ABENOBASHI MAHOU☆SHOUTENGAI

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA AdventureAbenobashi Mahou☆Shoutengai

REVIEWS

• 

  TheRealKyuubey

  30/100
  Shinichi Watanabe's work is bad enough without Gainax trying to mimic it.

  It’s a tale stretching back through countless generations of Japanese mythology… The legend of Shitenno, the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism. There’s the dragon of the east, the bird of the south, the tiger of the west, and the turtle of the north. By placing statues or other representations of those four animals at the four different points that they’re associated with, you can bring good fortune to your home… Or even to an entire town. One such location is the Abenobashi Shopping Arcade, a long-lasting and culturally rich town that’s finally teetering on the edge of relevence, and drawing nearer to it’s end, to the great dismay of Arumi Asahina and Satoshi “Sasshi” Imamiya.

  Having spent the first twelve years of their lives in Abenobashi, these two best friends are about to enter a world of uncertainty as the town they love is slowly being destroyed and redeveloped, and Asumi’s family is preparing to move to Hokkaido… But before any of these changes can take place, Asumi’s grandfather takes a horrifying fall off the roof of her family’s restaurant. He survives, but their statue of the pelican… The last remaining guardian statue in the entire town… Does not. As it shatters, so does reality, thrusting Arumi and Sasshi into a bizarre multi-verse from which there appears to be no escape. They may not ever get back home, but does it matter? I mean, after all, it’s being human and having your health that’s the important part.

  I’ve said before that the best word you can possibly use to describe the animation quality of any Gainax anime with would be “Inconsistent.” Well, do you want to know how to make it even more inconsistent? Hire Studio Madhouse to pitch in, that’s how! Now Madhouse isn’t necessarily a bad animation company… I personally feel they’ve done more good looking shows than bad ones, and hey, every company releases more cheap looking titles than you’d want them to… But the styles of the two companies are starkly different. Madhouse is primarily known for it’s realism in terms of facial details, shading and environments, even in it’s more cartoony projects. Gainax, ironically, is much more like an actual mad house in it’s visual style. Gainax is much more known for it’s fast, frenetic character movements and experimental artistic visions. To put it another way, when Gainax tries to put out a show that looks more like a Madhouse project, we get Corpse Princess, and we get bored out of our skulls.

  If there’s one thing that both studios excel at, it’s the clever use of lighting and framing techniques, and Abenobashi looks it’s best when it’s exploiting this similarity. This happens mostly during the slower, more serious scenes, like pretty much the entire first episode. As for the rest of it, this series just looks ghastly. I’m assuming there were some major budget problems here, because whether they’re resorting to low frame rates and broken character models to keep the movement flowing or not, it just looks cheap as all hell. It hits rock bottom in the Dating Sim episode, but it’s not a very far drop from the episodes that are surrounding it. It looks passable when there isn’t a whole lot of movement going on, but even then, the little movement we do get can sometimes look almost like the result of a poorly drawn flip book. The CGI that’s used whenever Sashi and Arumi jump between worlds is at least pretty impressive.

  As for the soundtrack… It’s a really weird one. There are a lot of different musical styles in it, all of which were composed by the legendary Evangelion composer, Shiro Sagisu. He has his own aesthetic, but with a story that involves multiverses, and each one of them parodying a different genre, he’d also have to pull off a lot of diversity in the sound… And he does. The soundtrack does it’s job nicely. For episodes taking place in present day Abenobashi, he sticks to upbeat, jazzy banjo music, a juxtaposition that’s somehow perfectly fitting with the “southern hick” reputation that the Osaka region has adopted with the rest of Japan. He abandons this sound and works under a different style for each weird world that the story crosses into, from fantasy epic to big band Star Wars-like themes. It does it’s job, but while there are a few stand-out tracks… The tense, sleazy “Hard boiled” BGM from the film-noir episode is a personal favorite of mine… It still amounts to some generic background music.

