contrast, you have a nod to biwa players being murdered to silence or steal the stories, or how tragedy comes into this film in its finale when, to have an official version of the tale that unites the country, any other interpretations must be silenced even if by execution.

Whilst this naturally leads to tragedy, the performances which make up the centre of the film are bombastic and vibrant, as staying within the world of this film rather than turning into their own sequences out of the period context, we see 20th century Japanese rock band performances reinterpreted in terms of how props like safety harnesses for choreography mid-air would transpire in an ancient setting, or how to depict with giant shadows the tale of summoning an unnatural whale made from a thousand dolphins the Heike clan call for mid-sea battle. As a result, including the eventual drama that comes in, including the envy of Inu-Oh’s father as his performances are being undermined by his son, this is a vibrant film to watch, insanely imaginative to view. Science Saru, whose productions include Western co-productions too, are a really good studio of talented animators just from seeing this film, where even their use of computers for the animation shows the best, when it is used for some very cinematic camera travelling shots, in scenes, that would be painstakingly difficult to have animated hand drawn back in the day and are incredible without context when they happen.

This is still one of Masaaki Yuasa’s more grounded productions in terms of style, in that he commits to the period setting, but with break dancing even transpiring among the peasantry here in this historical setting, the willingness to take Japanese cultural history and still be faithful to it with this sense of risk makes the plot more powerful by its end, including a bitter sweet conclusion where despite all that happens, old friends will reunite as ghosts in modern Japan and rock on together in the afterlife. This does not feel like a compromise at all where his sense of vibrancy as a director, including the talent of the studio behind this, show through, whether it is trying to integrate the modern rock aesthetic, even seventies and eighties glam rock/metal, to the world in visuals or music standing out in its melding of a period setting to its idiosyncratic touches. There is even as well streaks of horror storytelling that do crop up throughout and add to this story’s huge emphasis on the afterlife and the ghosts which haunt the living, including the least expected and gory explosion of a human being even if it contextually makes sense. In terms of its creator stretching himself into a different genre or two, Masaaki Yuasa completely succeeded here.

#260: Nyanpire - The Animation (2011)

 

Studio: GONZO

Director: Takahiro Yoshimatsu

Screenplay: Natsuko Takahashi

Based on the manga by yukiusa

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

To be continued, meow.

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

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

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

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

#259: Hell Target (1987)

 

Studio: Nakamura Production

Director: Keito Nakamura

Screenplay: Kenichi Matsuzaki

Voice Cast: Akira Murayama as Kitazato McRoe; Katsunosuke Hori as Hans Kruger; Kōichi Chiba as Yura Treyanov; Gara Takashima as Meryl Brown; Hirotaka Suzuoki as Harry Howard; Ikuya Sawaki as Rico Fernandez; Kaneto Shiozawa as; Jean Müller/Jean Myaura ; Shingo Hiromori as Chan Li; Sumi Shimamoto as Tiki Carmack

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

In the far-flung future, a space ship ventures out to a strange red world where a previous crew were lost upon - looking like copper art at times where you need to scratch the black surface of for the image created underneath, especially due to the history of this one-off straight to video work in terms of preservation. It is pretty much an early warning of what they are in for when one of their male crew members dreams of a monster perusing them on the landmass they will land on.

Note, out of many OVAs, Hell Target can be found in a version best described as shot through a dirty sock, a title which strangely never got a Western release despite the fact even Roots Search (1986), a notorious sci-fi horror one-off, managed to in the day. Travelling to this planet, the ominously named Inferno II for mission, obviously you get the vibes of this being another anime riffing on Alien (1979), as did many live action films in the day too. In truth, this is probably riffing on one of the films trying to capitalise on Alien's success in the ultimate irony, as the premise here, of a place of monsters who attack and kill their victims by psychically filling their minds with hallucinations based on their fears, evokes the Roger Corman produced Galaxy of Terror (1981), of a similar premise.

