The internet has made it rather popular for people to just rag on stuff that isn't great, and while I don't have any problems with doing just that (I've certainly ragged on bad productions here every now & then), I do think that such thinking often becomes a victim of its own hype, so to speak. It becomes easy to just write stuff off as mere crap that has nothing of value to it, outside of being reliable for a cheap joke, and in turn it gives people a way to feel artificially superior, because "they know better" by way of seeing other people act that way. I knew that I never wanted this blog to ever get caught in that way of thinking, because even the absolute worst anime I've ever reviewed had those glimpses of merit to them; they just didn't take advantage of those benefits. That's why I think it's more interesting for me to go over the "most interesting" titles I've reviewed, instead of simply looking back on "the worst" & feeling superior, because I know how to rag on it.
But enough rambling, let's move on the other "most interesting" anime I reviewed from December 2010 to the end of 2020. Sorry, but no "Honorable Mentions" this time around, though you could also include Yugo the Negotiator here as well, simply because of that whole "two completely different studios & staff worked on each half of the show" concept.
We start the second half of this list with a somewhat notorious anime that I actually enjoy in a completely unironic fashion (i.e. I don't think it's "So Bad, It's Good", but rather think it's legitimately good), but I can fully see why it wound up becoming a laughing stock. In fact, I won't even bring up my bizarre (& completely accidental) "argument" with professional translator Neil Nadelman over this anime, because I've done so before in the past, and it's honestly rather silly & "totally lame" to mull over it. Running from 2003 to 2007 in Shinchosha's Weekly Comic Bunch magazine, Naikaku Kenryoku Hanzai Kyousei Torishimarikan/Government Crime Investigation Agent Zaizen Jotaro is a 17-volume seinen manga written by ex-Tokyo PD detective Ken Kitashiba & drawn by Yasuhiro Watanabe, a former assistant to the legendary Tetsuo Hara, detailing the various adventures of the titular Jotaro Zaizen, an ex-cop who fakes his death after an attempt at arresting a foreign dignitary results in government corruption allowing the dignitary to get away scot-free. After some time abroad, during which he gains access to the Zainers Gold Black Card that gives him access to nigh-infinite funds after rescuing a member of British royalty, Zaizen returns to Japan to join the newly-formed GCIA, an extralegal department meant to put a stop to Japanese government corruption & hold those responsible for their crimes.
Befitting the artwork of a man who worked under Hara's wing, Zaizen Jotaro isn't exactly meant to be completely realistic, instead going for a more carefree, "MAN-ly", & loose execution of crime busting, while Zaizen himself is meant to call back to Hara's own Misappropriation Investigator Nakabo Rintaro, which dealt with a Kenshiro-esque lead dealing with government workers who misused funds. Some even doubt Kitashiba's own experience as a police officer, but from what I can find out he did work on election investigations, was in charge of guarding foreign VIPs during his career, and was even incidentally involved in a famous slander case involving comedian Smiley Kikuchi & jokes he made regarding the Murder of Junko Furuta being taken out of context to support various hoaxes; seriously, I just found that out. Also, it's obvious that Kitashiba was just having fun by embellishing things for the sake of entertainment; it's like saying that City Hunter is a serious look at the life of a bounty hunter/private detective. I bring all of this up simply because the 11-episode Zaizen Jotaro anime from mid-2006, which looks to adapt a story from Volume 9 of the manga, is often wildly misunderstood by many for various reasons, some of which are understandable, while others are more superficial. First & foremost, the first episode of the entire anime is both utterly horrible & completely superfluous, having absolutely nothing to do with the story arc the anime adapts (which comprises the other 10 episodes), and instead makes our lead come off as nothing more than a really bad parody of James Bond; I fully understand if people saw this episode & instantly wrote off the entire anime. Second, there's the over-the-top elements, which I find bizarrely hypocritical, going off of the same silly logic that "sports anime can't be over-the-top, because then it's impossible to take seriously", despite the fact that series like Captain Tsubasa, Kinnikuman, & Prince of Tennis (among others) have been just as inspiring for people as something like Slam Dunk or Hikaru no Go. Yes, Zaizen Jotaro is a rather silly show at points, especially in how Zaizen himself always is meant to come off as "cool" & suave, but that's honestly part of the point & gives the series some appropriately goofy charm. Would you watch or read Great Teacher Onizuka with the intention of acting exactly like him for your own teaching needs? Of course not, because you'd get fired ASAP, but people still love GTO.
