Archive for the English Anime Category


El-Hazard: The Magnificent World OVA 1 + 2 Collection, Guest Review by Xan H

September 1st, 2021

Hello and welcome to Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! I’m thrilled to welcome back Xan, with another terrific review! Settle in and give Xan your full attention, and get ready for a retro ride into anime – and our own – pasts. ^_^

I’m Xanthippe, creator of the comics Pandora’s Tale  and Thinking Too Much to Think Positively. Today I’m here to talk about the long-overdue Blu-ray release of the anime probably best remembered as Tenchi Muyo’s peculiar younger sibling, El-Hazard: The Magnificent World OVA 1 + 2 Collection.

It’s hard for me to be objective about a show that I have a lot of personal history with, and El-Hazard might just be the most personal of all. This was the first anime I loved, my first online fandom, and my introduction to Yuri. In fact, it was the first media I’d ever seen in which a gay character was just there, a part of the main cast, existing for something other than a punchline or to make a point. It might be hard to imagine these days, but in the mid-nineties, this was a revelation.

It’s also probably true that a show in which a boy has to pretend to be a missing lesbian princess with the help of said princess’s girlfriend might have held some special appeal for a closeted trans girl who was mostly attracted to women.

Some years ago, Erica reviewed the first OVA which comprises the majority of this set, and I mostly agree with what she had to say, so I’m going to try to avoid covering too much of the same ground here. But for an overview: El-Hazard was an isekai before there was such a thing as isekai. Taking cues from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, this is the story of three high schoolers and their teacher who are transported to a fantasy world, gaining strange powers along the way. Protagonist Makoto and teacher Mr Fujisawa are pulled into the politics of the royal family, who are quick to take advantage of Makoto’s resemblance to the missing Princess Fatora, and Fujisawa’s newly-acquired super strength. Wannabe tyrant Jinnai finds himself among a civilization of giant insects, who quickly appoint him as their commander, while his sister Nanami has the misfortune to be deposited in the middle of a desert.

I appreciate the amount of care Nozomi Entertainment put into this collection. The cover is the same one used for the most recent Japanese Blu-ray release, and I’m admittedly not a fan of the art or the bluish color palette – I feel that the sandy-colored cover of the old DVD collection better captured the feel of the show. On a brighter note, I’m happy to report that the numerous Easter eggs recorded by the dub cast for the DVD release have been preserved, and compiled into a short feature. They’re a mixed bag in terms of quality, but they prompted a few smiles, and it’s just nice to see the effort made to preserve a part of the show I feared would be lost with the change in format.

The original, seven-part OVA is easily the strongest incarnation of the series, and this remastered version looks gorgeous. The background artists took full advantage of the fantasy setting, giving us one lovingly detailed painted environment after another. This OVA, while probably not being quite long enough to do its large cast justice, manages to tell a complete story with a satisfying conclusion.

El-Hazard’s second OVA functions as more of a side story. Loosely adapted from some of the El-Hazard radio dramas, it’s half the length of its predecessor and never really reaches the same heights. The animation is noticeably rougher, and with no remastered version available, these episodes have been upscaled to HD. It’s an improvement over previous releases, but the drop in visual quality between the first and second OVAs is still quite noticeable. That’s sort of OVA 2 in a nutshell: it’s fine. If you enjoyed the first OVA enough that you’d like to spend a couple more hours in the company of these characters, this should scratch that itch.

Probably the most notable element of the second OVA, at least from this review’s perspective, is that we get a lot more of the show’s lesbian couple, the bratty Princess Fatora and her adoring consort, Alielle. There are elements of these characters that haven’t aged all that well – the archetype of “girl-crazy lesbian who doesn’t respect boundaries” is something I suspect we’re all tired of at this point – but damn it, I can’t help but love these two. At the time, I didn’t see stereotypically horny lesbians making a nuisance of themselves so much as I saw two queer women who were loudly, insistently proud of who they were. There’s a moment late in the first OVA when Fatora, who has been absent for the story thus far, asks with the most knowing smile if Alielle tried to cheat on her while she was gone, and it speaks volumes about their relationship. Fatora knows as well as the audience that Alielle has been chasing girls the whole time, and is mostly just amused at her attempt to deny it.