It is a curious touch in terms of what inspired this - compare this to Lily C.A.T. (1987), a feature length one-off which was released in the West and was openly a remake of Alien in its own way - and as a result, this has its own idiosyncratic mood, of a strange gigantic monsters who yet kill by causing hallucinations, such as snow falling inside a cockpit despite being also on a desert planet. There is a satanic mood or at least a demonic one too to these figures, with supernatural edges to them, and fittingly, in the best way for any anime from this era, it gets stranger in its aesthetic choices in depicting this which stand out. The acidic blood is taken from Alien for one of the few ultra gory scenes, a reminder of what era this horror tale comes from, but there are definitely gorier titles from the time, and eventually you do see some idiosyncratic touches which this can proudly say managed to make its own. Zombies of former victims is obviously expected but a Valkyrie attacking a space ship on a flying horse is not a sentence I would have had to include for science fiction, nor one eyed spirit God birds. Credit the anime, it goes for a weird mash-up of ideas than just remake Alien, if structured around the simple template of a slasher in picking the crew off one-by-one.

In terms of the story altogether, Hell Target can be accused of being very simplistic as the cast do fit the term "disposable" filly, which is going to be something you have to accept though with the advantage this is at least less than fifty minutes. They do not even really fit stereotypes either, barring the two who matter, the female lead who is stereotyped as more "feminine" and in peril a great deal of the work, and the stoic male lead, and barring the abrupt moment the pair have a sex scene, to clear their heads after witnessing their colleagues get slaughtered on mass and terrorised by the likes of a sentient tank, there is nothing that remotely ludicrous or distinct about this cast beyond that moment. One of the obvious issues that you can see in a lot of animated and live action works inspired by Alien, all in spite of the fact that film explicitly went out of its way to make its characters idiosyncratic, is how you can end up with a lot of pure "canon fodder" which you cannot even appreciate as stereotypes, a risk also the slasher genre can suffer from, and this anime production does as well.

It helps the work has an ending you could find in a macabre horror tale, bleak in outcome, Hell Target a work that has to be appreciated as part of a moment of single entry productions which allowed their creators to improvise original stories and flex, even if as full narratives they are not all perfect. This title came from Nakamura Production, a company who are prolific in areas like in-between animation to 2nd key animation, a studio who deal with working on productions for others in a vast number of titles, from entries in the Gundam franchise to the series adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Work like this is important for animation, but they themselves only produced one work of their own in Hell Target, which is strange to consider, that for a company founded in 1974, they exist more as a support studio for others and only expressed themselves this once. This title, again, surprisingly never got a release in the West despite not having any specific cultural traits as a Japanese production, and found itself in danger of potentially being lost were it not for amateur online perseveration, making it a legitimately curiosity thankfully preserved in some way even if not necessarily a masterpiece in its context.

#258: Pani Poni Dash! (2005)

 

Studio: Shaft

Director: Shin Oonuma (Series Director); Akiyuki Shinbo (Director)

Screenplay: Kenichi Kanemaki

Based on the manga by Hekiru Hikawa

Voice Cast: Chiwa Saito as Rebecca "Becky" Miyamoto; Ai Nonaka as Ichijō-san; Fumiko Orikasa as Himeko Katagiri; Kana Ueda as Kurumi Momose; Kayo Sakata as Sayaka "Rokugo" Suzuki; Satsuki Yukino as Rei Tachibana; Yui Horie as Miyako Uehara

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Pani Poni Dash was a title I saw very early into my interest into anime in the 2000s – a strange period with hindsight, now ADV Films, who distributed this, no longer exist, and for some inexplicable reason we once bought anime in three to four episodes per disc as separate releases for one television series, this one such case in the day, without questioning the cost of this. Available together through the likes of Crunchyroll in the streaming era, one of the biggest reasons I was not a fan of this in the day was that I felt it was “too weird” back then and too random. Neither helping is that, back then, it felt like the version of Azumanga Daioh (2002) you had back home, which is mean to both shows, completely missing the point of both series. Daioh is very different to this, though one of the biggest flaws with this series still, whilst I have grow to appreciate it considerably, is that if this had followed the high school clichés more, I think this would have been a great show rather than a funny one, which starts to deviate too much with its indulgences than use them to parody that genre.