Finally, there's the highly limited animation, which is an easy (& generally understandable) thing for people to nitpick on. However, similar to how Violinist of Hameln makes up for its own general lack of animation with its own type of visual panache, Zaizen Jotaro's staff decided to experiment with shot transitions, resulting in the anime honestly being a bit of a masterwork in the use of the cut-in. Whether it's using the outline of a character in the foreground of a shot to show a different shot, the Zainers Card being thrown on screen so that Zaizen catches it to advance to the next shot, or the current shot OPENING UP LIKE A DOOR(!) because the next shot starts with someone doing just that, this anime takes advantage of its highly limited animation to do something different. Admittedly, I'm sure some will think of these cut-ins as being rather cheesy, but I find them very interesting & give the anime a unique feel. Also, for my own cheap jab, Zaizen's "Da Bomb!" catchphrase is completely misinterpreted by almost everyone who uses it to poke fun at the anime, proving that they either really didn't pay attention at all or never watched a single second & is just parroting others. It's not Zaizen pompously saying that he's awesome, but rather is just his (appropriately Engrish-y) way of answering in the positive; isn't that right, Zaizen?
*snaps fingers & points to me* "Da Bomb!"
Moving on, let's transition from an anime generally hated that I enjoy to an anime that I absolutely despise, at least in its original form. The early years of the "modern" late-night anime infomercial, primarily meant to advertise the later home video release, were very much a time of experimentation & seeing how much appeal there was in airing anime at such late hours for hardcore otaku. Come 1998, though, it was becoming apparent that it was a place to rely on for original productions just as much as manga adaptations, so there's a decent chance that ideas originally planned as OVAs might have been moved over to being one-cour late-night productions, regardless of whether it made sense or not. I bring this up only because it's literally the only way I can possibly explain why early 1998's AWOL -Absent WithOut Leave- came out the way it did on TV: A TV series with such horrid pacing that it was deemed unreleaseable on home video in Japan... Yet was deemed perfectly fine to license out for North American release.
The concept of the anime itself, in which a ragtag group of soldiers & criminals have to make their way into terrorist territory in order to prevent them from using missiles capable of destroying planets, is honestly a good one; this could have been the sci-fi anime equivalent to The Dirty Dozen. Unfortunately, the original TV version of AWOL suffers from, what is easily, the most horrific pacing I have ever seen, with the first half moving by at such a slow pace that in my review (#150, in fact!) I compared it to the viscoelastic resin pitch, even going so far as calling the anime itself a "son of a pitch". It takes two episodes to show off how dangerous the villains are (& even give the hero his name), half of the show for the ragtag group to even all appear together, nine episodes to find out the name for one of the villains(!), and even with 12 whole episodes you're never really given any explanation as to why the main villain is even doing any of this. In fact, Episode 3 is literally pointless & has no real bearing on the rest of the show, yet is arguably the best episode of all. Sure, the second half is an improvement, but it really feels like a lost cause by that point. Because of this, the show was heavily edited down for its Japanese home video release, even removing all of Episode 3, resulting in the 4-episode OVA AWOL Compression Re-MIX, which is really the only way I'd recommend watching this series; it still suffers from some flaws that simple pacing edits couldn't remove, but it's still infinitely better.
