WINTER 2004: PARANOIA / GOKUSEN

PARANOIA AGENT EPISODE 1

Jesus fucking christ Okay. ok. this is a really good anime because it already unsettled me from the jump with the OP animation. it's like a slideshow of different characters standing completely still, facing the camera, and laughing really hard with their eyes closed. in many different areas (most of them pretty unsafe situations to be in)

jack: there’s a rumor that the reason the opening is like that is because it aired on a very late slot and they wanted to get the viewers attention its a pretty cool concept for an OP overrall i liked it. now for the actual plot of the episode: this is tsukiko she's a character designer for some sort of sanrio-esque company. she recently created a cute little doggy character named maru-something idont remember. and her shitty boss is breathing down her neck waiting for her to design the Next Big Character. she's just been sitting in her cubicle drawing a design. deleting it. drawing a design. deleting it. drawing. delete. she's so real for that honestly

later that night, tsukiko walks home Alone. and she trips and scrapes her knees :( but she's strong and she's an adult and she doesn't cry about it. but then she drops her bag with all of her sketches in it :( and one of them flies under a car :( and she has to reach really far under neath it to get the sketch and she ends up tearing her sweater on a sharp piece of metal on the car's bumper :( and then she starts crying :( and i feel so bad for her

AND THEN SOMEONE ROLLS UP AND HITS HER IN THE HEAD WITH A FUCKJNG BAT!!!!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this whole episode just feels like Tsukiko's Awful Day. she goes to the hospital (because she got clobbered in the head with a bat.) and is interrogated by some detectives about who could have assaulted her. and she says that it was a kid with a baseball bat & pretty much immediately this news spreads fast because Who the fuck would attack this universe's designer of hello kitty? Hello doggy? Who would do that??? No, really, who would do that??? NOBODY would do that!!! That didn't happen! There's NO WAY that that happened. TSUKIKO, YOU'RE LYING ABOUT THAT HAPPENING FOR ATTENTION!!! IM WRITING ON YOUR MESSAGE BOARD RIGHT NOW ABOUT HOW MUCH OF A BIG STUPID LIAR YOU ARE!!! i HATE YOU TSUKIKO YUOU'RE THE WORST CHARACTER DESIGNER EEEEVER AND-

tsukiko carries this little plush of her character around with her everywhere. it was with her on the night she was attacked. and now its talking to her and comforting her about people doubting her story. how sweet! don't worry about why its talking and moving around after this, tsukiko starts getting Fucking Stalked by a weird old journalist man that's trying to like. get the Inside Scoop on tsukiko's story and i hate him very much. he literally tries to get a look up her skirt and SHOWS UP AT HER APARTMENT LOOKING FOR HER i want him killed and maimed. thankfully, tsukiko was not home at the time the guy was knocking on her front door. unthankfully, tsukiko just got home. tsukiko is now rapidly exiting the apartment building to escape this creepo. she drops a handkercheif in her fleeing attempt and this fuckin' weirdo bends down to pick it up. and makes this stupid smug face that i hate

AND THEN SOMEONE ROLLS UP AND HITS HIM IN THE HEAD WITH A FUCKJNG BAT!!!!!!!!

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY we cut back to tsukiko. she's managed to get some distance on the guy that was following her (who has now been hit with a bat). she hears some skates in front of her. she looks up. It's the kid that hit her with a bat!!!!!!!

But he doesn't hit her with the bat again. all he says is "tadaima". which the subtitling team has chosen to interpret as "Hello again" but im doubtful that thats entirely what he meant and then he skates away and the credits play and all the characters from the opening are taking a napppp yayyy

do i want to watch more?

hell yeah what the fuck is this kid's deal? im assuming this is going to be the type of story that jumps between a lot of different characters. since the first two characters in the credits are also characters that this kid's clobbered with a bat, im assuming that's something that all of the credits characters have in common. see im already theorizing that's a GOOD fucking sign of a good first episode WHY IS HE HITTING EVERYONE WITH BATS???????? if he had a vendetta against ms. hello doggy he would have hit her AGAIN upon seeing her. BUT HE DIDNT. HEY KID!!!! COME BACK HERE!!!!! WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

favorite screenshots

i really like the artstyle and the landscape shots it feels very real and grounded. Which makes little doggy plushie suddenly becoming alive on two different occasions feel even more suspicious to me. what do you know puppy.

