#rating-c

[hardworkandguts]

The Laughing Salesman

笑ゥせぇるすまん

(Anime)

Dark comedy by Fujiko Fujio A

Era: 1980s, 1990s

Rating: C

Plot: Moguro Fukuzou, a short rotund man with a permanent grin of his face and a deep unsettling voice is a mysterious salesman, but rather than dealing in goods, he will fill the empty souls of his costumers by allowing them to live their dreams and desires. However, should they fail to follow his instructions or betray his trust, they will lose everything they had.

Length: 112 episodes (10 minutes long)

Thoughts: If Ninja Hattori, Motoo Abiko's most famous creation might not be that well known outside Japan, I think everyone is well acquainted with Doraemon, probably the most famous kids anime of all time and one of those that can be considered a truly global institution, created by Abiko's lifetime creative partner Hiroshi Fujimoto. They share a drawing style which makes their work instantly recognizable, and a true legacy in children's manga and anime. Now, imagine that same style, but in a dark comedy where men and women see their innermost desires fulfilled, before succumbing to their arrogance, greed or lust.

That's pretty much the whole deal with Laughing Salesman: someone, very often a salaryman or career person bored with life is approached by Maguro to whom they confess something they desire: someone, success or some skill, which he grants for free but under certain strict conditions, such as forfeiting a vice, valuing their newfound fortunes or keeping them within what they wished them for. When they invariably fail to, usually through hubris, they are punished by getting into a even worse position than they started on. Other times, it's not like they did anything wrong, but still the great forces of the universe kicks them down a notch or ten again.

Picking one episode at random, Kazuo Uwame is a salaryman who keeps groveling and apologising at every instance. Tired of being seen as a mat or a ass-kisser, Maguro offers to help him by taking him to the top of a skyscraper, where he will live looking down at everything for a week and change his personality. He becomes more assertive, earns a promotion, but returning home after a week without telling his wife, is greeted by a flying casserole and reverts immediately to his old self, as Maguro walks away reflecting on a week maybe not being enough. Now imagine this with a character that looks like Nobita if he had become a middle-aged salaryman going through a Sparks or Charlie Chaplin phase (or with uh... extremely questionable political beliefs), and you kinda have a big whiplash over what you expect from the visuals and the dark morality tales of the show.

Recommended to: people who like to say "well, they had it coming"

Plus:

It is kinda fucked up, in a good way.

The typical Fujiko Fujio style in something like this is... something.

Minus:

You can pretty much watch, say, 25 random episodes (or even less) and get a gist of it, there's not much variation beyond how poorly his customer acted to get just back where they started or get the finger pointing of doom and have their lives destroyed.

[hardworkandguts]

Overtake!

オーバーテイク！

(Anime)

Sports (racing) by Troyca

Era: 2020s

Rating: C

Plot: Kouya Madoka is a freelance photographer struggling to take photos of other people. At the request of his ex-wife Saeko, he is sent to cover the final of the Super GT Championship, but absent-mindedly walks into the F4 paddock where he meets Haruka Hasahina of Komaki Motors, a back of the grid privateer team. Energised by the race, he decides to help Haruka and his team.

Length: 12 episides

Thoughts: Well, there's isn't much to say really, other than being a fairly decent depiction of sports racing at the lower levels. Rather than making Haruka pull impossible wins with his low resources compared to Belsoriso, the top team, his talent only takes him so far - in the first race we see, a valiant effort to push into podium contention ends up with a blown tire after using it past it's limits. Besides that, it's yet another of those hobby shows about something where a character enters this new world he never imagined, and introduces the viewer to many concepts of both the business of motorsports and tactics, and stories you'd expect from someone who did some research such as the tension between both Belsoriso drivers (Harunaga, the camera ready playboy and the colder Tokumaru) and the dangers of motorsports (Haruka is the son of a pilot who died in a race and Harunaga has a serious crash that sidelines him). The B-story starring Kouya seems to reference the ordeal of the photographer who took the infamous vulture photo in Sudan, public reaction and conditions in that assignment taking an enormous psychological toll which led to his suicide, in this case, while working on a small town in the north and caught in a earthquake, he captures the face of a girl seconds before being taken away by a tsunami. It is a pretty gruelling scene, particularly as we know while he has been blamed by her family and vilified by the public, only in this moment it is revealed he was up in a mountain road, too far to actually even risk his life.

