Night is Short, Walk On Girl (2017)

From https://media.senscritique.com/media/000017621874/
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Director: Masaaki Yuasa

Screenplay: Makoto Ueda

Based on a novel by Tomihiko Morimi

(Voice) Cast: Kana Hanazawa as The Girl with Black Hair; Gen Hoshino as Senpai; Hiroshi Kamiya as The School Festival Executive Head; Ryuji Akiyama as The Underpants Leader; Kazuya Nakai as Seitarō Higuchi; Yūko Kaida as Hanuki-san; Hiroyuki Yoshino as The God of the Old Books Market

A 1000 Anime Crossover

Synopsis: The Girl with Black Hair (Kana Hanazawa), on her night of finally becoming an adult as a university student, goes on a drinking spree across the town on night. Senpai (Gen Hoshino), a fellow university student in love with her and knows her well, decides to also finally make this night the one where he woos her. Their night will be one including a rich tyrant who steals men's underwear, the God of Second Hand Books, the war between the School Festival Executive Head (Hiroshi Kamiya) and guerrilla musical performances that he's trying to suppress across the campus, and an ever increasing case of colds spread amongst the populous.

The trajectory of Masaaki Yuasa is a glorious victory for the right man. Once he was a secret among anime fans, acclaimed for works like his debut Mind Game (2004) but with none of his work available in the West. A fan like me confesses to having been provided bit torrent links to some of his work after, like the series Kaiba (2008), from a wonderful benefactor for the simple reason that, inexplicably, that work wasn't available and in some spots in his filmography still isn't. The Tatami Galaxy (2010) was for a long while the only work available, which I'll get to later as its important in this particular tale. Than within the time afterwards Yuasa finally got some recognition. He got to direct an episode of Adventure Time, and slowly to the current time we're getting his work even in the UK. In one of the strangest success stories, which will hopefully lead to a new chapter in his career, he's helming Devilman Crybaby (2018), an acquisition for Netflix which, whatever your opinion on the streaming site, did the world a big favour in presenting Yuasa to a wider public, aptly in another resurrection tale at the same time as, of all things, it was an obscure Go Nagai character that, barring a 70s children series, starred in ultraviolent and grotesque material.

From https://i.imgur.com/cU41JxE.png

If that feels like an odd turn for some, in context Yuasa's always had an experimental bone in his body even in his choice of genres. He's dabbled in horror before in Kemonozume (2006), had in Mind Game existential drama play out in a throw-in-the-kitchen-sink mentality with a recreation of the Jonah and the Whale story, even made a TV series about ping pong. Somehow the man who once needed fan donations through a Kickstarter campaign to create projects managed to now have three directorial features made within this year or so - Devilman Crybaby itself, his family film about a mermaid, Lu Over the Wall (2017), and Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, effectively a sequel of the eleven episode long The Tatami Galaxy. This doesn't following the same main characters but set in the same world of author Tomihiko Morimi's story of before about university students and their lives. Side characters I loved from The Tatami Galaxy make an appearance again like old friends - Seitarō Higuchi (Kazuya Nakai) a modern day vagabond dressed like a period ronin and with a Robert Z'Dar approved chin, and his alcohol loving, big sister-like friend Hanuki-san (Yūko Kaida), who play major parts here as in The Tatami Galaxy. Even the "libido cowboy", who I forgot from the series, once a running gag with obvious connotations, returns in style and with a posse at the end, and a major voice actor from the series, Hiroyuki Yoshino, also makes an appearance as a character strangely similar in appearance to one from the show.

The leads, whilst looking the same as those in The Tatami Galaxy, are different figures however. A young woman with an iron stomach for alcohol and only the desire to be nice to all people whilst enjoying her night as much as possible in youthful, determined enthusiasm. The male, merely "Senpai", could pose a problematic figure for some viewers as he gets up to some shady means to win her heart, including when the School Festival Executive Head offers him access to their illegal files on her, but as in The Tatami Galaxy the male protagonists in Tomihiko Morimi and Yuasa's combined world are not perfect people. They take the entire narrative paths to be anywhere near close to redeeming themselves. In The Tatami Galaxy said character had to endure a Groundhog's Day scenario, and even then the ending suggested his self improvement included become more devilish in personality, whilst Senpai here gets dragged (literally by a sentient book at one point) through his doomed attempts to woo the Girl with Black Hair throughout. In the end, including the hilarious sight of thousands of himself at a conference in his mind arguing about love not existing, Yuasa's takes on author Morimi's work really rubs the nose in for anime (and even film) viewers perceptions about male characters being perfect, noble individuals. They get up to some dumb, even sleazy goals to win over the opposite sex, and its telling that the Girl with Black Hair at one point, in an attempt to overcome his flaws and begin their romance, has to sedate and flee thousands of his libidinous duplicates. Youthful, full of too much spunk and dumber than bricks at times, very much a type of male lead in these stories which won't win some fans of Night Is Short... but is more honest.