Another aspect of El-Hazard that still stands out today is its English dub, often cited as one of the earliest truly high quality anime dubs. Ironically, it succeeds in part because it hails from an era when dubs weren’t held to the same level of scrutiny as they are today; the dub script has plenty of little additions here and there to spice up the comedy that I suspect a modern dub wouldn’t get away with. In the original, Jinnai names his insect lackeys after characters from the sitcom Sazae-san, a reference that would be immediately familiar to Japanese viewers but lost on almost anyone else; in the dub, they’re named for the Marx Brothers. A scene in which Fatora tries and fails to impersonate Makoto has some discussion of his dialect, which doesn’t translate particularly well into English; the dub takes a different approach and delivers what I still consider one of the funniest lines ever uttered in an anime dub.

The strong script is ably delivered by a mostly excellent English cast. Especially notable is Robert Martin Klein’s Jinnai, a radically different take on the character compared to Ryotaro Okiayu’s booming tones. Meanwhile, Melissa Fahn’s performance as Alielle conveys some depth I personally feel was lacking in the original, and is altogether more believable as a royal consort, while still maintaining the original’s peppy charm. Finally, on this rewatch I was particularly impressed with Nanami, a character who feels a little underused, but is nonetheless played with great energy by Lia Sargent. It would be remiss of me not to point out one sour note with the dub, though, and that’s the use of a certain homophobic slur beginning with “d” – though thankfully not aimed at either of the show’s openly lesbian characters. The Japanese script uses no such term, so I’ve no idea what happened here, but it’s a downright weird choice in an otherwise great script. Despite this wrinkle, I still strongly recommend checking out the dub for an altogether funnier experience and what I’d consider to be the definitive versions of these characters.

As I said, I agree with much of Erica’s review of the show, so my overall ratings are similar, with a few exceptions:

Art – 8 (The remaster really lets OVA 1’s gorgeous background art shine)
Story – 8
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7 (bumping this up a point for the extra focus Fatora and Alielle receive in OVA 2. They even get to frolic adorably in a lake! Can’t say no to frolicking.)
Service – 4

Overall – 8

As a teenager, I adored this show and wanted to lose myself in its fantastical world. Then I got older, became more conscious of its flaws and backed away from it, perhaps a little embarrassed by my earlier enthusiasm. Well, now I’m even older and I can say… honestly, it really was a fun little show, and I can see why my younger self was so enthralled with it. To be sure, there are parts of it that show their age, as one might expect of a show from 1995. At the same time, the show is queer in a way that felt downright subversive for its day, and holds up far better than many of its contemporaries.





Super Cub Anime on Funimation

August 1st, 2021

Super Cub is not, in any way, not even remotely, Yuri. It is, however, a compelling, if often enraging, anime about many things, including friendship, dreams and, quite possibly PTSD.

We begin the story in a kind of emotional abyss. Koguma has no friends, no family, no money, no anything. She lives in a stark little one-room apartment, eating cheap retort food. Her life is painfully bereft of life. Why? If we watch the anime, we will never know. The originating novels do explain, and as suspected, her situation is rooted in loss.

Even without knowing specifics, can anyone think of a positive reason why a young woman would live alone, with just enough money to survive but no more, with no one to care for or about her?  It seemed instantly obvious to me, that whatever brought Koguma here, it was not a happy circumstance. From the earliest moments of the story, I could not help but see Koguma as person whose life was a result of trauma. Her lack of affect, her difficulty relating to the people around her…it all felt as if we were entering the anime with a wall blocking us from seeing the why, so we must focus on the what…I had a lot of trouble coping with the early episodes as a result of this.

In fact, this is a major complaint I have in anime (and other pop culture from Japan, like idol culture,) right now. The performative aspect of emotional trauma. I literally sobbed my way through the first episode, I was so horrified at how empty Koguma’s life was…and knowing that we were working out of that did nothing to lessen my anger that it was being used for entertainment. 

I am so done with the emotional torment of children for plot purposes in anime. It’s low-hanging fruit for emotional engagement, but holy shit I hate it a lot. Every anime punches down like that it seems and I don’t want to have to watch it all the fucking time.

