Aguu: Tensai Ningyou

If the phrase "So Bad It's Good" means anything to you, you will likely get a kick out of Aguu. I most certainly have. Make no mistake, Aguu is bad. It's confusing, ugly, annoying, convoluted, and most of all really really weird. The whole thing blends together into a thoroughly entertaining mess that has to be seen to be believed. If you need a nice, warm dumpster fire to keep you warm at night, this one is a great choice.

Story:
Holy shit, buckle your seatbelts. Evil Purple People who look like the Apple Bonkers from Yellow Submarine suck the talent out of talented people and make ... them into gross little bondage fetus doll things. These people are called "Tailors" and they are without exception a bunch of annoying crazy assholes who monologue a lot. They then stick these gross fetus balls (Aguu) into other people for exorbitant amounts of money, upon which insertion the doll's talent is transferred to the recipient. Also they wear fabulous hats.

People called "Saviors," who so far consist of an old man, an EXTREMELY annoying kid sidekick, and our main character Ai, try to help save the Aguu from their fate as gross fetus balls and beat up the Tailors for being so violent and off-putting.

After Ai's friend Machi has fallen in with the Tailors, Ai and the other saviors chase them around Asia. It's really really dumb, and really poorly animated. Loved it.

Art:
As previously mentioned, completely terrible. Everything is boxy and flat, the color palate is insane (think Barney, all purple and green), the animation is mostly non-existent. It looks like approximately 0 effort was put into the polishing in this show, but I will be damned if it is not really fun to look at. I never know what's coming next, but it is almost always worse than I expect and better than I hoped for. This show looks like ass, but it is at least a funny looking ass.

Sound:
Kinda whatever. The OP makes me feel uncomfortable, but so does the show as a whole so I guess there you go. I haven't noticed the music enough to comment. It seems adequate and forgettable. People's voices are pretty hammy and over the top, but it adds to the camp factor already very much present in the show.

Characters:
Probably the best part? It's absolutely nuts. Seriously, just google "applebonkers." That is, no lie, EXACTLY what the bad guys look like. They are all silly petulant crazy people with a penchant for the dramatic. People's faces are crazy, people are strange colors, their clothes are nuts. Think acid trip fancy dress tea party. Even the non Tailor characters are pretty weird. The characters are what has me rating this show so highly even though it is admittedly terrible.

Enjoyment:
Just the most. This show has cheers me up every time I watch it. It is adorably ugly and stupid, kind of like a pug. Camp and trash may not be for everyone, but it sure is for me and I liked this show a whole bunch. Aguu is not as good as the tragic masterpieces that are Vatican Miracle Examiner or Qualedia Code, each magnificent and flawless trash heaps, but it is really entertainingly hilariously bad and if that's something you appreciate you will appreciate this.

Japanese-Chinese collaborations are nothing new, especially in the anime world, where we got to know the popular ones from China that are raking in the money from the oh-so-popular Tencent Animation & Comics, the largest Chinese regulator for comics and animation from China. Apparently Chinese people love Japanese manga (which comes as no surprise), and being a Chinese myself I can see why. But when it comes to the anime medium, sure there are classics that are well received like Quan Zhi Gao Shou (The King's Avatar) or Huyao Xiao Hongniang (Fox Spirit Matchmaker, which was recently dubbed in Jap last year), but with the ... good comes the bad series such as Evil or Live, and Aguu: Tensai Ningyou, falls under the "so bad it's good" category.

Aguu: Tensai Ningyou tells the simple premise of power: What are your dreams and ambitions to be like the friends who are more talented than you, only to find out that talent that they had, was all but a farce? And that sets up the story of two friends gone bad: Ai and Machi, both trained in ballet school, with both of them envying each other for fame and talents...that is until the existence of Aguu: human-lookalike embedded Devil spirits, dolls that can be consumed to give its user the ability to perform their life's ideals. And of course, one thing led to another that in a trance, something bad happened and caused both Ai and Machi to be separated, and forcefully altering their life's fate as well.

And without going into spoilers, an evil force is brewing over with the Tailors (masters of Aguu), with the defect boss wanting to alter the course of the world with Aguu, and it's up to the Saviours who have been fending off the evil-warts for generations, and with Ai, time has come again for them to do the same. The story starts out slow, but it definitely has some kind of linear progression which is nice. Character models are OK at best, it's the exact replicate from the Chinese-based web manga source so I'm fine with that.

The art and animation are truly worth of Studio Deen's low-budget quality, and it shows a hella lot here. The background art is like some kids' simple drawings while the animation is truly lackluster, just like the not-so-passive action scenes which is not a turn off, but is watchable (I guess). So, don't expect flashy scenes and great artwork, you're not gonna find it here. And that is the case similar to the music, which is not a whole lot too. The same tunes just kept repeating on and on to compensate for the same lackluster and boring visuals, and that goes for the OST as well which is decent to say the least. The OP at least displayed some decency with the tunes, and it's sounds quite weird, but somehow fits the overall aesthetics of the show. The ED is simple, but the clearest favourite of them all, showcasing the fallen relationship of both Ai and Machi and if there was one tune I would takeaway from this series is the ED, without question.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend this show, mainly due to the pro-Chinese demographics that are meant to showcase how well the manga source was (and still is) against the anime adaptation, but this isn't bad by any means. But it is still a shovelware show in the Summer season of shovelwares, and if you really find this intriguing, give this a try.

I don't know how many people enjoyed watching this, but I would say this show is not worth watching (although I am not saying you shouldn't watch it. The show itself wasn't unbearable to watch).

Story
The story wasn't good but was decent. I liked the idea of this anime, especially about the dolls. It's not something that you cannot understand or keep up with, but the story was poorly structured, therefore you kind of get lost sometimes. I also felt story weren't as engaging so I can watch the anime, but couldn't really enjoy it. The let down was the last episode, where so many new ... things just came up and I just stopped thinking about what was happening. Like seriously? Why would you put new stuff at the end? Just to leave people with confusion? I feel like this entire anime was a prologue and I haven't reached the main bit of the anime.

Art
Was ok.

Sound
Didn't like the op, but that might be just because of my taste. BGM didn't really bother me so I am guessing that it all suited the scenes.

Character
There's just too much going on with the character settings, especially at the end. It makes it hard for me to keep up with the story. And let me say one thing, although it might be a spoiler. Where is Raff gone? Well, it was fine for me cause I didn't really like that character. Although at the start of the anime good side and the bad side was stated, later on, shows that we cannot label these characters only with good or bad through their positions, but we can only see characters one by one and understand them, so I kind of did like that.

Overall
Not a total rubbish but not one awesome piece to watch. Decent anime. Couldn't engage as much with this anime, but was an ok show to watch. If you have nothing to watch, maybe watch it. If you really want to enjoy it, you might have to go read the manga after the anime since the last episode.