However, when AnimeVillage.com licensed AWOL for English release, likely as part of a giant package deal, it wasn't AWOL Compression Re-MIX that was given to the company, but rather the original TV version! Because of this, the English-subbed sextet of VHS releases for AWOL are literally the only home video release of this show as it was originally seen on Japanese TV in the entire world, and today are actually quite the rarity to get a hold of as a complete set. As much as I hate this original version of AWOL, I still own those VHS tapes, if only because of what they represent. For comparison, I quickly got rid of my DVDs for DiC's Knights of the Zodiac after that review went live, but that's only because I was able to rip their contents; it's harder to do that for VHS in the best quality possible.
Last November, I reviewed the manga Choju Kishin Dancouga Burn, which was based on an unproduced anime reboot of the classic 80s mech anime, which I categorized as a "Vestigial Work", as it's something that exists despite having no real purpose to it. However, this is not the first time I've ever written about a Vestigial Work, as I had done so before in 2017, and it's especially notable in that it's not just a rare example of this happening to anime, but it's (to my knowledge) the only time it happened on the scale of an entire TV series. Though the late-night anime infomercial eventually made single cour (a.k.a. 12/13 episodes across a single calendar season) the de facto standard for TV airing, it wasn't the first time this shorter format was attempted. TV Tokyo first tried it back in the latter half of 1994 with a pair of Friday morning shows: J.C. Staff's Metal Fighter Miku & Toei's Shinken Legend Tight Road. While the former would go on to receive some notoriety as the directorial debut for Akiyuki Simbo & see English release in 2001, it's the latter that's arguably more noteworthy.
With video game publisher Zamuse listed alongside Toei in the copyright, & the company's Shintaro Tsuchiya listed as a producer, Shinken Legend was actually intended to help promote a new fighting game in the works. From the little info one can find about this series, it's often stated that it would have been developed by Gust, which at the time was a simple dojin game developer that had only recently become an official developer for the Sony PlayStation; it's first "official" release would be Falcata: Astran Pardma no Monsho in June 1995. I say "intended", though, simply because the Shinken Legend game never saw release (& it's not even known if it even started any real development), as Zamuse would go out of business by the end of 1994, with its last published game looking to be Fortune Quest: Dice wo Korogase for the Super Famicom earlier that April; had things happened differently, Gust's first "official" release could have been Shinken Legend. Therefore, by the time the Shinken Legend anime debuted on TV Tokyo that October, it's entire reason for existing was gone, but still ran for its entire 13 scheduled weeks; Toei wouldn't release it on home video until late 1996, & only on VHS. Luckily, after importing those VHS tapes for me to finally watch it, the anime is honestly pretty good! There's no doubt that this was based on a fighting game, what with its international lot of characters & all manner of environments within the large Spiral Palace making for perfect stages, but the characters are well designed & cool to watch (designer Michio Fukuda would even admit that it was favorite work in that field in 2011), the fights themselves are well done, the plot is honestly a good way to tie everything together, & the music by Goji Tsuno (& theme songs by Nobuhiko Kashiwara) is actually really outstanding.
Today, modern fighting games almost always have some sort of cinematic "Story Mode" to them, of wildly varying quality. In that regard, Shinken Legend Tight Road can actually be seen as a spiritual precursor to those, as it feels very similar to what we get nowadays &, in some comparisons, may actually be better; in fact, it even outdoes a good majority of anime based on fighting games from the 90s itself. Unfortunately, I highly doubt it'll ever get anything better than that VHS release (which itself felt like Toei just tossing it out, as it's listed as the "TV Original Edition" on the packaging), which is a shame. It's by no means one of the best anime I've covered on this blog, but it's still way better than it's utter lack of any actual notoriety would make one think. As for Gust, it'd eventually release Atelier Marie: The Alchemist of Salburg for the PlayStation in 1997, and the rest is history.
