Customer Reviews

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, Vol. 2

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Things take a more serious turn in volume two of "Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi," and the wild chaos of the first volume starts to take shape. Like the previous episodes,Sasshi and Arumi fling from world to world, meeting the bouncy and enthusiastic Mune Mune ("Chesty chesty" in Japanese) who adapts to each world and spurs along the craziness. This time, a new character is revealed in a mysterious blue-haired man to whom Mune Mune is inexplicably drawn.

The first episode has the kids in a dinosaur world, with Mune Mune as the jungle princess in the appropriate leopard-skin bikini. Running from danger, they meet the blue-haired man who says that their fates are linked, but he is still unsure and clouded. Wild and funny, it maintains the tone of previous episodes.

Next, a Film Noir world sees Sasshi and Arumi in grown up bodies, on opposite sides of a dangerous games of gangsters and copper. Arumi joins the short-skirted Abeno Angels police squad, while Sasshi masquerades as professional sniper Rugolgo (a parody of "Golgo 13"). Some great gags here, but the tone changes when Mune Mune comes face-to-face with the blue-haired man, and flashes with anger and rage. The blue-haired man reveals a deep secret of Sasshi's to Arumi, and things begin to become clear.

Finally, the comedy and slapstick ceases entirely, and the Studio Gainax brilliance begins to shine through in the third episode. A flashback, focusing on the founding of the Abenobashi Shopping arcade, and the Love Triangle that develops between Sasshi's grandfather, the blue-haired man and a beautiful 18-year old girl named Mune. A bittersweet episode on fate and love, it is a nice break from the wackiness and non-sequitor nature of the series.

A great DVD all in all, with three excellent episodes and the series really moving along. As with other DVDs in this series, there are actually some good special features included hilarious voice actor outtakes.

As usual, the only problem with "Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi" is the Osaka dialect, which the producers have dealt with in a few ways. The English dub is atrocious, featuring faux Southern accents in an approximation attempt. This is ridiculous, as the Osaka dialect is an urban dialect, not rural, and a thick Brooklyn accent would be more appropriate. The subtitle takes a more direct approach, but still loses the flavor of the language, and for US audiences it is difficult to so firmly set this series in Osaka as the creators intended.

For those not informed in the ways of anime, a thirteen-episode show, like Abenobashi or Serial Experiments: Lain is distributed on four discs. This is just the way it is, and you pay more for a better picture (for comparison, check out the Fox DVDs. Picture quality is still good, but artifacting tends to show up more often due to the lower bitrates.)

As for this particular disc, the second episode, featuring a 20s-era crime world, and the third episode, detailing the past of the older generations are the gems. I would actually rate this about 4.25, but I fear that this disc would be damaged by the review below. Again, I do love this series. Truly a delicious viewing experience.

Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi Volume 2 is a DVD that contains three episodes of the series. The episodes included on this disc are: "Extinction! Abenobashi Ancient Dinosaur Shopping Arcade," "In the Night Fog! Abenobashi Hard Boiled Shopping Arcade," and "Flashback! Magical Shopping Arcade Birth." A booklet is included with this DVD, and the booklet is designed in such a way so it looks and reads like a tabloid newspaper. While I normally find DVD booklets to be dry reading, the booklet included with this DVD was actually very enjoyable.

There are four extras included on this release. The first extra on the disc is "AD Vid-Notes." This feature allows you to turn on or off pop-ups that appear during the episodes to explain cultural references. The second extra is labeled as "Outtakes." This feature, which runs for nearly four minutes, contains three to four scenes of the English dub. After each correct take, there is a corresponding "outtake" to go along with it. Each "outtake" contains something that isn't appropriate for the scene; however, the changed lines tend to be funny. However, it should be mentioned that most of the changed lines in the "outtakes" contain adult humor.

Next in the extras menu is "Clean Opening." This is a version of the opening credits that is truly textless; not only is there no credit text, but no subtitles for the song appear, either. There is also a "Clean Closing," which is also a truly textless version of the ending credits.