Starting with a Planet of the Apes parody, one of the many parodies Western and Japanese you will see, we are introduced to Rebecca Miyamoto, a Japanese-American prodigy who is able to become a high school teacher at eleven years old, teaching Class 1C at Peach Moon Academy. There are arguably too many characters, including the other classes, but to give you the idea of who we have in Class 1C in their anime versions there is: Himeko Katagiri, a hyper-active but lovable doofus whose cowlick is literally the source of her energy as reveal early on; Ichijō, managing to top the weirdness scale as a strange figure able to summon rain to willingly poisoning classmates, even able to see the aliens spying on Rebecca from orbit; Miyako Uehara, somewhat the geeky stereotype there to be annoyed and have a shiny forehead; Rei Tachibana, the most mature if capable of being vindictive, the glue to keep everyone together; Sayaka Suzuki (No. 6), who does suffer from a lack of characterization if with a lovable charm; and Kurumi Momose, where the joke is that she is the bland and normal one, giving her an existential crisis, as well as introducing a legitimately funny running gag that, as a result, she is the one who reacts to the increasingly insane events as most of us would, with bafflement, until the point she begins to accept the screwed up logic of the world. Then there is Mesousa, probably the most depressed rabbit in all of media, even over the insanely twisted humour of Andy Riley’s The Book of Bunny Suicides (2003) comic, in terms of the most depressed, put upon and poorest bugger of the species in media, whose depression and lack of fingers makes him hapless and lovable. Even before the cat in the school vending machine, who claims to be literal God, starts to torment him, Mesousa is the parody of cute animal sidekicks in dire need of a hug if Kurumi Momose was not already hanging out with him in the school rabbit hutch depressed she was call bland again. The aliens, as mentioned, are a Greek chorus, if accidentally breaking the rule to not interfere with the earthlings a few times, studying Rebecca as a subject and add their own amusement as a group too.

The show to its credit does have a good gag for everyone, but there are a lot of characters beyond this. Some of parodies of anime and manga, such as Behoimi, the magical girl who has no actual powers, whilst others include a very clumsy girl, an extravagant girl who brings exotic animals to class, the war between a film club and drama club pair of girls where they do not know their real identities and start to bond, and a few male characters, including the elderly teacher which a foot in the morbid and occult. A personal favorite are two other girls who are a double act, a shorter raven haired girl named Otome Akiyama who clearly has a friendship with the other girl, the considerably taller Suzune Shiratori who does have an affection for her, even if it means tormenting Otome and trying to constantly use the pressure point on her head to keep her permanently short. To say the show has a lot within it to accept is to realize by episode three, when the cowlick Himeko has is shown as not only sentient but has unnatural abilities, you also get a random Batman Returns (1992) Cat Woman parody, and some twisted jokes like the student ending the episode dead behind class 1C’s blackboard when trying to spy on them. A camping episode early on reveals kappa, the mythological creatures of Japan’s folklore, are experimenting in their own rocket space project in the deepest Japanese woods. By episode thirteen of twenty six episodes, the first of a few robot parodies appears, and by episode ten earlier, Behoimi and a newly introduced character, a maid named Media who knows her from their mysterious military pass, are disarming remote bombs around the school whilst everyone goes through their school vacation projects. It is that kind of show.

One of the hugest things about this show, and is one of its best virtues, is the production value, which is not a surprise when this is a studio Shaft production where, whilst he is not the series director, the director underneath Shin Oonuma is Akiyuki Shinbo. Akiyuki Shinbo, and Shaft in general, emphasize a distinct art style and willingness to experiment, such as in Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), and this is not different, a parody anime where the production team were just allowed to indulge in their most experimental side. The premise is blown up countless time and the fourth wall is constantly mocked, with scenes shown to be on a stage being directed by a film crew. Various visual gags transpire, such as “Punishment Pinball” in episode 7, or RPG game parodies, which change the aesthetic considerably, as there is the use of real images especially for food as collage. Even how to get around painstaking depicting the whole class, replicating the same character models over and over, is stylized and has moments when the production switch this up with figures from fashion magazines with disturbing open smiles. Weird sight gags, parodies or plain non- sequitur fill the screen, and you will see R. Lee Ermey in his Full Metal Jacket (1987) appearance as a screenshot at random times for no reason, like how the show starts to get more invested into parodying anime and manga the more episodes pass. It is not obvious things either like a Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), but ones which are explicitly for the Japanese viewership or those who get the reference, such as changing the characters’ designs to briefly match Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō, or explicitly referring to the work in character design of Riyoko Ikeda. Sadly they only start to appear near the end of the series, but some fo the funniest, because you do not need to get the references to appreciate the melodramatic clichés it is touching on, are all the elaborate excuses Himeko has for being late to class, most of which are shoujo manga parodies. Even the music is eclectic, with even yodeling bursting through the soundtrack at one point, and deserves credit for its unpredictability.

