Okay something more tame for this review, today we have another obscure OVA title Assemble Insert.
Aww she looks so happy
In generic future Tokyo, the city is being terrorized by the Demon Seed, a nefarious villainous group from the Team Rocket School for Cannon Fodder villains.
Wanting to stop this crime wave a special task force is formed by a group of executives and a mad scientist to find a person strong enough to stop the Demon Seed. After an audition process that would pass for a Britains/Americas Got Talent episode they find Maron Namikaze who is freakishly strong, although to fight the Demon Seed she wears a special robotic suit which further enhances her already freak strength. To compensate her for the crime fighting and to at least try and make some money from the collateral damage Maron causes, she works as an Idol Singer.
I'm not going to lie, the animation style is strange, well it was very late 80s. I find many elements difficult to absorb, for example if they were looking for someone with super strength why would they need them to wear a robotic suit as well when the strength alone is enough, it's not like these villains are hard to defeat, they don't even make an effort when it rains. (Real Plot Point!)
It's proven in the episodes how strong Maron is when she bends the metal microphone stand unconsciously, juggles dumbbells and runs at about 60mph.
I suppose I'm asking too much especially when my last review was Butt Attack Punisher Girl. (That one will haunt me for a while)
Final Verdict: The animation is strange, the story makes no sense and the name of the anime is pathetic, I'd give it a miss.
To try and dig up the weirdest anime of all time wasn't easy, but this one comes close, lets see how long I last before I go into hysterics.
Here is the review for Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman
Mari Amachi starts at a new school named Perfect Religion Academy but all is not well when the Black Buddha Gang kidnap her roommate. To stop this sinister evil, Buddha himself appears before Mari and offers her a special sumo thong that transforms her into the hero Gautaman.
Using her special wedgie powers she fights to save her friends and protect the freedom of religion.
This is a real 45 minute ova series, she saves the world by fighting with her butt and gets stronger when the sumo thong tightens. She catches swords with her butt, for some reason Darth Vader is in it......
*Technical Difficulties one moment please*
Cut me some slack, I watched this with my sister over some Long Island Iced Tea, I'm still racking through my brain the insanity of this show, I've got no more to say, this show is unreviewable.
Final Verdict: If you belong to an Anime Society or frequently band together for marathons then watch this as the final show of the evening and see how weird the Japanese can get.
The 90s was an era that promoted some of the best of cartoons but also promoted some of the worst and became a playground where celebrities & marketing brands believed themselves to be more popular than they really were. To start off this guilt trip I begin with MC Hammer's superhero series Hammerman
The story is about a youth worker named Stanley Burrell (MC Hammer's real name) who one day receives some magic talking shoes by a retired hero named Soulman. When he wears said shoes he becomes Hammerman and saves the world by promoting messages and motivations about common social problems.
During the 90s it wasn't unusual to see cartoons promote messages about social problems, because being the good Samaritan and saving the world was in during that era.
But I can't seem to get over how shameless this promotion looks, I'm sure MC Hammer is a nice guy and he probably has done a lot of good for charity, but this seems like the wrong way to do it.
All I see is a one hit wonder blinded by the popularity of his only successful hit, it comes across as being the same as Shaq-Fu the terrible video game endorsed and starring Shaquille O'Neal.
This is definitely a show worth forgetting and should leave the strong messages to Captain Planet.
It's unusual for me to review such an up to date series especially when it was only released in 2008, but I will break my rule today because I planned a review for Elf Princess Rane and I now have to watch it again because it made no sense in English, so instead I will review Kuragehime.
The show begins with an old fashioned dormitory consisting of a number of otaku girls of various ages and interests referring to themselves as "Amars" which translates as nuns. While on a routine walk home from the store, lead character Tsukimi notices a Jellyfish placed in the wrong tank with another deadlier Jellyfish in which she attempts to save despite the store closing, she is then helped out by a stylish looking woman named Kuranosuke who helps Tsukimi and saves the Jellyfish, however after spending the night at the apartment, Kuranosuke is revealed to be a cross-dressing man. (He definitely wins the award for most convincing cross-dresser)
A problem occurs when the apartment building is brought up for demolition, and not wanting to see a nice old building go down, Kuranosuke uses Tsukimi's knowledge of Jellyfish to make fashionable dresses in order to buy the building off the owner, all the while helping Tsukimi get in touch with her hidden beauty which results in an unusual relationship with Kuranosuke's brother.