It is a very competently made show that completes the arcs of both main characters - Haruka finally reached his dream of return to the podium by his own efforts, and Kouya comes to terms with what happened. However, there's always the lingering feeling in there one-cour shows that there was more to these characters than just that.

Recommended to: Sports racing fans

Plus:

It does well on the struggles of running a bottom tier team and mostly avoids doing the "driver winning on easy mode" thing until things get materially easier for them.

Racing scenes are mostly very grounded and while have that CG smoothness to them, are worked a bit to look more dynamic. Guess that bringing Naoki Hattori, one of the unfortunate souls who got into a Coloni F1 car helped a lot.

Minus:

It just kinda ends and you don't think of it again until you need something to write about.

[hardworkandguts]

Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls

Hi☆sCoool! セハガール

(Anime)

Sega Fanservice by TMS Entertainment

Era: 2010s

Rating: C

Plot: Three girls, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast and Mega Drive join the SeHaGaga Academy, from which they have to graduate by completing challenges based on Sega games and winning credit medals.

Length: 13 episodes (~12 minutes) + 1 ONA

Thoughts: While Sega, in all bluntness, ate shit in the early 2000s after almost a decade of mismanagement and internal strife and retreated from the hardware market, it is still a well loved company in general, with their major consoles still having a lot of vocal fans, and over the years they got pretty good at extracting maximum value of the nostalgia factor. Well, at least for a company that at times seemed to forget so many of their popular franchises existed (now imagining what a 2D Sonic or Streets of Rage could have looked on the Saturn and getting mad at it. AGAIN). Sega Hard Girls is a good example, in that it's just pure fanservice, and the details on it really show how well the writers were very tuned in - from Dreamcast being asked if she has been "looking at weird things online", being the first capable of accessing the internet... in dialup, the familiar sounds being heard anytime she tries to look something up, and Mega Drive likely ended up being the bookish character because that was the reputation of the console and just how many books about the Mega Drive / Genesis have you seen? Saturn never catching a break and being treated unfairly, which tracks with the history of the system. But maybe my favourite was a throwaway mention of the Game Gear, who "gets tired quickly and goes home to watch TV", which is perfection.

The challenges the girls have to go through, where they may change from their chibi forms to more realistic ones with a transformation sequence and all (please don't confuse セガサターン with セーラーサターン) involve classic Sega games and are just an excuse to make jokes about them, starting obviously with Virtua Fighter, where they have to beat 100 opponents, ranging from the cast of the game to a beetle out of Mushiking, palette swaps of the Bad Brothers from Golden Axe and Sakura Shinguji. Each is given one move that works well in a combo - Mega Drive has Sarah's rising knee, Saturn has Akira's punch combo, Dreamcast has Kage Maru's head slam... which turns out to be always a one hit KO they just decide to spam to advance. Other games they go through are Space Channel 5, Chain Chronicle, Jet Set Radio, Phantasy Star, Shining Force and Space Harrier, with some more obscure Japan-only titles referenced, like life simulaton game Roommania #203 and online arcade game Border Break.

Technically, it's a show made with MikuMikuDance, so don't expect anything too fancy, yet I've found it suits the theme and mood perfectly. It's a silly little show you can watch in little over two hours, after all. Your enjoyment will vary very much according to what they are spoofing - never having played something like Border Break or Chain Chronicle, I'm sure I've missed some jokes here and there, but those were likely two of Sega's marketing pushes in Japan at the time, so they got in over other titles that are probably of greater historical importance (even if just in the west) that got just a brief cameo.

Honestly wish Sega would pick up the concept again for a new extremely silly slice of life show with a more extended cast (look, I want to see Game Gear), and all this got me thinking: when are they going to return to Fighters Megamix? Just throw the actual characters of their fighting games and then a ton of kinda unbalanced joke characters from their history. And let the girls make an appearance.

