I seem to have stumbled upon a thread of commonality regarding the most recent entries in my blog. In my last post, I talked about a terrible TV show, made in 1990, that found a second life thanks to the internet. And today, more of the same, except instead of a TV show, it's a training video made by Blockbuster.
Blockbuster, you may remember, was a terrible, terrible place that, thanks to Netflix, no longer exists. It also is Exhibit A in my argument that nostalgia is basically a prelude to fascism - go on YouTube, and in the comments section of any Blockbuster related video, you'll undoubtedly see people waxing poetic about how they miss going out to Blockbuster and renting movies. As if spending six dollars on a scratched DVD copy of The Patriot starring Mel Gibson is anything we as a culture should aspire to return to.
HE IS PROVOCATIVELY DRESSED, ALL THE TIME.
Anyway, I'm getting off track. In 1990, Blockbuster produced a training video to train their new employees in the fragile art of selling movies to their customers. Long story short: it's fucking awful. And I'm going to talk about why.
Now, I understand training videos are very hard to do well - I've seen plenty that are entertaining in an ironic way, but never have I seen one that I actually consider to be "good." I'm guessing the reasons for this are because training videos are meant to teach people rather mundane and boring things, like how to operate a cash register or how to make a hamburger. Furthermore, though I don't have any evidence to back this up, I'm guessing the scripts for these videos are all written by people at the corporate level who have no knowledge or training in creative writing - despite my wishes, they aren't going to get Thomas Pynchon to write a script about what good customer service is.
"A screaming came across the Blockbuster..."
This, I'm pretty sure, is the main issue with training videos. When I was in school, I had professors that could entertainingly and humorously discuss things like Moby Dick and The Five Points ofFuckingCalvinism - if it's possible to do that, then it's theoretically possible, at least in my view, to create a training video that's genuinely funny. But it doesn't happen. All we get are embarrassing attempts at trying to be entertaining that only serves to demonstrate how out of touch company executives are with the very consumer base they're in business to serve. Blockbuster University is one of the most bizarre examples of this phenomenon. Here's the video, in case you want to watch along with me.
This is Buster Sales, who, as his name, appearance, and voice seem to suggest, is right now probably serving a five to ten year sentence for raping a sorority house. At this point, however, he's basically Marie's spirit guide - he's come down from TV heaven to share the gospel of "Listening, Thinking, and Acting" to help Marie better service her customers. The rest of the film is more or less Marie doing just that.
Let's not mince words: Marie is a girl who thinks people in the TV talk to her. Buster Sales can't interact with anyone except her, as he explicitly says at one point in the video. Furthermore, we can't forget about the most obnoxious scene in the entire film - to get Marie's attention, Buster appears on one of the TVs and starts banging like crazy on a pair of cymbals.
While Buster sits there with the biggest shit eating grin on his face, Marie has a full-on meltdown in the middle of the store, with every customer looking on in horror. We're supposed to laugh here, but how is that possible? The cymbals are obnoxious as hell, Buster's face makes you wanna punch it until he needs major reconstructive surgery, and Marie's reaction makes you want to call a hospital.
If you think this is just one scene out of many, think again - near the end, we're treated to Marie doing her damnedest to help a woman named Marge Simpson, who's shopping with her son Doug.
Alright, I need to rant for a second. Look, just look at how out of touch these writers are: this film was made in 1990, when The Simpsons was a bonafide cultural phenomenon in the US, and they include a character named Marge Simpson, and do nothing with her. As astonishing as it seems, the """"""Creative Talent"""""" responsible for this film seem to be the only people on the planet who don't know who the fucking Simpsons are. Alright, end of rant.
Getting back on track, this Marge Simpson woman has a son named Doug, and she wants to set him up with Marie. Marie calls Doug a nerd, but when we see him and hear him, we understand that "nerd" is code for "developmentally disabled."
At least Marie has the common decency to treat him like a human being. The same can't be said of asshole supreme, Buster Sales - when he sees him, he basically starts snorting like a pig and making fucked up faces.
