![]() ![]() ![]() #5 The Endingįor all its flaws, I would still say that I kind of liked the overall story of Abenobashi once it starts unpacking. It’s nowhere near as competently put together as either of the other options, but at least I could tolerate listening to whoever Julius Jellinek is. This led me, in desperation, to the German dub. All kudos to Jessica Boone and Luci Christian, the voices are well done and it lends the dub a lot of personality it just loses that novelty value after a while and then you still have to listen to it for 8 more episodes. The Japanese audio track is serviceable, but painfully generic with especially Satoshi’s annoying qualities being amplified by Tomo Saeki’s voice and pitch.Ī dub usually offers an outcome for me, but the Osaka setting was interpreted by the licensing company as translating well into a Texas one. I have watched episodes of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi in every language available to me and none of the versions were ideal. I am generally fine with fan-service, but one would think that the cast of older characters would have filled that role well enough without having to involve a literal grade-schooler. Similar jokes pop up throughout the show and all of them I found iffy. This is a classic Gainax production and while their library around this time was filled with fan-service and sexual comedy, I don’t remember their shows ever going so far with such a young girl.Īrumi is 12, yet episode 3 is entirely about her panties being stolen and a chase across a shopping center spaceship to get them back, filled with many near-misses where she just barely manages to cover-up or we only get to see her naked behind. To harp on that point about Arumi wetting herself a bit longer, I felt uncomfortable with the show’s attempts to sexualize her. ![]() The show does have its moments and a few jokes were on point, but the lows dip so far that the show completely lost me. Episode 1 is already full of burping and fart humor, episode 2 adds in an uncomfortable gag about inflation, and episode 3 doubles down on that by having Arumi wet herself while Satoshi runs around peeing on everything else. I think the point where I gave up on enjoying the show was a shout-heavy martial arts tournament filled with goofy expressions meant to mimic Fist of the North Star, before transitioning into a straight-faced Dragon Ball Z gag.īetween all the screaming and obvious parodies, the show is also vulgar. Its comedy is as obvious as it comes and goes accompanied by frantic animation and lots, and lots of yelling. It could be too on the nose with its jokes and it could be too loud, but it comes nowhere close to how incessantly annoying Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi is. And, you know, Excel Saga wasn’t exactly perfect. There is so much fucking screaming in this anime.Ībenobashi is a parody of various popular media, much like Excel Saga was some years prior. Aki, a male cross-dresser whose only significant contribution in episode 1 entails creeping on the underage Satoshi. The only character that stands out is Ms. Arumi’s father is a chef who speaks in gratuitous French, her grandfather is an obstinate old man who gets angry all the time, they aren’t exactly top tier archetypes. The characters that are familiar really aren’t worth the spotlight. If they did, I completely forgot about him. Likewise, I don’t even really know if they had the recurring salesman appear in episode 1 at all. It took me until episode 4 to register that a recurring villainess was meant to be Satoshi’s sister, for example. An idea that would have been effective if we had an understanding of how these characters are meant to be before witnessing their comedic transformations.Īrumi and Satoshi are on a quest to return home and constantly have to deal with alternate-world versions of their family members and friends, but many of these made only brief appearances without any meaningful dialogue at all. Each time, familiar characters from the shopping arcade are recast to play a variety of different roles. Each new episode sees Arumi and Satoshi arrive in a new world that parodies some genre of popular media, like a sci-fi setting where they get to pilot mechs or a mafia town complete with noir-style film grain. Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi is a very episodic show. However, as the Asahina family prepares to move out, a bizarre accident sends Arumi and Satoshi to a different version of the shopping center: a medieval fantasy one that runs on video game logic. ![]() A move that would separate Arumi from her childhood friend Satoshi Imamiya. Arumi Asahina’s family runs a French restaurant there and they have their sights set on moving across the country to a more lively location. An antiquated shopping arcade is slowly falling apart as businesses move out and customers stay away. ![]()
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