Uchouten Kazoku

I've been meaning to revisit Uchouten Kazoku aka The Eccentric Family for a while now. See, when I wrote my first review, I was going through a phase where my tastes were sine-waving between exploitation lover and dirty elitist, which didn't go over well with a lot of my readers at the time. And by Christ was that phase bad. I mean did I really say the show sucked by comparing it to Utena? That's like saying Texhnolyze sucked by comparing it to Legend of the Galactic Heroes. My views on the show haven't changed since then, but now that I've mostly embraced some sort ... of middle ground between enjoying Ingmar Bergman and Russ Meyer at the same time, I thought I'd give a second shot at describing why I wasn't into PA Works first "good" anime, as most people call it.

Let me just reiterate before I start that I by no means hated the show when it was finished and that I was exaggerating for comedic effect as well as to counteract all the unanimous praise regarding an anime that I desperately wanted to like and yet it failed me more than a racing horse that kept farting tires out of its ass whenever it ran half a mile (don't think too much about that metaphor. I certainly didn't). With original source material written by the man behind The Tatami Galaxy and an artstyle completely different from PA Works' usual stuff, something that not even PA Work's second elitist-bait show could get away from, you'd think nothing could go wrong. Well this show and Kyoukai no Kanata sure showed me.

Sometime around the show's end, I read an excerpt that stated that Uchouten was adapted from a book that was actually the first part of a planned trilogy that hasn't been completed yet. And by Christ did that show, because the way this anime played out was like Durarara channeling Ghost Hound in every single negative way imaginable. The anime starts off by throwing you into its fantastical world with no explanation and letting the character interactions do the talking; which sounds cool at first until you realize that by the end of the premiere, they forgot to give you a reason to care and expect the audience to just go along with the whimsy with the promise of paying off at the end.

See, I'm really opposed to this style of storytelling. Just because a good groundwork is required to make an engaging show doesn't mean you're supposed to rely on said groundwork for said engagement. Because more often that not, said groundwork isn't actually as good as it wants you to think and by the end of the show, you realized you got hoodwinked and all you can do is cry whilst Stephen King laughs at you. Every scene should have momentum. It should have a point. And hopefully at the end, said point is actually interesting.

This problem is that you need a plot to have an interesting point and when I realized by the second episode that Uchouten is all story and no plot at all, it just lost me. I know it's a style of storytelling that a lot of people seem to not mind considering the stuff that makes it onto MAL's top 30, but I personally tolerate said style at best and despise it at worst. Characters talk with each other in an attempt to build something up, but they forgot to give me a concrete reason regarding why I should care about the build-up in the first place. And no, I didn't dislike any of the characters or anything. But as much as I like the cast of Rocky, that doesn't change the fact that the fifth film was a giant dull turd.

The show never really gave the tanukis, the Friday Fellows, and especially not Benten anything to do besides talking about their lives whilst building up to a story that doesn't seem to be in service of anything really meaty. Sure Benten riding on a dolphin whilst nude before participating in a fireworks battle is cool to look at, but to what end? Well the end is revealed in the last stretch. It's just that said end is predictable as fuck, and it doesn't even conclude in a satisfactory way, coming across more as sequel-bait to something that hasn't even been written yet. So even if you were into this show for the pure storytelling, Rage of Bahamut-style, I'd argue that the show still falls flat. Did we really need thirteen episodes dedicated to a fizzled climax and family themes are the same standard "family must always stick together no matter what" stuff you see everywhere? I personally don't think so.

Yeah, the dialogue is nice and the presentation is good, but they should inform a plot. Not be the plot. Even the "good" animation showcases have more going on in them underneath "yes, this guy can direct". I mean take Cat Soup (the OVA) for example. It also had great aesthetics and a subtle storytelling method, but in addition to being much shorter, what really makes it stand out as one of the best anime short films in the medium is that the story was about how if you screw with the universe, it'll screw you back. That's an interesting message. That's something I can't learn from high school. "Fun things are fun" is neither of those things - unless you apply said message to something really ironic like Jake Gyllenhal's "I screw people to get the story that'll allow me to obtain money, women, and power" character in Nightcrawler or something. But we're delving too far into subjective territory even by my standards right now, so I should probably wrap things up before I end up trapped in a black hole of no escape.

All in all, the reason I didn't like Uchouten wasn't because it didn't make anything exciting happen week after week (well okay that is the reason, but I didn't necessarily need sword fights occurring on a sinking ship to keep my attention). The reason I didn't like the show is because for all the creativity going into the aesthetics, the actual core is just too safe in its goals to really be filling. It's comfort food anime at the end of the day, and in my screwed-up universe, comfort food anime is about as comforting as anesthesia. You'll feel better after waking up, but you were supposed to pick up your girlfriend an hour ago.

I was onboard with this anime at first. I "got it", the tanuki are carefree, and they accept being eaten by humans. I understand that people adapt to the realities of their lives if it is all normalized by their society. I got all that. HOWEVER, I stopped getting it when they Tanuki react to their trials and tribulations as would any normal human being, except when it comes to being vengeful or hateful.
I understand that many Japanese people believe that being hateful is wrong, but hatred and vengeance is a staple of human society, the reason is purely evolutionary. It exists in all creatures, ... not just humans. When someone does you wrong, you hate them because they hurt you of course, but the evolutionary reason you hate them and want to harm them is to PREVENT MORE harm being done to you or your family again in the future.
As antagonist and protagonists go in this show, you have to turn off your brain to watch this anime. In many cases, you have no idea what goes through their minds at times. I will not post spoilers but I'll give you a story. Imagine your brother gets mutilated and skinned alive by someone in your city, then you go out for a walk with that guy knowing that he might go and mutilate more people, forevermore, and you treat him as a friend, including all the people who help him, or try to push you down to get ahead in life. I am down with Tanuki being accepting of being eaten, but I am then not down with you trying to make me feel sorry for an organism that has the defense mechanism of grass.
There is so much cognitive dissonance in this show I feel that the people who wrote this show were smoking lead fumes when they wrote the story. This truly has so much potential and yet it is an infuriatingly frustrating show. The first few episodes were fine and by the end watching more episodes was like pulling teeth. If anyone you know liked this show, just never speak to them again. They might be walking next to you as you get mugged and then they might want to go get a few beers with your mugger.