Let's talk about sex, shall we? Or, well, not talk about it, more review some anime about it, but ... wait, what do you mean I already did a sex-themed review post way back in part 43? That's ... woah, exactly 43 posts ago, isn't it? That's kind of creepy. And also means that henceforward, every 43rd post is going to have to be sex-related.
Boy, that went south fast, huh? I guess we probably ought to just look at some sexy anime, in the shape of Demon Fighter Kocho, Very Private Lesson, Fake, and the Sorcerer Hunters OVA...
What's a fair way to go about reviewing an OVA of less than half an hour in length? It's tempting to say that Demon Fighter Kocho would have been a solid title if there was only more of it, but that doesn't get us far, because what we have is all there is or ever will be. And to its credit, it crams about as much into its running time as you could possibly ask for, setting up its concept and introducing four characters sufficiently that we have a sense of who they are and what they're about and even finding time to tell a decent little story, with a beginning, middle, and twisty end. Moreover, it's not as if that story would be improved by being twice as long; it's actually rather satisfying the way Demon Fighter Kocho barrels through its plot without pausing for breath. It's just that it's tough to come away from what amounts to a single TV episode and feel you've had your money's worth.
Still, let's take that as said and move on, shall we? What we have here belongs to a familiar subgenre, both in and out of anime: Kocho is a high school student who, as the title informs us, fights demons, as part of her role in an astrology class that clearly should have been shut down years ago, what with how the teacher, Professor Kamo, is a massive sex pest with no qualms about tricking his female students into disrobing. Also, thinking about it, as far as this OVA is concerned, Kocho doesn't fight demons, she fights ghosts; and this she does with the dubious assistance of her sister Koran, along with fellow student Kosaku, who's also a bit of a perv. Kocho seemingly lacks any powers, but what she's pretty great at is getting naked, and Kamo and Kosaku are both entirely fine with this, especially given that Koran's also quite willing to reveal all at the drop of a hat.
So you could consider it a much more perverted Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or a slightly more perverted Devil Hunter Yohko, but either way, it's evident the territory we're in and Demon Fighter Kocho does nothing to hide its influences. Insomuch as it's interested in doing its own thing, that mostly extends to doubling down on the nudity and the general obsession with sex, along with a bit of self-aware fourth wall breaking that's perhaps its biggest saving grace; it's genuinely funny in places, and even when it's not, it has an endearing tone of not taking itself too seriously. Being able to laugh along with Demon Fighter Kocho does it a lot of favours, because it's never quite good enough that it would get by otherwise. The animation is resolutely mediocre, with dated computer assists and character designs that look almost half-finished, and only the jaunty score stands out on the artistic side of things.
To finish on a slight diversion, while putting out a less-than-thirty-minute OVA that just barely warrants the effort is very much the kind of thing AnimeWorks had a bad habit of doing, a dash of credit's due for the extras, which are the usual behind the scenes stuff with the US voice cast that tend to pad out these releases, but much longer and much less filtered. Though I didn't check, I suspect the various bits of footage we get total more than Demon Fighter Kocho itself, and they're an entertaining insight, the more so because the dub cast are actually pretty good and pretty damn funny in their own right. Obviously those extras don't push the title into must-have territory or anything, but they round out the package nicely, and meant that I came away from Demon Fighter Kocho with a somewhat greater appreciation of its goofy, low-rent charms.
It's tough to imagine how the setup for Very Private Lesson was ever going to work: youthful teacher Oraku, in the midst of trying to hit on his crush and fellow teacher Satsuki, runs into the sixteen-year-old Aya, who proceeds to have him drive her home and flirts with him mercilessly. By the next day, Aya has somehow tracked down his address, and not only has she transferred to the class Oraku teaches, she's decided to move in with him, and Oraku hasn't much choice in the matter because her old man happens to be a Yakusa boss who, as the saying goes, makes him an offer he can't refuse: either get Aya to graduation in one piece or suffer the consequences.
Accepting that there's probably no good way to go about that wholly problematic setup, it's at least not hard to see a less disastrous approach than the one the makers opted for. What we get is effectively three different takes, which the show bounces between largely at random: the smutty comedy that's the most obvious route, a more sweet-natured character drama that emphasises Oraku and Aya's developing friendship and mutual respect, and - here's the kicker - a violent, social-realist thriller in which Aya is repeatedly under threat of rape and Oraku under threat of horrible violence or even death.