From https://i0.wp.com/www.heyuguys.com/images/2017
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It helps that this is as much the Girl's film, where even if it might seem problematic that they eventually fall in love, it's with her not really changing herself, really sympathetic and lovable from beginning to end, but Senpai having sides of himself bashed out instead. Yuasa, alongside fully undermining the boundaries of what is reality, metaphor and the surreal, utterly making the ability to differentiate them a joke, has always been obsessed with very unconventional but more realistic takes of how human beings are and interact. He's comparable to the late Satoshi Kon for his blurring of reality, but his style (alongside being compared to Superflat) has the one distinct trademark in that, despite how bizarre and incredible his imagery is, it's entirely for the sake of character pieces about people. (Even his horror story Kemonozume ultimately was about characters who felt like actual adults, merely in a gory action horror tale where the lead is the leader of a clan who kill monsters and the love interest being one of those aforementioned monsters.) Likewise here, on the longest and maddest night of pub crawling, improvised illegal musicals, and stints at even more illegal rare book tents, where copies of rare texts can only be won by eating more violently hot food than the other patrons, it's about a guy learning to start thinking more meekly, more affably, whilst the girl whose already well balanced merely realised he was attracted to her.

The noticeable difference in the age of the characters from most makes a breath of fresh air too. Anime suffers from the normalcy of "anime high school" where, due to a variety of factors such as a nostalgia for high school in contrast to modern Japanese society, a fantasised version of high school (or secondary school) is to be found in a lot of anime, hence why so many are about characters in their teens. Here, these are young adults who drink, read books, piss about and stage surprise musical performances in public, and the sense of change is rewarding. That and its liberal take on magical realism, Yuasa's trademarks matched by material which gleefully interconnects its segments with the utterly unnatural and strange gleefully. More so in this case as a tale of the exhilaration of life in the littlest of details. Far removed from any caution of drinking, it's a Bacchanalian parade where the young and the old intermingle. The love of books. Love in general, as a subplot reveals that the guerrilla musicals are all part of a scheme by a character who is in love with a girl he met one day, refusing to take the underwear he wore on said day off until then and using this illegal activity, which mocks the authority, as his stage to finally confess his love. (In fact the only real disappointment with Night Is Short... is that it nearly looks like it's going down into an unexpected gay romance at some point, and whilst its swerve from it is explained and never comes a cop-out, it would've been great if that tangent had gone fully to the hilt.)

From https://genkinahito.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/
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As with all of Yuasa's work, Night is Short looks incredible, even more surrealistic in a literal sense than someone like Satoshi Kon can be. It's fascinating how, when his clear themes over multiple genres is the important of human interaction and personality, its filtered through such sumptuous, unpredictable and openly weird stylistic choices. His tonal shifts over the years - sci-fi with Osamu Tezuka influence story and character designs in Kaiba, Kemonozume being adult horror in terms of its characters as well as sex and gore with even moments of Bill Plympton in the stylistic choices - have transformed stories like Night is Short into their own genres, a magical realist farce here where one can not only meet the God of Second Hand Books, a diminutive dwarf who pulls price tags of old books to liberate them, but can command them to fly like birds in the air when freed. There are moments of spectacle here more elaborate than in some action anime and, as with Yuasa's previous stories, even the fact the protagonists don't have proper names doesn't stop them and even a one scene character from having a personality or something strange about them, like one of the School Festival Executive Head's minions being a literal monkey riding a vacuum cleaner/Segway hybrid.

Abstract Spectrum: Expressionist/Magical Realism/Surreal/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High

Personal Opinion:

Since he has tackled the work of Tomihiko Morimi twice, the return to Night is Short does bring a nice circular movement with eyes back to one of the more easily accessible works when he was a cult figure. The growing status of Yuasa is wonderful, but its poignant he effectively made a sequel to arguably the least conventional of all his work, a comedy-drama which nonetheless decides to tell its story through the deliberately strange, one where the sense of white and black morality for its protagonists is greyed but everyone is still part of a madcap farce, not serious and intense drama. Night is Short is a very odd love story, which boldly shows the worst aspects of people but also that they can still be good people deserving a happy ending. All in a film that has romance, fantasy, supernatural figures, gangsters, and even musical numbers about the School Festival Executive Head sneaking into the women's bathroom. A film that works more having seen The Tatami Galaxy, preparing you for it, but by itself is still glorious to witness.

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Rise And Fall Of A Small Film Company (1986)

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Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard

Meant to be based on the novel The Soft Centre by James Hadley Chase

Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud as Gaspard Bazin; Jean-Pierre Mocky as Jean Almereyda; Marie Valera as Eurydice

Synopsis: The state of cinema by way of an adaptation of a James Hadley Chase crime novel, originally produced for the crime story series Série noire in France. Where producer Jean Almereyda (Jean-Pierre Mocky), once a matinee idol and major producer, is now reduced to TV movies and dogged by a case of stolen money from his past. All whilst Gaspard Bazin (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a director who now, after acclaim, spends his time in an obsessive ritual for casting extras that eats up their budgets, finds Almereyda's wife Eurydice (Marie Valera) a potential creative source when she desires to be an actress.

