Reviews

Kachou Ouji is a fun romp from 1999 with an engaging premise and fun execution, limited both by the resources available to it at the time and by shortcomings well within their control to fix. The idea of Ouji being a regular salaryman, thrust into the limelight of a galactic war to save the earth centering around his passion for music is pure gold, but at the end of the day the execution fails to live up to its premise. The story as a whole is fun and cool, but also nonsensical, and not in a way the bones of the show feel ready to support. There are too many problems for the show to be taken seriously, but the show itself isn't stunningly cool or wacky enough to forgive those problems. Perhaps the biggest problem with this somewhat generic storyline with a twist is the fact that I had trouble suspending my disbelief while I watched it. It wasn't consistent enough to fix those problems, and it wasn't quite good enough to forget about those problems, so the whole time I was very aware I was watching an anime.

As for the art, it is on-par for a late 90s anime, though the 2D often feels flat in the middle of the season, which shows in their faces and their inability to express emotion. They also reuse shots over and over again, and 100 percent of the 3D is atrocious, but again it was the 90s so while its unsightly, I can't in good faith fault the show for those things. The character design and background concepts were really well done, and the conceptual nature of these aspects were communicated with a great deal of skill.

The sound is where this anime really shined. The musical compositions made for this anime really did rock, and though they repeated pieces fairly often, they mixed it up often enough to keep things fresh too. Beyond all the hard hitting music, the sounds of the world also held up really well, like the sound of a file against a nail, or the varying sounds of footsteps depending on the footwear of certain characters.

Speaking of characters, I feel like that was a definite weak spot for this anime. Ouji and his whole schtick is funny and connects with the viewer well, but his motivations are oftentimes incomprehensible, and his reasoning often lacking. Same goes for his wife Yoshiko, who often seems to be flying off the handle of one extreme or the other for no reason at all. The rest of the characters were alright, and added a lot of depth to the show itself, especially the alien trio and Ouji's old bandmates, but except the alien major guy who was written like he was animated- with a stick up his ass. At the end of the day I had a fun time watching Kachou Ouji, but it didn't blow me away, which a show like this needs to do if it is going to work. Look at Gurren Lagann for a good example of something like that at play. Now the finale, THAT blew me away, but it ended abruptly and even itself didn't necessarily feel earned. It almost felt like this show was filler between episodes 1 and 13, thrown together to justify episodes 1 and 13. If the rest of the show showed the level of dedication and quality that episode 13 did, this show would probably rank closer to a 7, but alas, it did not. At the end of the day it was still fun, I do not regret watching it, and I certainly do not regret listening to it.