Deadman Wonderland – Shawshank Running Redemption Man?

What, no community service?“NUUUUuuuuuuu…….what happened to “if the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit“?!”

OK, I have to confess I started watching with almost zero preconception/foreknowledge, so I was reasonably surprised when the first 5 min started out with a school massacre, which went well with the songless credits lead-in. Our lead, Ganta, courtesy of an unusual encounter with the perpetuator, is wrongly arrested for the crime and framed in a near kangaroo court, with his defence attorney playing his part in a “not so good cop, bad cop” fixit routine. Ganta is subsequently sent to Deadman Wonderland, a dystopian gaol that uses prison inmates in gladiatorial games of the kind only the wacky Japanese can think up, where he is tagged with a Battle Royale-esque collar and must have “Candy”, the absence of which is essentially a death sentence adminstered via collar. He also means a strange savant girl that seems to know him, and resolves to find the “Red Man” to bring justice to his friends’ killer and prove his innocence.

OK, so that might be a bit of a mess, but seinen shows playing coy usually are, so I’ll give it some slack until a few episodes down the road. I’m pretty ambivalent about those early minutes though, because I’m uncertain if this was some attempt at mocking the real-life Japanese system for pinning societial ills on the young. In any case, the brisk pace of the plot meant the execution was rather clumsy for that bit, and in retrospect the classroom dialogue between his two friends and Ganta was just merely cheap pathos. Judging from the rest of the episode, the snake-like attorney with Gin-like speech patterns (has someone been reading Bleach?) seems to be the primary atagonist for Ganta. I’m not sure how seriously we’re supposed to take the Running Man gimmicks, because the amusement park sets and voluptuous warden isn’t really burnishing the “serious seinen” credentials. Hopefully, the atmosphere will tend towards the surreal more than towards the ridiculous, which given  the conspiracy-heavy talk and the past Akira-esque destruction of at least parts of Tokyo, seems to be the intention. Epsiode 2 will lead in with more of the cast, so we’ll have more information on the prison dynamic then.

Could someone please take pity on this little demon?

Not going to end well
Not going to end well
What's a little cannibalism between master and slave?
Tears>>>Pain
COMMISERATION
“Let’s go for a stiff drink, brutha”

(This post covers the OVA and the gist of the first episode of the TV remake, but the latter is fairly similar, except Rinko holds Azazel’s contract at the end of the episode)

Yondemasu yo, Azazel-san is the oddest of beasts, a slapstick comedy using that oh-so-common subject matter, demonology. Akutabe is a disreputable gumshoe running a small agency in rather rough office block, but his clients have no idea how REALLY disreputable he is. The man is actually a fairly skilled demonologist, and most of his cases are solved with the aid of demons that he summons and binds to service in a circle. The show’s nominal protagonist is either Rinko (his space cadet apprentice and general audience surrogate) or the eponymous character himself, Azazel the lust demon. The latter is either dishing out the jokey sexual harassment to Rinko, who holds his contract at the end of the first TV episode, or more often, the subject of merciless (or in the case of Rino, unthinking) abuse from his summoners.

Amazingly, all this actually works. Most of the comedy stems from the fact that Akutabe, mindful that the damage a loose/berserk demon can do is proportional to the power of its earthly shell, intentionally forces his summonings into ridiculously chibi-ized forms and sets them to do insultingly menial tasks, like cleaning up the office and such. Most of the comedy is of the physical kind, with Azazel constantly doing demonic faces before realizing his predicament and reverting to a chibized sadness, which never gets old. The master and apprentice are two sides of the same coin, one dishing out the pain because of malice while Rinko crushes the spirit of Azazel by treating him as an ambulatory hug toy. Most of the episodes thus progresses by Azazel screwing up the company cases and suffering the consequences as a result.

