Manie-Manie: Meikyuu Monogatari

Manie-Manie: Meikyuu Monogatari is a Madhouse production from the tail end of the 80s. It features three different segments, each from a different director. It's no secret that my history with Madhouse is heavily mixed. On one hand, they're the studio behind rubbish like Bio Hunter and the X-men anime. So nice of them to royally mistreat one of my favourite super hero teams. But they've also been behind such excellent anime as Monster & Petshop of Horrors. So, any time I see the studio attached to something, I don't know whether to expect garbage, mediocrity or something amazing. 

Story:

The segments aren't really connected. So, I'll ... go through each one as its own thing. 

Our first segment involves a young girl and her cat entering a mirror world and encountering all manner of strange things. Including the one person who liked Hollywood's Jem film and English cuisine that isn't hideous. 

The second segment involves a futuristic race where competitors risk their lives. We get to see a particularly disastrous race. You might think health and safety proponents would never allow such a deadly race to exist, but as all the racers are Frank Miller fans, no one actually cares. 

The third segment is about a young man who gets sent to the jungle to shut down a building operation after the old foreman went silent. He finds the robots working on the project to be less than responsive has to figure out how to stop their activities. He could ask them to calculate pi to the last digit, but he doesn't want to completely destroy their circuits. 

The big problem that every segment shares is that they all value spectacle over substance. The first and second segments both have very little story. We get a parade of odd images in the first and a big, overblown sequence of crashes and cars getting torn apart in the second.

The best segment is the third because it, at least, has something of a narrative. And even then it's a bit lacklustre. While I will credit the people involved with having a strong premise, there just isn't enough time to give it proper build up and its climax basically devolves into a big, over the top sequence.

Characters:

There isn't much character to speak of. Even in the last segment, what we get is very basic and simple. It's hints of personality without anything properly fleshed out. You could make the argument that these are sixteen minute segments and they can't really develop the characters, but Yami Shibai came closer to having fleshed out characters in under five minutes. Or, in the case of the final segment, it equalled the characterisation.

Art:

The artwork is quite nicely detailed and well animated. The biggest issue is that the second segment has a lot of bizarre shading and a lot of it looks a bit shit as a result. Like, we're talking a urine coloured filter over everything. Which isn't what you want from something that relies heavily on the spectacle. Give the first segment some credit, it may look like someone's illicit drug trip but at least it's interesting to look at. 

Sound:

The acting is passable. There aren't any amazing performances that will stick with you, but there also aren't any bad ones. The music is fine. 

Ho-yay:

Romantic dynamics are as lacking in this as strong interactions between characters in general. 

Areas of Improvement:

Give us some characterisation. Honestly, each of these segments lasts about fifteen minutes. And each one would benefit from taking a bit of a break from the spectacle in order to flesh out their characters a bit. 
Some basic narrative for the first two segments. Like I said, the third segment is, hands down, the best because it puts some effort into a narrative. 
Good art for the second segment. Lose the over-shaded, piss filter look. It's pretty awful. 

Final Thoughts:

If you're someone who likes to watch fifty minutes worth of spectacle without substance, you may enjoy Manie-Manie. For me, style over substance doesn't do a whole lot. The last segment certainly had potential but it needed more time to expand on it. That being said, I didn't think this was awful. Well, maybe the second segment was. It was mostly serviceable at what it's trying to do. I'm going to give it a 4/10. 

Once upon a time three well acclaimed directors came together to make a brainwashing program and u get what we see today as Neo Tokyo. Apparently from what I can see it worked like a charm in brainwashing people.

So lets talk what was so dreadful in it that I would call it a brainwashing program.
It has 3 short where obviously are not related to each other written by different people about different things. (Minor spoilers ahead)

Labyrinth Labyrinthos (1st short)-
It was kind of story which cannot differentiate the line between a masterpiece and nonsense. Yep, can take it either ways because ur brain is not gone ... register it anyways. I could seriously tell u, I understood more about the story by reading its summary compared to watching it. It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen which cannot be salvaged. I would compare it with alien's from mars sending cryptic codes which people of earth misinterpreted as holy text from gods. This was most unexplainable thing out of the three and this was present both at the beginning and at the ending of this movie like as a sign of Hypnotism initiation and completion. "Muddled portrayal of grotesque feature" is the best explanation for it. I cannot tell u any more about art, characters, storyline etc because I cannot read Martian unfortunately. Overall if there is really something called so bad which can only be considered as good by a fanatic, then u have it in form of this 1st short. I just hope whoever wrote it doesn't have such epiphany again, it probably would be matter of life or death for this world next time.
Score-1/10 (as every sane person should)

Running Man (2nd short) -
It was fortunately more understandable. It had a few more lines to offer compared to what preceded it, which makes it more recognizable. But question remains, is any less bizarre than previous short? Answer is no. While I could comprehend it at emotional level, it makes no sense from most of what was shown. From what I got the theme is "stress of work". We got a racer who is yelling and making faces while racing throughout the short and news reporter standing at the stand whose only role is to act as our perspective. Now comes the freakish occurrences. Everything is breaking without any explanation from engines to human faces everything is cracked, exploded and destroyed, but still the racing goes on. A point comes where u cannot differentiate between different racers who are still riding on. There are even more strangeness with pupils disappearing in madness, red streaks of light coming through mouth of yelling protagonist, he appearing both at home and on his cart with an expression of mad rage simultaneously and there Ghosts are still riding on while further racers and their carts are breaking and being destroyed over and over. Everything went haywire just like my spoilers. When finally all was said and done, the last narrative described the incident as "a mystery that no one seem to mind, if it remains a mystery" Probably those are similar to my feeling about this short. Never open a Pandora box, it only looks beautiful as a mystery.
Score-3/10 (for being understandable)

The Order to Stop Construction (3rd short) -
Probably the most sane plot out of the three. But is it? probably, yes. While the characters are insane, plot is still sane. It is ur run-of-the-mill insane robots tropes ( though I am assuming this trope is supposed to be some sort of innovation in 1987). Nothing much is going on, a pretty straight forward story with a wacky ending. So its suppose to be safe, isn't it?... No, never ever fell for that. while plot is still safe, the art and designs is right out atrocious. U could have a migraine after seeing the artstyle. One may argue that it was the similar since the beginning, but u see the ingenuity of it shined the best in the third short. As my saying going the true colors of a art came out in the finale. Remember my warning after brainwashing "horrendous artstyle" probably will be interpreted as "clean animation". So exercise extreme caution.
Score-5/10 (art was pretty similar to final fantasy : legend of crystals, probably scores also should be similar. I am not a guy who will treat unfairly only based on art and animation for a old 1987 work being bad)

Finally...I am surprised at myself, i could attempt to put this obscurity in words. As one of the survivors of brainwashing, I felt a immense duty to make the society more aware. Probably many fanatics will trash me for this, But I atleast tried to warn u all.

Coming to final scores, 3/10 overall (+1 for attempt and for being only a short, +1 for being a old anime and as a respect to its well established directors, +1 for the purpose of this anime - brainwashing works very well)