Idiosyncratic and unfairly forgotten, a six-part OVA "Gosenzosama Banbanzai!" (literally, "Long Live the Ancestors!") belongs to the most experimental period in Oshii’s career. Told in the form of a loony play, this farcical tragicomedy revolves around the Yomota family: a teenage boy, Inumaru, his father Kinekuni and his mother Tamiko.
Their normal life starts to collapse after the arrival of a mysterious girl, Maroko, who claims to be Inumaru’s granddaughter from the future. Even though she has a hereditary star-shaped birthmark on her buttock, Tamiko refuses to acknowledge her as Yomota. So, she leaves her husband and son, and hires a private detective, Bannai Tatara, to reveal the true identity of the uninvited guest.
Driven by self-irony and absurd, slapstick humor, a twisted, paradoxical story is directed in the vein of the French New Wave masters, with a short metaphorical mockumentary in which different kinds of birds and humans are compared, at the beginning of each episode.
An otherwise linear narrative rooted in its own logic is deconstructed, as Oshii plays with both the characters’ and the audience’s expectations. However, his anarchic shenanigans are not meaningless and they do follow some rules – no matter how strange it may sound.
Utterly aware of the fact they are nothing but marionettes controlled by a merciless puppeteer, the protagonists still try to manipulate the events in order to turn the situation to their own advantage. Occasionally, they burst into “karaoke soliloquies” under the spotlight – and not only figuratively speaking. With the most essential props and the minimalist backdrops on one hand and medium-related "deviations" on the other, "Gosenzosama Banbanzai!" is simultaneously stagey and filmic.
After all this spectacle you are left wandering through this labyrinth of ideas, hoping to find the answer to a question asked since the beggining of human life: "Who are you, only a puppet?"