oconnelly - 2015-04-12 21:30:35

[Old review is old.]

While watching this show, I really had to question myself if I was being subjected to some new form of humor miles beyond my comprehension. What was happening onscreen looked like comedy, it sounded like comedy, but lo and behold I wasn’t laughing. Was I just not getting this show’s formula or something? Was I too simple-minded to understand its complexity of wit and cleverness? But around halfway through the show, it hit me. It wasn’t clever, it wasn’t wit, it wasn’t even humor. This show was just fucking annoying.

The only way I could imagine this show being made is if a group of 3 in-between animators from Sailor Moon got together and asked themselves “How do we make a musical anime?”. Apparently you do so by recycling a ton of lifeless animation, reusing a ton of clichéd musical numbers, and bringing in a bunch of voice actors that can’t sing. Slap on a boring, easily repeatable plot and you have a musical masterpiece, right?

So what’s the premise of this musical masterpiece? The Nerima Daikon Brothers, a trio of siblings who run a Daikon farm in the middle of a town, dreaming of a time when they can play in a band sometime in the future. The typical formula of an episode follows as so:
The Nerima Daikon Brothers are broke.
Somebody elsewhere is doing something scandalous or illegal and getting lots of money.
The brothers and a police friend complain about each of their love lives.
They all check out whoever is raking in the money.
They go to a clerk to ask for something that will help them defeat the moneymakers.
They defeat the moneymakers.
The people who got scammed get their money back.
Rinse and repeat 12 times. Every episode is the exactly the same, and if you saw one, then you saw them all.

The characters are just as pathetic as the so-called “plot”, inventing some of the most annoying one-dimensional people that you could possibly ask to carry an anime. Each of their characterization is made up of a simple adjective to describe their personalities, as well as another character that they are automatically attracted to, no mater how much it fits or not. I’d much rather take the blandest of bland tsunderes than follow these thin and pasty excuses for personalities. By the time the show ends, nobody changes or leaves a memorable impact. Each of their romance plotlines ends up being laughably shallow or just more attempts to shove more generic overdone anime comedy aspects down our throats. It was a chore to spend five hours with them, and I pray that I never cross paths with them in the future.

The comedy is indescribable as I’ve sat here for half an hour trying properly describe it in terms that make immediate sense. The closest I got was the physical manifestation of Hitler’s asshole, but I doubt that will give you a sense of how insultingly horrid it really is. It’s like someone went through every anime made for little kids and took out all of the groaner jokes that didn’t work to be compiled here. The animation is a joke, the music is a joke, the only thing about this show that isn’t a joke are the jokes themselves because of how devoid they are of anything resembling decent humor. As much as this show was obviously attempting to be a comedy, every solitary minute is jam packed with so much annoying and lifeless content that is just becomes an unpleasant headache. It’s like a bad comedian turning to Michael Jackson as a desperate source for easy joke content (actually that’s too accurate since the last hour of the show is dedicated to making fun of Michael Jackson). Bottom line, all of these jokes can be completely outdone by other boring shows that reuse the same boring jokes, for the sole reason that at least they were executed with a bit of moderation and patience.

Finally, after hours of nothing remotely funny or entertaining, a finale that barely even deviates from the normal routine comes and goes, leaving every single aspect of the show unchanged. You could put the first episode right after the last one and it would blend seamlessly. So what was the point of me watching this show in the end? Apparently it was an accidental five hour vasectomy and nothing more.

I refuse to believe that this animation was done in 2006. I may be making a low blow to a legendary show here, but the weaker bits of SDF Macross look like a Mokoto Shinkai film compared to this anime. It’s unbelievably…dead. Yes, that’s the best word to describe it. Nobody gives any level of care if it at least looks decent, and if it did turn out that the animation team consisted of those three survivors of the other anime master of rinse and repeat plotlines, I would buy it without question. Bare bones execution, minimum amount of creativity, though to be fair, it’s not like this content was really deserving of any good presentation. At least it would have been nice to look at some decent artwork to get me through this maze of awful music and torturous writing, but it’s sadly not here.

And thus we get to the music section. It would seem fitting that a musical anime would have a lot riding on the actual numbers, but just like every other aspect in the show, nobody cares if it works or not as long as it fills up time. None of these pieces are the least bit fun, humorous, or worthwhile. They get old as soon as they’re introduced, and you’d better hope you have a high tolerance rate for uninspired generic tunes because you’re going to hear the same soulless ten songs about twenty times over. I couldn’t bear watching more than one episode a day because twenty minutes of the same old song and dance were apparently enough to fill my bullshit tolerance level.

The worst part about the music is that it ends up being impossible for certain tracks to leave your head. The overly simplistic campy renditions of each musical style grind their way into the inner workings of your cranium and refuse to leave because dammit, it’s generic and repetitive. In all fairness, there was one song that sounded at least decent, and I am extremely thankful that it happened to be the ED. It gave me something to look forward to at the end of my daily twenty minute braincell genocide, and unlike every other wretched tune, the singers actually sounded okay. A slow, easygoing tempo with comparatively calming voices was the perfect remedy for the nonstop energetic attempts to make sure viewers don’t lose their attention. I latched onto it from episode one as the single aspect of this anime that would at least keep my sanity.

I didn’t have time to listen to the English dub for the show, mainly because I didn’t want to subject myself to anything more regarding this anime. But the stuff that needs fixing is obvious: Getting performers that aren’t annoying to listen to, people that can actually sing well for more than a tenth of the time, and at least adding in some original lines that bring in a better sense of humor. From the premise I received, I doubt even the best dub in the world could save this anime. The original actors were intolerable and straining to listen to, and since people complain about the original intention being the “correct” intention anyway, I have no problem with completely writing off this sound design.

So when everything comes together, is Nerima Daikon Brothers worth your time?

I don’t think I’ve cringed harder in any other anime. I’ve laughed at how stupid shows were, I’ve psychotically raged about certain shows that exemplify the absolute anus of anime and humanity, but no show has been able to make me completely embarrassed for everyone involved in it, to the point where I faulted myself for being wholly involved in its presentation. After making the mistake of going in blindly and getting absolutely nothing worthwhile, I can easily say that it’s just some mind-numbing little show that nobody really cares about and isn’t remembered. But now, sadly, you know about it’s existence. So I sincerely hope that this knowledge comes with an obvious warning: “Worthless Bullshit Ahead”.

I give this anime a score of 2.4/10 (1 star), and a Highly Unrecommended rating.