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| All these years later, this Kazé France release still remains the only complete release of this series... in the entire world. |
Anime fandom has had its fair share of "The Worst Anime of All Time", some of which entering "So Bad, It's Good" territory because of just how much fun you can have at experiencing just how terrible they are. There's the old guard like Garzey's Wing or M.D. Geist, old legends that only recently became more well known like Chargeman Ken or Twinkle Nora Rock Me!, and even this very Winter 2021 season looks to be having one with "Crunchyroll Original" Ex-Arm. However, there remains one that is known of by name & slight association by some, but few actually know of just how bad it can get. Originally conceived of the late Monkey Punch about a decade prior to its debut in April of 2006, Gundoh Musashi (or Musashi Gundoh, because both are apparently official) unleashed itself on an unassuming Japanese public on satellite station BS-i, alongside an internet offering via GyaO, and in the first episode alone viewers saw countless problems with essentially every single area of production, minus the musical score & voice work, which were perfectly fine. The animation was embarrassingly poor (Musashi had to dodge a falling tree that was never actually drawn on screen), the characters were seemingly off model more often than not, a number of the backgrounds were literally nothing more than photographs with really bad filters put over them, and even the sound effects didn't seem to sync up at points! What followed was another 25 episodes of "quality", resulting in a 26-episode TV series in which it seemed as though each successive one was trying to best what came before in showing just how bad things could get; Episode 11 literally has multiple characters' voices coming out of the wrong people's mouths for one shot!
However, unlike Chargeman Ken or Garzey's Wing, which didn't even have decent storytelling to carry them, Gundoh Musashi's plot actually has tons of potential. It takes place in an alternate history where Toyotomi united Japan instead of Tokugawa, and Tokugawa winds up teaming with an ayakashi named Yasha in order to put history back on the right path... and he's the villain! Yes, a gun-wielding Musashi & his friends are actually trying to prevent things from going toward their "proper" path, which is honestly just an amazing concept that Monkey Punch came up with. Unfortunately, an infamously botched production process, involving relying mostly on Chinese & Korean animators for most of the show, the show almost not even getting to air (so actual work on it started late), a producer who ended up just embracing how bad everything was instead of actually trying to help, & a respected animator making his directorial debut who just couldn't get the show's quality to legitimately improve (no matter how much he tried) resulted in what was actually labeled as "The Worst Anime of the Century", and I really can't argue against that, as I eventually labeled it "The Disaster Anime"; while there are others that are as poor in terms of production value, none ran for as long as this. It's so infamously terrible that GyaO asked for a DVD boxset of the first eight episodes ASAP that were exactly as they aired on TV, which instantly sold out. As if to continue that string of "quality", the unfinished versions of Episodes 1-3 that were included as extras were featured in anamorphic widescreen, while the "main attraction" episodes were featured in letterboxed 4:3; that had to have been done on purpose.
However, the planned complete series release, which would have featured fixed animation (& the director had industry friends ready to help him out), wound up never happening... At least in Japan. You see, Kazé France wound up licensing Gundoh Musashi for European DVD release in 2008, and to this day remains the sole complete release of the anime in the entire world. In fact, it's not even known if Gundoh Musashi could even ever get a new release, whether a re-release in Japan or even licensed for English release, as the show's producer has since died, production company ACC Production went bankrupt not long after Kazé France's release, and Monkey Punch distanced himself from the entire thing the moment it started airing, so who knows if his estate would even want to be reminded of this show, let alone allow it to ever be sold again. Personally, I'd hate for Gundoh Musashi to be only somewhat known for its utter lack of quality in its early episodes (seriously, all of the infamy it has is only for the first four episodes or so), because I can guarantee that no one truly knows just how bad this anime gets unless they see it for themselves. Gundoh Musashi is so utterly bad that I honestly kind of love it, because I hate it so much.
Meanwhile, let's move on to an anime that I dreaded watching for literally years, only to wind up having a ton of respect for it by the time I finished watching it... for the 1.69th time. Similar to Gundoh Musashi just a year prior, 2007's Engage Planet Kiss Dum was a very troubled production, even before work really started on it. It was originally intended to be a sci-fi novel adaptation, but after being unable to get the rights anime studio Satelight decided to make it an original creation, hiring animator & director Yasuchika Nagaoka to create everything from scratch. Originally announced in early 2006 under the name "Mugen Kikou Necrodiver", the show wouldn't actually debut until the following year under a completely different title (one that also seemingly has interchangeable halves to it), and Nagaoka not only lost his "Original Creator" credit, but was seemingly moved from series director to "Chief Director", which meant that he wasn't as directly involved as he was before before, despite him being the creator of the entire series & also the person in charge of "Series Composition".