Fuck this guy.
I mean, this isn't funny - this is straight up bullying. Remember last post, when I said you have to be really, really good at what you do if you want to do offensive humor? Well, clearly, the guys who wrote this piece of shit aren't quite up to tackling anything offensive. Also, I have to ask, if Buster Sales is supposed to be Marie's delusion, are we supposed to understand what he does as Marie's unconscious feelings towards Doug?
Of course, that's what we think in the moment, but then at the end, we're thrown this curve ball. Marie has learned the gospel of "Listening, Thinking, and Acting" and was able to help all her customers. So we end by being introduced to another new employee, who, just like Marie, is seen talking to the TV, getting the exact same advice!
So I guess every employee is suffering from the same delusion, and this Blockbuster is basically the equivalent to Salem, Massachusetts in the 1690s. Only this time, instead of being lead to accuse innocent people of witchcraft, this delusion causes them to, um, be good employees? So in order to excel in customer service, you need to be schizophrenic? At this point, I don't even know where to begin, so I'm not even going to try.
I've sat here for the past 15 minutes trying to think of a clever way to begin this post, but you know what, I don't think anything I can come up with will come close to simply summarizing what I'm going to talk about. This post is about Heil Honey I'm Home, a 1990 British sitcom in which Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun live next door to a Jewish couple.
Now, a couple things need to be said right up front. As my taste in entertainment proves, when it comes to comedy, I'm not easily offended. The thing is, though, if a comedian wants to tackle something offensive, like the fucking Holocaust, they need to be really, really good at what they do. The Holocaust isn't funny in itself - it was one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the human race. To transform that into something funny? You need skill.
Ricky Gervais, in this clip, uses the Holocaust to ridicule the appropriation of profound philosophical thought by evil men. We laugh at the Holocaust here, but we don't trivialize it - the laughter comes from the absurdity of someone going from reading On The Genealogy of Morals to deciding to kill six million Jews, and somehow thinking this to be a logical progression. That, in essence, is what is required to do offensive humor effectively.
So does Heil Honey I'm Home meet that requirement? Absolutely not, although not in the way I was expecting. Here's the full episode, so you to can revel in the...comedy? Sure, we'll go with that.
The first thing we notice is the bizarre meta-joke that introduces the episode. In-universe, Heil Honey I'm Home was the product of an American TV producer, Brandon Thalburg, who recorded the show in the 50s and was subsequently lost. The show itself makes no reference to this "joke" after this point, so I have no idea why they even decided to include it. Perhaps the producers understood how controversial this show was going to be, so shifting the blame onto a fictitious American producer somehow absolves them of the guilt? Haha, no.
The reference to the 50s is important, however, as this show is meant to evoke the feel of shows like I Love Lucy, or maybe, since that's actually a good show, I should say it's meant to evoke all the shows that weren't funny enough to be I Love Lucy. Canned Laughter, wacky improbable situations, everything that characterized old school sitcoms at their worst are all here.
Before continuing, let me give a very brief summation of what happens in this episode. Hitler and Eva are hosting British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who is coming to discuss the Fuhrer's recent invasion of Czechoslovakia. The one thing Hitler doesn't want to happen is for their nosy (Jewish) neighbors, the Goldensteins, to find out about the visit. Of course, Eva blabs about it, and now the Goldensteins want to set their daughter Ruth up with the PM. That's basically it.
Do you notice what I notice? Despite how ridiculous the show's premise is, the episode summary is, honestly, pretty tame. That, ironically, is the most offensive part of this show: Heil Honey I'm Home takes absolutely no comedic risks whatsoever. In fact, if it wasn't for the lead actor's costume, I probably would have forgotten thatthis is supposed to be a show about Hitler. Sure, he brings up Goebbels a few times, and the episode hinges on signing a treaty regarding the Czech invasion, but for the most part, it's basically about a couple and their kooky antics. The fact that it's Hitler is, weirdly, almost an afterthought. Consider this: at no point does Hitler, the man responsible for the murder of over 6 million European Jews, make any reference to the fact that the Goldensteins are Jewish.
