The modern “cute girls doing cute things” genre of anime based on 4-panel manga got introduced by Azumanga Daioh in 2000, was epitomized by Lucky Star in 2007, and has been copied by what feels like a half-million enjoyable but unremarkable anime ever since. It’s an innocuous little sub-genre that’s hard to get mad at or get tired of because these series tend to be adorable and fun, but it’s also hard to say anything new about the genre or break new ground in it. It’s easy for even a solid series of this type to get lost in the crowd.

So, against this endless mob of adorable competitors, how does the 2013 anime Yuyushiki hold up? Short answer: admirably well. Now for the long answer, beginning with a summary… Yuyushiki tells the story of three high school girls who are close friends, and the title comes from the fact that all of their names begin with “Yu-”: pink-haired Yuzuko, blonde Yui, and blue-haired Yukari. The series mainly just follows them around in their daily life as they have weird conversations, attend class, and hang out. The only thing resembling a plot point is that they happen to join the defunct and then-memberless “Data Processing Club” presided over by their young homeroom teacher, who they always call “Mom” because of her sweet and motherly nature. “Mom” isn’t eager to drive away her new club members by forcing them into the dry activities that likely killed the first club, so she basically lets them sit around in the computer room after school, Google things, and “process” the data they learn, often with hilarious results. And… that’s it.

It’s a simple concept… so simple that it could easily have been killed by too much gentleness or over-reliance on cuteness. Thankfully, Yuyushiki went a different route by making this a character-driven banter comedy with an old-school comedy vibe. It may sound weird to say, but Yuzuko, Yui, and Yukari have at least as much in common with the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, or Laurel and Hardy as they do with the heroines of 4-koma series like Lucky Star.

You have Yuzuko, the zany clown who is constantly coming up with weird ideas that throw the others for a loop (Curly, Costello, Laurel).

You have Yui, the serious-minded “straight man” who mostly serves as the voice of reason and a foil to the clown, but who is still zany enough to participate in her antics (Moe, Abbott, Hardy).

Finally, you have Yukari, your ditzy and loveable third wheel who is just as crazy as the clown but tends to bounce off her antics rather than instigate the madness (Larry, Shemp).

It’s classic comedy in the best sense – you throw these strong, vivid, and funny personalities in a box, toss in a new topic every once in a while, and funny stuff happens. Most of the humor in Yuyushiki is conversational and dialogue-based, separating it from the physical humor of Nichijou or the surreal happenings of Azumanga Daioh. It also makes an effort to remain truly funny rather than just charming, which means those viewers who were exasperated by the long conversations about food in Lucky Star can unclench their teeth. Most of the characters other than the main trio are not particularly interesting, but that’s partly the point – with a few momentary exceptions, their purpose is to provide new fodder for the Yu-Yu-Yu comedy show rather than take up space as detailed characters in their own right.

Other than the classic banter comedy, the artwork is also a big draw for Yuyushiki and sets it apart from the crowd somewhat. It tends to be cartoonish and shoves detailed realism to the side, but the animators have a real gift for showing emotion (and increasing comedy) through facial expression. The voice actresses (Is there even a male character in this show?) all do fantastic jobs—again, with the main three deserving special praise. I have nothing at all to say about the music, either the BGM or the opening and closing tunes. They are entirely unremarkable, but fine. Yuyushiki was licensed and released in North America by Sentai Filmworks, and it’s a competent but fairly bare-bones release – they have both DVD and Blu-Ray options, but no English dub, no extras other than a “clean” opening and ending, and none of the OVAs (which were a bizarre but funny little CGI series where they all became catgirls in a weird pocket dimension).