It's strange we can uncover lost films by Jean-Luc Godard, one of the biggest names in all cinema, but we can forget that even after ten years obscurer films in a director's filmography can be neglected absentmindedly. There is, of course, when new blood in the fan base don't know common knowledge that the older members do, something which can happen be it for horror fans to art house aficionados, and in that case we need to provide that information or doom ourselves to obscuring works of the past. Retrospectives are thankfully more common too as are physical released, but there are cases, with a director like Godard who made so much outside of theatrical screenings, that once it was a lot more difficult to access this material and a lot of it hasn't even been gotten around to until now. That even a great American director can have material not available means that the Swiss director, even if he is a legend in cinema, can have probably more as both being a director who worked in a foreign language to English, made very difficult work that contrasts his famous early sixties works immensely, and has experiments in television and short work more rife than many other filmmakers which always tend to be neglected with any auteur. So, yes, you have the clues to why we trip over these obscurities like so.

Even in the theatrical corner of Godard's wing, where for many his debut Breathless (1960) is his most well known film, there are productions neglected especially in the late eighties when, returning with his second "debut" Every Man For Himself (1980) after his experimental era, which are not available. Now which his Dziga-Vertov Group films (mostly) available in high definition, even if many are some of the most painful failures of his career, the Holy Grail alongside films like the controversial Hail Mary (1985) is his television work. Experiments like Rise and Fall of A Small Film Company.  From a time where he was going to return back to experiments until the unforeseeable day and was in-between various projects, a year before his infamous Cannon Films production King Lear (1987). One very much not taking his assignment with Série noire as intended.

From https://medias.unifrance.org/medias/252/193/180732/
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Rise and Fall, rather than the adaptation of a crime novel as likely intended, is that meeting place between the return to narrative cinema in the eighties and the video experiments that would lead him to his career in the current day. The noticeable limitations - the TV screen ration, the limited aesthetic, the video sheen and digital text captions - are things that would undermine another director, but are like providing Godard with new tools to work with. He's someone, know to use VHS rips of old films on purpose still to this day, completely polymorphous when it comes to technology, already working on television productions in the seventies and, in the 2010s in his older statesman position, having his own 3D camera built by scratch and making a 3D feature in Goodbye to Language (2014). Here though he's still working with a plot, around one which contrary to his famous quote does have a beginning, middle and end in that order. The struggles of a TV movie company mid adaptation of James Hadley Chase's The Soft Centre, the novel Godard is meant to adapt, which he weaves his state of unrest cultural critiques in the midst of through the tired producer Jean-Pierre Mocky (Jean Almereyda), and the frankly deranged director Gaspard Bazin (Jean-Pierre Léaud).

Léaud, meeting back with Godard and thus evoking his many moments in the latter's work, could if you cheated a little be the exact character he would later play in Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep (1996). The same director hired to remake Les Vampires (1915-16) in that film, who decided to cast Maggie Cheung, once before with an entirely different name stuck in these wilderness years in the late eighties, his obsessive ritual with the extras of having them move through rooms in a  conveyor belt, quoting at one point the same passage contracted together between them, as much him attempting to find his creative sanity as a madness. He's less irritated by being stuck making television work, but as he confesses (and shows Godard biting the hand financing this feature) wishing he was adapting Dashiell Hammett instead. In a world where he and his producer sit in front of a television showing a fire, rather than a real one, to stay warm, the world has become stranger than the sixties they made their fames in. It's not an absurd comparison either between films as, whilst the ending of this suggests a happy ending for Léaud's character, the film making world is so different from France's before, where his arcane ritual with the casting is chewing up money for a company who can't even get a TV movie off the ground and shown.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/069Xaf__6nM/maxresdefault.jpg

Admittedly Godard's criticisms of the state of cinema and life, as he's been doing them since the sixties and hasn't stopped since, could dangerously fall into shouting into the wind, worse a man trying to joust windmills thinking they're dragons. (Even if that's the case for some now, I'd at least want to picture him as cinema's Prospero, in his magical tower in Switzerland creating his cinematic incantations, or like his character Professor Pluggy in King Lear with patch-cord dreadlocks in his hair). What doesn't allow this to be the case is that, generally, his philosophical concerns are not only enlightening but constantly evolving over time, the ones of yore still relevant to the current day or time capsules to new problems per era. Here, ironically when he was asked to make this TV film, he's practically spiting the producers by having the pair of Bazin and Almereyda as doomed figures of the past floundering even in commercial television. Their lives are small scale, the television budget and style of Rise and Fall... helping this. It is too rye to be an out-and-out comedy, but humour is to be found especially in characters like the accountant, who in deadpan just doing his job hands out paltry earnings to the extras discounting their social security. Or Léaud playing up his character's out-of-control behaviour, be it interrupting a phone call between a potential actress with acute abruptness, brought at what she suspiciously suspected to be erotic when asked to bring a bikini alongside her, or breaking into a Woody Woodpecker impression.