That said… the story is not about how she got here, it is about how she gets out – and that made for a still-often-difficult- but-frequently-triumphant story that I could not stop watching.

At the heart of this tale is  the power of a peer group, of fandom and of friendship – all of which make this something that the Okazu audience might find worth watching. Through the course of the story, Koguma discovers love in the form of a little used scooter…her Super Cub, And we are introduced to a global fandom we might not have ever heard of! Apparently the Honda Super Cub fandom is worldwide. If I thought I could ride a scooter, I might have been tempted, as the 2021 model is, honestly, quite darling.  ^_^

Koguma’s first peer in this new fandom is the mechanic who makes it possible for her to get her Cub in the first place, and then slowly gives her gear, advice and maintenance, so she grows more confident. With every new challenge, Koguma begins to find her humanity.  When a classmate turns out to also be a Super Cub enthusiast, Koguma makes her first friend. 

Reiko is the perfect foil for Koguma. In the anime, we again are given no details of Reiko’s circumstances (which are, again, somewhat predictable based on her lifestyle and, again, detailed in the novels.) In stark contrast to Koguma, Reiko is ebullient and clearly wholly comfortable with her life. Reiko is perfect for Koguma precisely because she doesn’t need Koguma or her approval or companionship. Reiko’s comfortable with herself and has her own goals. Because Reiko doesn’t rely on her for anything, Koguma is free, at last, to begin to move past her stunted emotional growth and become a person of her own. It is this Koguma who is at last able to make a friend in Reiko.

So Koguma now has a fandom with peers, and a friend. Slowly, her Cub allows her the mobility and freedom to become more interested in things and places. But her life is still insulated. We enter into a section of the anime in which Koguma is allowing her interest in her Cub and her friendship with Reiko to expand her horizons..but only as far as Cub-related things can stretch.

My absolute favorite part of the anime is the episodes in which Koguma and Reiko take on summer jobs. This section contains some breathtaking animation art and character development unlike anything I have seen in anime. In a conventional anime this would be when we get the details of Koguma’s tragic backstory. Instead, this anime looks always forward. Additionally, Reiko’s summer is not positioned as a foil for Koguma’s at all. Instead she gets her own time to try and fail to achieve her goal. Reiko’s desire is to ascend, while Koguma’s is more human in scale, and with her new job, she finally starts to become more comfortable with people and the comforting banality of social ritual. (This lesson took me a good 40 years to learn, so good on Koguma!) It also teaches Koguma that to be relied on, and to ask for help, are both acceptable.

We come to a crisis in the anime at this point, and I cannot have been the only one who was on tenterhooks as Shii inserted herself into Koguma and Reiko’s cabal of two. In real-world relationships, a third person can be a real problem. Shii is, however, endlessly sincere and helpful and when the crisis arrives we are not angry at Shii at all. All the adults in the room might have been screaming “Call 119!!!!” but out of concern and frustration. Everyone I know watching this felt this way and we all remind ourselves that 1) they are teens, 2) on their own, without adults modeling responsibility and 3) it’s a fucking fiction, Erica, get over it. ^_^;

Setting the frustration at that aside, Shii’s crisis forces Koguma to do something she has never before had to to – to take care of someone who is not herself. In this, she finds a protectiveness and strength she had no idea she had in her.

Suddenly, the Super Cub bubble has been broken…and it’s okay.

The final arc of the anime was brilliant in every way possible. It ends in the only possible way I would have found acceptable. All of the themes here come together. Koguma’s insular bubble made possible by her Super Cub snaps open and she is able to expand it, to include new experiences, new responsibilities and new people. In the end, Koguma herself explains this to us. Her Super Cub gave her opportunities…but it was up to her to take them. Now it will be up to her to make new opportunities for herself and for others. And wow, if that isn’t a lesson for fandom, I don’t know what is. ^_^

Fandom gives us opportunities to enjoy new things, meet new people, have new experiences – but it is also up to us to make new opportunities for ourselves and for others to enjoy! 