Recommended to: Sega fans

Plus:

If you have a passing knowledge of what's being spoofed, it can be quite funny.

Minus:

"why didn't they spoof (insert game here)" yeah yeah I know.

[hardworkandguts]

Rose of Versailles

ベルサイユのばら

(Film)

Historical Shoujo by Ryoko Ikeda

Era: 2020s

Rating: C

Plot: Oscar de Jarjayes, born as the youngest daughter of a noble family in 18th century France is raised as a boy to fulfill her family's role, to serve in the palace guard, where she receives the assignment to protect the future Queen of France, Marie Antoinette.

Length: 113 minutes

Thoughts: Rose of Versailles is one of the very first posts I made here, and remains both a personal favourite and at that time one of my top picks for a show to be given a modern coating, comparing it to The Apothecary Diaries - insert back the tiny gremlins in the background and some of the silliness from the manga, while being a mostly serious historical affair of palacial intrigue. Months later, it was announced it would return, but as a movie, which I don't think is suited for such a well crafted story, and both the visuals from the trailer looked a bit weak and if you are going to use music, ignoring one of the most iconic OPs is a choice, for sure. As it was released in Japan the news was that it was a musical and while I'm not opposed to the idea, the original was so strong in the incidental music department I knew it was going to be an uphill battle for it. So, months later, here we are.

First thing, it's not a musical as much using a few musical montages to advance most of the early part of the story. In a way, that reminds me of the 2006 movie Marie Antoinette, which attracted notoriety by using post-punk and new wave songs to some of the montages of Marie Antoinette's daily life. That movie also shows you can do that story in around the same time, but as this is also Oscar's story, well... On the positive side, the character designs, from Mariko Oka, are closer to the original manga than those of Shingo Araki, and when it isn't trying to do 3D stuff that always reminds me of something like the Sega Saturn RPG Dragon Force, it looks quite good. Unfortunately, that's about as much I can say I liked from it. The music? Hours after watching it, nothing stayed in my ear. However, most of my complaints are from the story being cut down beyond the essentials. The overall arch of the story is of her becoming one of the few persons Marie Antoinette can trust in Versailles, and then witnessing the self-serving interests of the noble class and the constant palacial intrigue, and their treatment of the common people, and during all this her struggles in her identity as a woman, a noble with the duty of protecting the queen and her growing interest in the humanist ideals of the revolution bubbling under the surface. Unfortunately all the palace intrigue beyond her affair with von Fersen is glossed over, and the pains the people of France go though are alluded but since Rosalie is just a girl protecting a boy (in the original, the noble letting him go just to shoot him in the back becomes a key point where Oscar realises that is what she is sworn to protect) and her time with the French Guards is severely cut, having read the manga and watched the original anime, I really can't tell if this adaptation conveys the same weight to the events, or for a newcomer it all feels rushed. Can you suggest this as an introduction to a newcomer to the series? Arguably not, as I think most of it has to be filled with some knowledge of the original story.

Ultimately, there are many problems I already expected, first from the idea of the story as a movie and then from the initial trailer. Expected it would have something to make up for it, but found it very lacking in that aspect. Still hope this brings enough interest so that someone would do a fresh 24 episode adaptation of the manga.

Recommended to: It's probably for the fans more than for newcomers.

Plus:

Good character design

Minus:

Story glosses over much of the human factor that led to the radicalisation of Oscar by the end of the story, without establishing her closeness to Marie Antoinette.

[hardworkandguts]

Project A-Ko

プロジェクトA子

(Anime)

Action Comedy series

Era: 1980s

Rating: Project A-Ko: S, 2: B, 3: C, 4: C Overall:A

Plot: Girls doing AMAZING things.