Godard's also one of the few directors able to get away with casting himself as the wise sage. Much of it, by this time, is because Godard was such an iconic name it was impossible to get around this, common in narrating his own films since the sixties and having a reputation as a figure outside of cinema, making his work (usually dialectic anyway) completely attached to him. Rise and Fall... offers him playing a character as himself, amusingly (as I want to picture it) living in Reykjavik in Iceland because he had to witness the greatest chess game being played there, here appearing to find a deal back in the left for him with a (fictional?) producer and Romy Schneider. Thus his scene also turns to an appropriate melancholic air about the period, when both said producer is dead and Schneider, in real life, passed in 1982. When that comes to pass it becomes one of the film's most meaningful scenes, more so because Godard is playing himself interacting with a fictional creation of his, two old pros lamenting their careers in cinema being affected by the change in tide and left adrift within it. Even if Godard would become more and more a legendary filmmaker who made films to the current day, he's eventually drift far from narrative cinema into experimental features entirely, all bolstered by the reputation he developed allowing him to leave mainstream cinema behind.

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His critiques are matched by a willingness to play with the form of film a way few would. The limitations, the flaws, of this television work are devices for him to exploit, superimposition to the hair-raising use of slow motion on a female extra's emotions mid-performance. He even deliberately has the sound abruptly halt as if the film's failed, followed by a technical difficulties screen, for a joke. Musically he picks interesting pieces like from Leonard Cohen to Janice Joplin, the latter's famous rendition of Mercedes Benz amusingly used on a moving computer square with the technical screen colourbars. The marriage between the two sides is like a very underrated theatrical feature Godard made within this era, Detective (1985) with Johnny Hallyday and Nathalie Baye, a small scale crime narrative confined to one hotel, perfect for Godard's experimentation as well as providing an actual story. Rise and Fall... still tells an interesting tale - for Jean-Pierre Léaud's Bazin, a spark of life is found in his producer's wife Eurydice (Marie Valera), who he compares to actress Dita Parlo known for films like Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937). Theirs is not a romantic or sexual relationship, instead Bazin finding artistic clarity as, testing her, she is one of the only people when giving an old painting will not point out all the figures within it but say the characters are actually the most important themes of said painting. Sadly, apt for a small scale crime drama about a little company, it's the producer's shady past with stolen money that does them in.  

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Diegetic

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

Personal Opinion:

Hopefully, restored and premiering at the 2017 Locarno Film Festival, the reappearance of Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company is not restricted from public access beyond being temporally streamable on MUBI. If Godard's Dziga Vertov years can be accessed, as difficult and un-cinematic in his career's work as you can get, an uncovered gem like this can have appeal. If anything it hopefully leads closer to the vast television and video work in his catalogue finally appearing in wider access.

From https://assets.mubi.com/images/notebook/post_
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Flexing With Monty (1994/2010)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/
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Director: John Albo

Screenplay: John Albo

Cast: Trevor Goddard as Monty; Rudi Davis as Bertin; Sally Kirkland as Lillith

Synopsis: Living together, Monty (Trevor Goddard) a physical education teacher at a university fitness obsessed muscle man with a homophobic streak, complicated sexuality and complex due to being raised by his grandmother, who believes in being the best in physical might. His teenager younger brother Bertin (Rudi Davis) is more sensitive, an intellectual but also with a severe complex for a mother he never met and Christian mystical thoughts. Their lives are to be drastically changed when an eccentric nun Sister Lilith (Sally Kirkland) enters their lives.

Among films left unfinished, only to be finally completed decades later and released, Flexing With Monty is a one-off even a person like myself, a jaded viewer of many a strange film, was taken back with. Starring Trevor Goddard, who most will know from playing Kano in the 1995 live action Mortal Kombat film, Flexing... was an early nineties production that started in 1994 only to be finally released in 2010; in that time Goddard sadly committed suicide in 2003, and one of the producers of the film also passed away. That it's a film of the nineties, regardless of its actual release date, means a lot to me. It's strange for myself, born in 1989 and a child of the 1990s, to see a production from that era and distinctly see the idiosyncrasies from that time, completely separate to now as a time ago. Like The Dark Backwards (1991) or nineties Gregg Araki movies, these films are going to grow in cult status now the nineties will probably get as much attention as the eighties even in the mainstream. Those references are not out-of-place either as they are the perfect comparisons for the oddity that is Flexing With Monty. Imagine the kind of transgressive story found in classic Greek plays to William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus - incest and gory revenge abound here - but with bright gel lighting Mario Bava would be proud of and an idiosyncratic, mad script filled with enough religious symbolism to make your head burst, and enough scatological and profane material to piss yourself laughing over.

From http://sinsofcinema.com/Images/Flexing%20with%20
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The tone is where you where you separate the casual  fans of weird cinema from the obsessives as its a mad hodgepodge. Some feels retched from director/writer John Albo's own life clearly, especially with its Catholic references, and issues deal with sin and the place of women as corrupting forces in Christianity, and aspects that can never be explained such as Bertin acquiring a rare bird, actually a diminutive man in a cage (Manny Gates), who varies between masturbating to suddenly bursting into an aria for a profound moment. There's points in Flexing... where even I was surprised by where the tangents went, both in dialogue and when visualising some truly strange images. The dialogue's enough before Goddard, in arseless leather chaps and a cowboy hat, starts humping a stuffed polar bear in from a prostitute on his birthday as they elaborate the tale of his ancestor impregnating a bear in the forests. The combination is delirious, especially as the film, mostly set in deliberately artificial interior sets, adds to the deliberately sense of exaggeration on display.

