The Right Kind of Sucking

I think I've found it. A bona fide so-bad-it's-good classic. An anime that touched me in much the same way Angel Cop touched me; so wrong, yet so right. Its name is Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned.

Now, you wouldn't really expect something from way back in 1980 to leave that sort of impression on anyone; when older shows and movies get bad, they generally don't get memorably bad. And the directors had worked on plenty of well-regarded shows, with the comedy Doctor Slump probably bearing their most distinct creative fingerprints. By all accounts, this is quite the faithful adaptation of a Marvel Comics series (as evidenced by the Western designs), though I'm admittedly unfamiliar with the comics' quality. The only thing I know for sure is that creatures of the night wouldn't have their dignity steamrollered like this until Twilight.

Dracula himself is actually this TV special's main character, or butt-monkey to be more accurate. And as it turns out, he's actually a really nice guy! But that darn Lucifer's always bringing him down, man, so the mountain of bodies to Dracula's name really aren't his fault. He even tries to stick it to the man by kidnapping a Satanic church's sacrifice, but ends up falling in love with her at first sight. They have a kid together.

Are any of you buying all this? Good, because the movie throws it at us in the first thirty minutes, before things start getting weird.

It isn't until the child, Janus, is a few months old that Lucifer realizes he's been screwed, and orders a trap laid for the vampire. Up until now Dracula's lover, Dolores, has renounced her devil-worshiping ways as a simple mistake of youth: “I agreed to become the bride of Satan as a lark”, as she herself puts it. She's instantly willing to take up the Satanic Church's mysterious offer to baptize and protect her child, however. Hey, they must offer some pretty good protection. It's a trap, of course, as they attempt to weaken and kill Dracula by . . . lowering metal shutters in front of the windows with crosses painted on. Did the church come equipped with metal shutters for the windows, or did they have to be specially installed? Did any of the devil-worshipers feel conflicted about painting crosses all over their church? These are not questions Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned cares to ask. Regardless, my plot description ends here because some twists no description can do justice.

While the plot certainly provides much amusement for reading like a bad dream after drinking too much spiked punch at Halloween, the characters themselves also hold their own. There's a trio of vampire hunters with an evil-detecting dog (!) who you expect to be the good guys, but end up more like a Greek chorus. They always end up standing within crossbow range of Dracula while he's distracted by/fighting something else, only for their wheelchair-bound leader to say, “Wait, let's see what happens here”. Then he helpfully explains to his comrades (and the audience) what just happened, but not until Dracula leaves. 

The really funny part is, they never hide themselves well, yet Dracula never acknowledges them unless they directly confront him! They pass each other on the street! I just like to imagine what he's thinking: “Who're these crossbow-bearing youngsters who just show up at all the important events of my life? Ah, well, maybe they'll go away if I keep ignoring them . . .” Dolores is your standard tragic woman, bemoaning how she can never again find true happiness in life. You joined the Church of Satan and married Dracula yourself, honey. And let's not forget the vampire of the hour himself.

Earlier I hinted at how ridiculous it is to portray Dracula as a good guy, but that's really what the movie wants us to think. His need to drink blood and the destruction it causes is forgotten when inconvenient; it's never shown what he does for food when living a peaceful life as husband and father at the beginning. They play up that he was a good man when alive, and only impaled all those people to make a point (bah-dum-tiss), a mistake he's apparently more than paid for the now by . . . doing the devil's work. Yeah, you figure out how that works. All I care about is the script's desperation to make Dracula the underdog, which eventually results in his vampiric powers being stripped and humanity restored.

He still dresses as a motherfucking vampire.

Seriously, at no point does he think to ditch the flowing black and red cape to blend in, and being powerless he just keeps getting his ass kicked by pretty much everybody. Thus, we have the audience are treated to scene after scene of what looks like the biggest failure of a vampire ever. Even better, not a single character who sees him think this guy might be a vampire, despite dressing exactly like Bela Lugosi. They'll just let the nice man in a cape who's being chased by zombies or whatever into their home without question! I'm not sure my suspension of disbelief will ever be the same.

Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned is a must-watch for anyone who loves entertaining garbage. It's pretty amazing how seriously the plot takes itself while throwing such loads of batshit (!) crazy at us. You can watch it here now, or make a date to see it next October. But be warned: you may never take vampires seriously again.

Let's Have Fun!

 

I count it a good anime season if we get a comedy that's actually funny. Not a lot of Japanese gags translate very well, and it's hard enough to write new gags and/or reinvent old ones that I'd estimate the majority of shows worldwide don't even try. Osomatsu-san tries, and it translates pretty well, but it's a weird enough show that I thought I'd analyze its success a little.

The current show is a continuation of sorts of Osomatsu-kun, a 57-episode show from way, way back in 1966, remade in 1988 as a 86-episode show, based on a simple gag manga. Sounds like a surefire recipe for success already, right? Luckily, right from episode one it's clear that Osomatsu-san knows what it's doing.

Fittingly enough, the show opens with the characters themselves exclaiming, “Holy shit! We got another season!?” The black-and-white cast then enacts a few obviously old-time gags before acknowledging, “Okay, those didn't age well. This isn't going to work.” The rest of the episode shows the cast attempting to be popular by mimicking (read: making fun of) what's popular today, from Attack on Titan to Yowamushi Pedal.

This irreverence, I think, is one of the keys to making a solid comedy. Nothing is sacred, least of all the show itself, and it earns a lot of goodwill by inviting us to laugh at that fact. Osomatsu-san then turns the joke around by showing us that what's “cool” right now is just as predictable and stupid. I like comedies which push boundaries rather than stay safely inside them, and Osomatsu-san certainly fits the bill; turns out its previous incarnations were decried by PTA groups as being unsuitable for children. Toilet humor and jokes relying on sadism abound, as well as the lampooning of cultural stories and icons. Just checkout the fallout when they took on Anpanman.

Not that Osomatsu-san is exclusively about parody. Most times it just does . . . whatever the hell it wants, which brings us to tits second major strength: the characters.

These are simple characters, each one bearing maybe one or two distinguishing traits. You can tell which sibling's which after a few episodes by how they act; Karamatsu is always trying to be cool, Jyushimstau is excessively hyperactive and stupid, Ichimatsu is a quiet yet moody loner, etc (it also helps that each is color-coded). They have simple wants, and probably the best comedy comes in not giving them what they want. One skit, for instance, sees Todomatsu win big at Pachinko, only to realize that he must now find a way to hide this from his five brothers, who will no doubt eat away at the jackpot until there's nothing left. We watch the two sides fight it out until, inevitably, Todomatsu loses. Side characters follow these same rules, such as Iyami, who carries one of my favorite gags. Throughout the show this snob idolizes France as the pinnacle of culture even though he's never been there. He discovers a certain wonder-mineral one episode that lands him fame and fortune, culminating with France's offer to grant him full citizenship in exchange for it. The mineral then gets snatched by a hawk and dropped into a volcano. Iyami desperately hides this fact, and succeeds . . . until he's disembarking the airplane with one foot poised above French soil. Only then is his ruse uncovered, and Iyami shoved back on the plane without ever touching his beloved France. Too bad!

Actually, that segues into another strength I touched a bit on before: how over-the-top it is. We've seen the above gag before where some important item is comedically lost, but not many shows have said item thrown into a volcano. Likewise, the joke where an acquaintance or family member goes to their friend/relative's workplace and tries to make them look bad is nothing new. What is new is one of the brothers attempting to shit on a cafe patron's plate in order to accomplish this. People don't get smacked with a paper fan much in Osomatsu-san, they get blown up with rocket launchers, kicked off cliffs, or shot in the head. There's blood. That's why their comedy makes me laugh when so many others don't; it's not afraid to offend, so I'm always watching to see how far it'll go.

Comedy is such a weird genre that, naturally, there's no guarantee everyone will laugh at this show. But considering its dated origins, did anyone expect to laugh at Osomatsu-san? I sure didn't. It seems some concepts age pretty darn gracefully with a little polish and care, and that's really something to smile about.