Thoughts: Considered doing the OVAs on a different post, but I'll just do everything here at once since it's a continuity. Anyway, this has a very Gainax "we love what we do and we love doing it" feeling to it, and many people working here would a couple of years later be doing animation for Gunbuster, and it even feels like something the studio would do. Along the copious fanservice (in both senses) and cheesy 80s music, there's a city rebuilt after a spaceship crashed on top of it, and our main girl Eiko "A-Ko" Magami, who for some never explained reason is inhumanely fast and strong, Shill "C-Ko" Kotobuki, the kinda ditzy crybaby who's incredibly attached to her and loves her more than anything in the world and Biko "B-Ko" Daitokuji, who wants to break them apart and take C-Ko to herself, using increasingly bigger mechas (never explained how she built them) to settle a dispute she had in kindergarten with A-Ko. In the middle of them wrecking their school and then the city there's an alien invasion led by an alcoholic captain, searching for a lost princess who they believe to be C-Ko. Guess what, also never explained if that's true or not. We're just here for 80s cheesy music, the vibes and explosions, and boy, there's a lot of that here. Visually, it's not that different from your average TV anime of the time, only with that often elusive thing called "budget for Inbetweens". Great fun. That scene of A-Ko jumping between missiles? Classic.

Moving on to 1987 and Plot of the Daitokuji Financial Group, the first of the OVA sequels. It's a few weeks after the alien spaceship crashed, and they turned into an hotel and resort hoping to pay for the repairs. Meanwhile, Hikaru Daitokuji, B-Ko's dad and military contractor is interested in getting the technology of the alien spaceship for his own use. All in all, it adds a bit more fun and to the story, while not being exactly a must see. Also adds one of the best gremlin faces I've ever seen that is going to get it's own post. Following that, the third OVA, Cinderella Rhapsody (1988) brings another love triangle to the mix with the addition of Kei, a quiet biker to the mix, with the usual consequences for the poor spaceship when A-Ko and B-Ko get a bit too intense over him. A new bit of information is that their bickering and the presence of the alien spaceship has become a bit too frequent and there's a voluntary municipal defense force with its own super robots to control damage, and that A-Ko's bracelets are actually there to limit her power, but I feel it's a bit unfocused and tries to do a bit too much with limited runtime. Shout out to the absolutely gorgeous introduction. The third and final OVA (there's an unrelated crossover, but that's for some other time) is Final (1989), set to the invasion of earth by the aliens trying to rescue the princess during the arranged marriage of Ayumi to Kei, who's still very much in love with C-Ko and have A-Ko and B-Ko fighting everything, even each other over him, in a love triangle now with five players nobody is interested in the other person (well, A-Ko really likes C-Ko, but is it romantic?).

Looking over the OVAs, I think keeping some of the ambiguity and unanswered questions would be fine - what if Ayumi was really the princess all along and Napolipolita and D were just so bored and wanting to go home they jumped to conclusions? But maybe C-Ko returned not because her mother saw she'd only be happy on earth, but because they really got it wrong. Who knows. Now I'm doing the same thing of overthinking the show of the girls in sailor suits destroying a school fighting each other.

Recommended to: do you like having fun?

Plus:

Pure "turn off your brain and enjoy the show" entertainment

Funny faces (you know what's coming)

Minus:

OVAs are fun to watch but not exactly necessary watching.

[hardworkandguts]

The Maid I Hired Recently is Mysterious

最近雇ったメイドが怪しい

Romcom by BLADE, SILVER LINK Based on a manga by Wakame Konbu

Length: 11 episodes Aired: 2022 (Summer) Rating: C

Plot: After his parents died in a car accident and had to left the old staff go, young Yuuri tried to live on his own, which was a lot harder than he expected. One day, he's surprised on his doorstep by Lilith, a maid offering her services, which he reluctantly accepts. Yet, he feels something is off with her: she's far too competent to be working for free in a dingy old mansion, sometimes looks like she's muttering curses, and he seems to lose himself in her eyes.

Thoughts: A few months ago I looked at The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated, which I've found to be an extremely amusing show that combined a lot of the things I look for in the cute girls genre to the point I'll probably write about the manga once it wraps up, so it's only appropriate I look at another adaptation of of Wakame Konbu's work, which came out the following year. Unfortunately, while the premise had some potential, there's so little meat in the story it could have easily been a 4 part 30-45 minute OVA.

