Pandora to Akubi

Pandora to Akubi is a very lovely surprise to a weary anime traveller like me. Very clearly a passion project, I’m sad to see it go unnoticed in the western anime sphere. I put a ‘maybe?’ next to this show on my list of 2019 movies I still want to watch and that ‘maybe?’ very much stands for ‘maybe this will get subtitled’. Yet, as it does time and time again, the passion of a small group of creators I know almost nothing about, manages to reach halfway across the globe through the power of the internet, reminding me in the process of the powerof anime. I’m not making that up, by the way. This anime is very much a love letter to anime, with it proudly showing off a bunch of characters from old Tatsunoko Productions shows from the 60s and 70s. I have very little idea how a project like this could come to be, but It seems to be linked to the 50th anniversary of the anime ‘Hakushon Daimaou’, and I guess a bunch of other Tatsunoko characters got caught up in the mix in the celebrating studio’s drunken stupor. Still, what ultimately matters is that this production shows off some real talent on multiple fronts and, though its presentation is somewhat inconsistent, it’s a real joy to watch. Pandora is a clumsy girl who, after opening a box, accidentally sends magical shards of ‘calamity’ across multiple worlds and, together with a goofy, magical girl named Akubi, travels through dimensions in order to collect these shards before bad stuff happens. This is very much not an original plot for an anime, but I don’t think it has to be. The creators of the show clearly just wanted a generic anime bullshit plot so they could fill it with fun stuff. Anime bullshit to facilitate more anime bullshit, that’s what this anime is and I love it. What ultimately makes this anime stand out, however, is that it manages to find an interesting balance between the goofiness of the premise and its main characters and some more serious elements. Especially episode one feels somewhat grounded in that the characters and setting are shown off more or less realistically. So when two girls claiming to be from another dimension to collect an evil stone that will do bad stuff, barge into town, no one takes them particularly seriously and the two of them are somewhat surprised about this. Yet no one makes a big stink about this and the only policeman in town, Speedracer, and his girlfriend genuinely try to be helpful, even if they don’t know what’s going on. What’s even more interesting is that Speedracer and his girlfriend Doronjo genuinely have some depth behind them. Speed put behind his dream of being a racer to protect the people of his home town, which is very much not a thing he would have done if he was anything like the speed we know from the original show. Doronjo wants to support his dream of being a racer, but she’s also being chased by her criminal past which might put the whole town in danger if she stays there. These characters feel very real and lived and put an emotional core behind an otherwise silly and baffling show. Sadly episode two isn’t as grounded and is overall a lot less engaging. What’s interesting is that the serious and silly nature of the show is present in the character designs as well. Our two protagonists are very cutesy and moe, but Speed and Doronjo feel like modern , mature renditions of the original characters in a similar vein to ‘The woman called Fujiko Mine’. I’m very impressed by how this show manages to fit these very opposite aesthetics under one character design style. And it’s not just the characters, the art in general in this show is stellar. The character art is very bouncy and animates wonderfully, the background art is gorgeous and stylized and the colour pallet is one of the best I’ve ever seen. Overall the art by itself is already wonderful, but then it’s backed up by a lot of fantastic animation, mostly of the very fluid, very web-gen kind. Seeing Akubi bounce around like a goofball was an absolute joy and there was some great action in the mix as well. At the end of both episodes the characters end up transforming into characters from gatchaman and yatterman and this results in some great fighting sequences accompanied by some equally fantastic music. I can very much understand that some people might not get into this anime the way I did, considering it’s very weird and it throws a lot of conflicting stuff at you. For me personally, this anime threw together a bunch of great things into a wonderful mix that really resonates with me. In an anime landscape that is dominated by very stale visual productions the colourfulness and the poppyness of this anime is a sight for sore eyes. The anime industry is composed of passionate people who row against the tide to be able to facilitate the creation of good anime, so when I see an obviously passionate production like this come out, I can’t help myself but be excited. Talented people making good shit, that’s what this show is. The world needs more passionate people making good shit. That’s what I preach.