Two of those could, maybe, have fitted together; certainly you could have got a fairly routine nineties anime sex comedy out of the first two in combination, and if it kept a tight rein on the fan service, it might even have been pretty okay. And for that matter, the thriller stuff, though grim and tasteless, is far from unsalvageable; it's novel, at least, to see an anime of this sort that doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of school life and Japanese society. But all three together makes for a tone that's often wildly, cringingly dysfunctional. The show absolutely wants to have its cake and eat it, while never seeming entirely sure what the cake actually consists of: one minute it's leching over Aya in her underwear, the next it's freaking out over the prospect of her falling into the hands of one of the many male characters who openly express an interest in sexually assaulting her. It shouldn't need saying that that's not a topic you treat lightly, and it's sure as hell not one you cram up against sleazy light comedy.
Really, the only reason I'm wasting this many words on something that's in many ways totally obnoxious is that it isn't wholly awful. Technically it's pretty competent - the music's particularly solid, but the animation does just fine - and narratively it's not always a train wreck. Oraku and Aya are both humanised enough that we like them and would like to see them helping each other out, and Aya in particularly strays far enough away from the twin poles of obnoxious male fantasy and obnoxious male nightmare that it feels like there's a personality there that could be more deeply delved into. The comedy is even funny sometimes, and the thriller aspects are interesting, particularly in how they're willing to explore their ostensible villains and reveal them as more complex than we'd assume. But seesawing between the two constantly over the course of an OVA that doesn't make it to ninety minutes is a hell of an ask of an audience, and one Very Private Lesson ultimately doesn't warrant.
It's fair to say that the anime market has never exactly been overstuffed with shows about gay American cops holidaying in the British countryside, so if there's one thing Fake has going for it, it's novelty. Though, unlike in the West, it's not the gay part of that equation that really stands out; most anime fans will have at some point encountered the subgenre known as Yaoi, of homoerotic stories aimed at a primarily female audience. Supplant that to the wilds of England, though, and the result is something decidedly interesting. It's not really a criticism to say that anime tends to get the UK enormously wrong - I mean, it's not as if Western media hasn't been horribly misrepresenting Japan forever - but it genuinely feels like a bit of research went into Fake, and possibly even an actual visit. I mean, Peter Rabbit shows up at one point, how's that for veracity! Granted, so does a tanuki, and you don't see a lot of those gambolling around in English forests, but nobody's perfect.
In fairness, that care for detail is mostly true of the Yaoi aspects as well: you can sort of tell that this was aimed more at women than at gay men, but there's enough depth and complexity to the lead characters that the presentation of their relationship feels more sympathetic than prurient. This is a good thing given how basically seedy the premise is: the confident and openly gay Dee Laytner has arranged this trip away with the explicit goal of bedding his more closeted partner (in the police sense!) Ryō 'Randy' Maclean, and he's certainly not above getting him drunk to do it. Thankfully, Dee isn't quite as lecherous as the setup paints him to be, and where many a nineties anime character would have barged onward without restraint, he's generally inclined to rein himself in before anything happens to push the certificate up. This lets Fake have it both ways, by being a raunchy sex comedy that nevertheless doesn't slip up as a character drama and lets us laugh comfortably at situations which could easily have gone the other way, especially given that we're never a hundred percent sure of where Ryō's proclivities tend.
So that's the first half of Fake: Dee hits on Ryō, Ryō demurs, while also playing up to it sufficiently that we can get a few scenes of two guys making out, and it's all pretty involving, mostly because the pace is relaxed enough that we feel we're hanging out with this pair of likeable characters who we'd be quite happy to see wind up together. But there's a B-plot bubbling away, introduced by a brief flash of bloody murder early on, and inevitably the B-plot has to become the A-plot before all's said and done. This isn't disastrous, since it's not like the stuff that was working just vanishes, but the murder mystery that dominates the latter half is hardly an asset: it's obvious who the culprit is, since there aren't any other suspects, their motives are nonsensical, and it's utterly implausible that the local police wouldn't have figured out whodunit. There's some hand-waving about a cover-up perpetrated by the locals, which is downplayed enough that its stupidity isn't too glaring, but in general, all the shift into more traditional cop drama gets us is a relatively fun action sequence to cap things off with. Oh, and the sight of Peter Rabbit being stabbed, which after those godawful recent movies is enough to earn an extra point.
