Dramatic Nounai

It's worth noting that I am the first to review this title on MAL, and even the first to give it a score at all. It is my belief that every anime deserves at least one proper review, deserves to have its content engaged and reckoned with. No matter how obscure it is, and no matter how long ago it was made, an anime still represents the creative passion of its creators, the hopes and dreams of the team that made it, and as such, I will give this one a fair and honest accounting here. Dramatic Nounai, however, makes such a thing quite difficult.It is a brief anime which depicts daily decisions as a horse race inside of one's head, with all the potential options as named horses in the race. I had to look pretty hard to find any way to watch this with subs (as they are necessary given the rapid, auctioneer-level speed of the narrator as the horses race), and ended up still needing the assistance of translation tools for a fair portion of it, but the message still came across. This is the whole of the story, pretty much, and in many ways it feels kind of like a commercial for something, though it's not clear what they'd be advertising for. The concept itself is a fun one-off idea, suitable for the funnies in a newspaper, but gets old pretty quick, as it's basically the same joke applied to different situations. What really nets this whole production such a low score, however, is the art. Something about the sloppy, undisciplined style feels cynical, like it was made in such a way so as to give the impression of authenticity while in reality being carefully manufactured to some end. Furthermore, it feels distinctly cheap and soulless, especially in the way the riders move on their horses. It's just ugly, and I think my reception of the art is what's fueling my reaction to the piece as a whole. The sound is totally unremarkable, and so are the characters, even if the latter are a little better. Overall, Dramatic Nounai barely feels like an actual entity, and exists as a set of weird, ugly shorts, fueled by a joke that is quick to overstay its welcome. Since there's no real reason to watch it, there's no real reason to recommend it either.