While the romance angle was a bit weird, the dynamic between both can be funny at times: Lilith teasing him and saying something like "oh, of course I put a love potion on your food" and Yuuri, no filter fully honest replying "I KNEW IT THAT'S WHY I LOVE YOUR EYES AND CAN'T STOP THINKING OF YOUR BEAUTIFUL FACE", cut to Lilith blushing, but I've found that a bit too thin and yet, a bit too reliant on repeating this over and over. While I often complain these sort of shows (or the manga they're based on) often go overboard with the number of characters they feature and then end up not having enough time to do anything with them, I think this was one case where the cast is too small, and with just Yuuri's classmate Tsukasa and her butler Fujisaki (who is aware of who Lilith really is), closer to being recurring than regular characters, the problem of the show feeling just a one-note joke gets a lot harder to ignore because you are seeing the same episode repeating over and over, and when the character dynamics change, it's something like Yuuri crying how he can't live without Lilith anymore and then the next story he's thinking she's suspicious again. Overall It feels there's no progression at all and it's just repeating the same scenario over and over, same reason why I maybe should have written something about a show like Kimagure Orange Road or Miyuki by now but then realise I'd have to watch them again and I'd probably just prefer to write about their soundtracks (yes yes I'd still say after hearing that song), really not a fan of the style of romcom that resets everything at the end of the chapter/episode, and also why I regard Maison Ikkoku so highly: sure, there's a lot of padding based on misunderstandings because Takahashi gonna Takahashi, but it isn't just a love story, it's about growing to be worthy of someone's love on one side, and about overcoming grief and allowing yourself to be loved again on the other. On something like Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro, which you could argue started from something even thinner, a fetish webcomic by a erodoujin author, you can see the dynamics between the characters gradually change. At least in this adaptation, by the end it doesn't feel it changes that much from the first three episodes. Maybe the biggest problem was that the payoff for the story just wasn't there, the big mystery that made Lilith look so suspicious and cagey about her past really doesn't feel that much of a big deal. Something that would be more interesting would be getting into if Yuuri loves Lilith romantically, as an older sister or as a friend, which comes too late to the story, I'm sure not for the manga, although if it explores this is a different matter, I just read the last chapter after watching the last episode.

Visually it's one of those shows that tries to do something a bit different: colours have the textures of very vibrant watercolours, which works in some places, in other it gives "flash game developer running photos in Akvis for backgrounds", and characters have a pencil-like outline. This is something other shows also did and even I experimented with when I did the Gunbuster Science Lessons in HD, but I ended up also adding a denser, thinner line for the same reason it irks me a bit here: sometimes it has a big gap and it annoys me because the rest of the colours are quite strong. While I'm not fully on board with how this looks, it's not something that gets way too distracting and I'm always in for studios to experiment in shows that could look pretty generic otherwise.

At the end, this is a show that I wanted to like more, but the premise was far more basic than I expected and stretched pretty thin, when there were other themes the story could have explored. These sort of shows are almost always an automatic B-grade around here, but this is closer to a D. Quite disappointed after the ride that was The Great Jahy.

Plus:

The initial dynamics are fun (Yuuri having no filter, Tsukasa being a romantic, etc)...

Minus:

... but it doesn't have anything else beyond that, making it feel stale.

Extremely thin premise

[hardworkandguts]

High School! Kimengumi

ハイスクール！奇面組

Slapstick comedy by Seven Based on a manga by Motoei Shinzawa

Length: 12 episodes (covered from #40 to #51) Aired: 2026 (Winter) Rating: C

Plot: In the last year of middle school Yui Kawa transfers to a new school, where she intends to create as many good memories as possible and befriends Chie Uru. She informs her of the various cliques who run in the school, from the playboys at the Irootokogumi, the athletes of the Udegumi and the girl delinquents at the Omegumi, but most importantly, the ones in their own classroom, the Kimengumi, a group of five weirdos with funny faces led by Rei Ichido.

