Kuuchuu Buranko

The world of psychology is far from strange to the unusual Dr. Ichirou Irabu, a resident psychiatrist of Irabu General Hospital. He and his charming nurse Mayumi run through several patients, each suffering from a mental illness that harms their everyday life.

Patients should be wary of the seductive Mayumi, with her spellbinding looks and devilishly short pink nurse uniform. On the other hand, the doctor seems to have three separate personalities: a child with an oversized lab coat; an intelligent, youthful man with feminine traits; and a selfish, outgoing green bear. While curing his patients in questionable ways, Dr. Irabu often tries to gain something from them outside of his profession—and in doing so, occasionally forgets his role as a doctor.

As each patient struggles to face the nature of their distress, an obvious yet invisible thread ties their paths together.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Irabu, Ichirou Main

Park, Romi Japanese

Mayumi Supporting

Sugimoto, Yumi Japanese

Fukui Supporting

Fukui, Kenji Japanese

Ino, Seiji Supporting

Takahashi, Hiroki Japanese

Yasukawa, Hiromi Supporting

Hatano, Wataru Japanese

Tsuda, Yuuta Supporting

Irino, Miyu Japanese

Bandou, Shinichi Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Tanabe, Mitsuo Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou Japanese

Tsuda, Hideo Supporting

Furuya, Toru Japanese

Iwamura, Yoshio Supporting

Iwata, Mitsuo Japanese

Yamamoto, Kouji Producer

Jouno, Masato Producer

Washio, Takashi Producer

Nakamura, Kenji Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Dec 29, 2009

Detective

Recommended

Here is an anime that will turn 90% of its viewers away. Why? Because it dares to be distinctly different. For the remaining 10% who watched after the first episode, you probably know already how great this anime is. Now let's hope to switch these figures, so everyone can enjoy.

Story: 9/10
The story is of Dr. Irabu, a psychiatrist who also happens to be the vice chairman in his fathers hospital. He's an incredibly skilled doctor who welcomes many patients, and his treatment is always vitamin injections. The story revolves around the people with disorders such as OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), and ... many others. The story takes place all within ten days, December 16th to December 25th, and all the stories somehow affect one another, whether it be minutely or dramatically. Now up to this point you may think this sounds really dreary and serious, right? Wrong. The stories are very light-hearted for the most part and the comedy is boundless. There's a case where a man has an uncontrollable boner, and the only way to cure it is by forgetting his past. Crude? Yes. Hilarious? Yes. The interwoven ten day tale of the wacky doctor and his just-as-wacky patients will surely amuse you if you give it a chance.

Art: 10/10
Well. You might hate it. You might love it. But you gotta admit, it's interesting to watch. Kenji Nakamura used the same kind of art in Trapeze as he did in Mononoke. It's really cool stuff if you're a fan of his. The terrificly strange style really does help the mood of this anime, a psychedelic off-key kind of a mood - something weird. And listen here folks, this is anime is as weird as it gets. Trapeze sometimes even incorporates live-action materials like faces and bodies, once again setting it apart from the usual anime. If you liked the art styles of anime like Mononoke, Mind Game, and Gankustuou this may be the artsy-fartsy anime for you.

Sound: 9/10
Character voices for Irabu are great. Whiny and shrill, loud and fast-paced, slow and chiseling - actually three different "voices" altogether (two voice actors). When Irabu changes persona's from his middle-aged man, to his bear-mask, to his child form, his voice changes and personality slightly changes as well. A really nice touch. As for the rest of the cast, nothing out of the ordinary, good voices, but nothing historic. The opening is loose and odd and fits the anime quite well, it has a good beat you might even start to hum. The ending is really great though. It fits the anime perfectly and whenever I hear it, I just feel like dancing. The ending suits the feel you get at the end of an episode of Trapeze, and that's what really counts. You have to make your catchy songs not only be catchy, but also connect to viewers emotions for more of an impact, and that's what Trapeze does.

Character: 10/10
A new character every episode? How am I supposed to like that? I won't even care for them if they just disappear in twenty minutes! Right? Wrong. A great cast of characters, just about every single one of them memorable. The recurring cast is Irabu, who I've already touched on, Mayumi - Irabu's nonchalant maid-nurse who supplies the patients with injections (and cleavage), and Fukuicchi the live-action doctor who pops up from time to time to inform the viewer about certain things he may not be familiar with (i.e. what OCD is). The interchanging cast is the patients. All appear in more than one episode, but only one episode is mainly focused on them. There's a reporter who's afraid of causing people trouble, there's a failed child actor who still thinks he's "got it", there's a baseball star who's feeling like he's lost his touch, there's even a man afraid of sharp edges. Just check them out for yourself.

Enjoyment: 10/10
Not a single episode I didn't enjoy more than the average anime. If I had to rate each episode, I'd give nine out of eleven of them a solid 10 and two of them a 9. Not too shabby. But this rating is only mine. It's not yours. If you don't like this anime, it's not because it's bad, it's because you simply *didn't like this anime*. It's a psychological show, about emotions and personal distress and what can happen to it when left alone. It's not the kind of a show with a message that reaches the world easily. All I can ask is that you try it out, and if you didn't like it after one episode don't drop it and give it a 1 out of ten (unless you seriously hated it that much, but I'd have to question your judgment skills - only watching one eleventh of something and turning it off).

