That's right: under the colours and the comedy, Kuuchuu Buranko is a series characterised by an impassioned attack on its own audience.
The setup is simple: each episode follows the interactions between madcap psychiatrist Ichiro Irabu (whose primary methodology involves talking absolute nonsense) and one of his many patients, all of whom find Irabu's approach to psychiatric treatment baffling at first, but ultimately effective. Issues raised include common phobias, OCD, sexuality and addiction, and it's likely that at least one episode will seem relevant to you or someone you know. To help things along, a character known as Fukuicchi pauses the show semi-regularly to explain the various psychological conditions depicted in order to give us a fuller understanding of what's going on. That understanding is key to the show's underlying message, which is more subtextual and elevates the series above any heavy-handed attempt to simply raise awareness.
In short, Kuuchuu Buranko's key theme is empathy.
WARNING: We will now be venturing into the territory of mild spoilers.
It's important to note here that Kuuchuu Buranko is incredibly funny. You will laugh at Irabu's zany antics and the absolutely spot-on dialogue, and so you'll probably also feel reasonably comfortable giggling at the strange behaviour of seemingly unimportant side characters, including a yakuza mobster who keeps trying to stab himself in the eye with a pen (and is impeded by a pair of goggles) and a salaryman who walks around with a permanent bow. When those characters later appear as patients, you might start to pick up on what this series is really going for. And when the show's absolutely brutal finale kicks in, you'll be left feeling more than a little shitty. The point is, it's very easy to laugh at people whose behaviour doesn't seem normal, and to subsequently dismiss them as simply being weird, but to do so suggests a lack of understanding, and a refusal to consider the possibility that that behaviour reflects very real psychological trauma. It's not uncommon to pass people in the street who are behaving in unusual ways, and it's easy to dismiss and trivialise their actions by validating your own with social convention.
And that's Kuuchuu Buranko's real angle. With it's interweaving of various episodic narrative threads and with the charismatic Irabu at the centre, Kuuchu Buranko aspires to draw out prejudices that the audience doesn't even know that they've absorbed, and to then confront you with them in its absolute gut-punch of a final episode. Few examples of fiction promote introspection as effectively as this one, and next-to-none are this confrontational about it.
It hurts you because it loves you though; Kuuchuu Buranko simply wants you to be a better person.
The series' aesthetic style may be where people struggle slightly. I know a lot of people dislike rotoscoping, and it certainly can't be said that anything about the art is conventional if you approach the series as you would approach any other anime, but I personally love the use of colour, symbolic visual motifs and Irabu's strange (and constantly changing) character design. Even the rotoscoping serves to make the characters feel that little bit more human, and is just another way that this series sets itself apart from the industry around it. I found no fault with the aesthetics or animation.
One issue that I do have relates to the show's framing of gender, as the series features almost no female characters at all, and absolutely no female patients. Female cast members are limited to Mayumi, Irabu's sexy live-action nurse who's more supermodel than actual character and serves very little purpose, and certain side characters who mostly go unnamed and are never fully explored. The result of doing this makes the message feel a bit exclusive, and arguably suggests that the writer affords less importance to the psychological traumas of women or simply believes in a predominantly male audience that can't empathise as readily with female characters. There was no real reason that certain patients in this series couldn't have been female, and the result would've been a series that's more inclusive and accessible to a broader audience, which would only have helped the series' message to get through.
Still, few TV shows or movies have come this close to perfect, and it's hard to argue that I found Kuuchuu Buranko any less effective as a result of this one particular fault. If it didn't have this issue, I might actually be calling it perfect. As it is, it's only near-perfect. Its powerful and assertive assault on its audience's sensibilities is something I've never witnessed in any other example of narrative fiction, and the result is a truly stand-out anime series that'll have a remarkable impact on all who watch it. Highly recommended.