Thoughts: Kimengumi was a show I was always kind of aware of when searching old stuff to watch, although never quite pulled the trigger on watching because these older comedy shows that feel like they run forever (86 episodes these days would get a show to run for nine or ten years, the original show did it in two) and there often isn't much in difference from the episodes which makes it feel like a slog unless you are watching as intended, one episode per week, preferably when you are 12. Comedy is also something that can be a bit hard to write about, because not only it is highly subjective, it may also require cultural and context queues that might make you miss many jokes: I'm postponing rewatching something like Nerima Daikon Brothers because I remember it relying a lot on pop culture references that would probably be near impenetrable for someone born in Japan in 2006, let alone someone who was born and lived their life outside the country, or VTuber Legend because unless you are specifically looking for a perspective of a guy who at most watched a few videos of one playing an F1 game and only watches regularly one person who streams (s/o @animenostalgia), I know I missed too many references to make a compelling post about it.

If all this sounds very exculpatory, it's because I have a lot of questions about Kimengumi, like is this a show for little kids? With it's very colourful visuals, pun names (try saying "Kawa Yui", "Uru Chie", "Ichido Rei" or "Reietsu Go" ) and fast pace it sure looks like it, but I'm not sure where that fits with the very retro staple characters of the delinquent girl clique or making allusions to City Hunter fits in with that beyond the "something for the parents" angle, if such things exist in Japan. The main question is mostly from the fact the show appeared a few times on the anime ratings top 10, dominated by morning and afternoon shows, Frieren being the only other night block regular, so I have to question myself: considering I was mostly ambivalent towards it... am I missing something? Should I actually write about a comedy show if I feel I'm just like the guy with "war is bad" flying above his head? There's times the reason some comedy ages poorly isn't just timing and pacing, it's exactly that they may be doing a joke that goes right above your head, and that makes it harder to give it a fair assessment when you are aware that may be the case.

What I can say is that it is a fun show to watch, it starts with a very manic energy which makes it look a bit rough and all over the place, even if it has some of the best jokes, like the "Graduation Meteor", by midway it found a more balanced pace, at the cost of some of the eccentricity that suited these characters pretty well. It settled there, doing more traditional episodes, but the same problem remained: it always had a few solid if not very good jokes (the one about using razor earrings in the wind is going to live in my mind palace forever) and visual comedy, but rarely with the frequency or the visual lavishness it would require for me to recommend it. Not going to say I regret spending the last three months seeing it, while it certainly isn't going to appear in my best of lists, it's also far from entering the circle of hell that are the shows I mostly treat as jokes because they annoyed me in very specific ways. Should you watch it? It's a hard show to recommend when there's probably dozens of shows you missed the first time around with humor that is more accessible, but like I always say when issue is not watching a show, I'm not your dad. Double that when comedy is very much subjective, let alone from a different culture where you might not be fully aware of wordplay or what it may be referencing. In doubt, watch one the later episodes at random and see if you vibe with it.

Plus:

It always has one or two very good jokes or sight gags

Minus:

Very much lacking in consistency, a lot of jokes just don't land

Visually very basic

[hardworkandguts]

Double-J

だぶろじぇい

(Anime)

Comedy by Eiji Nonaka

Era: 2010s

Rating: C

Plot: at Nagashima High, Hajime Usami and her friend Sayo Arima come across the Traditional Arts Preservation Club.

Length: 11 episodes (~4 minutes)

Thoughts: Cromartie High ranks pretty high in my bizarre comedy lists, and one day reading about it noticed Eiji Nonaka had another of his works adapted, so I guess here we are.

I... Honestly don't know what to say because there's so little to talk about. The characters as you can imagine are a bit off, from the club president Ichiro, who honours his family heritage by trying to modernize the original manga, Maria, who does toothpick carvings, Aya, who writes fortunes for temples or bird trainer Shizuma, the stories are all short gags around these weird "traditional arts".

Visually, it has photos and video under what looks flash animation. I'm not opposed to very basic animation when properly used and wasn't fully sold until the glass cutting episode, but you know what, sure. Ultimately, it's a silly show that doesn't have anything to recommend it, but also doesn't have any reason to avoid it, or wastes your time, the whole precious 44 minutes it takes to watch it all, including the catchy ED.

Recommended to: People who want to fill a slot on their Tumblr in the least time to spend possible?

Plus:

The idea of modernising a 13th century scroll as a modern manga is funny

Minus:

There's just nothing much to it