That it's a tale of weird psychosexual issues is amplified by the tone. Monty the brash, homophobe who yet places ads in newspapers for gay cruising. Even that sequence, with leads to him brutally harming the gay man who expects a pleasurable time, has the strange mix of Monty harming him but still giving him the pleasure he wanted only in a violent way. Obvious, with moments like this, this is going to turn people off for how nasty the film is as out-there it is too. This is alongside the truly weird moments like Bertin dreaming of giving birth to his own mother, given an abortion by their grandmother with a knitting needle, extracting a ball of wool from him. Or the incestuous moment about said nightmares between the men. This type of drama is not common nowadays in mainstream storytelling, which is strange as, as mentioned in the beginning, this is not that different from the type of storytelling even Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks wrote of, classic canonical art which dealt with the complexities of human beings through extreme content. The issue is that this type of storytelling is rarer in modern art baring that which is dubbed "extreme" and gets divisive reactions from professional critics.

From http://sinsofcinema.com/Images/Flexing%20with%
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Flexing...'s plot is effectively the downfall of a completely amoral man, as told in classic literature and even cinema. Where the strangeness comes in is the tone and the heightened dialogue. As much as this type of extremer material has a basic in classic work, you still have to work around moments likeSally Kirkland's entrance into the film as Sister Lilith. Talking about a charity campaign to deal with pollution undermining the biology of the populous' brains. Which leads to her talking about having to lay eggs in a ditch. Which leads to a cut to Academy Award nominated actress herself in a post apocalyptic environment, naked and squatting in a wasteland ditch laying an actual egg. It's one thing to have a story, like Shakespeare's tales of revenge, which eventually gets into dismemberment and toxic family relationships, it's another to have scenes like this or dialogue as ripe to rattle off terms like "fried rat cunt" or muscles having their own souls with constant regularity. It's something special but also giddy in its madness that you have to be very prepared for.

As a result, however, it's also never boring. It's also too well made to dismiss. Production wise, it's a low budget film restricted in sets that stands out. It's also worth comparing, not only to Araki, to the work of Stephen Sayadian, a.k.a. Rinse Dream, films like Cafe Flesh (1982) and, for a non-pornographic production, especially Dr. Caligari (1989) in its completely artificial look that feels on theatrical sets. The central one, with Monty's gym that includes a giant hamster wheel for him to run in, is spectacular especially with the deep, rich coloured lighting. The cast as well are trying their hardest and chewing the scenery, and this is where Flexing With Monty can get away with being this mad in tone. Tragically, as mentioned, Goddard would pass away at the age of forty, a true shame as whilst his Australian accent is over-the-top, actually born in England, he's utterly compelling. Aware of the tone of the film, he's in tune to the film's take on the extremes of masculinity within Monty, one which arguably has a clear point to in within the weirdness again his toxic macho attitudes, the whole misogynistic streak by way of Christian faith he has subconsciously within (even with a sex worker who visits on his birthday talking about Lilith as the first true wife of Adam), and the quasi (and frankly overt) homosexuality in spite of his homophobia. He's an energised ball of energy, the character constantly exercising or flexing, Goddard at the peak of physical health on camera, the life force of the film whose profane dialogue is richer due to his ridiculous fake Australian twang and forcefulness. Monty is an utterly loathsome character who you yet follow throughout gladly, the perfect anti-protagonist whose downfall is hideous as it is sickly funny.

From http://img.movieboom.biz/movie/screen/194965/15.jpg

The rest of the cast do as well though, especially Kirkland. In a film, among bizarre moments after another, where Monty's soul possesses his own penis, or Kirkland's scene where she reveals full body tattoos and goes into a frenzied religious monologue about the Whore of Babylon, you had to have a cast willing to both take the material serious but also, to quote Spinal Tap, go up to eleven to make it credible. It's here the film fully succeeds even if it's an acquired taste, a revenge tale like the nastier classics of yore brought kicking and screaming into the nineties. The extremes of people, over the top in tone and performances on purpose. The perversity, entirely appropriate and not out of place in context, telling a tale not that different from the likes of Oedipus only the later is of historical legacy and Flexing With Monty isn't. What separates it as well is Flexing...'s tone and style is something that makes its tale of bad blood and neurosis, until its calm and disquietly serene shot of a cabbage field, even more twisted and rewarding as a result.

Abstract Spectrum: Grotesque/Psychodrama/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Absolutely a ripe, bizarre discovery still needing more coverage on. Flexing with Monty will be very divisive for many viewers, but the few that can get onto its wavelength will be morbidly delighted.

From http://sinsofcinema.com/Images/Flexing%20with%20
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A 1000 Anime Quartet

I did nearly use the term "quadrilogy", but considering its not an official term, know more by people by its use for the Alien franchise in DVD sets, and"tetralogy" or "quartet" are proper dictionary terms, I decided to stay classy...

A non-anime abstract review will be coming very soon. Until then, here are a few more tie-ins for the 1000 Anime blog, as eclectic as you can get.

