Sexy Commando Gaiden: Sugoi yo!! Masaru-san

WARNING!! If you are unusu­ally sens­ible, ser­i­ous or a wan­na­bee goody goody then there’s no need to read this review. Also, no criticism’s allowed! — The review­ers father This review has had my heart and soul put into it. Please close all other win­dows and focus on only the text. It is advised you read this review while listen­ing to music, eat­ing a sand­wich while tweet­ing that you are doing these three things. Quick crash course: Sexy Com­mando Gaiden is a 1998 anime, 50 epis­odes long (although the epis­odes them­selves are only 10 minutes long so it’s not as long as first glance would have you believe) andisn’t that well known in the west­ern world. It’s never been licensed in any way shape or form out­side of Japan. It does, how­ever, have a massive cult fan­base inside Japan itself. Now the reason it’s not pop­u­lar abroad is pretty obvi­ous. It’s very Japan­ese in it’s humour. This is as Japan­ese as you can ima­gine. Full of weird, non-explainable events with the clas­sic man­zai com­edy style of the straight man to the funny man. But it’s only when you watch the show does the idea of why this is a cult hit make sense. The anime’s cent­ral focus is a gen­eric main char­ac­ter and his encounter with the prac­ti­tioner of the Sexy Com­mando fight­ing style, Masaru. Every aspect of Masaru’s char­ac­ter is a gradual build up of ran­dom char­ac­ter traits. He wears rings on his shoulders that cause cash machines to start sprout­ing ran­dom phrases. If he takes them off, his hair grows shorter. Oh, and they also start spout­ing smoke at occa­sional inter­vals. Not that any of this par­tic­u­larly annoys Masaru. He has a fond­ness for mous­taches and magical dis­ap­pear­ing base­ball throw­ing tech­niques. Oh, he also has a story about how he found those rings. One day, he was walk­ing through the woods. He saw the rings on the ground, so he picked them up. The End. You start­ing to get a pic­ture of what this anime is like yet? While Masaru is the ulti­mate example of the sheer ran­dom­ness of this anime, this trait fea­tures through­out the show. Char­ac­ters are intro­duced with the most ran­dom of char­ac­ter traits with the most bizarre abil­it­ies with seem­ingly no real reason. If there was meant to be satire of some sort in this show, I never saw it. Maybe once or twice, but it would hap­pen so infre­quently that I came to dis­miss it. While it’s obvi­ous that I could miss a fair amount of the Japan­ese satire, I find it impossible to believe that I missed so much of it that I thought this wasn’t satire at all. My mind sees an totally batty author, about as mad as Masaru him­self, who will think up of totally ran­dom plot points and toss them in for the heck of it. He has a vague idea of what sort of story he’s try­ing to tell. It’s about gen­eric main char­ac­ter learn­ing that there are rather less con­ven­tional ways of mak­ing friends (oddly close to Arakawa when I put it like that, but these two are nowhere near the same level), but for the most part he just makes shit up. But, and here’s the import­ant part, he runs with it. Any­thing he’s writ­ten stays in. The ran­dom­ness builds up and becomes part of the story. The anemic guy has the spirit of muscly, Japan­ese salary­man from the muscle build­ing ads inside him? Great, we’ll run with that through­out the story and he’ll appear whenever it makes sense for him to do so (for a given value of ‘sense’ that is). This all builds up. The ran­dom­ness becomes part of the story and part of the world. You’re always aware at how stu­pid all this stuff is, and yet you grow accus­tomed to see­ing it. You’re sucked into the world of the Sexy Com­mando, where the head­mas­ter calls for breaks in class by dron­ing ‘sea­weed’ over and over again on the inter­com. Where girls have their fath­ers killed by rogue mous­taches. It all becomes part of the world you’ve got­ten sucked into, and it looks like so much fun you find your­self want­ing to join in. Hence, I can totally see why this is a cult hit. A world where people cry WANCHU and CLEANUP PRINCESS, know­ing what they mean. A world where you can all dress in the cus­tom­ary Sexy Com­mando battle gear of the white, long sleeved shirt and jeans, with your team leader sport­ing those fetch­ing golden rings. Where you all come together to per­form the Mel­an­choly of Elise (the dra­matic unzip­ping of your fly, that is the pre­cursor to every move in the Sexy Com­mando hand­book). That’s a cult I’d love to be part of. Oh and by the way, the female coach is called Moe Moe. You now have another reason to watch this anime. Oh yeah, that open­ing para­graph? Each epis­ode of Sexy Com­mando starts with this: "WARNING!! If you are unusu­ally sens­ible, ser­i­ous or a wan­na­bee goody goody then there’s no need to watch this anim­a­tion. Also, no criticism’s allowed! — The review­ers father" Mean­while, a women is telling us to turn up the volume because the video was recor­ded in ste­reo hi-fi while a man sim­ul­tan­eously tells you to turn down the volume because this is a late night anime and you don’t want to dis­turb the neighbours. CLEANUP PRINCESS!