Put the two halves together and you end up with something that's definitely unusual - "come for the gay romance, stay for the naff murder mystery!" is a tagline no-one used ever - but generally more successful than not. Ryō and Dee are engaging company, as are most of the supporting cast, technically it's all more good that not, there are some solid laughs, and the thriller elements kick in just as we've had about enough of our two heroes awkwardly flirting. If those thriller elements had been great, Fake would be an easy recommendation; given that they're only just about functional, it ends up much more in the category of "Take a look if it sounds like your thing." Still, all credit to AnimeWorks for putting this out there, it's always a treat to come across a title that doesn't feel quite like anything else.
Sorcerer Hunters OVA, 1996, dir: Kōichi Mashimo
I'll say this for the Sorcerer Hunters OVA, it's nice to see an anime that commits so hard to being a sex comedy, instead of tentatively nosing around the concept. So often anime has a tendency to be simultaneously prudish and exploitative, portraying sex as something basically naughty that men want to do to women - and that needs to be punished, perhaps via giant hammers or lightning attacks - and never going beyond the odd illicit flash of bare breasts or underpants, there to "service" the (implicitly male) fans and often so unrelated to what's going on elsewhere that the plot has to come to a crashing halt to fit the moment in.
Sorcerer Hunters is having none of that. We've seen practically the entire cast naked by the end of the second scene, and the remainder of the first of these three episodes involves them all trying fiercely to hook up in various combinations. It's that rare work that concedes that sex is basically a fun activity, one most people want to do, and even goes so far as to admit that sometimes women want to have sex with women and men want to have sex with men and some folks aren't especially picky and all of this is absolutely fine. Once you get past the sheer busy lecherousness, it's actually kind of refreshing. Sure, it's not particularly adult - the general theme here is still using sex as a way into a familiar brand of silly comedy, and there's no question that the targeted viewer remains predominantly male - but it's at least flirting with the notion of adultness.
Would that it could have found a way to do this and be a mite funnier! Don't get me wrong, the Sorcerer Hunters OVA often is quite funny, and I certainly laughed out loud at various occasions over the course of its ninety minute running time. But it's not hilarious, or consistent, and even that would be fine if there was a bit more plot to hang the gags and the raunchiness off. Only the middle episode sees any actual sorcerer hunting going on, or has what you could generously call a story, and thinking about it, that probably makes it the weakest of the three; then again, it's not much of a story, so I'm not sure that disproves my argument. The problem's not ruinous, but compare this with another Sorcerer Hunters spin-off, the two-part Sorcerer on the Rocks, that actually did manage to deliver a relatively involved narrative without sacrificing the humour, and it feels that bit shallower than even its inherently shallow nature calls for.
On the plus side, if we're making that comparison, Sorcerer Hunters does considerably better on the technical side of things, with animation that's in line with what you'd hope for from a mid-nineties OVA of a TV show: there's enough extra spark here to warrant the step up of an independent release, and Mashimo's energetic direction ensures that the plotlessness and inconsistent humour don't matter too much while you're watching, since there's rarely a slow moment in which to nitpick. Even with all that, I doubt it's going to stick in my memory, but if you fancy a fantasy comedy anime that's not terribly interested in the fantasy side of things but is absolutely obsessed with sex, this might well be for you.
-oOo-
Sex may allegedly sell, but you certainly get the sense from this bunch that it doesn't often make for good anime. I suppose that only Very Private Lesson was actively bad, though it was bad enough in its worst moments to cast quite the shadow over everything else, and it's not as though anything was good enough to make up for it. Fake seems to be well-regarded, and I can certainly see why, but the thriller parts were enormously dumb and could have been fixed with annoying ease. Looking back, I'm almost wondering whether my personal highlight wasn't Demon Fighter Kocho, and that certainly wasn't a sentence I ever dreamed I'd type when I was watching it. Oh, and as for the Sorcerer Hunters OVA, while it wasn't anything terribly special, it does have the advantage of having been recently re-released along with the series, so at least you can buy the thing for money without too much bother, which makes quite the change for these reviews!
Next: probably another trip back to the eighties, unless I change my mind between now and next week...
No comments:
Post a Comment