When the first episode of Kiss Dum debuted, it was a wild & crazy thrill ride of an alien invasion story, complete with some interesting Lovecraftian elements. Unfortunately, this would wind up being the only episode in the entire series Nagaoka actually worked on in any form, and to this day there's been no real answer as to why, though there were rumors of him suffering some sort of medical condition, if not a complete mental breakdown; the fact that he's only worked on a handful on anime since, none of which as director, lends some credence to it. Combine that with the fact that Nagaoka left behind very little in terms of what his plans for the show were (he was consulted at points, but it apparently didn't amount to much), the entire staff of Kiss Dum now had to create everything from scratch for the remaining 25 episodes, resulting in a story that wound up being much more Guyver-esque than the seeming mech anime it was looking to be intended as. However, when I looked at the first 18 episodes of the original TV version, I saw a very flawed show with all manner of rough animation at points, but it was also a show where I could seemingly feel the desperate efforts the staff had put into salvaging this apparently cursed production. This feeling carried through all the more so with Kiss Dum R, a fixed version that removed an early recap episode, improved on the animation, & added in a new epilogue episode that gave the series the proper finale it was originally missing.
To quote mech designer Shoji Kawamori when I had asked him about this show during an autograph signing a few years back, "It's complicated". I'm not going to say that Kiss Dum R is a great show, because it definitely is flawed, especially with its partially aimless second quarter; if one was to watch this show & hate it, I'd completely understand. Still, the fact remains that Kiss Dum DIDN'T wind up having the same fate as Gundoh Musashi. The staff DID manage to recover to enough of an extent that they still successfully told a complete story (one that does go in some interestingly wild directions), and the show DID manage to get that second chance to be even better than before. Finally, Kiss Dum R DID eventually manage to get licensed for English release by Maiden Japan, so one can at least give it a watch over at Hidive & see for themselves. Taken on its own, Kiss Dum R is very much a flawed show, though not a "bad" show, but considering how much was going against it long before it even started airing, I have nothing but the utmost respect for it simply because it's a survivor that managed to fight its way back up, no matter what complication appeared before it.
Idea Factory Anime... All of Them!!!
Finally, we end this list with not one anime, not two anime, not three, not five, not seven, not even ten. No, we end this entire list with TWELVE ANIME TAKING UP A SINGLE SPOT!!!!!!! Literally, this entire list of "most interesting" anime I reviewed across the past decade could have been filled with nothing more than Idea Factory's roughly 8-year endeavor in producing its own anime.
Established back in late 1994 by Yoshiteru Sato & ex-Data East planner/designer Shingo Kuwana, Idea Factory started out with bizarre adventure games made using Photo CDs before eventually entering proper video game development with Yaku ~Yuujou Dangi~ & Spectral Tower for the PlayStation, both in 1996. However, it seems like Sato & Kuwana had far greater ambitions for their company, so to go alongside the 1998 release of Spectral Force 2, Idea Factory produced its own two-episode OVA that acted as a prologue & advertisement for the original Spectral Force from the year prior. To put it simply, it's not really any good, with the small bits of competency greatly overshadowed by the fact that this was an OVA made by a video game company, complete with using CG backgrounds meant for video game cutscenes, resulting in the cel animation not quite meshing well at points. Still, this would only be the start of a large push Idea Factory made towards producing anime to help promote their new games. Unfortunately, almost every single one of them is not any good, not helped by the fact that Yoshiteru Sato himself directed about half of them.