The next feature is "ADV Previews." This link takes you to a menu with previews for Happy Lesson, Slayers: Gorgeous, Saiyuki, Super Gals!, Pretear, and Orphen 2: Revenge. The final extra is the DVD credits, which is just a single screen providing credit for the people involved with putting together this DVD release.

While this DVD may not have much in the way of "interesting" special features, it's still a release I would be willing to recommend to anime viewers who are seventeen years of age or older. However, this DVD is now out of print, due in large part to ADV Films going out of business. If you can locate a used copy of this DVD, then I would recommend picking it up if you enjoy comedies that poke fun at anime and otaku references.

"Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi Volume 2" is all about answering questions.

Well, okay, it's not ALL about answering questions -- half is about that, and half of it is mayhem and madness, machine guns and medieval mansions. While Arumi and Sasshi are still swimming against a tide of bizarre spoofs, the writers of this cracked-out comedy anime also introduce a darker, more tragic vein to the storyline.

Sasshi and Arumi find themselves in a foggy 1930s gangster film, where Sasshi is mistaken for a legendary sniper. And Arumi is practically abducted by the Abeno Angels (police style), who are intent on stopping the Pelican Family's illicit snail trade! Then they find themselves in a world based on dating sims, where Sasshi is the beloved of all around... and Arumi is a horned goblin bullied by a chicken.

In the meantime, there's a flashback episode in which we see Grandpa Masa in his youth. The Abenobashi Shopping Arcade was being built by the mysterious Mr. Abe, who attracted the affections of the girl Masa was in love with -- a girl who looks suspiciously like Mune Mune.

When Arumi stomps off, Eutus appears to take Sasshi away with him, to a rather strange Heian-era mansion. There the blue-haired man's true identity will be revealed, along with the reason Sasshi's fate has been linked to his. And most importantly, we learn the tragic reason Sasshi never wants to go back home....

Despite all the jiggle, potty humor and wild spoofery of "Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi," the second volume becomes very serious at times -- even tragic. The storyline was kind of insubstantial before, but the clues and foreshadowing are suddenly fleshed out in a rush. The arcade, the hinted-at love triangle, and even some surprising revelations about Sasshi.

But fortunately the writers haven't lost their sense of humor -- they have lots of fun with the comic-relief bullets that shrink the victim into a cute comic relief character ("My legs... they're so short. I look like a dork!"), sim spoofery (a robot angel?), and Arumi's increasingly whacked-out behavior ("Let Sasshi know the torments of HEEEEEEEEELLLLLLL...").

These episodes also reveal just who the mysterious Eutus is, as well as the loopy half-naked redhead Mune-Mune. And Sasshi turns out to be a bit more than the geeky boy who knows his way around every world -- he learns some amazing new powers from Eutus, and his feelings for Arumi are shown in his actions. As for Arumi... she's starting to crack up. And who can blame her? She's had one fun stint in the entire series, as a torch singer.

"Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi" adds some depth to the wild spoofery and whacked-out comedy -- and leaves you wondering what Sasshi is going to do next.

When rating the second DVD volume of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi I have to consider it from two different perspectives. If I were just rating it based on artwork, comedy, drama and action then I could easily have given it 5 stars. But the fact is that I feel like I have been ripped off by the American studio, now let me tell you why. Animes are already overpriced, with an average of only four episodes on them, when they could just as easily put an entire short series on a single DVD, like Shamanic Princess; 9 episodes would be the standard in an ethical industry. But this DVD fails to meet even that standard, it only has 3 episodes on it but the price is the same as the previous one with 4.

Now lets look at it on the basis of regular anime factors. The artwork is great in this series, of course its hard to find an anime without great (or at least good) art. The episodes on this DVD add much to the Abenobashi storyline, the viewer gets background on the adults which show up in the, "game worlds." The comedy is also very good, and seems to spoof real video games, such as people deflating when being shot, that reminded me of Mario.

I really wish I could give this DVD five stars, but I cannot get over how A.D. Vision has ripped off anime fans around the country.

Unlike the previous review, I think that hte anime is priced quite well if you considar Japanese prices which are usually roughly 58.00 and have about 2 episodes. So you need to get you're ignorant ass and shut it up cause you SUCK