This is, I think, a huge deal. By not having the balls to say or do anything truly offensive, Hitler is reduced to some sort of Everyman archetype. He gets into fights with his wife! He doesn't like his neighbors! He's got to impress a VIP! He's just like us! Only, you know, he's Hitler.
In a way, watching Heil Honey I'm Home was a lot like watching Triumph of the Will, the Nazi propaganda film commissioned to show off the greatness of the newly resurrected Germany. Of course, this being a Nazi propaganda film, some important things were left out. Those exact same things were left out of this show. At worst, this makes Heil Honey I'm Home appear to trivialize the horrors of the Nazi regime - at best, it makes the show lazy and existentially questionable. The same questions I posed in my Power Rangers post apply here - why did they even make this show about Hitler if they weren't going to even try to tackle what made Hitler Hitler?
Since the creators of the show don't even attempt any of that, what we're left with is a series of stale sitcom cliches, bad writing, and atrocious acting. Only once did I laugh, near the middle of the episode where Hitler messes with someone on the other end of the phone, pretending briefly to be "Bob Hitler." Other than that, nothing. What was supposed to be the funniest joke of the episode, if we're going by the volume of the canned laughter, comes at the beginning, when Eva screams to her husband, "I knew you when you were just a house painter!" Impressive indeed, considering that, when I heard it, I didn't think it was actually a joke.
Yes, it seems as though the writers of this piece of shit have a very, very different idea of what's funny than I do. You want proof? Look at how long some of their jokes go on for. When Eva and Mrs. Goldenstein are playing charades, it goes on for what seems like half the episode. But I know that isn't true, because, as it turns out, the scene where Neville Chamberlain and the Goldensteins get drunk does, in fact, go on for literally half the episode. It's not funny for one goddamn second. Now I know where Seth MacFarlane got his inspiration for the recent seasons of Family Guy!
I'm sorry guys. I'm so, so sorry.
I honestly wish there was more to say about Heil Honey I'm Home. I mean, it's a sitcom starring the most evil dictator in human history- I should be able to write an entire fucking book on the subject.But I can't, because it's just bad - and I don't mean bad in the same way The Room is bad, I mean bad in the same way that listening to The Black Eyed Peas is bad.
Don't watch this show if you want to laugh, because you won't. Don't watch this show if you want a clever World War II satire, because it's not. Hell, don't even watch this show if you want to be offended, because you won't be. You want something offensive? Watch The King of Queens. It's a sitcom, starring Kevin James, that CBS kept on the air for nine straight seasons - that right there makes it more of an affront to the standards of human decency than Heil Honey I'm Home will ever be.
Once upon a time, in a magical, far away world called the early 90s, there was an anime company called Central Park Media. At AnimeCon 91, CPM announced one of their earliest licenses, a 1987 sex comedy OVA called Minna Agechau. This was going to be released in a special edition that included a pair of panties, because why not.
Unfortunately, two evil empires called The San Jose Mercury News and the Fox Network ran a hard-hitting expose on these terrible, terrible porno cartoons that would ruin children's minds forever or some bullshit. Because of all this negative publicity, Sony, the original license holder for Minna Agechau, asked (read: politely demanded) CPM to sell back the license and never release the title in America. They did, and in exchange, CPM received several titles for free from Sony, one of which was Dog Soldier. The End.
It's like Rambo! Only shittier!
The controversy was, in all honesty, fairly short-lived - even a couple years later, nobody was talking about Minna Agechau anymore. Hell, we live in a world where, thanks to insane religious people, fucking Pokemonhas more controversy surrounding it than Minna Agechau ever did.
I heard this story about ten years ago, and immediately my interest was peaked. However, try as I might, I couldn't find a copy of it anywhere. Then, as is usually the case with these things, all of a sudden it just appeared on a torrent site, and I downloaded it immediately. So, for this edition of Anime Roulette, I figured I'd take a look at this show that almost made early 90s anime fandom explode like Neo Tokyo.