Now as many know, I hate anime about otaku but this one does more than present us with a few otaku with poor social skills, it actually takes the word "Otaku" and applies it to everyone, so lets review.
Tsukimi: Jellyfish Otaku
Kuranosuke: Dress Otaku, (which is why he cross-dresses)
Chieko: Doll & Kimono Otaku
Mayaya: 3 Kingdoms Otaku (Good Choice)
Banba: Train Otaku (Although I challenge anyone to find me a female trainspotter)
Jiji: Old Man Otaku (Played better by Negima's Asuna)
Shoko: Sex Otaku
Shu: Unknown but seems obsessed with being boring
Hanamori: Mercedes Otaku (Only Reason for being a Chauffeur)
even the Prime Minister has some uncomfortable habits.
The point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter if you come from different sides of the spectrum whether it be normal things or geeky things at the end of the day we are only human.
Many times during the series and the manga the characters are frequently taken out of their comfort zone and seem to do just fine.
In fact the message I read is that normal people are just as fragile and nervous as the Amars, while the Amars are just as confident and popular as normal people. Knowing that message does make it frustrating to watch especially when it's 100% clear that Tsukimi is beautiful, and the ending doesn't quite give us what we want, the manga is still going though so we just have to wait.
Final Verdict: It's message is a powerful one and the characters keep things interesting but where the show falls down is a failure to give us the ending we so want. Other than that I'd say give it a try.
I seem to cover a lot of music based anime having reviewed items based on real bands and musicians, and later on will be digging up a shameless one for the cartoon vault, but to get me back in the swing following Gemucon I shall review Wandaba Style.
A late entry for ADV Films, Wandaba Style is about a boy genius named Dr Susumu Tsukumo who doesn't believe man really landed on the moon, so is out on a quest to get to the moon using the cleanest way possible from his strangely well funded island base that looks like a Disney World attraction.
Then we are joined by Micheal Hanagata, a poor mans Nabeshin who wants to use Tsukumo's ambition to get a mismatched pop group to perform on the moon.
This pop group consists of an Enka singer named Himawari Natsuwa, a rock singer named Yuri Fuyube, a deranged folk singer who can see macho green fairies named Ayame Akimo and a nursery singer named Sakura Haruno (No not that one)
The series runs as a wacky comedy with various failed attempts to get to the moon, followed by a strange afro-alien afterwards.
For it's time, it was very colorful and retro looking but doesn't seem to have spent an awful amount on animation quality saving the best art for DVD covers, promos and ending sequences.
The pop group Mix Juice, as their named in the series isn't a real band but consists of voice actors who are normally singers in real life.
Looking at the absurd plot, it can make for great laughs and the dubbing is top notch ADV at their best but I find a few things to be a little out of left field.
For starters it's explained that Dr Tsukumo made Kiku No.8 after building smaller prototype models as a child but it makes no sense how he got from simple inanimate objects to a little moe robot girl (sorry Satelite Girl) who is as bad at emotions as Tony Tony Chopper. And for a band consisting of different genre singers, each as different as the other, how come they can sing idol pop music so easily? I'm not even going to try and explain the afro-alien.
Tsukumo himself has a strange way of operating, he measures all his theories using the old Japanese Metric system and named all his experiments to the moon as Wandaba Styles, which fits the name of the anime but makes utterly no sense to anyone reading the title.
For all it's faults its still a fun series but quality wise it's less anime and more cartoon.
Final Verdict: With it's retro feel and high color count, it's an attractive series to watch and equally funny but forgettable as the quality is rather low for an early 00s anime and the title doesn't really strike you as being anything other than "what"