  The opening theme, Treat or Goblins, is much less forgettable. It’s a catchy pop tune with some jazzy orchestration, and it’s sung by Gainax staple Megumi Hayashibara. It’s a fun song, played over clips taken directly from the show(an admittedly lazy tactic), but once you get past the actual music, this song has some strange, strange lyrics. I mean, even for an anime theme. I don’t know what’s so hot about an equalitarian, or why I should chit-chat with one, but Hayashibara-sama sure sounds enthusiastic about it. I like the ending theme better, myself.

  The English dub, much like the music, does it’s job well enough. The leads are played by Luci Christian and Jessica Boone, two of my favorite actors from classic ADV, and this is one of the first dubs either of them did. Jessica Boone is endlessly charming as mature, ambitious Arumi, but Luci Christian blows away the part of Sasshi, pulling off so much range even as she rasps her voice to what has to be an uncomfortable degree. They work off of each other fluidly, matching and in some cases even surpassing the chemistry the original japanese seiyuu had.

  There’s a little controversy as to their accents, however. Anime dubs have had a long tradition of representing the Osaka dialect as a southern drawl. I’m normally very forgiving about this, as that dialect can be a very difficult thing for an American to pull off. It was used for some comedic effect in Excel Saga, and the dubbed Wolfwood from Trigun was able to use it as smoothly as if the actor were born speaking it, but aside from that, I can’t say I’ve ever heard it done well. The southern accent isn’t the worst way to represent an Osaka dialect, as any viewers of Azumanga Daioh will tell you, but the fact that the two of them are the only characters in the show speaking it can be a little jarring. In any case, it’s a fine dub overall, but the sub is still a lot more fun. You can go either way on this one.

  If you’ve watched a lot of Gainax’s work, you may have noticed two themes that they just can’t stop repeating… The first theme is the perils of growing up, and the second is the dissolution of traditional Japanese culture at the hands of invasive Western influence. These may seem like two distinctly different ideas, but they’re both representative of the fear and uncertainty of change. You may not find them in every Gainax work, but the amount that they’re in is staggering. They love writing stories about young children who are either on the verge of puberty or who are already coming of age, and they never shy away from the awkwardness and sexual tension that these changes bring.

  In Abenobashi, Sasshi is our main protagonist(Because of course he is), and these two themes embody everything he’s going through in the story. His best friend is moving away just as he’s reaching the age where he might start to understand his feelings for her, and his entire neighborhood is quickly being bulldozed to make way for more modern accommodations. We find out pretty quickly that the worlds they’re being sent to aren’t just a random multiverse, they’re his childish fantasies brought to life. Every time they’re about to jump, as Arumi assures him that everything’s going to be okay when they go home, it just isn’t enough for him, and another bizarre world awaits them on the horizon.

  This, alone, is a pretty good concept. It’s interesting, to say the least, and it’s really the only reason we’re given to care about the two main protagonists. But as the plot evolves, and we get to look deeper and deeper into the backstory of this multi-verse, you can start to see why so many people consider it to be the ‘boring’ material. It gets way too complicated way too fast, and part of it has to do with just how culturally impenetrable the backstory is. You’d have to possess a deep understanding of Eastern mythology to fully understand it, and most viewers don’t… Including me. It involves a story that I can swear I’ve seen in later shows like Hell Girl’s “Purgatory girl” episode, which is really my only clue as to it being a mythology-based story, and the way it ties into the final resolution is just too damn confusing.

  Of course, as most fans of the show will tell you, it’s not the story or plot that matters… It’s the insane, balls-to-the-wall, joke-a-minute genre parody episodes. A little over half of Abenobashi’s episode count is spent on the various worlds that Sasshi chooses for the two of them to visit. Each of these worlds is a macrocosm of the cliches, trends, and tropes of a particular genre of entertainment. It has an experimental feel to it, which brings up Gainax’s third repetitive theme… The fact that they really, really wish they’d been the ones to make Excel Saga.

  Well, I’ve never been shy about being the lone dissenting voice, and in my opinion, those are the ACTUAL boring episodes. They’re not so much ‘joke-a-minute’ as they are ‘reference-a-minute,’ and considering how little thought or insight go into these references, I found myself constantly referring to Abenobashi as “Buzzfeed the anime.” Every single one of these episodes could have been easily retitled with Buzzfeed-friendly headlines, like “You know you’re a sci-fi fan if,” “Fans of dinosaurs will roar over these gifs,” and “If you hate harems shows and dating games, you’ll love these observations!”

