Itoshi no Betty Mamonogatari

Correct me if I’m wrong, but when you find an injured witch on the side of the road, I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to suck on her breasts, even if said injured witch is naked. Doing so may be how the protagonist of the anime film I’m reviewing today met his wife, but in real life, it’ll cause to be thrown in jail for a longer time than how long said protagonist spent in there later on. I know, I know, I’m already spoiling quite a bit; I promise that I won’t spoil any of the major plot points from here on out. Honestly,though, I don’t really care if people get spoiled heavily on this particular anime film. Itoshi no Betty Mamonogatari, an anime film I found and decided to watch on a complete whim, was a complete waste of nearly an hour of my time, and I implore that no one else watches it. Itoshi no Betty Mamonogatari, or “Devil Tale: My Beloved Betty” in English, begins when gangster Tanpei Kimokawa treats an injured woman during a rainstorm….and then, for some reason, sucks on her breasts. Well, regardless of whether or not that’s ethical (or sanitary, considering how he was sucking on her injury before that), this woman, who turns out to be a witch named Betty Valentine, comes to rescue him the next day when he attempts to avenge his master’s death against some thugs. Betty just so happens to look just like the woman Tanpei got a back tattoo of, who he describes as his ideal woman, so naturally, he falls in love with her. Betty reciprocates his feelings, and the two decide to get married. The other witches, especially Betty’s skeletal grandmother, have a problem with this union, as the witches have a code that dictates that a witch must never marry a human; thus, they use whatever means are necessary to split them apart. Oh, and there’s also this demon named Thomas Ruten who Betty is trying to kill to avenge her sister. I’m sorry if that’s a bad synopsis, but it’s kind of hard to summarize a story like this. It’s not because I’m bad at summarizing in general; it’s more because the story is poorly written. I don’t know if the 53-minute runtime is to blame for this, but the film rushes through the story of a 17-volume manga (though I don’t actually know how much it covers) in a way that constantly made me think, “Oh, so we’re doing this now? Okay.” There were also plot points that weren’t fleshed out enough or handled poorly, such as either of the revenge plots that both of the main characters have. With Tanpei’s revenge plot, it’s blazed through at the beginning of the film without any time for the audience to even know who he’s even avenging or really anything about the guy he’s getting his revenge on; with Betty’s, so much time is put on her relationship with Tanpei without Thomas being seen or mentioned that I almost forgot that was a plot point. Unfortunately, the characters might be even worse than the story. I didn’t care about Tanpei at all; without spoiling too much, I will say that he’s kind of a sleazeball who does some unforgivable things to Betty. Betty herself isn’t much better; although there are moments where she is portrayed as someone who kicks a lot of butt, she doesn’t have much of a distinct personality and only exists as a love/lust interest for the main character. Not caring about either of these characters obviously meant I gave zero cares about their relationship; it doesn’t have a strong foundation to build on other than Tanpei being okay with Betty being a witch and how good the sex is between them, if you even want to call those strong foundations. None of the characters were any good, either, not even Thomas Ruten; he’s probably the most boring villain I’ve seen in a while. I almost found myself liking Betty’s grandma due to how expressive she demonstrated herself to be in her first appearance in the film, but no. She’s boring, too. This anime film is the first of only three projects that the animation studio Big Bang would spearhead, and seeing the output here….if this is the same Big Bang studio that has done work on Detective Conan and other anime, I’m glad that they’ve just been focusing on outsourcing work. This animation is rough, even for something that came out in 1986; there is one sequence involving a door opening that was drawn in a way that would make one question if it was even closed. The character designs aren’t particularly appealing, either, despite the animators’ best efforts to sell how sexy Betty is. The voice acting was nothing to write home about, and I’ve pretty much forgotten what the opening and ending themes were like other than how they were definitely Japanese songs from the ‘80’s. From the looks of it, it took until 2021 or 2022 for fansubbers to touch Itoshi no Betty Mamonogatari, and I applaud those fansubbers for bringing a forgotten anime into the light for English-speaking anime fans. Unfortunately, Itoshi no Betty Mamonogatari itself isn’t a film I can extend that praise to, and I’d only recommend it if you REALLY want to watch every anime that came out in the timeframe in which it came out. I would say that it’s a better love story than Twilight, but that meme is as old as this is.

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