Hello, Nurse!

As much as I may relish anime with intricate plots, compelling characters, and solid direction, at the start of each new season I usually pick at least one show to watch that looks awful. Sometimes, for instance, I'll pick up a show because of its overused premise in the hope that it'll somehow find a new way to explore it. Sometimes my lizard brain is entranced by big cartoon boobies in the promotional art despite knowing that's how they git ya! If reviewers pan a pilot for being incredibly sexist or racist, I'm intrigued; I can't change that about myself. The thing is, sometimes a seemingly crappy show can turn into a solid guilty pleasure. Like this season's Triage X.

The premise sounds simple enough: Mikami Arashi gives his life as a child in an attempt to save his best friend Mochizuki Ryu from an explosion. Ryu's mad father, Doctor Mochizuki, however, deems his own son as unlikely to survive, and sacrifices him for the limbs and heart necessary to restore Arashi to life. Years later, Arashi works with other resurrected patients as Docot Mochizuki's personal assassin, eliminating the criminal scum that infects the human population. Oh, and every other teammate happens to be a female nurse, idol, singer, or high school student with very improbable figures.

The reason for this is the source manga comes from the pen of Shoji Sato, illustrator of Highschool of the Dead. I'm proud to say I guessed such a connection before confirming it for a fact; something about the over-the-top action and fetishized proportions just gave me flashbacks. Those who go in expecting a retread of 2010's hit anime series will be let down, though. The animation budget is noticeably low, not quite to derpy-face levels, but low enough that highlights and shading are practically nonexistent. More tragically, Tetsuro Araki isn't directing. I get that he was probably too busy rolling in his Attack on Titan money to touch this work, but I'd just love to see what the man who gave us the infamous “bullet time boobs” sequence could do with this material.

Triage X's saving grace is that it doesn't really downplay its own outlandishness in the way Highschool of the Dead did by trying to make to relate to the characters, their suffering, or any similar bullshit. In that show we were expected to believe that your typical high schoolers could suddenly become badass zombie-killing machines. Here's your average teenager turned slayer of a hundred undead freaks; you can relate to them, right? In contrast, Triage X doesn't even try to earn your empathy with most of the cast. Here's Hitsugi, a sexy nurse by day. By night, she puts on an oni mask, punches through walls, and kills people with a minigun. Now here's Yuko, a doctor with JJ-cups magically changing her hair color and slicing through a Humvee with her katana. Turns out the tired character-building tropes Highschool of the Dead relied on aren't as effective as characters so bananas you accept them in spite of themselves.

Basically, this show is much more willing to have fun. Almost every mission ends with an abandoned building getting blown up, and the good guys always go to chillax at an onsen immediately afterwards. Sure, Arashi tends to question if what he's doing is right and angst over his Frankenstein-esque origins, but otherwise he's a pretty blandly agreeable guy. Compare that with Highschool of the Dead's combination of great action scenes with borderline uncomfortable perviness and bleak depression (it ends with a quote from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, for crying out loud), and I'll tend to choose the show that promises a less flashy but more unashamed good time.

Is Triage X for everyone? No, and maybe I'm overselling its appeal. It's still a fanservice show, and suffers from the stigma that go with that genre; namely average-to-middling animation and an obvious male gaze. However, the action is creative and engaging, as are a surprising number of storylines. If you're outright looking for a fanservice romp but have been burned by too many shitty entries, I'd definitely recommend this one. Odds are, it'll be just what the doctor ordered.