  Abenobashi’s style of comedy gets points for pacing, but it absolutely reeks of excess, with constant references being thrown in your face from both sides of the ocean, as well as fan-service shot after fan-service shot that are delivered not only from the kids themselves(ick), but also from the voluptuous, scantily clad meganeko girl “Mune-Mune,” their guide to these crazy worlds as she searches for the mysterious blue-haired man that they keep running into. The comedy at play here is more exhausting than funny, and the few jokes I did laugh at were instantly killed by writers who just don’t seem to know when enough is enough.

  But getting back to the plot for a moment, we find out halfway through the series that Sasshi isn’t just jumping between worlds for the reason that he initially thought. The truth is, he’s refusing to go back to the real world because of a tragedy that his jumping prevented from happening. I won’t give away what it was, but the way it was executed was pretty damn clever(Props to you if you figured it out early), and it plays to the fear of death just as well as the world jumping plays to the idea of Sasshi retreating into fantasy in order to avoid the inevitability of change in the world around him. It’s a pretty poignant little twist. The problem, however, is that it’s stupid. Any viewer of at least average intelligence will come up with about half a dozen solutions to this problem, the easiest of which being “Go back to your world just before the tragedy happens, and put yourselves in the right place to manually prevent it.”

  The solution they reach… After several episodes of the viewer screaming “Fucking tell her already!”… ties in directly to the very culturally impenetrable sub-plot that I was talking about earlier, leaving many viewers to question what the hell just happened. It wraps up not only the tragedy, but the other plot points as well with a nice little bow, thus belittling the themes it was working with and steering directly away from the satisfying conclusion that the series was heading towards. Abenobashi wasn’t about preventing a series of life changing events from occurring, it was about watching Sasshi grow up so he could learn to become mature and accept them as a part of life. By copping out and going for the happiest ending possible, Gainax just wound up insulting the intelligence of both it’s audience and themselves. Frankly, it’s nothing but a shadow of the far superior series, FLCL.

  Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi was originally available from ADV Films, but it was one of the titles they unfortunately had to sell off when they went under several years ago. It was sold to Aesir Holdings, one of the five companies that have Section23 films as it’s distributor. The formats that ADV released it under are still available online, like the individual disks, the box set, and the once popular steel-cased “Perfect Collection,” but they’re a little on the pricey side. Aesir has released it in a much cheaper collection that you can currently find on Amazon for about 25 dollars… Or hey, maybe you were lucky enough to grab it from Rightstuf for 15 dollars during their holiday sale last year. A two volume manga series is also available in many locations… Most likely used… For a ridiculously low price, but I should warn that it does follow a different(and raunchier) version of the story. The soundtrack CD is also pretty easy to find, and like the manga, you won’t break your bank over it.

  I’d be hard pressed to say that there was anything genuinely good about this show. The plot showed some promise early on, and it may have been more enjoyable for a native Japanese audience than it was for American audiences… I don’t know… But it wound up being confusing and hard to follow, and like many Gainax projects, it lost sight of it’s message as it neared the conclusion. The comedy, which many have claimed to be the saving grace of the series, ultimately amounts to a set of keys being jangled in our faces. Some viewers will be stupid enough to be entertained by all the instances of Gainax saying “Hey, look, we remember this too!’, but for those of us who aren’t, this show was just flat out boring. It’s nowhere near as entertaining as similar shows like Excel Saga and Panty and Stocking, and I’d just like to point out that neither of those shows are perfect in the first place. With nothing else to offer BUT that comedy, it has nothing else to save it when that comedy fails to entertain. I give Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi a 3/10.

