Score: 7/10, 4/5
Length: 11 Episodes
Genre: Drama, Action, Supernatural, Psychological, Yoai
Summary: Desperate to never lose the connections he's fought to establish with others, Yasaka Kazuki will do whatever it takes to make his little brother Haruka happy. Desperate to stay connected to his best friend, Jinnai Enta will bend over backwards to make Kazuki happy in the hopes that everything will eventually go back to normal. Desperate for gangster older brother's approval, Kuji Toi will commit any crime to keep the money flowing and his brother by his side. Try as they might, though, life has a way of testing and breaking the bonds people share. All the more so when a hidden war between kappas and otters drags these three into the conflict in exchange for the hope of having their wishes granted.
Review: Odd as this claim might be, I can't help but feel that there's something of a kinship between poetry and insanity. Both functionally regard our reality from a warped and often nonsensical perception that most other people fail to comprehend. Yet, if either is treated with a willingness to meet their words halfway, a strange kind of logic can eventually be gleaned from the madness, one that might even offer the listener profound insights into the world that most people wouldn't even think to consider. It should go without saying, though, that everything I said just now was utter bullshit. Statements like those simply work to affirm that people have the innate skill to notice patterns and draw connections between any two objects or concepts regardless of whether or not those connections actually exist. It is this very skill to dig for meaning in irrationality that allows the works of authors like Ikuhara to thrive. Using transgressive themes and bizarre imagery, Ikuhara manages to craft stories that practically challenges his audience to find all the little bits of meaning and subtlety in his work. In doing this, though, he ends up leaning on a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it could be argued that his works have a functionally infinite number of meanings since each audience member will naturally find meaning that relates specifically to their own life and experiences. On the other, it could be argued that his off-putting and haphazard way of building characters and stories could just be a sign that there isn't actually any meaning to anything he creates. Personally, I don't think either of these extremes are fair or even valid trains of thought though. Odd and confusing as Ikuhara's Sarazanmai might be, I'm pretty sure there's at least some intentionality and meaning to his work. If there wasn't, what would be the point? So, over the course of this review, I'll go into the basics of this show, the message it seems to be putting forward, and a few of the more questionable theories and connections I made over the course of the series.
Just keep in mind, though, that my theories might contradict others you've seen
and there will likely be dozens of others I hadn't even considered.
Unlike most Ikuhara titles, the primary focal point of Sarazanmai is actually fairly simple and much more in your face than usual. Put plainly, this is a show about "Connections," i.e. the connections people share and those that define who someone is and the general course of their life. From this core focus, the series then branches out to regard this topic from a variety of different angles and offers criticism of both the discourse itself and society as a whole. Serving as vehicles for this discussion, Sarazanmai follows the lives of three boys who are desperately struggling to maintain a connection essential to who they are as they interact with the mundane and supernatural alike. For example, the show's primary protagonist, Yasaka Kazuki, is struggling to hold onto his connection to his family and, more importantly, his little brother. In order to cling to the connection between him and his brother, Kazuki works tirelessly to maintain a lie just to keep Haruka happy. Dressed like the town's kappa-themed idol, Sara-chan, Kazuki goes around town, poses for pictures, and messages them to Haruka just to make him think he's personal friends with Sara-chan. In much the same vein, Kazuki's best friend, Jinnai Enta, struggles desperately to stay connected with Kazuki during this same tumultuous period in his life. Bending over backwards to stay relevant in Kazuki's life, Enta spends the vast majority of the show's being his yes man even though Kazuki rarely even notices that Enta is there. Lastly, the local juvenile delinquent, Kuji Toi, gets dragged into their nonsense in spite of his desperate struggle to remain relevant in his gangster older brother's life. From making and selling drugs to outright killing people for his brother's sake, Toi serves as the incendiary loner of the group with little care for anything other than his own goals. Functionally-speaking, though, he actually becomes a reasonable middle ground between Kazuki's desperate struggle and Enta's general helplessness, rounding out the group in a manner you wouldn't expect of his attitude.
So, in other words, the show's worst boy also ends up being its best boy.
I warned you this would be weird.
Through all their mundane drama, Saraqzanmai steadily works to flesh out its core discourse on "connections." Individually, each character offers a good amount to consider when it comes to this theme but the connections that grow from their unwitting friendship bring a great deal nuance to the narrative. As Kazuki, Enta, and Toi but heads over the course of any given episode and begrudgingly agree to work with one another, we see the connections these three form undergo a great deal of strain. From drama born from simple disagreements and selfish actions to outright cruelty, the connections these three share offers a decent glimpse into the variety of ways human relationships can go wrong. Particularly because of the fact that they were hardly friends to begin with, we're given a bleak reminder of just how weak our interpersonal bonds can be. To ensure these episodic struggles get hammered home, though, the show offers decent amount to consider whenever it reveals the title of each episode--following a general pattern of "I Want to Connect but...."
So, yeah, in the end, this show is just meant to be representative of your average, mundane
struggles to get along with other people. Nothing weird to see here.
Now, as for the off-the-walls insane supernatural aspect, the story actually remains much of the same. Having accidentally and conveniently upset the prince of the kappas, Keppi, the three boys are forced into an agreement where they will wipe out any and all kappa-zombies the evil otter faction creates on the prince's behalf in exchange for the chance to have their wishes granted. During these almost magical girl-esque segments, the boys are transformed into tiny kappa, sing a song, and then defeat the kappa-zombies by ripping the shrikodama (the twisted embodiment of their earthly desires) out of their butts. Bizarre as these segments might sound, though, all they really do is reinforce the lessons of the show's mundane drama through a distracting, drugged out filter. After all, as the show reveals fairly early on, the kappa-zombies are just people whose socially-inappropriate desires made them ideal targets for the evil Otter Empire. Using two officers of the town's police force, Reo and Mabu, these individuals are rounded up and functionally disappeared from society so that their desires might be warped into something more destructive, turning them into "kappa-zombies."