Overall: 10/10
Wildly different and stunning in every sense. I'd be terribly disappointed if this anime didn't win some kind of award somewhere out there, whether it be for "Strangest Anime of All Time" or what I don't know*. But this is good. Watch it, and watch more than one episode. Why not watch two? I mean, twenty minutes won't kill you if you end up enjoying it.

I guess the point I'm trying to hit home is that a lot of people drop this anime because it isn't their cup of tea, and there's nothing wrong with that. This anime deserves more than that though, it deserves a chance for all the hard work put into it for making it as off-beat as possible and I'm just trying to supply a voice to do that. Now go forth, and witness the birth of the freak known as Trapeze!

*Actually Trapeze has won a few awards since, notably it's award for best show for young adults and "the Prize for Filming Technology by Motion Picture and Television Engineering Society of Japan."

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 21, 2016

ktulu007

Mixed Feelings

Kuuchuu Buranko is based on a series of short stories by Okuda Hideo. The stories have been adapted into multiple live action films, a television drama and this anime series from Toei animation. That's right, the same studio behind Dragonball, Sailor Moon, Precure, Digimon and many other anime. So, how did they do with this series? Let's delve in.

Story:

Irabu is a psychologist who works with all kinds of patients. The series basically covers eleven of his cases. What their neuroses are and how he treats them. All in a way that's supposed to be comedic.

But that's also the big flaw of the series. It's largely ... not actually funny. A lot of the humour is supposed to come from shifting art styles, Irabu's weird fetish for vitamin shots, his patients being shown with animal heads and other things that aren't actually funny. They're strange, certainly, but strange doesn't necessarily equate to comedic. Part of the issue is just that the setups are all pretty similar. We get a glimpse of the patient and their problem. Irabu has them given an injection and then we see them go about their lives for a bit while Irabu follows them to dispense advice and then we get a small indication that things are going fine for them before the episode ends. For a series that relies so much on surreal artwork the comedy is all rather sterile and predictable. From a comedic standpoint, it's pretty lacklustre. Another issue is that the attempts at comedic content are distracting enough to undermine the series' more serious elements

That being said, the series does keep your attention pretty well. Seeing the daily lives of the various people and how they carry on while trying to control their mental problems can be interesting. I also appreciate that the series does inform you of how the illnesses its portraying actually work or if they're pure fiction, as one is, instead of claiming to be any kind of accurate representation of those illnesses.

Characters:

In terms of characters, this is a kind of odd series. The major characters don't have much to them. Irabu is just kind of quirky. His nurse, Mayumi, doesn't have much personality aside from being kind of cold. The side characters ie the patients, however, get pretty nicely fleshed out. The series spends time setting them up and the bulk of them are fleshed out, believable characters. Which is a big part of why the psychological aspect of the series does generally work.

Art:

The series has an art style unlike any other series I've seen. There are a good three or four different art styles and the series mixes them together, shifts between them and it results in a pretty surreal atmosphere. That being said, there is one major failing to the whole thing. It's way too damn busy. The combination of bright primary colours and shifting artwork can be physically painful to look at. There were multiple points where I had to stop watching in the middle of an episode, take off my spectacle and rest my eyes for a while before continuing. Especially since it's pretty constant. Even putting the discomfort aspect aside, it just comes across as half ocular cacophony and half surreal.

Sound:

The acting is another heavily mixed element. The series did get some good actors, Paku Romi & Mitsuya Yuuji being the big ones, and they sound fine when they're talking normally, but they frequently don't speak normally. They operate with loud, exaggerated, bombastic performances that make Brian Blessed sound subtle. Irabu's character, voiced at times by both of the aforementioned actors, is the worst when it comes to that. Whenever you see him with a mouse's head, he sounds ear-bleedingly obnoxious. The music is brought to us by Mori Hideharu, who also worked on the music for Black Rock Shooter TV. It's all right. I wasn't super fond of it but I also didn't dislike it.

Ho-yay:

There really isn't any in this series.

Final Thoughts:

When it comes right down to it, the big issue with Kuuchuu Buranko is that there's so much about it that's overblown. A lot of the acting is bombastic. The artwork is overdone to the point where it can be painful. The comedy relies on things being overly strange and the other exaggerated factors. That being said, the psychological elements generally do work but I don't know if I can recommend it on that basis since this is a psychological comedy and the comedic elements generally don't work. Ultimately, it's a pretty average series. My final rating is a 5/10. The stuff that does work works well and the stuff that doesn't gravitates towards being obnoxious. If you want something a bit different and you like psychological elements, it might keep you entertained. If you want the comedic or dramatic elements, you'll probably be disappointed. Next week I'll look at something else psychological with Haibane Renmei. Until then, keep being fabulous.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jul 25, 2024

PheasantTaste

Not Recommended

I enjoyed this show, as many other people have, but most MAL users would not. The visual style is somewhat abnormal and the episodes are self-contained. Also, other reviews and synopses overstate the presence of psychiatry in the show beyond a fun setting. The show isn't really about psychiatry; it's just psychiatry-flavored. This is not a bad thing, but if you watch this show expecting something substantial in that regard, disappointment is inevitable.

This idea deserved more than just 11 episodes. My only complaint is that Irabu could've used more screen time.

Semi-spoilers:

I thought the last episode sucked. I fear that if they had made more ... episodes, they would've tried to deviate even more from the working formula.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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	Poll: Kuchu Buranko Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) grapeofdeath - Oct 15, 2009	202 replies	by Noctael »» Oct 29, 7:19 AM
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