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• 

  bboyoatsnrice

  100/100
  Abenobashi Shopping Arcade is a show that fills me with nostalgia, warmth, and joy

  Ah, the Abenobashi Shopping Mall Arcade. I remember my initial run in with this series as an adolescent-child at a friend's house. Despite being only in elementary school, my friend managed to have a copy of this DVD in his possession. This was back when paying twenty dollars for a DVD containing only three or so episodes was the norm. But I digress, even at a young age, though my face was beet-red during all of Mune-Mune’s scenes, I still noted the elasticity of the characters, the warm vibe, and varied artstyle this show had. I was eager to continue watching this other-worldly show as soon as I got home, but alas I hadn’t the slightest clue of what the name of the show I just witnessed was. So for years, this anime lived rent free in my head until I stumbled upon it by accident some point after I’d already gotten my feet wet into the anime medium. So after finally watching, and then rewatching, this show that I’d always thought about for the last ten years, did it live up to the fond memory I had of it as a child, or did it fail to reach my expectations? In short, the story is about the misadventures of Sasshi and Arumi. Two childhood best friends who are the children of the owners of shops in the Abenobashi Shopping Mall Arcade. A shopping district that has long since seen better days. With business being almost nonexistent, Arumi’s father decides that it’s time to pursue his business endeavors abroad and to leave the shopping mall. But before they leave, Sasshi’s grandfather suffers a tumble that breaks a statue that sends both Arumi and Sasshi across various worlds and dimensions. Will our duo be able to make it back to their world, or are they forever trapped traveling across various dimensions? It’s a timeless tale I’m sure you’re all familiar with. Though accidentally ending up in a bizzaro-version of the MC’s original world to learn a moral that helps him back in his original world is a tale as old as time (see the Wizard of Oz for example). This series is perhaps the strangest and most subversive take on that format. Although it may seem like a surface-level comedy anime with low brow humor and playfully unique visuals (it didn’t win the Excellence Prize for animation at the 2002 Japan Media Arts Festival for nothing), the show is much more than meets the eye. And if you've read my other essays, you'll know just how much I love having my expectations subverted by comedy anime in particular. And especially ones that manage to make me laugh at that. How exactly does this show manage to subvert my expectations and manage to fill me with equal amounts endearment and hysterics? Without giving any spoilers, the show tackles themes of escapism, coping mechanisms, growing up, dealing with the death of a loved one, and having your health (which is what’s important). It excels at conveying these themes to the viewer through Sasshi’s immature nature and reluctance to accept reality and Arumi being the more level headed of the two, often trying to make sure that Sasshi doesn’t fall too far off the deep end and keeping him focused on their mission to get back home. It also helps that these two characters are written to be very likable and accurately behave how kids their age normally would, albeit Sasshi being an emotional loose canon from time to time. Both have strong Osaka-region dialects which I can only equate to someone having a sick southern accent from where I reside in burgerland, only adding to their uniqueness and quirky ways they interact with the wacky worlds and situations they find themselves in. Had the characters not been as cleverly designed and written as they were, I could only imagine this premise feeling all too familiar and far less interesting. Arumi and Sasshi’s bond wouldn’t be as convincing and fun to follow as it is without it being put to the litmus test of the situations they find themselves in. I’m not sure where the saying comes from, but it goes something like “To make a compelling story work, the most important aspects are the characters. If you have well written and interesting characters to follow, then you can throw them in just about any situation and it will work.” And that’s exactly what Abenobashi excels at and constantly tests itself in each episode. Every episode is different from the last and yet no matter what situation Arumi and Sasshi find themselves in, whether that be in a mafia-noir or harem dating simulator, seeing the ways our MCs tackle each situation is fun and engaging to watch. Not only that but the characters are always true to themselves in how they’re written, and they (usually) don’t do anything out of character save for Arumi playing along with Sasshi’s fantasies a couple of times. But this fact comes to the dismay of many viewers, myself not included, in the final act. This is a spoiler free review and I plan to keep it as such, but I can’t discuss the themes and characters without mentioning the last episode, and I’d rather do it here while I’m talking about the premise and themes than save it for the end of the essay, where I’ll be discussing a different aspect. So keeping it as vague as possible, as I mentioned earlier the show deals with themes of tackling our