2001's Run=Dim was Idea Factory's first TV series, an all-CG co-production with Korean studio Digital Dream Studios that had decent potential, & is honestly one of the better productions from IF's anime catalog, but being an all-CG TV series that early on means that it's aged extremely poorly in the 20 years since. Also in 2001 was Mamimume Mogacho, IF's only other TV series, but that's hard to get a hold today, so I likely won't ever be able to cover it; it'll remain the elusive "13th Idea Factory anime". After that, we saw OVA prologues for 2001's Generation of Chaos & 2002's Generation of Chaos Next, neither of which were anything more than decent, at best, though the latter's visuals clash much more than the former. Also in 2002 was the two-episode OVA for Gakuen Toshi Vara Noir, which in my opinion is the absolute worst IF anime of them all, with it being so bad that it's the only anime I ever gave a proper review for without ever watching the entire thing; one episode was enough torture for me. Thankfully, the next pair of productions wound up being an oasis surrounded by crap, as 2003's two-episode Generation of Chaos III ~Toki no Fuuin~ prologue OVA & four-episode Kingdom of Chaos - Born to Kill OVA series were both actually pretty good, with KoC in particular being a legitimately cool watch, since it actually tells a self-contained story with a pretty mind-twisting finale. Unfortunately, 2004's Steady x Study & Tenkuu Danzai Skelter+Heaven prologue OVAs both amounted to nothing more than being bland, despite both featuring consistently decent animation to them, and the latter even featuring experienced animator Kenichi Ohnuki in its staff. Finally, Idea Factory's self-produced anime experiment came to an end in 2005, with the main attraction being Spectral Force Chronicle Divergence & Rebirth Moon Divergence, both of which are literally nothing more than the anime cutscenes from their respective games (animated by WaoWorld) strung in chronological order, and while the former winds up working decently enough in telling its overall story, the latter is just a mess & fails in actually telling its plot in a coherent fashion. Meanwhile, in between those two was the prologue OVA for Mars of Destruction, which has often been cited as one of the worst anime of all time, but in reality is just really boring & lazily animated, despite also being done by WaoWorld.
All that being said, though, I do hold a small modicum of respect for Idea Factory's slate of anime, if only because watching all of these made me realize that IF is truly the anime equivalent to infamously bad 50s filmmaker Ed Wood. Similar to him & movies, IF wasn't really all that talented at making anime (though, like a broken clock, it did produce two good results), but the fact that the company actually managed to produce 13 anime releases, two of which airing on TV for one calendar season each, in an era where the OVA market was nowhere near what it was during the boom in the 80s, deserves some manner of respect; I'm sure everyone told Sato & Kuwana that it couldn't be done, and they proved everyone wrong.
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And those are, easily, the "most interesting" anime I've reviewed in this blog's first ten years. Will I come across any other potential candidates in the unforeseen future of The Land of Obscusion? Oh, I'm sure I will, and I'm sure they'll have their own unique stories behind them that will make them worth writing about. As I start a new year for the blog once again, time will only tell what sights I have to show you.
Let's just pray that none of them are so bad that my soul will be torn apart.
Naikaku Kenryoku Hanzai Kyousei Torishimarikan Zaizen Jotaro © Ken Kitashiba・Yasuhiro Watanabe/Coamix/Shinchosha/Trans-Arts
AWOL -Absent WithOut Leave- © et/BeSTACK・Project AWOL
Shinken Legend Tight Road © Zamuse/Toei Animation
Gundoh Musashi © Musashi Production Committee
Kiss Dum R - Engage Planet © 2007 BVSN・Project NES
Run=Dim © 2001 Idea Factory/Digital Dream Studios/TV Tokyo
Gakuen Toshi Vara Noir & Generation of Chaos III: Toki no Fuuin © 2002, 2003 King Records/Idea Factory
Kingdom of Chaos: Born to Kill © 2003 Idea Factory/Taki Corporation
Tenkuu Danzai Skelter+Heaven & Mars of Destruction © 2004, 2005 Idea Factory/Design Factory
Spectral Force, Generation of Chaos Prologue & Next: Chikai no Pendant, Steady x Study, Spectral Force Chronicle Divergence, & Rebirth Moon Divergence © 1998-1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 Idea Factory, Inc.
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