The last thing I’d mention about this series might surprise you given the picture I’ve painted of it so far, but it has a knack for throwing in moments of whimsical sadness at you that breaks through the comedy to land right in your feels. Specifically, it’s very clear throughout the series that these are the adventures of these girls’ teenaged youth – a time in life that, fun as it is, won’t last forever. They will each grow up and have lives that will be more separate than they are now by necessity, and that point is poignantly made several times throughout the series. Thankfully, it’s always counterbalanced by the happy belief that friendship can endure as long as the people involved are determined it will, and that is backed up by several little moments such as “Mom” talking to her friend from high school who she still remains best friends with despite their separate professions. All-in-all, it’s a nice message that improves the show and carries with it more sweetness than sadness.

I get a sense that Yuyushiki didn’t attract much attention due to the glut of similar-looking “cute girls doing cute things” shows that also came out in 2013, but it’s definitely closer to a hidden gem than cutesy ephemera. Its old-school character chemistry comedy breathes a bit of new life into this worn-out genre, and while it won’t be a life-changer by any means, this anime is consistently hilarious, very sweet, and absolutely worth your time if you like comedy anime. Support more “Three Stooges: Cute Anime Girl Edition” series by checking it out!

Availability: This series is available as a DVD or Blu-Ray physical release licensed by Sentai Filmworks, or it can be legally streamed on the Anime Network.

It Hurts So Good

Whatever else you can say about it, MM! pulls no punches when throwing out wacky examples of deviance to comedic effect. It manages be less entertaining than the sum of its parts, unfortunately, but this anime still has enough good points to be worth a watch. Before I explain, let’s rewind a minute for a summary.

Taro Sado is a high school student with a major problem – he’s a masochist, and not just a little bit. Any sudden spike of pain sends him a euphoric state and leaves him uncontrollably pleading for more. This creeps out his classmates, and it has earned Taro such a bad reputation that he’s desperate to shed his mega-masochism (the MM of the title). When he hears of the Second Volunteer Club whose stated goal is to “make students’ dreams come true,” he hopes they may be able to cure him, but their “cure” may be deadlier than his disease. The club is run by a petite but fierce blonde named Mio whose primary treatment method seems to be trying to cure his masochism by awakening his survival instinct—putting him in so much pain that fear of death overcomes pleasure! Along with the club’s other members—a cute girl named Yuno who has severe androphobia, a cross-dresser, an underaged mad scientist, and the world’s least responsible school nurse—Taro and Mio set out to discover whether or not “even if it kills you” is really a valid treatment philosophy.

If that summary made you laugh or grin, you aren’t alone. MM!’s premise is funny as hell, and to some extent the series delivers on that promise. Mio is endlessly inventive with her methods to “cure” Taro (read: torment to the point of ecstasy), even if her success rate is questionable at best, and his reactions are just as funny. Despite the pervy subject matter, MM! also isn’t sexually explicit in any way – Taro’s turn-ons are represented by a dazed, happy look, nosebleeds, steam pouring off his head, giddy laughter, etc., and the series also features zero nudity. This is a comedy anime through and through – which in some ways is also its downfall.

The big problem with MM! is that while the comedy is fantastic, it flops in practically every other regard. This anime features no particularly unique characters, and they never get developed beyond their one-dimensional beginnings. Mio is a stereotypical tsundere who is only atypical in the violent intensity of her tsun (sour / angry) moments, and aside from the masochism thing, Taro is the same blasé good-guy male protagonist you can find in any comedy anime.

The only character who receives any development at all is Yuno, the androphobic girl. The series spends a lot of time fleshing out her backstory in the first 5 episodes or so, explaining why she’s afraid of men and building a believable case why she would fall in love with Taro. This is easily the best and most interesting part of the series – it’s touching, makes you feel like the plot is going somewhere, and makes you like the characters. The problem is that this forward momentum disappears after episode 5 and is never seen again. From then on, we mainly just have gimmick-of-the-week episodes that do show Yuno and Taro growing a little closer at points, but never anything significant. This makes the romantic quality of the first few episodes feel like a tease, and it might have hurt my enjoyment more than if it had just been straight comedy the whole way through.

