Lampoon #81: Dark Cat

• Run time: 60 minutes
• Published: 91 (JP), 03 (US)

Antispiral – A lot of the time when I talk about anime, I tend to over nostolgiafy anime from the “old days”. A lot of people are guilty of time, saying things used to be cheaper, better quality, have better plots, less fanservice, etc. Anime’s hardly the only media that this happens with of course (music, movies, TV, etc), but this being an anime blog, it makes sense that I’d feel more strongly about it than other mediums.

Of course, nothing breaks rose-colored glasses quite like a firm stomping of reality. So today’s review is for Dark Cat, an old anime that is really just down right horrible.

Tenjobito – Hilariously so.  I don’t quite have the same rosy view of old anime as A.S. does, and Dark Cat exactly typifies what I think of when I think of bad old anime;  Muddy art, incomprehensible story, troaping it up with tentacles, some of the worst sound quality and voice acting I’ve ever heard… to the point it’s almost zen like.

If it were trying to be bad or funny that would be one thing, but this is a “serious” little anime that just fails spectacularly on all fronts.

Antispiral – So right, the plot. Oh god, the plot! The main story revolves around the titular Dark Cats, who in this case are brothers Hyoi and Ryoi. I’m not certain what makes them “dark” other than they appear to have been “made” by some sort of demon/oni/horror THING. They’re cats only half the time however, able to change into hunky teenage boys at any time and infiltrate our schools with little effort.

Tenjobito – Hunky in this case meaning willowy long haired guys with little fangs and pointy elf ears, which one girl in the anime comments that she likes (rather than finding strange for some reason).

The start of the plot, best as I can understand it, is our two dark cat things listening to two girls talking about how one of their classmates has disappeared.  Since this clearly means tentacle demons, off our heroes go to infiltrate the school and save the students from all getting eaten!

Antispiral – There’s a little mini plot before anything starts involving a girl that won’t die, but the older brother Dark Cat manages to convince her to pass on. It doesn’t get mentioned again or anything, but I thought I’d mention it, since it’s only an hour long…

Anyway, back to the “main” plot. The two girls that were talking about people disappearing end up being best friends, and one of the girls has a crush on a childhood friend that seems to be listless and restless recently. Her friend doesn’t understand what she sees in him, but he secretly likes the second friend… I think? It’s all just poorly set up and acted, so I have a hard enough time seeing what any of them see in each other.

Tenjobito – I… personally get kind of lost from here;  I know there is a green demon guy, a magic tree, tentacles…  Umm… any insight on that A.S?

Antispiral – Well the demon guy is the Demon Cat’s creator, but for some reason they decide that this is their moment to oppose him. There doesn’t appear to be anyone else they can turn to for help, so instead they just rush him and the older brother almost dies. The tree is some magical forest tree that heals him after a grumpy looking female dark cat guide them to the tree. The tentacles pop out of teachers and students after they get corrupted, for some reason.

The girl in love with her childhood friend ends up sprouting tentacles (that look rather rated R by the way), but thankfully the guy realizes at the last moment she meant a lot to him and he saves her soul and they ascend to the afterlife in a huge column of life.

The end.

Tenjobito – Not spoiling the best parts obviously.

But honestly, the summary doesn’t do the movie any justice.  It’s so loose and meandering, and weird… You really have to see it to understand.  Or not understand.

The anime actually ends with the dark cats talking about the nature of evil and wandering off into a crowd.  Truly it sums up everything.

Antispiral – Dark Cat has horrible voice acting, a plot that makes little sense, graphics that are jumpy and not very well done, and it’s only an hour long. To be honest though, at the end of the day, it’s an entertaining train wreck. If you have a chance to see it online sometime or (like me) find it on DVD for $2, watch it. I can’t say you’ll like it, or that you’ll understand it, but you very well might get a laugh, and you’ll never forget it.

 

Review #80: Cromartie High School

• Episodes: 26
• Published: 03 (JP) 06 (US)

Antispiral – Welcome back readers, new and old! I’m the Antispiral, and with me I have Tenjobito the Shy One. Last time we brought you the adventures of amnesiac women that barely knew how to dress, so we went quite different for today’s anime review with the tale of a robot, a gorilla, Freddie Mercury, and more high school delinquents and ruffians than you could beat with 100 baseball bats; Cromartie High School.

Tenjobito – Cromartie definitely belongs in the “random humor” category of animes.  Things like Excel Saga or Pani Poni Dash! come to mind.  In addition to the kooky cast of miscreants there are manly moms, horses biting peoples’ heads, aliens who come and go in the space of a minute, a motion sick street tough… the point is, the series is clearly trying to juxtapose a lot of things, most notably the idea that a bunch of tough looking hooligans can have a softer contemplative side right along the street toughs.

Antispiral – Where to start then? Well, the main character is mostly Kamiyama, a good-guy type that ends up at Cromartie High and wishes to improve the students there. A lot of his humor ends up being from the difference between his easy going mama’s boy attitude and that of all the ruffians around him. Still, there are a lot of other side characters that have their own episodes, coming in and out of the “plot”, as it were. Keep in mind, Cromartie episodes are only 10 minutes long each, standing apart for the most part as well, making for smaller, 10 minute jokes that are more self contained.

Tenjobito – It definitely feels more like a series of sketches than a true plot per say.  But that’s ok, that works;  With the aforementioned 10 minute episodes the jokes don’t overstay their welcome all that much, and the series has the feeling throughout that there ~isn’t~ supposed to be a plot.  It’s even discussed at one point;  Despite all the craziness that happens at Cromartie, to them every day is boring and the same.  Just another day at high school, no more meaning than any other day.