We begin with a radio broadcast of a poem that sounds like it should be in Chihayafuru, followed by a shot of a dirty apartment littered with porno magazines. Awesome dichotomy - already I'm interested. This den of filth belongs to Rokuro, a poor student whose favorite pastime seems to be masturbating while listening to classical music, all while making the best faces.
The appropriate reaction to Beethoven's 5th.
Now, Rokuro isn't exactly modest about his hobby of choice, so much that a group of girls in the apartment across from his spend their free time spying on him and laughing. One of the girls, Yuno, doesn't find it funny - all he wants is a girl, and it's sad that he has to spend so much time masturbating! For me, this was a red flag, which was further confirmed by what happened next: Yuno knocks on his door, and asks, very nonchalantly, "You want a maiden?"
Yes, a woman goes to the apartment of a stranger and, without the slightest hint of irony, offers to let him take her virginity right then and there. And he does. And she ends up moving in with him and becoming his girlfriend. Forget the awesome dichotomy at the beginning - this is just fucking insane.
I guess we're supposed to be amused by the ludicrous situation, but I just felt uncomfortable. This gets to the heart of the problem of the Japanese sex comedy - a lot of themare really bad. I won't mince words: Japan has some really fucked up gender and sexuality issues, and nothing makes that clearer than watching their erotic entertainment. Every guy is basically an antisocial sexual deviant, and every woman exists solely for the pleasure of the guy, whether she wants to or not. Yuno, of course, falls squarely into that stereotypical role.
Surprisingly enough, he turns it down.
Rokuro, on the other hand, doesn't at all. He loves sex, sure, but unlike, say, every hentai main character in history, he isn't a rapist, and just wants to have a normal relationship with his new girlfriend. That's basically the plot - these young lovers trying to live together in harmony, and overcome their differences, and not kill themselves by sucking on an exhaust pipe when they have disagreements.
You thought I was kidding?
The problem with all this is Yuno herself. Her logic-defying sycophantic worship of Rokuro is so foreign to our sensibilities that we never care about their relationship or sexual dysfunctions - we wonder instead about Yuno's mental health.
I must say, though, it's a bit unfair to lay all the blame on Yuno herself - every female character in the show is like this. We quickly learn that Yuno is actually the heiress of the billionaire Mamiya family, and the two lovers decide to spend a weekend at her house so Rokuro can meet her family. The Mamiyas employ a number of female maids, all of whom want to throw themselves on Rokuro without a second thought, because, you know, then they can be the concubines of a future billionaire.
Note the above scene takes place in a bathroom, so the line "make me your #2" takes on more sinister meanings. Anyway, we soon meet Yuno's mother, who is basically an older clone of Yuno herself, only more insane. When Yuno asks her for sex advice, she does what any sensible mother would do: put on Bach's Toccata and Fugue, shove a string fitted with weights into her vagina, and force her to do pussy-squats. Which she does.
My thoughts exactly, Yuno.
As if that weren't enough, Yuno's mom later sneaks into Rokuro's room and tries to have sex with him while he's asleep.
In spite of all this insanity, their relationship progresses nicely, until we're introduced to perhaps the only sane woman in the entire OVA - unfortunately, she happens to be the villain. This is Yuno's grandmother, who looks kind of like Yubaba from Spirited Away if she had a normal shaped head.
She's not exactly keen on having Yuno being married off to some plebeian from the streets, and does all she can to break them apart. This culminates in one of the few scenes in the OVA that I found genuinely funny, when she proposes Rokuro raise a 200 million yen dowry, and Yuno, who has no idea what anything is worth, acts like it's no big deal. Eventually, of course, the two of them do manage to get together, despite that insurmountable obstacle.
I'm sure it's fairly obvious, but I didn't like this show. Granted, I didn't hate it - Rokuro is alright as a character, and there are a few scenes I enjoyed. But honestly, I don't know who this would appeal to. As sexual is it gets, it isn't porno - we never see any genitalia or full-on intercourse, so someone looking to get off would be best served elsewhere. Those expecting to laugh will, as I said before, will probably be too baffled and uncomfortable to find any comedic value.