Sexy Commando Gaiden is an anime that purely focuses on comedy. If one were looking for a laugh or merely something light-hearted and short, this show will tick all the right boxes. Whilst each episode only lasts 10 minutes, the amount of laughs garnered during that short time simply cannot be measured! ====== STORY===== Without a doubt, the anime’s lack of a coherent storyline is what contributes to its comedic shine. Sexy Commando Gaiden’s humour is heavily reliant on random slapstick and eccentric twists and hence, this style of comedy relays effectively off its weak (or lack of) storyline. In fact, it would come as no surpriseif one were to say that the humour defines the story (or vice versa). ======ART===== For an anime that aired in 1998, the art is just what one would expect. So whilst the art and animation may be somewhat ‘choppy’, this does not detract from the anime’s overarching purpose – to make you laugh. ====== SOUND===== The voice acting manages to reflect each of the character’s personality sufficiently. The OP is upbeat and, similar to the voice acting, successfully reflects the true nature of the anime. ====== CHARACTER===== What really defines this particular anime is its cast of characters. If it were possible to personify comedy, the protagonist, Masaru, would perhaps be the closest result you can achieve. However, the said man is not the only conjurer of comedy in the anime. There exists a whole cast of characters that draw out the true essence of this anime; each one funnier than the last. The cast of characters range from the (somewhat) straight-man to the most peculiar student you will ever see. ====== ENJOYMENT===== As a dedicated fan of comedy, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed Sexy Commando Gaiden. Its random and rapid-fire style of humour really plays to my taste – whether they are laughs generated through the witty puns or the constant ridiculousness of the situations the characters find themselves in. ====== OVERALL===== Taking into the account the fact that the anime aired in 1998, I found it difficult to unearth a flaw in the show. However, it is important to understand that the anime’s style of humour may not necessarily cater to everybody’s tastes in comedy. To those looking for something more ‘intellectual’ (for lack of a better term), Sexy Commando Gaiden may not be for you. However, those merely seeking a show for a couple of light-hearted laughs are guaranteed to enjoy this anime.

Why does nobody talk about this show? 1. It's funny 2. No drama 3. Very good pacing 4. High energy 5. "Wanchu, clean up princess" – a reference from the anime This is a very enjoyable show. It's a real hidden gem with an original story and unique characters.As a huge fan of gags, parody, humor, comedy, and funny shows, I really love it – Wanchu! Unfortunately, it has two drawbacks: - First, it's an old anime from 1998 (not their fault). - Second, it's very, very short. Luckily, there's a compilation available on YouTube. And of course, the story ends with a lot of unresolved mysteries. Spoilers from here: What is the origin of the aliens? What is the true purpose of Masaru’s ring? Do you remember when he flies? What was the reason behind that? Why does Meso act so weird? What’s his real secret? Is Masaru actually an alien?