Robot Carnival
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The first, Robot Carnival (1987), is an actual anthology film which, barring the theme of robots, entirely let its animators (including Akira director/author Katsuhiro Otomo) loose on their segments, an example of the craft of eighties animation that has to be seen to be believed. The review can be found HERE. 

Sparrow's Hotel
From http://i.imgur.com/wGCbsTs.jpg

On the opposite side of the coin, in terms of the lowest of budgets and expectations, is Sparrow's Hotel (2013); if Robot Carnival is an anime production that could've only been made in the eighties or nineties, with its painstaking craft and artistic heights, than Sparrow's Hotel could've only been made in the 2010s, with its janky animation, three minute long episodes and having some recognition in the West through the streaming site Crunchyroll. Is it deliberately bad - with its voluptuous, Barbie-with-assassination skills protagonist and crude, colourful demeanor - or just bad? Read the review HERE and find out how more complicated the truth is.

Five Star Stories
From http://www.anime-kun.net/animes/screenshots
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Back to the eighties, with painstaking and gorgeous animation, but with the reminder that that era could have productions which promised so much in a teaser but never had an ending, nor a follow on barring a manga that might've never been translated for the West. Hence, whilst I absolutely recommend finding Five Star Stories (1989), a melodramatic space opera with fabulous character designs based on the manga author's obsessively beautiful art, and even more fabulous giant robots, be warned that if you fall in love with its uniquely fantastical take on the giant robot genre of anime, it'll hurt like it did for me that this was the only anime adaptation of Mamoru Nagano's manga, and obsession over multiple decades and still counting, and nothing else came after. Admire the series and share the pain HERE.

Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise
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Thankfully some of the productions in the eighties had endings, and in any other blog post like this, seeing Robot Carnival or even Five Star Stories and writing of that experience would've been huge for another anime fan. However I also watched Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise (1987) for the first time. One of the most significant anime theatrical films of all time, one of the biggest anime productions from the eighties, effectively birthing the divisive but culturally important anime studio Gainax, and one of the most divisive anime just for a (understandably) controversial segment, less than ten minutes but enough to lead people to dismiss the entire feature and its virtues, and took a huge additional chunk (with full spoiler warnings) for me to cover as it's be impossible not to talk of. However, even if that segment in its alternative world sci-fi drama was a moment that ruined the film for you the reader, rather than part of the complex drama few anime films cover for myself, than I'd still argue seeing The Wings of Honnêamise is going to be one of the most significant film viewing experiences, of all cinema not just anime, for the entirety of 2018. Read the review HERE and read why. 

So effective, watch all these anime. Well Sparrow's Hotel is to debate, but at less than thirty minutes or so for an entire series, even something that deserves a warning before seeing would've hurt that much dear reader would it?

Gdgd Fairies (2011-13)

From https://www.anime-planet.com/images/anime/
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Director: Sōta Sugahara

Screenplay: Kōtarō Ishidate [Season One], Kazuyuki Osabe and Taizō Yamamoto [Season Two]

(Voice) Cast: Suzuko Mimori as pkpk; Kaoru Mizuhara as shrshr; Satomi Akesaka as krkr

A 1000 Anime Crossover

Synopsis: In their magical forest, three female fairies - pkpk (Suzuko Mimori), shrshr (Kaoru Mizuhara) and krkr (Satomi Akesaka) - spend their time debating inane topics, from the virtues of deja-vu to the virtues of sleeping in, using their magic in the Room of Spirit and Time for bizarre games, or looking into the mystical Dubbing Pool, a mirror to the outside world and weird events.

How do you sell gdgd Fairies? In the 2010s, short form content has grown in popularity, from YouTube videos to short animation. Anime is the same, especially as original net animation (ONA) has grown as straight-to-video (OVA) animation has declined. Short anime, even as low as three minutes per episode, has become more common within this decade especially as the likes of Crunchyroll and streaming programming online has allowed such projects to be available in the West. I suspect as much this development is a way to let younger creators actually cut their teeth in helming a production, to experiment as well. Even the lowest of budgets, with minimal animation, doesn't stop these productions from finding ways around that. Many, like Inferno Cop (2012-2013) to the subject of this review, intentionally use their cheap production values for the humour.

Many of these works are comedies. Strange characters arguing and occasionally with bouts of action. They even have precedent before the 2000s in the "omake", a concept of extra skit animation or segments included as bonuses for works as far back as Gunbuster (1988-89) in the eighties, usually comedic segments that still exist into the modern day for shows, allowing the creators to take a break especially from serious series or franchises to have characters do something silly for a couple of minutes like pretend to be magical girls like Sailor Moon. The difference is now there's a market for parody series to be produced by themselves. On legendary franchises in Japanese anime like Gundam to Fist of the North Star that can riff (or take the piss out of) canonical characters and plot points with fully licensed characters involved. Then there are original projects like gdgd Fairies. Taking advantage of a very low budget, and public domain computer animation figures, this deliberately crude and cheap looking production is the first big work by the duo of Sōta Sugahara and Kōtarō Ishidate, who have made this type of short length comedy with usually three characters their bread and butter even when they separated before gdgd fairies' second season. The pair, even separate, have went their own ways, Sugahara with Hi-sCool! Seha Girls (2014), where the female trio are anthropomorphised Sega videogame consoles, whilst Ishidate has gone onto material like Q Transformers: Kaettekita Convoy no Nazo (2015), which as you guess from the "Transformers" in the title is where Optimus Prime and Bumblebee argue and bitch about their own franchise. Theirs is a very niche style, but why gdgd Fairies worked for me is that, as will be elaborated on, it's a farce that deliberately goes to the strangest of ideas and held aloof, made cohesive, by its three sole voice actresses.