are you hallucination dog are you real am i real. where am i

GOKUSEN EPISODE 1

i. i need to recover from this one. okay. so. okay. so. setting: all-boys highschool. premise: Girl Teacher premise 2: The students are all annoying gross delinquents thats basically a lot of what the first half of this episode is establishing. i really wasnt jiving with it too much since it was just the male teachers going "Look out ladies those teenage boys will rip you apart Euheuehuehueheh" like 🙄 Ok dude. they literally play a ZOOM IN+BOIOIOIOING sfx on this lady's boobs to communicate just how big they are

and then it just kinda punches you in the face with PREMISE 3: GIRL TEACHER IS PART OF THE

YAKUZA.

specifically the brown haired one. her name is yamaguchi. shoutout Girl her parents are dead but she lives in a big yakuza house with a bunch of her family (yakuza members). and when she tells them about her first day at her new teaching job theyre all FUCKING FURIOUS that they would ever treat her like that and theyre all like We have to go over there and teach these punks a LESSON

the premise is pretty simple but the catch is that yamaguchi is keeping her yakuza life a secret from the school and her students. probably because she would be fired if they knew she was a yakuza. so she puts on this really oblivious ditzy persona and they do it in such a way to where i can tell she's faking it but it's good enough to fool a group of teenage boys who are full of themselves. which is good character writing to me i think but every so often she'll slip up and say some shit like

and then go Umm anyway Teehee! Ah, eto... bleh! ^_^ my favorite scene is the ending one. yamaguchi overhears one of her students being threatened by some seniors, who tell him "come to the back of the school. ALONE". so she inconspicuously sneaks over to protect her student (by dropping a bunch of volleyballs and pretending to trip so she has an excuse to be behind the school.) and so she gets captured by the Teen Thugs who are beating up on the student. and of course she can't have anyone in her class knowing that she's yakuza. so before she can unleash her full power to safely protect her student. she has to.

she has to incapacitate him herself.

#GIRL

oh my god i forgot to talk about the dog. yamaguchi has a dog. and it shows up on its own. at random And it wears a tracksuit jacket. just like yamaguchi. and it has a bow on its tail.

And it can talk. important to note: during yamaguchi's home scenes, THE DOG IS NOT PRESENT. WE DO NOT SEE THE DOG AT HER HOUSE. WE ONLY SEE THE DOG AT SCHOOL. YAMAGUCHI DID NOT BRING THE DOG TO SCHOOL. HE FIRST SHOWS UP AT THE END OF THE SCHOOL DAY AND ALMOST GETS HIT BY A CAR and yamaguchi just goes "Fuji! What are you doing here! are you here to pick me up from school? teeheehee" WHERE THE FUCK DID HE COME FROM??? the second time it shows up is right next to the pile of incapacitated thugs that yamaguchi beat up (she left the crime scene and it was discovered by a group of her students.) and the DOG rolls up and goes "Yeah, let's just pin this incident on me. I'm the one that did it. Just leave it at that. We're good, see." I dont understand. i dont understand his purpose. Why is he here. Who is he

do i want to watch more?

and you know what that's a really good question. i don't know. i really like yamaguchi. she's a funny character and i think she's interesting. but i dont know if she's worth putting myself through Annoying Gross Teenage Boys Scenes. and also im scared of them playing something really serious for laughs. ...But also it might not do that because it seems aware of yamaguchi's current position and maybe she'll use her yakuza powers for good to turn the school around? But also it might NOT do that because the other Girl Teacher straight up says "Yeah theres two or three students in my class that id be fine sleeping with. Haha!" and it's played fully as a joke. SO: I DON'T KNOW. that's my official and boring rating for this show. MAYBE! MAYBE NOT!

favorite screenshots

the first two are the teacher initiating yamaguchi and her coworker into life at the highschool and his expressions are just. they're very. he's always wearing a hard hat for some reason....?

the last one is yamaguchi with her dead yakuza parents. awww how sweet