Even the basic way the story is presented comes off awkward and unskilled. Case in point: there's a scene near the end where Yuno admits to Rokuro that she really wants to have an orgasm, because apparently she's never had one yet. The two of them make this their goal, and the most inappropriately happy music begins to play in the background.
OK, maybe not that inappropriately happy, but you get the idea. In any case, we think that this is going to be the final story arc, but it just isn't brought up again - they go back to trying to make peace with her grandmother.
The final scene is similarly mishandled - I'm not going to spoil it, but needless to say, the two of them manage to get their hands on the money they need for the dowry. How it happens could have been funny, but it comes across as rushed, almost an afterthought. Despite it being, ostensibly, one of the crazier scenes in the OVA, the story ends, as paradoxically as it may seem, completely anticlimactically. I'm going to assume this is because the director, Osamu Uemura, mostly does production work, so I'm guessing he just doesn't have the cinematographic knowledge necessary for these things.
In the end, I'm glad Minna Agechau was recalled from the US market. It's not the depraved X-Rated monstrosity that the news made it out to be, but I almost find it more offensive - it's an impressively awkward, badly directed romantic comedy masquerading as erotica. CPM did the right thing in bowing to Sony's demands. We lost Minna Agechau, but in exchange, we got Dog Soldier - I think American anime fandom came out light years ahead.
I can't understate how important Power Rangers is to my development into the nerd I am today. When the first season of the show aired on Fox Kids, I was 3 years old, and I became a crazy fan almost immediately. That lasted until, oh, Power Rangers In Space, when I soon moved onto otherthings. But I still love those early seasons to death, and I love watching all the Sentai shows that were adapted into Power Rangers. I mean, no season of Power Rangers ever had this:
Really, do I even need a caption for this masterpiece?
In any case, Power Rangers remains one of the most important parts of my formative years. So when I heard they were making a big-budget film adaptation of the series (of the original series, no less!), I was excited with a healthy degree of skepticism. I followed the announcements on and off - when I saw the updated armor designs, I thought they looked pretty cool, like if they were to take a set of powered armor from 80s anime and make it real.
Then Bryan Cranston was announced to play Zordon, which is awesome not just because it's Bryan Cranston, but because Cranston actually got some of his earliest roles providing voices for some of the monsters in the original show. It's a cool little full-circle thing with a hint of self-awareness that made me hope, at least, the movie wouldn't suck. And then I saw, under the trending section of Youtube, that a teaser trailer had been released, and I just had to watch.
Quick aside here: we need to stop referring to every goddamn popular thing under the sun as "trending," lest the world become like Twitter, at which point we can never have peace. Fuck Twitter. End of aside.
Now, I didn't want to do some sort of shitty "reaction" to the trailer, because I don't want to end up in the same category as any of the assholes featured here:
Note: If I EVER do something that stupid on the internet, every one of you has the right to find me in the street and set me on fire. Anyway, I watched the Power Rangers Trailer, and I definitely have some issues with it, so I figured I'd take the sane route and write them here instead of, as a wiser man than I once said, making an ass of myself for all eternity. For reference, here's the trailer:
We aren't in the early 90s anymore - whereas the original show had kind of an explosive color palette, this trailer is awash in very muted, almost sedate tones. Jason, apparently, has a father who hates him, and has to attend some sort of Breakfast Club style Saturday detention with the rest of the future Rangers, for reasons we aren't told. There's bullying on multiple fronts. The teens find their powers in some weird grotto, and immediately test them out at school. This is all capped off by Rita Repulsa threatening one of the female Rangers in an almost sexual way. Wonderful.
If you couldn't tell, there's an obvious pattern going on. Everything is dark and edgy. I suppose, though Power Rangers is a show for children, that the studio is trying to target people like me who saw the original show when they were kids, and so naturally made it a little more adult. But why the hell are they trying to make it dark and edgy?
