Slice-Of-Life Done Right

Sometimes when an anime series doesn’t catch on, it’s not the fault of the series itself, but just a matter of a mismatch with its audience. The 2010 anime And Yet the Town Moves from Sentai Filmworks (known in Japan as Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru, or Soremachi for short) is an excellent case in point. It didn’t make much of a splash here in the United States because it’s such a thoroughly Japanese slice-of-life anime, but that obscurity is a darn shame, because the series is pretty fantastic.

And Yet the Town Moves follows the daily life of Hotori Arashiyama, a loveable dingbat of a high school girl who lives in a small Japanese town, dreams of becoming a detective, and works part-time as a waitress in a maid café. The series also features her family, her teachers, her boss, and her friends: a brainy but slightly arrogant cutie (Tatsuno / “Tattsun”), a cool and rockin’ upperclassman (Kon), a boy who secretly crushes on her (Sanada), and a ping-pong champ (Haribara). Together they… just live normal lives, really. Just funnier than ours.

On the surface, it sounds like a less-than-inspired entry into the “cute girls doing cute things” genre, but that stereotype and even the summary I just gave start to break down when you start looking at the details. With the exception of Tattsun, none of these girls are breathtakingly pretty, and poor buck-toothed Haribara is ugly as sin. The maid café where Hotori and Tattsun work is actually a run-down regular café the elderly owner thought she’d spice up by wearing uniforms. Despite occasional flashes of surprising brilliance, Hotori is mostly dumb as a rock and whines a lot. Wannabe-badass Kon is secretly a mama’s girl.

All of these characters, and the town itself, are just very real. This is not the cute-washed Japan of most girl-group anime, nor a self-absorbed otaku geek-fest, nor a stylized samurai epic, nor a whimsical Miyazakified Japan of Disney-level purity. This is how people really live, and how people really are: flawed but generous at their cores, living a life that can be funny not because of the environment itself but because of people’s reactions to it. That level of comfort with everyday life and confidence in finding what’s hilarious about it are the qualities that make And Yet The Town Moves special.

With that said, this same realism might have hurt its chances on this side of the Pacific because the series is just so Japanese. I consider myself fairly well-versed in at least most surface aspects of Japanese culture, but this show pulled out puns, folklore, superstitions, and random little customs and traditions that I’d never even heard of. The style of humor is also very typically Japanese, which won’t deter dedicated anime fans but might raise the hurdle a bit for more casual viewers.

Speaking of humor, the plotting of the episodes deserves major credit for the way it contributes to the slow-burn comedy. Virtually all of the comedy can be tied to two concepts: a meandering common thread that leads to unexpected results, or an escalation of something that should be simple and low-key into something epic. The “common thread” is announced by our very philosophical narrator at the beginning of each episode and repeated at the end, at which point his abstract point has often taken on very funny concrete implications in the lives of the characters.

And Yet the Town Moves was produced by studio Shaft, which also produced Maria Holic. Fans of the latter will definitely see some correlation in the humor styles and in some characters (esp. math teacher Mr. Moriaki and MH’s Father Kaneda), but Town is much gentler in its humor compared to the dark, biting parody of the yuri genre presented in Maria Holic. Another commonality with Maria Holic is that Town sometimes introduces strange science-fiction elements into its otherwise grounded story, much of which can be attributed to Hotori’s overactive imagination, but not all.

Other stuff worth mentioning include the visuals and the music. As I mentioned, this is a Shaft anime (which produced Maria Holic, Monogatari, etc.), and their reputation for beautiful artwork does not fail them here. The town itself is vibrant and well-realized, and the variety of character models is a great breath of fresh air. While the background music is seldom anything to write home about, the opening and ending tunes do deserve special recognition. The ending, “Meizu Sanjou!”, is not exactly contagious, but it is funny and captures the series’ humor well. The opener, “Downtown,” is a beautiful, jazzy earworm that uses trumpets and glitz to great effect while capturing the visual beauty of the art style and animation. (Watch it below.)

https://youtu.be/UpuwLex5S5s

Altogether, And Yet the Town Moves is 110% worth your time. It’s visually gorgeous, laugh-out-loud funny, and genuinely sweet without ever dipping into cheap sentimentalism, melodrama, or five-cent whimsy. It’s a slice of life done right, which is a rare and beautiful thing. Be sure to check it out.

SPECS

Available Formats: VHS only

Run Time: 45 minutes

Sub/Dub: Sub only

Publisher: ADV Films

Year: 1992

Rating: NR, but 16+

Those Obnoxious Demons

It’s interesting how certain anime or manga publishers sometimes get a “lock” on certain creator’s works. Just as Viz had and has the rights to almost all of Rumiko Takahashi’s series, back in the 1990s Houston-based A.D. Vision (or ADV) achieved a near-monopoly on the works of manga-ka Go Nagai. I would be interested to know if this was founded on some sort of business arrangement with a Japanese counterpart who worked closely with Nagai, or if it was the result of some bigwig at ADV being a huge fan of his work.