From https://plainpastaandplainrice.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/gdgd02.jpg

Whilst rife in manga and anime references, especially in the mid-break eye catches and the parody next episode previews, most of gdgd Fairies is instead the tale of three likable characters, voiced by popular voice actresses, pissing about with magic or getting into conversations at their tea table which get increasingly off tangent as they go. pkpk (Mimori), the naive pink haired fairy who is nervous and frankly somewhat dim-witted. shrshr (Mizuhara), blonde ponytail and boisterous, at times exceptionally dumb and egotistical but balanced alongside her sense of enthusiasm. And krkr (Akesaka), purple hair with a orange mushroom hat, incredible morbid in saying deliberately gruesome things, or purposely saying weird things to get a rise out of her two friends. krkr is also my favourite not only to the character but because voice actress Akesaka, as I elaborate on the usual structure of the two seasons, not only has the funniest lines but, in the elaborate improvisation that the actresses are required to pull out, she has the most neck crack inducing turns into various voices out of her arsenal out of the three. She also has the tendency to burst out into song, which the creators and her co-performers clearly loved because that becomes a running gag that lasts both seasons.

gdgd Fairies, in one of its best aspects, screws with the viewer constantly in terms of expectations but there is a basic template in both series for each episode, usually split into three parts. Part one is the characters at a table, tea pot and cups unused in the centre, discussing a basic concept but reaching into peculiar tangents that are elaborated on by thought bubbles showing ridiculous, cheaply animated scenarios. Part 2 is the Room of Spirit and Time, where the fairies play very elaborate games, from how many old men they can jump over (the same model copy pasted), to within one of the last episodes an extended Mario Kart/racing game parody where a traffic officer is a weapon that can be fired out and the tortoise shell is instead an actual slow moving tortoise. Occasionally this is changed about, or even ignored, but Part 2 in any form, even when replaced with the fairies attempting to go camping, is among my favourite moments.

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Part Three is not that far behind, the Dubbing Lake the most curious of all the segments as, in which the fairies watch on at events, it's entirely improvised in dialogue when, after the first showing of the sequence, each one has the actresses themselves in character come up with dialogue over the scene depicted. You can tell its improvised as they break character a lot, slip out of their characters' voices and openly discuss their own careers. At one point Satomi Akesaka confess herself to be a terrible actress when in one of the many times the improvised joke bombs among the trio. There's a perverse joy, when Suzuko Mimori drops her squeaky accent for pkpk, or when the actresses nod to other shows they work on they cannot talk about, to this meta-humour, but it works as much because it's the human beings who work on these shows appearing in front and centre. There's a vicarious glee of them voicing these helium voiced characters, mucking about and finding their own jokes funny.

Season One is sustained by both the three voice actresses' charisma, and that Sōta Sugahara and Kōtarō Ishidatedo not let the low budget prevent them from being gloriously weird. Even without the anime references, the series is still hilarious. A game of apple dunking is turned into having to eat ramen from a bungee jump erected in outer space, and even another overt reference to Mario, buying a house that is effectively a death trap filled level from one of those games, still working as a joke in the prolonged agony of mushrooms versus flames. More so in the next season gdgd Fairies gets more resourceful in its material, but even in the first season this type of post-internet influenced humour is thankfully more directed to be deliberately silly and in inventive ways. It does argue that dated computer animation has the potential to be used in creative ways, the use of deliberately awful CGI character models and locations leading to elaborate gags that span the length of episodes. One such model, an older woman with purple hair wearing lingerie, even becomes the closest to a fourth main character in how much she is used, christened Fusako Mochida and eventually voiced by Satomi Akesaka, the model likely used as much as she is because she is where the running joke of Akesaka singing bombastic songs stems from each time the model's used.