Assuming this show lasts the distance, it’s actually a very refreshing comedy take using crude humour and much better than the otaku-pandering 30-sai no Hoken Taiiku this season. Azazel is a character that you can’t hate despite his venal nature, and he’s pretty much Kon (from Bleach) on steroids. There is also a bunch of demons appearing in the series corresponding to the seven sins, and they look similarly offbeat/demented. In fact, the OVA introduces Moloch, a tyranny demon that is skeptical of Azazel’s complaints of his tribulations at Akutabe’s hands. This leads to hilarity once Moloch is accidentally summoned by Rinko and finds out what Azazel’s servitude “upstairs” REALLY means, and it’s doubly amusing because we’re allowed to see their true forms in the underworld itself and its dismal nature. I’m looking forward to more from this show, not least because the industry needs more comedy that doesn’t default to fellating the otaku demographic.

Iroha 02….A Tale of Rubbish and Breakfasts

My Mom Taught Me To Hate WeedsNINJA GARDEN 101: GARDEN MOAR

Cactus and Shrinking Violet, KOed
Please be gentle, new girl-sama

So we get some more background on our spunky girl Ohana, learning her mom is indeed a Dark Lord of the Sith and told her to STRIKE THEM DOWN WITH ALL OF YOUR HATRED. Ahem, so yes, bad parenting led to the formation of a stubbornly independent streak, but over the course of this episode she realizes it’s counter-productive to continue doing this in an alien environment, so she resolves to form her tripod support network by first force-feeding her 2 co-workers with prison grub. Excellently cooked prison grub. Supposedly.

There’s also a small main plot regarding her throwing away the supposed masterpiece of the inn’s resident wordsmith guest, but it serves mainly as a backdrop for Ohana to resolve her personality issues and win Die-girl and Shrinking Violet over to her yuri campus, so it wafts in and out of the episode discreetly when it’s not needed, until the last few minutes. When our wordsmith is hilariously exposed, figuratively. Though judging by his awesome verbiage, probably literally too in private. The show continues to deliver its “humorous growing-up pangs” drama quotient, and the art is still gorgeous, so I have zero complaint so far.

Dog Days – Truth in Advertising

Cat-people vs. Dog-people...ostensibly
A pink and girly Chocobo...sorry I meant Cellkull
Ninja Warrior - lame edition
Appropriate attire for war
The HUMANITY!

I was already regretting my decision to give this show any time at all before the OP sequence was over which is probably something of a record. The show itself did nothing to change my mind.

So, this show is about a mixed race Japanese school kid who gets summoned by the dog princess to be her champion in the battle against the cat people. The battlefield looks like an obstacle course which is perfect since our hero is a gymnastics otaku. The “fighting” results in no casualties, losers just turn into stupid looking spheres.

This is a dog of a show. Avoid.

Words fail me

She shows political promise

TIN STOMPâ„¢!

Gawds, what an effin’ terrible show. For a moment I thought the “girl falling from the sky” scene in the beginning was a parody, turns out they were serious in the end. Avoid avoid avoid, and one more black mark in Teh Rie’s body of work.

C is ++

<Tim>LET’S MAKE MAGIIIIIIIC!</Burton> So what exactly is C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control (a more pompous anime name is hard to recall)? Judging from the first episode, this seems to be a mad medley of Yugi-Oh, Boogiepop, Eden of the East and MEGUCA IS SUFFERING. What C does have in spades is an amazing sense of style, which makes it a more probable successor show to take over from the Star Driver timeslot rather than Ao no Exorcist. Even if nothing delivers on every other front for this show, I can see that visual asthetic take it to cult status, just like it did for all things Kiraboshi. That being said, this show is far more surreal than Star Driver ever was and is clearly meant for an older crowd with its noitaminA slot, and given the way the plot plays out in the first 20min  the watcher is unsure what the general direction of this show will be. Again, there are parallels with Star Driver, which never did mesh well its action and school slice-of-life halves. My verdict is cautiously optimistic, and we’re VERY unlikely to see a 1st ep this season that’s more attention-grabbing. P.S: The E.o.t.East similarity fascinates me, because whatever that show was trying to do, it never raised itself over its major failing of trying to stretch its cellophane-thin plot over the credibility rack without using fantasy elements. C clearly isn’t going to redo that doomed experiment, because we can see the supernatural is afoot here. In my opinion, this already makes it easier for the watcher to swallow whatever nonsensical plot twists (and in this type of show, there are bound to be at least a few) arrive down the road.