We’re also clearly supposed to feel that Mio is Yuno’s romantic rival, but I just can’t see it. She’s obviously a bit of a sadist (in the clinical rather than cruel sense) who is forming a symbiotic relationship with Taro in which torturing him becomes a grand old time for both of them. (She’s the last one to realize this, until it’s pointed out to her great surprise in Episode 10.) I actually really enjoyed watching her and Taro interact, and weirdly enough, Taro and Mio reminded me a lot of Charlie Brown and Lucy from Peanuts in their confused relationship. She is definitely the smug bitch who pulls the football away every single time right as he’s about to kick it, but he keeps coming back to her for psychiatric advice year after year, so clearly he feels like she’s doing him good in ways that may not be easy to articulate.

With that said, the romance element was poorly developed with Mio. Taro has very few of the bonding moments with Mio that we routinely see him get with Yuno, nor were there enough moments where Mio saw him as anything more than an interesting pastime. In short, for a character who’s essentially the series’ mascot, Mio got unpardonably short shrift in terms of meaningful screen time.

The series is at its comedic best when it spirals down into a laugh-out-loud train wreck of ridiculous deviance. Two of my favorite examples of this occur late in the series. One is where Mio hypnotizes Taro’s masochism into a suppressed state, only to have him suddenly erupt into several other different types of extreme perversion. (It cannot be contained!) Another is when the mad scientist girl kidnaps Taro to “play house” – a game where the whole cast gets involved – and the whole business devolves into a messed-up soap opera where everyone right down to the neighborhood mailman is having an affair with Taro, “the father.” MM! also occasionally goes into straight parody territory, spoofing Dragon Ball Z on two occasions. This is a little funny and results in some classic one-liners, but overall this style of humor is flatter and less interesting than the harmless raunch that makes up MM!’s original material.

In terms of visuals and music, MM! is what I’d describe as “perfectly adequate” – neither impressive nor a letdown. The animation is middle-tier, though I will say the coloring is particularly nice – a lot of browns and deep purples that you don’t often see, and the effect is nice. For music, the background music is non-intrusive and bouncy without ever drawing attention to itself, and the ending tune is okay. The only musical standout is the catchy opening, “Help!”, which has great background visuals, a fun chorus line (“Chu-chu-chu-chu, to help you!”), and lyrics that are either funny but not cringe-worthy Engrish (“Je-sus Cri-sis Oh-My-Gah!”) or kind of sweet (“I’ll help you change your life philosophy”). There are two versions of “Help!”, called the “Hell” and “Heaven” sides. It swaps over about mid-series with new visuals, but the sound is similar enough that you might not even notice the difference aside from subtle changes to the subtitled lyrics.

Overall, MM! is pretty solid, but not everything it could have been. You will laugh to the point of tears at some points, and it’s always a fun watch. I just wish it could have spent its screen time a bit more wisely to do some actual character development in its later episodes to go along with its comedy. This is one I can definitely recommend as a streamed watch, but I can’t in good conscience recommend it as a physical purchase unless you find yourself much more impressed with it than I was.

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.)

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.

Anime Obscura tries not to duplicate / reblog content for the most part, but I thought this was too well-researched (and important!) not to share. We all know that illegal torrenting costs the anime industry a lot of money, but how much are we talking about, exactly? Jenbae over at GoBoiano crunched the numbers to find out.

http://goboiano.com/list/4104-how-much-money-you-cost-the-anime-industry-when-you-illegally-stream

While the number is difficult to pin down exactly, it’s something to the tune of $33 million per year (by the most conservative estimate) and may reach as high as $132 million per year. That’s a staggering amount of money that will never go toward making second seasons of your favorite series or improving the quality of existing ones. If you want to support the anime industry — and I mean helping it continue to exist, not creating gifs or memes — then please take advantage of the many ways to stream anime legally (described elsewhere on this site) or make a rental or purchase.

So, that’s today’s PSA. Thanks for reading, and back to our regularly scheduled nonsense!

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.