The randomness does need to be accepted – like the entire tangent about a lost Holed Pasta Civilization which learnt the ability to make them from aliens, at least to how Himeko views them, or how the aliens, when not causing problems or being noticed even by Ichijō’s todder sister through their viewing telescope, eventually start to look like the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Honestly the biggest issue with Pani Poni Dash is eventually the school setting is just a location by the final episodes, feeling like it is bored with the set-up and more concerned with the world being threatened by an asteroid, an Edo period chambara parody, or Himeko being possessed by a sentient space mushroom. The space mushroom is so strange it is funny, but honestly, the show starts to get too indulgent and baggy by its last episodes, when consistency would have been found more if this content was forced onto high school anime clichés fully.

The Azumanga Daioh comparison is apt even if entirely different comedies, where Daioh took the time frame of school events, from sports day to the cultural festival, and had moments of legitimately strangeness too to contrast its jokes about things real teenagers would go through with school. Pani Poni Dash could have been the weirder parody, where an episode mentioned early on, disarming bombs juxtaposed with the school vacation projects being talked of in class, fully shows when this duality works perfectly. The show is funny, visually creative, and I cannot have anything but admiration for all the female voice actors here; comedies, especially ones this idiosyncratic, where there is all the gags and vocal changes, even the idiosyncrasies of the casts’ like Sayaka Suzuki calling everything the “most ---- of the year”, provide Herculean vocal stretching to test anyone, and I admire the dexterity of all the cast for ridiculous some of the scenes and moments get. The reason as mentioned I was not a fan of this in the day was because this gets weird for the sake of it, to the point it seems like the concept of being a high school anime parody is a pretense. With time having past, how weird the series is was not an issue in the slightest, even when I am lost, but that it could have tried to force itself more onto its high school story premise becomes the lost opportunity. There is a cultural festival episode, but not for example a sports day one, and that feels like a lot of lost moments could have been done with all the idiosyncratic characters and reoccurring gags this show does have, leading to funnier moments.

Pani returned, abruptly in a 2009 OVA, effectively a one-off new episode also by Shaft, which was clearly used to advertise the manga, still going in from 2000 to 2011. It is obscure to the point I had no idea of its existence until I had returned to the original series, not included with the original work in streaming or a physical release in the West. Even the opening credits are the same, and it feels like a run back in nice comfortable shoes for the voice cast and the production team to a work they liked. Only some tame fan service, mild titillation, suggest anything remotely different, alongside the questionable decision to dress Rebecca, in an antagonist's role, in a tweens' size Germanic black uniform, which we will just ignore as a poor choice. It would have actually been a good episode in the source series, actually emphasizing the better virtue of having normal school activities distorted in an absurd touch, here how Rebecca's class and a couple others have failed exams but have a chance to avoid retest if they can beat the school tradition of "Kick the Can". This is an all day event where they have in a school day until 5pm, without all of them being caught by their persuaders, to kick the aforementioned soda can. It definitely has jokes to remind you this is Pani Poni Dash, such as the aliens returning with a parody of scenes of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, represented in close parody caricature, from Michael Mann's Heat (1995), but barring some of the more overt light eroticism, this has a lot more good jokes, such as Media the maid and the magical girl, on the pursuers'' side, wishing to protect the can by planting M18 landmines and military defense weaponry around the school. It is the last piece to a work which, baring an internet radio show and spin-off manga on specific characters, has a lot I admired but was in the animated version a show which is flawed entirely because the premise, whilst mad as a box of frogs in tone, has so much you can work with that it is actually not as interesting to be as unpredictable as it was, the punch lines missed of trying to pretend to be a cohesive high school comedy with this motley crew of lovable school girls and miscreants tantalizing in where it could have gone with that dynamic schism.

