![]() 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. Despite these antisocial tendencies, it's the social failure Shinji that chooses to reject Instrumentality, asserting his individuality and reuniting with his friends while facing reality and all of its struggles.An antiquated shopping arcade is slowly falling apart as businesses move out and customers stay away. Protagonist Shinji Ikari constantly ran away from his problems as well as from other people, who he feared hurting or being hurt by. This choice to continue living in the fantasy world of isekai was definitely something that many viewers didn't expect, and in many ways, it's the opposite of the ending in the TV version of Neon Genesis Evangelion.Ī fellow Gainax production, the now legendary Evangelion was as much a psychological exploration of its characters as it was a mecha anime series. ![]() He realizes this by the series' conclusion, but instead of turning back to reality to face his problems head-on, he turns his back on reality. In being such a deconstruction of isekai, it also ended up reversing the ending of one of Gainax's most popular and iconic anime ever.Īs mentioned previously, the various realities in Abenobashi are born out of the psyche of Arumi, as these escapist ideas keep him from accepting and dealing with the realities confronting him in the real world. Likewise, the lack of any real reincarnation into these different worlds further separates it from its more modern ilk, as does the flipping of the power fantasy concept. This makes the story, fun and wacky as it is, a much more mindful affair than many modern isekai. He doesn't realize this initially, but this journey is in many ways a psychological exploration and avoidance of his personal trauma. These realities, which range in themes from dating sims to fantasy, are all born out of the mind of Arumi. They soon find themselves transported away from their home to a series of different realities, all of which are somewhat humorous in nature. The plot revolves around two children named Arumi and Sasshi, who live in the soon-to-be renovated eponymous Abenobashi shopping area. The series' intro was the catchy banger "Treat or Goblins" by Megumi Hayashibara, and the show was later adapted into a manga series. Abenobashi was a 2002 anime created by the illustrious studio Gainax, with the animation handled by both Gainax and the equally as well-known Madhouse. ![]()
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