Regardless, a “Go Nagai empire” was in many ways a strange choice of monopoly. I say this because Go Nagai is the reigning king of acquired taste and uneven results. Over the years, anime based on his work have generated some international smash hits (Mazinger Z, Cutey Honey, Devilman), some titles that gained niche appreciation but no widespread popularity on this side of the pond (Demon Prince Enma, Devil Lady, Kekko Kamen), and some truly wretched drek that is better off forgotten (Demon Lord Dante, Black Lion, Violence Jack). Good, bad, or ugly – complete or incomplete – ADV was on a mission to publish the anime adaptations of all of them. However, of all anime based on Go Nagai’s work and published in North America, perhaps the most obscure was the weirdo title Hanappe Bazooka.

Hanappe Bazooka was a 45-minute OVA that followed the misfortunes of a young man named Hanappe who gets roped into a way-too-close encounter with the demonic kind. Hanappe is a bit of a coward with terrible luck, and the anime starts with him trying to outrun a local gang. He ducks into a video store to escape, happens upon a pervy VHS tape, and covertly slips it under his shirt and takes it home. He watches it that same night, and in the middle of… doing what you do while watching such a tape… the sky becomes pitch-black above his house, a portal opens to an eldritch dimension, and these two come out: the demons Bazooka and Dance.

According to Dance, Hanappe accidentally performed an obscene rite during a cursed planetary alignment that opened a portal from the demon world. The ancient rite had the exact same motions as Hanappe dancing around with his **** out, and in Dance’s words, “When you came… so did we.” (Welcome to the world of Go Nagai, people.)

What follows is Bazooka and Dance making themselves at home in Hanappe’s home and striking up elicit (but surprisingly consensual) trysts with his mother and sister. In exchange, they try to offer Hanappe one demonic superpower after another – super-strength to destroy the gang, a ray beam from his finger that auto-seduces women, help getting closer to his crush – all of which backfire horribly and hilariously. In the course of these twists and turns, we discover that Dance and Bazooka are actually aliens from space, and humanity’s previous experiences with their twisted kind gave rise to lore about demons.

The state of affairs that is making Hanappe miserable is heaven to everyone else in his life, and his family, Dance, and Bazooka all mock his suffering and basically say Hanappe can go jump in a lake if he doesn’t like it. They push him too far, though, and Hanappe eventually does something shocking and tragic. The anime takes a surprising turn at this point as we find out that Dance and Bazooka aren’t as heartless as they let on, especially where Hanappe is concerned. They resolve to make things right with their erstwhile-victim, no matter the cost or danger.

In the end, Hanappe Bazooka is emblematic of what makes so many Go Nagai anime adaptations a goulash of the terrific and the terrible. On the plus side, this thing is batshit insane in terms of its plot, and I would have to worry about anyone who claims “I saw that coming” more than a few seconds in advance. I also really started liking the characters of Bazooka and Dance by the time the credits rolled. They’re certainly still mischievous, but in the end, the demons were the most human characters in the cast. (Kind of a Go Nagai trademark, that.)

On the downside, this anime is badly rushed and utterly schitzophrenic in terms of mood. This anime jumps from being utterly horrifying or tragic to making cheap boner and fart jokes at a second’s notice. It also tries to include way too much in a 45-minute timeframe: we have a Hanappe’s personal struggles, his love interest’s pathetic backstory, information about the demons’ alien society, and a cosmic final battle all thrown at us far too fast to do justice to any of these themes. I get the strong impression these are problems with the anime adaptation rather than Go Nagai’s original manga, though. From what I’ve seen, it was more light-hearted throughout, and the plot progressed at a much more leisurely (and sane) pace, letting things play out in monthly installments over 3 years as opposed to being crammed together in 45 minutes.

Two last quick things to mention… First, it’s important to note that despite Hanappe Bazooka’s seeming randomness, it borrows a huge deal from Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura, which was published the previous year (1978 versus 1979) and became a smash success. Urusei Yatsura introduced the concept of extraterrestrials influencing mankind’s conception of demons (there, the alien oni / ogres), and the fact that we have another alien-demon girl chasing a horny-but-unfortunate guy who looks just like Ataru Moroboshi seems like more than just a wild coincidence. Still, Go Nagai does make the material his own – Bazooka and Dance are notably more demonic in attitude and presentation than Lum, the material is gleefully irreverent, the humor is more defiantly childish, and the ending is weirdly touching despite all the nonsense that came before it.

Lastly, if you happen to get your hands on ADV’s old VHS tape (the only official release of Hanappe Bazooka in North America to date), be sure to keep watching after the credits roll. The VHS has a really fun featurette showing the voice actors and actresses doing their thing, a little directorial discussion about the anime adaptation and storyboard, and Go Nagai himself making a voice-acting cameo in the OAV. (His nervousness over his three-second role is funny and endearing.)

And that’s it! Hanappe Bazooka isn’t one of the best or most essential Go Nagai anime out there, nor would I pay more than $25 or so for it unless you’re a very determined completionist. That said, it is fun and a genuine example of “anime obscura” that you can out-hipster your friends with. Check it out if you get a chance.