For an excellent exploration of emotional intimacy among young women – with a focus on interiority, and emotional growth – Super Cub was a fantastic anime. If you haven’t watched it, I hope you will. Super Cub is streaming on Funimation.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Service – 4 Yeah, but it’s kind of handled goofily
Emotional Intimacy Between Girls Without Romance – 10

Overall – 9

One point off for performative trauma.

I truly enjoyed Super Cub and it is certainly in line for one of the best anime I watched so far this year, along with Zombieland Saga Revenge and Odd Taxi. It’s been a good year for anime with three such completely different, really excellent stories about being human from outsider perspectives.





Battle Athletes Victory ReSTART!, Guest Review by Eric P.

July 14th, 2021

Happy Guest Review Wednesday! Today we welcome back one of our long-time friends and Guest Reviewers, Eric P., who is taking a look at the newest in the Battle Athletes franchise, Battle Athletes Victory ReSTART!, streaming now on Funimation. Please welcome Eric once again. The stage is yours, my friend!

Set in 5100, 100 years after Akari Kanzaki’s victory at the Cosmo Beauty competition, humanity has extended beyond Earth and even further into space, and a new generation of athletes gather to compete in the Divine Grand Games to be crowned Cosmo Beauty once again. Since winning said crown is not just a mere title but grants them Queen-level authority, each athlete has their own goal in making the universe or at least their home worlds a better place. From Venus is Shelley Wong, a physically disabled athlete with prosthetic limbs who wants to especially prove her capabilities. From Pluto is Paglia Raspighi, an aspiring genius doctor who wants to advance her home world’s medical technology. From Mars is Lydia Gurtland, whose father’s company is a supplier of weaponry that instigated a civil war on the moon. There is Yana Christopher, a Lunarian refugee from said civil war, and who gets suspected of plotting terrorist activities within the competition (drawing some rather on-the-nose parallels to Middle East conflicts). And there is also Kanata Akehoshi from Earth, an unassuming potato farm girl (who could easily be besties with Sasha from Attack on Titan) that enters the competition as a promise from the distant past to another athlete. Said athlete is a quiet, mysterious girl named Eva Gallenstein who does not even remember Kanata, but plays the role of a puppet for an evil behind-the-scenes organization called the Solar System Control Committee.

As one watches Battle Athletes Victory ReSTART!, it does not feel so quickly certain whether or not it is a direct follow-up to Battle Athletes Victory, or if it just takes inspiration from the original. Aside from the names of past Cosmo Beauty champions, the events of the original anime (such as the Nerilian invasion) are not alluded to in this new story. Almost all the new characters share the same last names as the original characters, which would imply that they are descendants (as well as imply what may have transpired with everyone in the 100-year gap), but it could just as easily be fan service for viewers who have seen the original. Kanata bears such an easy resemblance to Akari but still does not share the same last name. It really is not until the very end of the series that we finally get affirmed clarity that ReSTART! is indeed an in-universe sequel to Victory, with surprise cameos from both a certain person and song I will not directly spoil here.

My personal fan service was seeing what appeared to be Ichino Yanagida, only it turned out to be Tamami Yanagida who just bears an uncanny resemblance, both facially and in attitude. She works in coaching the athletes at University Satellite, something I imagine Ichino would have likely ended up doing if ReSTART! had taken place a mere decade after Victory. Two other characters that are interesting in a specific way are Shelley Wong, descendant of Chinese athlete Ling-Pha, and male police detective Jeff Natdhipytadd, descendant of African athlete Tanya. Ling-Pha and Tanya were both criticized as ignorant caricatures of their respective nations/continents. Granted I could be over-speculating, I could not shake the vibe that Shelley and Jeff were created as a kind of apology to make up for those past insensitivities. Where Ling-Pha was a conniver whose friendship was shaky at best, Shelley is both driven and loyal to a fault. Where Tanya was hyper-animalistic, Jeff’s only “eccentricity” is that he declares himself to be a warrior for justice with a gung-ho attitude—which is actually fine, since he is competent at his job and plays a key role in trying to protect the athletes and the games from outside evil activities he is investigating.

