Publisher: Deltamac (Hong Kong)Format: Region 3 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional Cantonese Dub and English and Chinese Subtitles
Length: 95 minutes
Production Date: 2009
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
I think Studio Ghibli should watch out as Madhouse seems to be gradually taking over the title of the studio that releases the best animated family films. While “Summer Wars”, released the same year as this film, got all the attention, Madhouse’s other family film of that year is no slouch. The closest this film comes to is “My Neighbour Totoro”, especially with its low fantasy elements and realistic setting. However this film is pitched at a slightly older crowd and the fantasy elements are toned down. Like “Totoro”, it’s set in 1950’s rural Japan, but this is probably where the comparisons end. I really liked the contrasts between new girl Kiko Shimazu and her “country bumpkin” classmates. What really impressed me with this film is the fact that it doesn’t wallow in sentimentality or makes out that 1950’s rural Japan was a better time than the present. Suicide, the failure of adult relationships, deaths of loved ones and even the seedy red light district of the town are shown. You’d never see that kind of stuff in an American family film. The thing which didn’t quite work for this film was the sub plot linking the main character, Shinko Aoki, with a princess which lived in the same area a thousand years ago. Possibly there were too many sub plots going at the same time and not enough time focused on this part of the story. Certainly the first half of the film moves rather slowly as we are introduced to the characters, setting and the way of life of the town. Maybe more time should have been spent linking the past and present together. Like most Madhouse films, the animation is just gorgeous. I think it’s a real shame that this film hasn’t received same attention that its sister film has. At least the film has had some sort of legit English release (outside of the subbed film print doing the rounds of the film festival circuit), though the font and readability of the subs leave a little be desired on this DVD. But the subs are great otherwise and I really doubt this film will ever be released in the US. 7.5 out of 10.
"Welcome to Irabu’s Office (Kuchu Buranko)"
Publisher: Siren Visual (Australia)Format: Region 4 DVD, PAL, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Subtitles
Length: 11 Episodes x 22 minutes
Production Date: 2009
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
About five years ago, most people had Siren written off on anime. We all remember their Manga Entertainment sub licence (only because Polygram Australia didn’t want to follow in Island’s lead – Polygram distributed Island’s stuff in Australia, which would have included their Manga video label) back in the 1990’s which they somehow managed to lose the licence twice and eventually Madman took over. Then Siren released some dreadful quality titles which had most Australian fans clamouring for the R1 counterpart releases. In the last couple of years, somehow they’ve pulled themselves out of mediocrity and have released some pretty quality discs. I really don’t think Siren’s going to break Madman’s monopoly on the R4 market, but it seems that they’re going to give them a good run for their money. Shocking most fans, Siren have gone with a strange model of releasing sub only discs first, then releasing a bilingual version if an English dub is made down the track. This seems to be working for them.
Even more strange is the titles they’ve picked for distribution. Sure, most are rather mainstream, but then you come to this title. This show hasn’t been released anywhere else in the world on home video in English, except here. You can literally count the amount of Australian anime releases with this claim to fame on one hand and have more than a couple of fingers spare. The subject matter is odd; psychologist, Irabu, with three physical presences consults patents in a rather unorthodox manner which includes his sexy nurse giving them a “vitamin shot”. Not only that, but the art design is wonderfully garish and everything is heightened and rather surreal. The show also makes extensive use of its voice cast, all of whom are popular male voice actors (odd, but Irabu seems to have no female patients), but I knew none of them. A lot of the time video and images of the actors are used in the animation, digitised and altered to fit I with the animation. The nurse, Mayumi, played by bikini model and "Engine Sentai Go-Onger" actress Yumi Sugimoto is also seen in live action mated into the animation. She’s mostly there for eye candy, but is also an integral part of the plot in a number of episodes. Also Yumi Sugimoto is yummy. Just sayin'.
As this is an “experimental” title, there are a number of times where it just doesn’t seem to work. Some of it seems rather formulaic and most of the mental illnesses are variations of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. However is pretty darn funny a lot of the time and the style are really refreshing. All 11 episodes take place around the same time period and are all interlinked in some way. This leads to some really surreal moments which don’t make any sense early on, but as the series progresses everything seems to untangle itself. Siren’s release looks fantastic in the video and packaging departments, but the audio sounds a bit strange at times, as if it was compressed incorrectly or something. Not sure what was going on there. 7.5 out of 10.
"Divergence Eve"
Publisher: ADV Films (USA)Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Dub and English Subtitles
Length: 13 Episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 2003
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes
Surprise of the month, that’s for sure. I really don’t know why I bought this. I blame Right Stuf and their bargain bin. Oh well. Fan service in lieu of plot really, really shits me. I hate it. I think it’s cheap and nasty. Looking the character designs, with young women who seem to have overly large floppy lemons as breasts, well I was dreading watching this show, especially as it had the same character designer as “Amazing Nurse Nanako”. Oddly there is a lot less fan service in this show than I expected. Sure the show’s plot is the usual alien enemy vs. Earth, but they mix it up here and include a gateway to other dimensions and experiments on the enemy and humans. OK, so that sounds like we’ve seen it all before and we probably have. For some reason I kind of dug this, probably because it’s a pretty dark show. The CG animation is pretty dodgy. The mecha is ugly and gawky as sin and the alien monsters have that bizarre slow motion movement that just looks wrong. Luckily the CG, especially the monsters is used sparingly for the most part. The ending seems like it was cut out of a random mid 1990’s OVA. It’s all rather colourful and sugary and doesn’t seem to belong to this show. The foreign character names are pretty silly and probably some of the worst I’ve seen outside a Yoshiyuki Tomino anime of the early 1980’s. Well Ok, perhaps not THAT bad, but still pretty awful. The plot can be rather hard to follow and some the character motivations and pseudoscience seems confused, but I had quite a bit of fun with this show. The ending is a bit of a downer to a degree, but they had a sequel ready to go. 7 out of 10.
"Misaki Chronicles"
Publisher: ADV Films (USA)Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Dub and English Subtitles
Length: 13 Episodes x 24 minutes
Production Date: 2004
Currently in Print (as of writing): No
So this is the follow up to “Divergence Eve”. From the start our ever happy little heroine tells us this show is going to have a happy ending. She’s a freaking lair. While the first season surprisingly didn’t have much in term of fan service, this one lays it on pretty thick at the start. So I hated the guts of the show for the first couple of the episodes. To get around the ending of the first season, we time travel and dimension hop. However it’s never fully explained why this needs to be done or how it’s done. I think it’s safe to say the plot and motivations of the characters are even more confused this time around. Some of the episodes are pretty good, while some just stink. Add in the lack of quality control in terms of animation with characters going completely off model, and a wack of unnecessary fan service in an episode half way through the series, it kind of peeved me off. I really though the time and dimension hopping did make things rather confusing and added very little to the plot. In the last third of the show, things do settle down and show becomes a bit better, however strange plotting rears its head again and I was a bit annoyed at the lack of logic with the reappearance of several characters assumed to be lost. Oh, and the CG and mecha still suck. ADV have included a “sexy” mini-poster on the reverse of all three slicks of the series. If your definition of “sexy” includes grossly top heavy girls in dental floss bikinis, then I suppose it’s “sexy”. There was point in time where some creators in the last decade or so have made anime girls so pneumatic that it just becomes grotesque. Surely that stuff should stay in the realm of hentai anime, not mainstream stuff. These mini posters are proof of this. It was an OK show, but it really over stayed its welcome. 6 out of 10.
Remaining Backlog: 22 months (it's much easier this way than listing the number of discs).
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