Of course, the violent creation of the kappa-zombies also involves a song
and dance number, much like the boys' battle sequence.
Strange as these kinky monster-of-the-day segments might be, though, they ultimately work to offer yet more facets to consider when regarding the nature of connections. After all, while the boys' struggles might give us the chance to consider such things in a vacuum, the reality of our world is that nothing exists in a vacuum. Quickly and brutally, the introduction of societal norms and Japan's unique willingness to value the community over the individual stirs up the discourse and makes things much more complicated than they already were. Specifically, as the kappa-zombies prove, there is a point at which connections and our desires to stay connected to other people can become toxic and unacceptable. Whether it be the flirt who collects women just to satisfy some bizarre obsession or the masochist who demands that his girlfriend kick him like she would a ball, the kappa-zombies showcase how desire can be seen as something undesirable. Yet, at the same time, they offer an extreme contrast to the destructive desires and habits of the main trio. Between their selfish desires and those warped by the Otter Empire, we're forced to ask at what point the line gets drawn. At what point does a selfish desire go from being socially negligible to one that would demand that someone be disappeared for the good of the society? From what I've heard before and this show seems to criticize, that line is drawn when that desire actively harms the community. Noted through the way the kappa-zombies steal and hoard a particular item relevant to their desire from the boys' community, this idea seems to ring true. So, no matter how much the boys harm one another with their selfishness, they never become targets for Reo or Mabu since their desire isn't nearly problematic enough to suit their needs.
It's eventually revealed that Keppi's been on their radar for a while now and rightfully so.
This, then, brings us to some of the more questionable considerations Sarazanmai seems to offer its discussion on connections. The largest of these considerations is the simple question of how society's role affect these connections or might cause strain. As noted through Reo, Mabu, and the Otter Empire's involvement throughout the series, it stands to reason that society would have a stake in how people form connections and might wish to monitor them for any number of reasons. For instance, the police that enforce the supposed will of the society would want to eradicate any problems within the community. In Japan, this can be seen in the way that the law and law enforcement have a way of just making people's livelihoods and social cache vanish, instantly severing a criminal's connection to the community and isolating them from other people. Yet, on a fundamental level, society is supposed to connect people and bring them together. Shared heritage, customs, and quirks are all things born of a functioning society that strengthen the bonds between people despite our more selfish natures. The way Kazuki, Enta, and Toi bond over their shared love of soccer and a local pro player is a perfect example of this. So, the question then comes up of where all this can go wrong. Like people, a society can become corrupted as it seeks to satisfy the desire of the few rather than the many, according to the general imagery of Sarazanmai.
That's right, you guessed it, Sarazanmai is a criticism on the poison of capitalism.
On top of being a cute pun on the word for Otter possessing the word for "lie," all of the scenes involving the Otter Empire and kappa-zombies contain images of the commercial industry. Packaging and shipping human desire en masse, the Otter Empire's ambitions seem to run in tandem with humanity's more materialist desires. In essence, the villains come to represent the way people's obsession for things rather than each other can stain and fray the connections that tie people together. What's more, the fact that Reo and Mabu are in this literal commercial empire's pocket shows how law enforcement can put further strain on social connections as well as their own relationship. A society that's fearful of their law enforcement and the power they wield would, after all, be more inclined to isolate themselves for fear of becoming a target of the law. Then, to fill the void of those lost connections, material things become a simple channel for unhealthy obsessions that the police would, then, work to root out and put on display to engender yet more fear.
Not to mention the fear of legal repercussion of being seen as a sexual deviant obsessed with butts.
In the end, though, all this fear and negativity isn't so much the point of Sarazanmai as it is just one of a million different things that can be gleaned from it. All the various facets of the show's discourse on "connections" are simply a means to regard human nature, our society, and the simple narrative that people should fight to maintain their connections to other people. No matter how terrible people might be, how hopeless our personal situations might be, and how hard it might be for us to face the traumas of our past or the demons that haunt us, Sarazanmai ultimately states that nothing is more important than staying connected with other people. After all, no matter how much strain the Kazuki, Enta, and Toi put on their friendship with their selfish actions and hurtful words, they still ended up growing as people because they fought to stay together.
What a bunch of good, terrible boys.
Now, as I said during the Seasonal Wrap-up, a big part of whether you consider this show good or not is going to depend on your taste for the weird and off-putting. For me, I felt the hiccups that ran rampant throughout the series--particularly in regards to how forceful the drama felt at times--were easy to look past when all was said and done. For other people, though, it's likely that this show will cross a line for you at one point or another thanks to its transgressive nature. I can easily see Toi's criminal tendencies, Enta's desperate pining for Kazuki, or Kazuki's generally just being a shit for about 80% of the series being too much for some people to handle. In those cases, it doesn't matter how good the art and animation are or how catchy the music is. It's just a point of fact, I feel, that a lot of people just aren't going to like this show. The thing is, though, is that that's pretty much the nature of Ikuhara's anime. You have to be one of those people willing to sit back and experience the ride in the hope that you'll get something out of it in the end. So, if you're like me and willing to take that leap of faith for some shows, then you'll probably have a blast with Sarazanmai. If you're not, it probably just isn't worth the time or frustration.