As far as Yuri goes, where Victory was not just overt with it but was even driven by it, ReSTART! comparably just dips its toes. In Episode 5, Kanata gives Shelley a motivational speech about taking pride in our imperfections (in light of Shelley’s physical disability), saying that perfect people can stay still while everyone else who is not perfect are able to keep running. It makes enough of an impact that Shelley responds with “I might be falling for you.” Despite the complications between Yana and Lydia due to their conflicting backgrounds, the two still form an unlikely friendship and even express their mutual affections. In the last episode,Shelley comments on Lydia appearing angry about seeing (a sleepy) Kanata clinging onto Yana, to which a blushing Lydia insists “Yana and I are just…” but does not get to finish her sentence. And in the closing shots we see Shelley cozying up with a girl back home, who may or may not be her girlfriend. What little we get adds to a bare amount compared to the first time around, but with just 12 episodes to work with, the story’s thematic focus seems to be more on friendship and determination anyways.

When all is said and done, Battle Athletes Victory ReSTART! has turned out to be the kind of follow-up that was made to exist but ultimately does not feel necessary to the original, or even all that remarkable for newbie viewers. At the same time it is still there, harmless, adding nothing to the first series but not taking anything away either. It has an intentional old-school feel to it which often happens with reboots/sequels/homages of older titles. The humor is not as over-the-top this time around, although Yana for whatever reason has a literal boxing kangaroo companion in contrast to Kris Christopher’s cow. This companion series to the original classic can still be a pleasant treat that just manages to have its own charm if given the chance, even if just for a one-time viewing.

Ratings:

Art—6.5 (Neither high or low quality, just serviceable, although some galaxy locations/ships get neat little 3D updates)

Story—6 (At 12 episodes, it does not even try reaching the epic heights of the original, but instead settles for something concise and simple that does the job, even if it is still a little uneven—while it deals with themes of politics interfering with sports, it never really goes deep below the simple, superficial plot)

Characters—7 (The characters and their dynamics/motivations are what really help make the story worthwhile, including Eva’s actual goal, and Kanata as a heroine could be seen as an improvement over Akari in some ways)

Service—3 (Most of it happens in the first episode, with convenient body shots of the athletes and an especially non-subtle one of Paglia being introduced on-camera boobs-first. It is like as if it was all dumped there for the purpose of getting them out of the way so viewers can focus on the story and the characters’ journeys for the remaining episodes)

Yuri—2 (Again, there is not much to go on beyond the little indications that would seem obvious enough, albeit mostly to old-school fans)

Overall—6.5 (Just on account of it not being quite as worthwhile as the original, even if I am speaking from nostalgic bias, it gets scored just a notch less)

Erica here: Thank you so much, Eric!  It’s always a pleasure to have you do a review for us and I really appreciated hearing your thoughts on this series, which I’m watching right now.  I look forward to discussing it with you when I’m done. ^_^





Sailor Moon Eternal on Netflix

June 6th, 2021

2021 has been an “interesting” year in every meaning of the word, In the middle of so much wonderful and awful news, Netflix announced a Global (excluding Japan) release for Sailor Moon Eternal, Parts 1 & 2. The movie had been delayed in Japan, due to the pandemic, then pushed out in between two lockdown state of emergencies this past spring. Given that this, of all the arcs, is least likely to appeal to any adults not already fans of the series and being the one most likely to need a very young audience, it’s kind of obvious that it was being set up for failure as a theatrical release. Making it two movies didn’t help, as it forced people in Japan to make time *twice* to sit with other people in a small room for an hour in a pandemic. Frankly, the whole thing was so poorly handled, its a wonder we actually got the thing at all.

But we did, in the end, get the thing. And you know what? I think it was pretty darn good! Certainly better than I expected.

Sailor Moon Eternal, Part 1 is a re-introduction of the Inner Senshi without rehashing much of the history from the first three seasons of Sailor Moon Crystal. In rapid succession we meet Usagi, her daughter from the future, Chibi-Usa, and her boyfriend and eventual eternal consort, Mamoru. If you don’t understand their super weird dynamic when you begin the story, it is going to be super weird. This sentence was written for my mother who says she’s going to try to watch it. I’m just saying, that if you walked into this part cold, it would be befuddling.

