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Jungle de Ikou
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Title Info
- seen: 1-3 of 3
- type: OAV
- grade: watchable
- genre: dumb_fun
- made: unknown
- Review created: Recently, but I didn't record the date.
- mod: none
Cheerful, Energetic and woefully unsubtle...this is something that you'll have to be in the mood for. The story draws heavily from magical girl, taking the foundation from a primitive inspired mythology (with new guinea nominally being the source) and topping it off with sizable doses of humor and fan service. Basically it begins when a 10 year old girl, who is frighteningly physical in her own right (aggressively genki?) forgets the first rule of anime. Young girls should never take primitive relics from their archeologist fathers. This is because, hey, you might just find yourself involved in a conflict between various elemental spirits that are happy to consider Tokyo a new playground. Still, as long as it has a strong current of humor running through it everything will be fine in the end.
And that's how it goes. There are lots of spirits, all of whom have frightening magical powers contained in `anime humor archetype' bodies. They are set free, or summon magic powers, through crazed dance routines which also double as a chance for a bit of fan service. It might be historically accurate that such magical dances ended in orgasmic throes, but whether it is really neccessary here is open to question. And given that one of the characters is an earth/fertility spirit, symbolized by enormous breasts I think you can see that the fan service doesn't reduce after the transformation sequence. Indeed this anime goes suprisingly far, having some suprisingly racy humor. The conclusion is an interesting combination in godzilla style horror, humor and fan-service which is very weird. Does it work? Not for me, way too unsubtle. But if you really get into physical humor, such as slapstick, body jokes and strange powers then you'll probably enjoy it a lot more. Or perhaps if you just feel like something light and different.
Certainly the animation has the same strengths and weaknesses as the writing. It is wildly energetic, with lots of strange camera angles, and exaggerated physical action. The animation is bright and simple, with some of the character designs being in super-deformed mode all the time. Indeed the whole effect is somewhat unsettling, looking quite different from normal Japanese animation. Dialog is simple, characters are loud and the over-all story is not particularly complex. The action scenes are ambitious, and large in their scope, but not particularly interesting in their animation. There is some quite nice character animation though, especially for the lead. Oh, and if you're into `politically correct' thought then don't watch this, as the first episode is centered around Japanese food, namely whale steaks.
Well, Lord Carnage is probably a better judge of this sort of thing than I am, so check his review, although he didn't think much of the story either. There's also a review from the Anime Critic who find it energetic, but that the fan service becomes sufficiently excessive to detract from the experience in this excellent review.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:20 WST 2009