Power Rangers is the antithesis of dark and edgy. It's ridiculous and goofy, and it revels in that. That doesn't mean there can't be drama - the original Power Rangers movie, made in 1995, had Zordon almost get killed. And still, it decided to open the film with a scene of the Power Rangers skydiving set to a Red Hot Chili Peppers song, because, why the fuck not. That's the kind of show this is.
The new Power Rangers film will certainly not have any scenes like this, and that's to its detriment. Sure it will probably have great special effects and some cool explosions, but if it's anything like the trailer, it won't be any fun. And Power Rangers, above all, was fun. That's what's so offensive about the dark and edgy direction - it's literally making Power Rangers into something that it fundamentally isn't. I honestly wonder why they even bothered to call the movie Power Rangers in the first place.
And this gets to a deeper problem facing a lot of American made action movies, as well as TV shows and video games. They all need to have this dark and edgy veneer, or else, and I'm trying to put myself in the head of a studio executive here, nobody will take them seriously or think they're cool. This is taken to ridiculous extremes. Even the motherfucking Ninja Turtles, a franchise about motherfucking ninja turtles, have to be given this treatment!
What's terrifying is that these movies make money, so there's clearly an audience for this shit. I just don't understand it. Sometimes, like when you're making a movie about teenage mutant ninja turtles, whose most memorable characteristic is eating bizarre kinds of pizza, you can let loose. But nobody feels like they can, and that's really sad. If they would have done that (and gotten rid of Michael Bay), Ninja Turtles could have been a fun movie. What we have now is something that tries way, way too hard, and in the process is just not fun to watch. All but a handful of modern action films fall into this trap.
I'll give you a video game comparison: look at Bayonetta, the Platinum Games action epic, alongside God of War, the beat em up based on Greek mythology. I like both games, but I prefer Bayonetta hands down. God of War gets tiring after a while - Kratos as a character is nothing but anger, and even though you're literally killing gods, its unironic no-laughs-ever attitude just makes it feel like a chore. Bayonetta, meanwhile, has no pretensions of being taken seriously - it's a completely unhinged thrillride that doesn't leave you hanging for one second. It's, oh my god, an action game that tries to be fun! And it succeeds! Here's the trailer in case you haven't played it:
This is the kind of thing American movie, TV and game developers need to be putting out. I hope it happens soon. Clearly, the audience for God of War style action pieces have no problem shelling out money for all that, but I honestly wonder how long it'll be until people are just no longer interested. I see a lot of complaints on the internet, so maybe it's already happening. I long for the day when the Stonefaced Action Movie becomes an embarrassing pop cultural joke, like the concept of the Arnold Schwarzenegger "Comedy" is to us now.
To end this post: based on the trailer, am I going go see the Power Rangers movie when it comes out? The answer is a resounding no. Once upon a time I had at least some hope, but after seeing it, I have none remaining. The film won't be terrible, I'm sure. But it also won't be Power Rangers, which, in this case, is a far greater sin.
Over the years, I've downloaded what must be terabytes of anime from the internet; most of which I've saved on several portable hard drives. Though my collection is pretty varied in content, one of its cornerstones is a massive archive of obscure OVAs and movies from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. The Golden Age of the OVA, as I call that era, is, for me as an anime fan, a source of perennial fascination - this was a time when it seemed as though studios would animate anything, regardless of mainstream appeal, comprehensibility, or quality. Sometimes, we would strike gold and be treated to things like Angel's Egg or Gunbuster, and other times, we got Roots Search.
Yes, this really exists. And someone in Japan probably spent $80 pre-ordering the Laserdisc.
Spread over two hard drives, I've managed to amass 495 different obscure OVAs and movies - the vast majority of these titles have never been released in the US, and the ones that have are so far out of print that finding a legitimate commercial copy is damn near impossible. Though I've watched quite a few, I've recently realized that hundreds upon hundreds of these things are sitting in cyberspace, unseen. From this realization came a mad idea: I'll pick one of these OVAs or movies at random, watch it, and write a dumb blog post about it. I've decided to call this series "Anime Roulette," and the first thing I chose was an OVA called The Chocolate Panic Picture Show.