Both bad and good, we spend almost no time with the Amazon Trio. On the positive side, we don’t get endless rapey chest mirror scenes, but on the bad side, the gender queerness of Hawkseye and Fisheye ends up reinforcing negative tropes. Of all the characters in the entire series, Fisheye is my  #1 vote for why this series desperately needs a full rewrite to bring it up to date with  modern understanding of gender and sexuality. I want a Sailor Moon in which she gets a chance to tell Hawkseye and Tigerseye that she was Assigned Male at Human Transformation.

Thankfully, we also got a brief moment with each of the Senshi in a relatively pure form. Character tells us her dream, powers up, defeats baddie. I love when the spirits of their planet castle come to help them power up, so swoon on that for me. It’s basically the only part of this manga arc I really like.

Voice acting (I watched the sub, as I am wont to) was great, I want to shout out to Watanabe Naomi for absolutely doing a Zirconia that was actually creepy.

Sailor Moon Eternal, Part 2 is begins with the Outer Senshi and again, this was the strongest portion of the movie. It was outstanding to see Haruka, Michiru and Setsuna recognize their vows to be a family and raise Hotaru, their happy home life together, and this scene in particular:


If the whole thing had stopped here, that would have been fine. ^_^ Along with I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 3, this has definitely been the year of the Yuri family. ^_^ When I log into Patreon, the thing that is written in this space is something like, “Why are you creating today?” or “What have you worked on today?” or something like that… Well…this image right here is why I am still writing Okazu. THIS is why I am creating today, So that someone looks at this and says, “That there is my ideal world I want to create.”

I consider the Amazoness Quartet a whole wasted opportunity every time. They deserve better than just being sent back to sleep. Can someone give them a decent comic arc, please? Saturn stepping up as Chibi-Usa’s companion was nice, but the Asteroid Senshi still deserve their own story.

I very much liked seeing the Senshi in their Princess (i.e. dressed-up) forms and the final powerup scene was beautifully done.

Most importantly, I want to give props to the animators for killing the transformation sequences. I could watch just them and the attacks and be happy. And, finally Saturn has an official henshin, yay! For once, the extra time Toei got from the delays went to taking better care with the animation. Kon Chiaki’s direction was on point and the whole package is that, as a theatrical experience, Sailor Moon Eternal was not going to let us down, as earlier seasons of Crystal had.

I’ve been thinking about this specific issue a lot. There’s something to be said for making sure people assigned to the creation of a beloved series give a shit about that series. Viz was doing really well on that score, until this release, when they and Netflix allowed a man who has been credibly accused of sexual assault of an industry colleague to be involved with the production. Lynzee Loveridge has written poignant and heartfelt coverage of this and I have to say I really feel her.  Almost 30 years of upskirts and down shirts (Part 2 was especially obnoxious in this regard) and sex pests infesting every aspect of this series – for little girls – sends a clear message that we will never ever be free of the creeps as long as all those “nice” guys let them have power and influence.

Just as impactful for those of us who rely on translations and adaptations – localization companies who put any old translator or actor on a series that is, in the original language, a breakthrough of representation for a marginalized audience,  is going to come off looking like they intentionally insulted that audience. It’s not 1995 and it’s not okay to put a vocally anti-trans person in a role that is trans or trans-adjacent, for instance. It’s not acceptable to put someone who doesn’t *care* about language used by a queer writer to tell a queer story to translate that story. When you pick some guy to direct the world’s most famous series for little girls, he’d better LOVE that series to death, or get him the fuck off the project. Sailor Moon Crystal Season 1 looked like crap. There has yet to be an edition of the manga into English that I think is better than okay. It’s been more than a quarter of a century. This stuff is important.  It’s time for a power up.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 6
Characters – YMMV on every last one of them, but we voted 9
Service – Yes, sadly – 4
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

So, overall, the movies themselves are very well done, men who are sex pests suck and this series needs an overhaul. If I had the time, I would definitely be inclined to rewrite the whole thing. ^_^

No we sit back and wait for for news of the last season. Again.

