Bishounen silliness that goofs around with the whole fantasy genre of Earthlings magically finding themselves in fantasy worlds where they are inexplicably important. Rather that travelling to the magical world in question by magic portal or wardrobe, hero Yuri Shibuya is instead sucked down a school toilet. Junji Nishimura (Urusei Yatsura) does his best, but struggles with a budget that must be comparatively lower that what he had to work with during the peak years of Urusei Yatsura.

Successful enough to produce 2 sequels on TV, it’s another example of how Studio Deen’s approach of low budget shows aimed at niche audiences that are already fanatical about the properties in question (this was a light novel originally) has kept them chugging along. Even though in terms of creativity and production quality, their best years are years behind them.

This is one of those shows that exemplifies the direction that anime was going in this decade, and it’s handy to use a show like this to illustrate it, rather than a moe show.

It’s a deceptively popular show because it is targeted at a niche audience that isn’t getting this sort of material anywhere else. The fan chatter around it was huge at the time, and presumably the DVD sales were great because it got multiple sequels and OAVs. However when you look at the TV ratings, they aren’t any better than other late night shows that had less noise made about them. In fact overall, they were kind of on the low side (around 1.0).

So you’ve got this disconnect that’s formed in the industry between what appeals to a mainstream audience & what will shift silly numbers of DVD sales and merchandise. There’s too much chasing after the latter rather than former, which is understandable as it’s a lot easier for find a niche audience and exploit them, than find something everyone likes. With manga sales down it’s harder to find both the niche and the popular within them, so light novels and visual novels seem have become an easier source to find the rich veins of fandom to mine.

And if you’re trying to create completely original anime, you’ve a steep hill to climb without mixed media support (and even with it, you may end up getting a niche audience when you shot for a mainstream one).

A side effect of mining these niches, particularly the light/visual novel niches, is that as long as you get their story right, the fans aren’t that bothered about the visuals. For all its vocal fandom, I don’t think I’ve ever heard fans of this show lavish praise on the animation, which struck me as plain and not particularly inspired.

They just want their Catholic schoolgirl romantic friendship and lesbian undertones, they don’t really want it to entertain as a cartoon. It’s not really anything new, Legend of the Galactic Heroes worked under the same premise, I can’t believe that the folks buying those early episodes of LotGH were getting them for the animation, it was the story that was the selling point.

The problem is that there’s now too much of that sort of approach, and it’s all over TV rather on OAV. This leads to a distorted view of the industry when you just look at a list of available titles like I’m doing now.

The first 13 episodes are a great TV show, and achieves the “Shoujo for boys” idea that was being bandied around at the time. It switches between being essentially a shoujo story show set in school and the British telefantasy & 80/90’s Hong Kong movie-inspired action of the Read or Die OAV. Episodes like They Shout and In A Grove could have had their plots ripped out of The Avengers and are all the better for it.

Those 13 episodes end on a superb rescue sequence and had it stopped there we’d probably be talking about it as being one of the great series of the decade.

However then the fans of the OAV and light novels got what they had been complaining about being missing from the those 13 episodes and, possibly coincidentally, the whole production went to hell. As broadcast those final 13 episodes were just a mess. While the production problems were fixed for DVD release, the writing, which had been exceptional up to then, was in just as much a mess as the animation, bogged down in exposition and characters on the run for much the time.

An ambiguous final scene (was that dog supposed to represent a Churchillian depression or a creature like Black Shuck?) suggested more was to come, but given the loose continuity between the various ROD projects I’m not sure if they were hoping for a follow up anime or if it was picked up in the light novels.

Something I actually liked.

The Full Metal Panic franchise is taken from Gonzo’s hands and passed to some Kyoto Animation, with this their first production of their own. Stripping the drama from the Full Metal Panic world, you are left with a clever variation on the so called magical girlfriend genre popularised by Urusei Yatsura. A military boyfriend show if you will.

In much the same way that Lum doesn’t understand human culture and uses alien technology in a way that disturbs the lifestyle of the humans around here, a similar culture clash occurs with child soldier Sousuke Sagara’s interaction with the students of Jindai High.

For something that’s been done to death for decades, it was impressive to see a new twist, and I think it works much better stripped of the more serious baggage of the FMP story proper.

More bagpipes!?!

Based on a light novel that is probably most noted for the involvement of noted Rei Ayanami “enthusiast” Mogudan, this Bones anime seemed to me at the time as being a pretty bog-standard fantasy. Having now read the plot twist on wikipedia, there might be more to it than I gave credit for. Even if that twist has kinda been done before, including earlier in 2003.

Can’t find an opening video so make do with a trailer:

Good grief that VOICE OVER OF IMPORT totally made me want to avoid this even more than I did before. I know people love this, and again, it’s a show that I’m sure I’d have loved 10 years ago, but if I wanted to watch something about a traveller discovering episodic tales about human nature, I’d watch Galaxy Express 999.

And if I wanted something with a talking motorcycle I’d watch this:

The assassin/flower shop juggernaut continued with the third anime series of the multimedia shojo franchise.

More Sister Princess. Apparently this is even worse than the first, in that it’s truer to the terrible moe light novels that spawned it.

The second Tsuneo Kobayashi anime of the decade, and it’s a severe diversion from the comedy of Super GALS. Twelve Kingdoms is based on Fuyumi Ono’s series of light novels of the same name. The good reviews it musters and the fact that Shou Aikawa (Oh Edo Rocket, Ayakashi Ayashi) was writing makes me tempted to pick it up at some point (the complete collection is dirt cheap for a 45 episode show).

Good idea, poorly executed. Thankfully they let someone else have a shot later and they got it right. This was another Gonzo show where I got 4 episodes in and had had enough thank you very much. Which was a shame as the idea of a soldier with no social skills forced to pose as a schoolboy is a great one. To the extent that I think as long as the rumoured Hollywood adaptation keeps that core idea they’ll be onto a winner regardless of what other changes are made.