Information on this anime is scarce. With the exception of its producers (whom I'll discuss in more detail later), all I was really able to find was that it was based on a manga by Kamui Fujiwara, and was released on video in 1985. I've never read the manga it's based on, because its never been translated into English. However, if the manga is anything like the anime, I need to get my hands on a copy immediately.
I won't mince words: The Chocolate Panic Picture Show is one of the most bizarre pieces of animation I've ever seen. The "plot" (airquotes are emphasized) is paper thin - it more or less follows the three African tribal kids on their adventures, literally, through time and space.
Let me just get this out of the way right now. As you no doubt noticed from the theatrical poster, this show's portrayal of black people is, to our western sensibilities, mind-bogglingly racist. These are caricatures that would have been considered in bad taste during the Eisenhower administration. But I'm not going to accuse Japan of any bad intentions here - they're a very sheltered, racially homogeneous country that, quite honestly, doesn't really know about other races that much. So I'll leave it at that and move on.
I mentioned the plot earlier, but plot isn't really the right word to use for this show. If I were to compare Chocolate Panic to an American animation, it would be Fantasia - like Fantasia, it's more or less a series of silent pieces set to music. Unlike Fantasia, the music isn't all classical masterpieces - we go from an ambient piece replete with creepy breathing that sounds like it was lifted from the Akira soundtrack, to an upbeat rockabilly anthem, to an ending theme that sounds like a Was Not Was b-side.
Sure, why the hell not.
The eclectic soundtrack certainly fits the mood, which I would describe as stream of consciousness, only that term seems a bit too tame. Just let me read to you some of what goes on in this show. A group of cardboard cut-out people are doing TV exercises in some drab, almost post apocalyptic setting, when all of a sudden the TV explodes, killing everyone. We're then sent to an underwater city that's chock full of obnoxious product placement.
I'm surprised - usually it's Coke that's doing the blatant anime product placement.
See that Pepsi sign? That's subtle foreshadowing - in the next scene, which is set on a desert island, the kid is drinking a bottle of Pepsi, when he gets sucked into the bottle. The bottle is left on the beach, where another kid that looks exactly like him drinks it. A few minutes later, I kid you not, the kid literally gives birth to himself.
This makes that scene from Alien look G-rated by comparison.
Are we to believe he "gave birth" to the other kid in the bottle? Is he really giving birth to himself? Am I an idiot for asking such questions of a show that seems to not only disregard logic entirely, but live as though logic doesn't exist?
That, I think, is the essence of Chocolate Panic. Watching this for any sort of coherent story, or character development, is a fool's errand. This show is an unapologetic 25 minute descent into audio-visual insanity, and it knows it. Turn it on, don't think, just allow yourself to be surprised by the completely unforeseen jumps in tone and setting, and be mesmerized by the some of the most psychedelic animation Japan has given us.
A note about the animation. Though the main production was handled by Kamui and Studio 2b (a fact the show won't let you forget; they literally credit them like 3 times in the first few minutes), it seems as though some animation assistance was provided by, of all people, Gainax, the studio that would go on to create Neon Genesis Evangelion. Among many other things, Gainax is known for their nice looking animation, and this show, to it's credit, looks consistently great, with the exception of one strangely out of place bad looking character right at the end.
It's like a 7th rate flash animation.
Other than that, Chocolate Panic never fails to impress in the looks department. It may not have a colossal budget, but what it has is style, a completely insane style, that always keeps you guessing and watching to see just what the next segment is going to look like. Kudos especially to a (sadly) very brief scene where the entire world is animated in pastel, which is a technique that unfortunately seems to have fallen out of favor sometime in the 1990s.
There's honestly not much more I can say about Chocolate
Panic. For some of you, this is just going to be too weird, but at only
25 minutes, I feel its weirdness doesn't overstay its welcome. Even if
you're on the fence, I say, watch this. At the very least, you'll see a
man giving birth to himself on a beach, and that's something you'll
never see again.
