Abenobashi Mahou Shotengai

Yet another Gainax production. Magic Shopping Arcade Abenobashi is a very very funny anime. The trademark styles and camera angles from FLCL are all here, and so is the VERY VERY weird plot, matched in weirdness only by Excel Saga.

Sashi and Arumi lives in Abenobashi Shotengai, a 50-year-old shopping district that is going to be torn down to be redeveloped. One day, strange things started happening and suddenly the two of them were teleported to another world! From then on their trans-dimensional journey started and they move from world to world in hope of returning home. All the worlds are just Abenobashi Shotengai, except with different themes. (i.e. in the sci-fi episode, the district was a space station and all the regular characters of the show except Sashi and Arumi were androids)

The great thing about this setup is that the anime can parody ANY genre of any thing. There are so many references and spoofs sprinkled all around the series that you probably won’t get all of them unless you are very knowledgable with animes and Hollywood movies. Not to mentioned some other things that don’t fit anywhere. Here’s a brief description for each episode:

1: [Introduction]
2: RPG game
3: Sci-Fi
4: Chinese Martial Art
5: Dinosaurs
6. Gangster Thriller
7. [Backstory]
8. High School/Dating Sim
9. [Plot Advancement]
10. Fairy Tale
11. War
12. Hollywood
13. [Ending]

See how much they differ? Even with my limited knowledge I managed to get these references:

Star Wars (hint: listen to the background music carefully)
Dungeons and Dragons
Evangelion (Lance of Longinus :P)
Space 2001 (Tycho Magnetic Anomaly… brings back memories)
Gundam
Akira
Zero Wing (remember All Your Base Are Belong to Us?)
Bruce Lee
Dragonball
Tokimeki Memorial (confession under the old tree?)
Kanon (uguu?)
To Heart
Pokemon
Cinderella
Cardcaptor Sakura
Pearl Harbour
Terminator 2 (hand over your clothes!)
Robocop
Nightrider
Indiana Jone (*swish*)
Matrix (buuuuuuuuullet time)
Twister
Jaws
Titanic
Air Force One
Back to the Future
Doraemon (came out of the drawer…)

The most memorable one has to be the Pearl Harbour reference. In episode 11, when one of the sides made a plan for a counterattack, (well not historically accurate, but whatever) the target was a barber shop, (since the whole thing takes place in an alternate version of Abenobashi shopping district) and the barber shop’s name was “Pearl Barber”. (read that aloud)

Other obvious references include:
– girl with gloves who said “uguuu” (guess what anime…) who later turned into a girl with robotic ears that points upwards. (guess another anime)
– Sashi buying a black monolith and felt smarter, follow by a scene with him as an ape and hitting the floor with a bone. (the movie that screws with your mind)
– “I’m flying”… (no hints needed…)

LoL

Coupled with the FLCL-style movements, how can you resist the urge to laugh? However, be warned, this IS still a Gainax production and all Gainax productions MUST have some kind of deeper theme involved. Things get more serious towards the end although not as difficult to understand as Evangelion.

Ahhhh… feel like rewatching FLCL… sigh, I want the dual audio version. Stupid Gainax jacked their prices sky high.

Anyway, final score for Abenobashi:
9.0/10

Update: Oh yeah, forgot to add… The OP and ED are nice too. It’s Hayashibara Megumi after all. :P mmmmmmmm… Rei…