Fromhttp://i.imgur.com/r7bpi.jpg

The cheap look helps gdgd Fairies to an advantage, colourful and cartoonish. There are end credits where more overtly realistic and feminised versions of the characters perform a dance, more elaborate as the series goes on and becoming a rap ballad in season two, but the lead trio are usually drawn as "chibi", an exaggerated style usually done for comedy where characters are short, squat and deliberately cute. It's also used for humour a lot in anime, particularly as here there's as much emphasis on the characters' voices and exaggerated facial expressions as there are prolonged skits, a surprising amount of them with a character (usually pkpk) being thrown across the screen, eaten or set on fire. Likewise the utter tackiness of the computer animation is exploited fully, an innate oddness to dated animation that has even been exploited by instillation artists to this type of animation. It's a testament however to the series that its humour varies a lot. Some anti-humour, usually a divisive concept for me in modern comedy, but used here to good effect. Non-sequiturs, more so in the second season as episodes start with random fake advertisements or have mid-episodes interactive games of trying to find krkr in odd Where's Wally/Where's Waldo environments. Perverse humour, both in its misanthrophic glee in moments of violent slapstick or krkr's grim proclamations, crude as well as, even when it is usually pretty innocent, by the second season the voice actresses start to find more excuses to cause each other to burst into laughter for real. Due to the nature of a season, a lot of gags are also the most innocuous of conversations getting out of hand. There's even word play, which could pose an issue due to the language and cultural barrier for a Western viewer, an issue some English dubs have deliberately switched the gags because of, but helped here due to the creators including visuals. (One of my favourite segments is based merely on the transition, just due to slightly altering the kaiji used to write them, from a car having regular wheels to irregular ones to even lions as wheels.)

Season one does end a little flat. The  final episode is played seriously, with pkpk dead and the other two adults, shrshr a washed up drunk, having to collaborate with Fusako Mochida in a larger role to bring pkpk back to life, all for an excuse of a punch line at the end. It's a good punch line, but you still have to sit through a somewhat sluggish drama before. (So far, unless it's a serious series with comedic moments, the only comedy that's gotten away with this is Excel Saga (1999-2000), all because its completely serious episode leads to a final episode that gets even more dynamic and unexpectedly conclusive). Thankfully Season Two takes all the works with the first and gets stranger, building on the characters and visibly slicker in animation even if the tacky computer animation is still proudly there. Kōtarō Ishidate may have left, but Sōta Sugahara by his own with two new writers is more ambitious, arguably more rewarding jokes and segments to be found including even a multi-episode time travel plot, one which is set-up and planned in early episodes fully. There are also, whilst they don't get as much screen time as I would hope, three new fairies (voiced by the same actresses) and a new dubbing segment with a strange sound the actresses have to imagine its origins of, funny as they get crude and even darker in their improvisations. A lot of the Dubbing Lake improvisations aren't necessary funny all the time for a Western viewer, more amusing for their banter, but there are moments like this (or the introduction of one of the actresses'/characters' fathers in the segments) where the improvisations also jump even higher in quality.

From https://vintagecoats.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/gdgd-fairies-the-
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Season Two is also when the desire to defy viewer expectations grows exponentially and when gdgd Fairies became a legitimately good show for myself. Even with the template of the show before, there are also more elaborate and episode long gags involved. The time travel plot. The fairies going on vacation, managing brilliantly to have a sweet and funny series of interactions which last for what feels like one single ten minute scene, all whilst a wooden ceiling is all the viewer is looking at throughout it. The Mario Kart parody. The abrupt running gag about a middle age woman inexplicably being hired for a baseball team, starring Fusako Mochida, that is returned to later on. References even back to Season One, and even changing the premise of the show to a high school comedy for a superior final episode. For material that is meant to illicit merely laughter from the viewer, there's a noticeable jump into funnier, wittier and just plain weirder gags, able to stretch a one scene joke for a long length, not until it stops being funnier as in anti-humour but adding quirks due to the fairies' eccentricities.

Eventually what started as a strange curiosity grew into something I liked immensely, appreciating the hard work just to put together these cheap pieces of computer animation together. It would be enough for some just to have a clip of a superhero punching a bear in the stomach and letting the actresses improvise over said clip, even stumble of over their own improvisations, but the two seasons get further and further with this material with a sense of progression and ambition. Its feels, absolutely, like a project done for fun. It especially shows the talents of Suzuko Mimori, Kaoru Mizuhara and Satomi Akesaka, giving me a greater respect for them and voice actors in general. This argues that comedy is especially where Japanese voice actors have to really be on their toes and the truly talented ones stand out. In its extremes you are forced to switch tones on hair pin twists, like Dragon Half (1993), and even in the less extreme examples there's still the need for flexibility, to be on your toes and even deadpan. A project like but even in the examples like this which are not as much of an endurance, you have to be flexible and on your toes, especially with a project like gdgd Fairies where Sōta Sugahara and Kōtarō Ishidate were probably coming up with their bizarre ideas giggling like mad men, the type of material even in the depths of weirdness anime in general can lead to being a lot to expect from three actresses who have no other cast members to bounce off from barring themselves.  

From https://vintagecoats.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/gdgd-fairies-
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Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Post-Ironic/Surreal/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Even if the look of the series feels tacky and ridiculous, gdgd Fairies is arguably a series a non-anime fan or someone with no real viewing experience of Japanese animation could still get a lot out of. Especially in this era of animated sketch shows with this type of very limited or deliberately crude aesthetic, this one stands out for being very inventive and legitimately charming in its style. If anything because, for all its references to anime and manga, it's not only constantly funny but gleefully strange. Considering there are comedy anime about sentient farts (Onara Gorou (2016)), and jokes like a cat living in a vending machine who proclaims himself God can be tossed off as side gags in obscurer shows like Pani Poni Dash (2005), how gdgd Fairies gets and how merely three voice actresses by themselves can make it all seem more credible (and weirder as a result) is really an accomplishment.