 





High-Rise Invasion on Netflix, Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

May 26th, 2021

Welcome to Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! Today’s review is a gift to me as much as to you. ^_^ I was thinking about watching this anime on Netflix when Christian said he had just watched it and needless to say, I was delighted to invite him to bring us all this review! Please welcome Chris back once again, and thank him for taking one for the team. ^_^ The floor is yours, Chris!

When I first read the description for High-Rise Invasion on Netflix (based on the manga Tenkuu Shinpan by Tsuina Miura and Takahiro Oba), I wrote it off as silly, violent edgelord fare, along the lines of what I thought those Purge movies must be like. Fortunately, I gave those movies a chance and found a suspenseful string of films that turn a critical eye on society, capitalism and marginalisation, with a cynical view of where America’s current darker impulses are leading it. Unfortunately, I also watched all 12 episodes of High-Rise Invasion.

Well, I say that, but I’m honestly of two minds about this show. The first time I watched it, I could practically hear the writers coming up with the plot: “Wouldn’t it be fuXXed if you got transported to this alternate realm where you have to go from high-rise to high-rise across rope bridges, and there’s brainwashed people in smiley-face masks trying to kill you by making it so you’ll throw yourself off the buildings, because that’s the only way down to the ground anyway, and if the masks get damaged then they have to kill themselves, and there’s all different ones so there’s like a butcher Mask, and a baseball player Mask, masked everything right, and there’s like a ton of blood whenever anyone dies, and it turns out this is all a way to create God, like how fuXXed would that be.” (dramatic pause while writer takes a long drag off a smoke to let these ideas sink in)

I mentioned to Erica that I watched it because I’d heard the main characters described as Yuri and wanted to find out for myself, and before I knew what happened I’d agreed to write a review for her. I hadn’t taken any notes the first time around, so I watched it all again and, while I’m not proud to admit this, I started to enjoy it.

To start with: is this a Yuri anime? Well, the high-school aged main character’s name is Yuri Honjo, so there’s that. Yuri quickly meets high-schooler Mayuko Nise, and unsuccessfully tries to stop her from stabbing an innocent man in the throat. After their little meet-cute, Mayuko becomes ride-or-die for Yuri, blushing and looking away whenever Yuri does something cool, gives her a compliment, hugs her, flashes her panties, bathes or changes in front of her, kisses her while she’s unconscious and struggling for her life, etc. You know, the same way we all secretly showed our feelings for that girl we liked back in high school; for her part, Yuri pretty much feels the same way about Mayuko.

Is this a Yuri romance? Definitely not. This is grindhouse action/suspense through and through, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be Yuri, of course, and whether it qualifies or not. depends on your own feelings. Mayuko blushes her heart out at Yuri constantly, but it never goes beyond hand-holding, even though they are intimately acquainted enough that Mayuko can recognize her crush by just a quick glimpse of her posterior (which actually happens more than once). Mayuko’s first love, however, is stabbing people in the throat. If there’s ever a second season we’ll see if she has to choose between her two devotions, but for now, we’ll see her face redden either from sweet emotion, or other peoples’ sweet, sweet neck blood. (And to be fair, this is a Shounen anime, which means that the straights don’t get any further than getting exaggeratedly flustered and denying any interest in each other.)

So what’s this all about again, anyway? Well, Yuri’s main goal is to find her brother, who’s also trapped here. Mayuko’s goal is to help Yuri find her brother (and, on a personal level, stab so many throats). Kuon Shinzaki has pink and blue hair, and an app on her phone that lets her use a giant building to shoot down other buildings; she wants to become God so she can bring peace to this realm. She also has a crush on Sniper Mask, an amnesiac, self-aware Mask whose goal is to recover his memories.

Aside from that, the show tends to abandon plot points, theories and objectives almost as soon as they’re thought up. Yuri rebelliously declares to Mayuko early on “I’m not going to kill any humans. I refuse to follow this world’s rules.” A minute later and she’s enthusiastically doing her best to shoot down a helicopter with just her handgun, and she’s unloaded a full clip into an assailant ten minutes later (before he commits suicide by biting off his own tongue, naturally.)

