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Synopsis

Best friends Sasshi and Arumi have grown up together in the Abenobashi shopping arcade in Osaka for twelve years. Now, a job opportunity in Hokkaido for Arumi’s father threatens to split the two apart. But when her grandfather Masa has an accident that puts him in the hospital and breaks the pelican statue above the family restaurant, Arumi and Sasshi are transported to a sort of parallel bizzaro world—an Oz-enobashi, if you will. And neither owns a pair of ruby slippers.

Impressions

Because they are both Gainax productions, a lot of people like to compare Abenobashi with FLCL. Usually these people are not FLCL fans, so the comparisons are unfavorable and run along the lines of “random” or “nonsensical” or “completely without a plot.” This isn’t a FLCL review, but I feel I should mention that FLCL is, at its base, anything but random. Sure the allusions and gags can be complete non-sequiturs. That’s just the way this brand of comedy works. The plot, however, is pretty meticulously crafted and well-rounded. And whether it was intended to be or not, FLCL is multilayered in its complexity and meaning. Abenobashi is…not so much.

Don’t get me wrong, Abenobashi is good fun. It is more like Excel Saga than FLCL, though—a constant barrage of pop culture references, both generalized and specific. Casual anime fans should recognize a lot of allusions, though one needs to be a pretty hard-core otaku to catch a lot. Even Japanese will miss their share of allusions (especially since many of them are to Western culture).

The series isn’t nearly as layered as FLCL, nor is it open to as many interpretations. At its heart, Abenobashi is about being a kid and about being a kid on the verge of adolescence, where life is soon to get complicated in unexpected ways. It isn’t consistent enough to be a top-tier anime, but this little journey over the rainbow is one of Gainax’s better efforts in the post-Eva timeline.

Dub

Most people seem to despise Sasshi and Arumi’s accents on the English dub track. I don’t. Sure they are a little jarring at first, but accents and speech patterns are very important to the humor in Abenobashi. As a Southerner myself, I’m usually annoyed by how horribly Yankee actors mangle Southern speech patterns. Here, however, the characters speak with a Texas accent which seems very appropriate and is probably fairly accurate (if exaggerated) considering both Arumi and Sasshi are voiced by native Texans.

Overall, I actually find this to be one of the better series dubs around. I’m comfortable watching either the Japanese or English track.

The DVDs feature ADVs Vid-notes, which first appeared on their Excel Saga discs. These little popups describe the puns and allusions in the anime that Western viewers may be unfamiliar with. I wish more anime DVDs (Yes, FLCL, I’m looking at you) had this feature.

One extra on many of the discs is an “outtakes” reel. For the most part the outtakes are simply the English VAs having fun with some of the scenes, not what we would normally think of as outtakes—that is, mistakes. While it is mostly pretty ho-hum stuff, there is a running gag about Eutus being Michael Jackson, which is actually pretty funny. “You’ve been struck by a smooth criminal.”

- 2004-09-06 01:09 -