Friday, April 3, 2009

Fucking robots playing fucking basketball

Seriously.

Shoji Kawamori is someone I try and at least pay attention to, even if he hasn't done a fucking thing worth watching since 2001.
Basquash! flew completely under my radar, and I only watched because I happened to see his name attached. Pretty much went into it blind.
Wildly uneven, to say the least.
Even dismissing standard anime horseshit like the unlikeable shonen spaz hero or the sex pot with the voice of a gratingly cute 10 year old, this fucker is all the god damn hell over the place on a second by second basis.

I mean, what the fuck are those things, and why are the police stopping to let them pass?
Then there's the world's dumbest fucking premise, and the production values that actually make that shit work. And the bad ass steampunky future city largely ruined by the fucking pedo idol singers broadcast onto the fucking surface of the moon. Or the randomly awesome incidental character moments (lots of cavities is on the hero's list of crimes) clashing with embarrassing anime stereotypes (I can live with fat dudes that are always eating, but do they have to use the fucking comedy fat guy voice? No real human being has ever talked like that) or the comedy bits that totally work (every line an old man is overhearing from inside sounding so brazenly sexual it make a dumb old gag pretty damn funny again) to the cheese-tastic metaphorical goals that make a big swing as 70s manly jovianism and wind up sounding like dated horseshit instead (the hero believes all things wrong with life will be righted if he can just get to the moon) and ultimately, fuck it, it's god damn terrible and entertained me more than anything I've seen in months.
Good start to the Spring.

7 comments:

  1. It has a character named Iceman Hotty!?

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  2. I'd seen the promos for this and hoped it'd end up in the "so retarded it's great" category.

    Definitely an "only in anime" concept.

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  3. Yeah, Sato's involvement is definitely the big reason to care. That said, I never did get around to checking out Tokyo Tribe 2, but I don't think anyone else did either.

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  4. I wouldn't have pegged you as someone who likes Arjuna.

    Definitely going to look into this.

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  5. I didn't say Arjuna was good. Just worth watching. The philosophy the show is based on is cringeworthy, but it was still a very personal show in a medium that rarely supports that sort of thing, and the bits that worked made up for the hippie shit.

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  6. "Shoji Kawamori is someone I try and at least pay attention to, even if he hasn't done a thing worth watching since 2001"

    Have you seen Kawamori's Genius Party short, Shanghai Dragon?

    As for Basquash!, I very much enjoyed the first episode. Stupid as hell, yes, but boy if it isn't fun. Production values are gorgeous too.

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  7. I was not even aware he was involved with that, to my shame.

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