fears head on and not resorting to running away from reality or the hardships that we face and how life is always worth living no matter the hurdles it throws our way, because just cause times may be hard for you now doesn’t mean they’ll always be that way. Think Sonny Boy, Paranoia Agent, NHK, or EVA. Anyways, Abenobashi acknowledges that, but ultimately tosses that mindset out the window in favor of being content running away from your problems, or is it? Because it’s left rather open-ended, but I digress. Even when the ending is left that much to interpretation, and even if I detest the stance the show took on it, I have to commend it for taking such a different approach to that message. And just for a second, let’s assume that Sasshi actually succeeded in what Arumi wanted, then it’s still ambiguous enough to leave a lot of room when discussing this show with others on what they think happened at the end. Regardless, I do not hate the ending, however I do think it’s rather abrupt and anticlimactic. Alright, less about the themes and more about the visual component. As I mentioned earlier, it didn’t win the Excellence Prize for animation at the 2002 Japan Media Arts Festival for nothing. The show has excellent animation, especially in the character’s movements and at times during scenes where’d you’d least expect it. Such as in episode nine where an interdimensional traveler named “Eutus” elaborates on the lore of Abenobashi and the show utilizes stylistic and traditional japanese visuals and stills to convey the backstory. Being able to transition from a scene where Gainax’s typical wacky, but refined, artstyle is to a scene like that in an episode that’s filled with so much ambience that it’s akin to an Iyashikei that seamlessly is extremely commendable. The show is extremely playful and experimental with its visuals and animation, and it’s not afraid to favor a less well animated or visually pleasing scene in favor of making a gag land. But even then those gag moments can also be quite aesthetic and filled with alot of fine detail. I think episode twelve is an excellent demonstration of this, since it starts off with a visually aesthetic art style reminiscent of trigger's artstyle that'd be further explored in Dead Leaves and beyond. Utilizing hard shading, and a sunset's orange hue, making the scene very appealing to the eyes. And not long after that scene it’s possibly the most crackhead episode thus far, again reminding me of dead leaves in its unapologetic fast pace and jokes/references to pop culture nonstop. You can find the humor extremely lukewarm or even unfunny and predictable, but saying that about the visuals would just be a blatant lie. Before jumping into my final thoughts about this series I’d like to touch on one final aspect of this show that doesn’t get the praise I feel it deserves, and that’s the audio department. The OST doesn’t nearly get its just deserts, composed by Shirō Sagisu who also composed the soundtracks for Evangelion and certain installments of the Bleach franchise, this OST is eclectic to say the least. Incorporating elements of orchestra, big band, rock, folk, and electronic music that’s as mesmerizing and impressively diverse as the scenes these tracks accompany. Making this OST go down in history as one of my all time favorite soundtracks of anime. And speaking audio, let’s not forget the performances done by Arumi and Sasshi’s VA doing a wonderful job bringing these personalities to life. Both Tomo Saeki and Yuki Matsuoka as Sasshi and Arumi respectively have so much fun in their roles, that you can hear and feel the blast they’re having recording their lines as the characters. In fact they had so much fun in their roles that there are countless hilarious outtakes with the seiyuu ad libbing and going off script, I implore you to check those out if you haven’t already. Abenobashi Shopping Arcade is a show that fills me with nostalgia, warmth, and joy. From its early 2000s artstyle, humor, characters, and themes I instantly know I’m in for a wild ride with each rewatch. And each time I do decide to rewatch this show, I’m still filled with the same wonder and confusion as when I first came across this series at a friend’s place. Did it live up to the fond memory I had of it as a child, or did it fail to reach my expectations? It most certainly did, and continues to, I do think this show is such a treasure trove of creativity and having fun. Does every single joke make me laugh, no, and do I think the ending is rather abrupt, absolutely and I think the show could’ve been more fondly remembered by others in a similar way as me if it had just one more episode. But alas, I’ve already stated my stance on the ending and how I differ from most in regards to the way the show handled its conclusion. But even with that, I’ve seen many other series that drop the ball way harder in its final act than this show, and as I’ve expressed I don’t even consider this show’s ending as it dropping the ball, I think this series said what it wanted to and has enough faith in the viewer that they won’t make the same mistake that Sasshi did. So even if Sasshi did or didn’t make it back to the Arcade, I implore you to take a stroll through this anime’s 13 episodes and see if you do, ever decide to come back to it thereafter.
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