How can people connect? By sticking things up each others’ asses.
Ikuhara’s back, and continues in the tradition from his previous shows. Great animation, and it does that thing Ikuhara is amazing at where it builds up your expectations through repetition and then inevitably subverts it in an unexpected way that blows your mind. It’s extraordinarily gay.
I suspect this show would have benefited from a little more time. Eleven episodes was short, and everything felt condensed. That is vastly preferable to not having enough material, of course.
I think my ranking for Ikuhara shows would have to be Penguindrum >>> Utena >>> Sarazanmai >>>>>>>>> Yurikuma.
- Storytelling – A – Superb.
- Voice – A+ – Whoah.
- Characters – A – Loved them. Favorites were the cops I think.
- Attention Grab – A – Easily kept my interest.
- Production – A – Looks amazing.
- Overall – A-
Recommendations – Mawaru Penguindrum
Really good and relatively straightforward and optimistic for Ikuhara’s standards – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For all its oddity, at heart this was a very anime story about friendship. It was wholesome and uplifting. I also loved the musical numbers, the visuals were all kinds of bonkers, there were some great visual gags and characters were all very fleshed out… the Ikuhara package. AotS for me, especially given how Carole and Tuesday turned out to be pleasant but very bland.