Various exposition-dumps throughout the show explain the different types of masks and how their programming bestows powers/constraints on the wearers. There is a consistent, if convoluted, logic to the masks, but the rapidly-shifting goals and theories the main characters have obfuscate this logic, making it feel inconsistent initially. Still, trying to puzzle out these mysteries helps hold the viewers’ interest in between gory fights with the Masks (or Angels, as the antagonists refer to themselves…Angels to some, Masks to others, I guess).

Trigger warnings? This show has geysers of blood, flying eyeballs, severed fingers and limbs, decapitations, and crazy amounts of stabbing and shooting. The violence in the show doesn’t bother me all that much because it’s expected for the genre, and even gleeful in its execution. There’s a ton of violence, but very little of it feels truly horrific; it’s all in good fun.

On a sexual note, however, Yuri is forced to strip at sword-point for a rogue cop (ACAB) in the first episode, but she’s managed to set his corpse on fire before things go much further. Happily, I don’t remember any further sexual threats to anyone after this.

Is this show dumb? Oh, it is so dumb. Yuri’s brother tells her over the phone that she should immediately murder her new friend Mayuko, because “In this world, there are no such things as allies.” (This very same brother is shown leading his own litter of new pals minutes later.) Sniper Mask’s main personality trait is smoking and looking cool in his stylish suit, and is so good at shooting guns that he can shoot a knife on the ground forcing the bullet to ricochet 90 degrees towards a target hiding around a corner. Yuri happily hands a firearm to a small child because he’s excited and would really like to see it. Mayuko’s shirt gets ripped open in the second episode, and until she replaces it with a slightly darker shirt in episode 11, she’s just walking around with her chest and bra completely exposed. Yuri never fixes the revealing rip in her skirt; characters change their priorities far more often than they change their clothes. Yuri can shoot ballistics out of the sky. Someone says the name of the show out loud. Characters gain new abilities as soon as the plot requires them, and the entire raison d’être is to simply show Masks looking creepy and cool in a wide variety of cosplay and violence. No, seriously; when it looks like one character is about to die, he at least comforts himself with how cool he’s going to look.

“Tasteless” is probably the best way to describe a show with this much blood, this many panty shots, suggestively-posed corpses, and a villain who calms himself by plunging his face into a Mask’s fully-clothed chest (she’s wearing one of those anime suits where the fabric acts like it’s painted on, you see).

I’ve given you plenty of reasons not to watch this show, and yet, depending where you find your bliss, I’ve also given you plenty of reasons to watch this show. If you’re in the mood for senseless, bloody violence and you’d like to see some ladies being badass and causing most of it for once, and you can dim your brain just to the point where you can buy in and enjoy the spectacle, then you might enjoy the bright, stylized, creepy bloodshed and mystery contained in these 12 episodes.

 

Ratings

Art – 6 There’s a very ‘basic’ quality, but it’s also stylized, and there’s no denying the care that went into animating the many sprays of blood.

Story – 6 There’s enough of a plot that it might keep your brain entertained by trying to puzzle out what’s going on, at least.

Character – 7 Nobody’s too complex, but it can be a joy watching Yuri flip her internal ‘cold as hell badass’ switch when she goes into action, ambidextrously shooting with both hands.

Yuri – 3 There’s a cute scene near the end where, separately, Mayuko and Kuon are each helping Yuri and Sniper Mask dress for battle, both wearing the same blushy, besotted grins as they think the world of their champions. Some viewers may need Yuri goggles to find any representation, but I don’t think you’ll need a very strong prescription.

Service – 8 Panty shots, bras, stripping, bathing, changing, anatomical impossibilities, and skinny-dipping into dream-states (my number refers to quantity, not quality). Conspicuously absent is a ton of boob-jiggle; I suspect the budget for that animation all went towards depicting the copious blood-letting instead.

 

Overall – 7 And I’m recommending this to nobody.

Erica here: /standing ovation/ Absolutely splendid review! You may have convinced me to watch it…after all, grindhouse violence, cute blushes and throat stabbing…it reminds me of my youth. /nostalgic sigh/  LOL

One point of order, The manga is released on Shueisha’s Manga Box app, and I’m inclined to think it’s Seinen, with that amount of blood.

Spectacular review, Chris!