This first week is going to kill me.
Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge. The concept makes no sense, and the conflicts as portrayed in the PVs looked generic as hell, but they had plenty of style. Let’s see what’s under the hood.
Episode 1
0:55 – “There was a Hair Queen at that place…” This is gonna get weird, isn’t it?
0:57 – Whips out scissors. Yep, it’s gonna get weird.
1:46 – I thought the overwrought pauses of the PVs were just for the sake of that format, but it looks like that’s the modus operandi around here.
1:55 – Also, bewildered eyes + “PONY CANYON” = comedy gold
3:24 – At this point, I’m beginning to realize making jokes at the show’s expense is just silly – the show knows it exists in a ridiculous world, so I just gotta go there with it. I’ll get my scissors.
3:50 – Okay, what is this terrifying shot of his family demanding he stop “cutting?” What the fuck did he do?
5:21 – This show isn’t playing with the weird space it occupies as well as Mysterious Girlfriend X did, but I do like these tricks of deflecting the weird awkwardness of young sexuality onto hangups like this. I think adding some random fetish like this helps to externalize the emotional vulnerability of these situations.
5:38 – Hah! Then they make the metaphor explicit with Hair Queen’s “Sigh. Can’t get it up?” face
6:46 – DAMN is this show ever going there.
7:57 – Can’t quite decide if I like the combination of overt anime-ism and the melodramatic intimacy stuff yet – whether they keep each other from going too far, or just clash.
8:30 – Well this is some ham-handed exposition. I guess there’s no graceful way to say, “This show will be about an absurd criminal organization based on a lineage of murderers, and also hair”
9:18 – I have to say, these melodramatic camera angles, lighting choices, and songs are starting to grow on me. It’s an endearing kind of ridiculous.
10:11 – Sees a woman, is consumed by hair-cutting lust… falls in love with the woman with uncuttable hair… learns to manage his urges…
Dear god, is this show an abstinence metaphor? Is that hair-fondling virginity he just lost this show’s version of good, Christian, “heavy petting?”
12:30 – Day after day, I pray to the gods of anime for a romance that involves a couple actually in a relationship. Today I get my wish, and the show’s about hair-cutting fetishes and secret murderers.
CURSE YOU, MONKEY’S PAWWWW!
14:51 – “UWA! K-K-KILLING GOODS!” God this show’s so stupid. I love it.
15:22 – “What can I do for her? I can’t even cut her hair!” Anime of the year.
16:08 – “I wasn’t gonna mention it, but… we’re the descendents of a cult of secret murderers. Just FYI”
17:39 – They must have had so much fun making this show. That absurd slow-pan across his terrifying scissors, contrasted against the full moon, as the organ plays its operatic funeral march. This is like the JoJo of daytime soap operas.
23:14 – I don’t think I’ve ever been more confident an episode would end with a “cut to lurking sinister forces” shot. My god this show.
And Done
AHAHAHAHA YES. Wow. So entertaining. Gloriously stupid, gleefully melodramatic, reveling in the tropes of its genre while taking them way, way too far in the lighting, in the lethargic directing, in the standout absurd musical score. JoJo is definitely the right word for it.
Also, that “hair as sex metaphor” stuff was actually pretty unique, and the million ways they kept making the parallel (the two of them stretched out on the bed after her first “death” (oh hey, there’s another parallel) – all that scene needed was Kiri smoking a cigarette) were really entertaining to me. I kind of doubt actually commentating this one will be worth it, since I get the feeling it will just continue to be ridiculous in the same ways, but we’ll see. It turns out what was “under the hood” was a mass of weird sexual hangups, self-seriousness, and self-indulgent lunacy. My expectations were certainly exceeded on this one.