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

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Tetsuya Watanabe

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

Based on the Zone of the Enders franchise by Konami

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#256: Campus Special Investigator Hikaruon (1987)

 

Studio: AIC

Director: Kazuhiro Ochi

Screenplay: Kazuhiro Ochi

Voice Cast: Mika Doi as Adzumi Hadzuki; Toshihiko Seki as Hikaru Shihodo; Kazuyuki Sogabe as Shirou Amakusa; Miina Tominaga as Yayoi Shiina; Shōzō Iizuka as Demonic Beast; Tesshō Genda as Kyousuke Gomi

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Continuing into the catalogue of obscure eighties OVAs, this is the last of the "Pink Shock" trilogy which I have seen all of. Produced by AIC, it was a brief series which came with no real consitent aspect to them barring some eroticism. One was Maryū Senki (1987-9), a three part horror-action release of interest in that genre. The other Call Me Tonight (1986) is one some viewers may have learnt of as it has gained interest in the internet age, a fascinating short predating the notorious Urotsukidôji anime adaptations by parodying it, by way of a lead male character who turns into a tentacle monster when horny and the female phone sex employee who can tame his heart, all in a work that is more progressive for the time then you release. Campus Special Investigator Hikaruon, in vast contrast, feels like a pilot to a show that could have been, a tribute to the likes of live action tokusatsu "Metal Hero" shows like Space Sheriff Gavan (1982-3) only with a darker slant.

At a school an alarming number of suicides are transpiring, and a young male hero, able to turn into an armoured battler, has snuck in as a new transfer student with his female colleague there already as a teacher. There is a female student pulled into the secret force harming the students, and the sense of this feeling like one episode to a longer work than never came to be is felt. The more adult tone is that this entity, masquerading in the school, drives people to suicide or to be devoured by a supernatural force. There is a sense of style to this anime too; the opening, set in a train station almost white with just outlines, the patrons all blank faced, has the one character in colour and fully drawn jumping in front of a train, an inspired opening for any production which emphasises the shock of the scene as a set up. There is also my favourite trope of the older era of anime, maybe still into the modern day if I ever encounter it, of characters being transported to an alien realm, here a surreal chess motif of black and white tiles, and gravity defying steps against a crimson sky. Add to this that the villain is at first a harlequin Pied Piper in appearance, tempting a new victim with wine of her demise. The best of these sequences cross into another of my passions as, with the best of these older anime of strange alternative realms, you could imagine them as the art appearing the front of a metal or prog rock LP.

Hikaruon also has an uncomfortable of victimising the female characters sadly. The other Pink Shock titles as mentioned had an eroticism, and here this is sadly an implicit threat of sexual violence, be it a group of bullies targeting the female student, or how the female heroine, when the number of goons in a bar are too many to fight, is left with clothes shredded and on the floor implicitly suggesting a rape scene to transpire. She is brainwashed to fight the hero thankfully, in another cool aesthetic choice in a paper walled pastiche of samurai combat, wearing an omi demon mask, but that hint is tonally out of place. The hero also sexually harasses her, such as groping her behind, as humour which definitely has not aged well at all. Out of the three Pink Shock entries, this feels like a contractual requirement and out of place, as this feels like a tribute to this genre it is recreating, and only is darker in the villains' plans, not the special abilities or how the episode finishes with fighting a monster.

Maryū Senki has sexually crossing with the grotesque which could be accused as offensive, and out of place for something meant to be erotic, but felt more befitting as ero-guro, a horror story where the sexuality is more for the horror edge than meant to be sexy, whilst Call Me Tonight as mentioned is surprising for what themes it covered in less than thirty minutes. Hikaruon, whilst entertaining, is a disappointment in how I do need to advise a trigger warning for those watching this, and how it really is undercut by this undefendable, and arguably pointless, way to still sell eroticism like the other Pink Shock titles did. It does not even, if the eroticism was not problematic, seem a fit, where it would been more appropriate if this had been a more explicitly erotic pastiche or take on the tokusatsu genre. Considering the opening credits is a sincere animation of the show it could have been, like the pilot of a longer production, shows it is an odd production in some of the creative choices. It becomes, out of the Pink Shock series, the weakest of the trio for the reason it feels like a pilot for a show we never got the whole of.

#255: Alice in Cyberland (1996)

 

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

Director: Kazuyoshi Yokota

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka

Based on the videogame by Glams, Inc.

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

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

========

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

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

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

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