Antispiral – That’s really the part that makes Cromartie good, but it’s also the thing that holds it back from being great. Having watched it my first time, I was left unimpressed, and only rewatching it for this review did it stick more. Without a strong central plot, and without a real sense of anything getting done, the show rides on the humor and jokes almost entirely. While that works for the episodes where the jokes are great (and there are definite laugh out loud moments), the episodes where the humor falls flat just feel bland and boring.

Tenjobito – The humor is the core of it.  I was going to mention how there was no real ending and how it left it feeling incomplete in a way despite there being no plot.  But I realized another series it’s like in a way;  Azumanga Daioh.  And that’s the thing;  Azumanga is just a funnier series.  When a series depends so deeply on it’s humor like those two do, the entire perception of the series comes down to how consistently it gets you to laugh.  Of course that also means it’s harder to grade, since humor is a very subjective thing, even compared to other things.

Antispiral – Well Cromartie has SOME other things going for it. While the art style is fairly simple, it works well as a parody for the serious “tough guy” anime it plays off of. The music is kooky and out there, but fits the kooky out there nature of the series. Plus, the voice acting is just spot on great for pretty much everyone. I think that’s what makes the series keep up enough to give it a recommendation. There’s a great charm to it overall that works, enough that even with the things that fall flat, it keeps itself up enough and gives enough genuine laughs that it’s well worth a look.

Tenjobito – Yeah;  Overall Cromartie is an acquired taste.  Not a bad one mind you, but I can see how it’s off the wall style and strange humor isn’t for everyone.

Antispiral – So overall, a weirded out but laughter filled recommendation! Tune in next time for an anime sure to be even weirder somehow. Until next time pitiful Spiral Beings!

 

Review #79: Daphne in the Brilliant Blue

• Episodes: 24 + 2 OAV
• Published: 04 (JP) 05 (US)

Antispiral – Hi there everyone, and welcome to another Anime Twin’s review! Well we’re finally out of the Lodoss universe this time, and we’ve moved back to Earth. Not modern day Earth mind you, Earth sometime in the future, after the entire planet’s been flooded, leaving only small mountain top bits of land, as well as a group of floating cities. Welcome to the Earth of Daphne in the Brilliant Blue.

Tenjobito – The story more or less follows a young woman named Maia Mizuki.  When we meet her she’s just finished her exam to get into the Ocean Agency, a sort of multinational peacekeeping/military organization.  However, she’s rejected and it ends up she had no back up plans for jobs.  With her old place already vacated and very little money, she eventually falls into the not so tender care of the Nereids Kamchatka branch, the local branch of a multinational corporation that will do any job for a price, no matter the danger.

Antispiral – Most of the series revolves around the Nereids and their various adventures, especially the first half of the series. Each of the women in the group has a very stereotyped personality that they play up, from Shizuka’s overly trusting air headedness to Gloria’s shoot first attitude. Even the antagonists, when they’re recurring, are fairly one dimensional. That said, the second half of the series takes a deeper twist, going into not only Maia’s mysterious past, but also the past of the floating cities themselves, coming off as a lot more serious than the almost slapstick first half.

Tenjobito – Apart from “wacky hijinks” and the picking up of Maia’s plot, the biggest part of the series is the fanservice.  It seems the work uniform of the Nereids consists of skin tight bikini things, c-strings, hotpants, and the like, all showing off bodies that are generically toned to a T.  It never gets R rated, certainly only pg13 hijinks, but it’s an inescapable fact that the series is certainly playing up on it, with a frankness we haven’t seen since our Divergence Eve review (though perhaps Demon King Daimo gets there).

Antispiral – Much like in Divergence Eve, no one seems to notice how things are overly sexed though. There WAS one comment from an old couple about one of the characters dressing like a hussy once in the series, but that wasn’t even one of their “work” uniforms. Generally, they all seem to traipse about in their more gone then there outfits surrounded by criminals, police, or even the general public, with no one batting an eyelash.

That said, Daphne also reminds me of Divergence Eve in the fact that the creators seemed to aim for a look that would be overly sexy, yet seem to instead just make characters that end up boring and one dimensional. That’s not only in appearance (as flashy as they try to be), but as if the creators made their eichi characters and tried to build a story around that.

Tenjobito – It IS rather tropey in its characters, though no more so than many series.  And I certainly found the characters more interesting than Divergence Eve, though perhaps part of that was the pretty good quality of voice acting.

All around though, if I had to give a grade to Daphne myself I’d be talking about the C+ to B range;  It definitely fits into the early 2000’s brand of “ecchi action” animes along with Burst Angel, Divergence Eve, or Vandread (which we have yet to review I realize).  But either way, it has a plot I was actually interested to see to the end, good voice acting, some humor that actually had both Anti and I laughing out loud, it doesn’t overly use the CG that can plague some of these things, and I personally found something to like in some of the characters.  Clearly though this series is NOT high art, and it lacks depth, teeth, and any shine that would make it actually stand out above and beyond other animes.

Antispiral – I can see that in some senses. I will certainly say I think the second half of the series saves it from utter mediocrity, since the plot involving Maia’s past catches my attention quite more than the random antics of the first half, even if there’s some humor there. Even then, I’d give it a little lower grade than you because, while the positives aspects were good, there over the top eichi design visually, along with the one dimensional characters (other than Maia) meant that the series just had less to hold onto me and keep me interested.

If you can get past the horrible character design and somewhat slow first half, the second half makes the series worth a view. Just get ready to roll your eyes a few times.

Tenjobito – Higher opinions of inanity and cheesecake from me is pretty par for the course.  So take that how you will folks!

Antispiral – Anyway, that’s that. Stay tuned for a series that we’ll hopefully have a little more to say about next time!