Magical☆Shopping Arcade Abenobashi
Another Plan To Watch entry is DOWN!!! Ok, my mind went through a rollercoaster of "should I keep watching?", "should I drop this?", "no, I'll continue", "no, I'll drop this" like never before. For me to properly talk about this anime, I'll describe the whole first episode because it's an amazing set up for a disappointing first half and good second half.
The story begins with a conversation between Sasshi and Arumi, two childhood friends. Sasshi is a 12 year old boy and a huge nerd. Arumi is clearly the straight man in the duo. Arumi and Sasshi's families both hold businesses in the Abenobashi shopping arcade in Osaka which is set to be torn down soon. Arumi's family has the Pelican Restaurant and Sasshi's had the Turtle Bath which closed down (there also used to be Tiger's Gold Coin Dumplings and Dragon's Wooden Clog Shop, all 4 of them representing the Four Gods). Arumi is moving away soon because her dad wants to realize his dream of going to Hokkaido and becoming a chef, but her grandfather wants to keep the restaurant running. Sasshi is clearly depressed about that because he doesn't want her to leave. In the middle of the episode the pair and their families talk about some past family drama, like Sasshi's grandma being really good looking, crushing on a different man, and Arumi's grandpa also having a thing for Sasshi's grandma. We also find out that the man his grandma was crushing on was the one responsible for the development of the arcade, some 50 years ago. Skipping to the end of the episode, a cat climbed on top of the Pelican mascot and Arumi's grandpa tried to shoo it away, falling down along with the sign in the process. Upon the destruction of the Pelican (the last god standing), Arumi and Sasshi get transported into another world.
The first episode of this anime is, in my eyes, phenomenal. Such a good premise, likeable characters, great atmosphere. Everything you need to know for the rest of the anime is perfectly laid out here. I love when stories interweave family relations, older + young generation crossing paths, that kind of stuff. Truly the perfect set up episode.
But then... The next few episodes were really not my thing and I'll say why for a few reasons. The anime went full gag style comedy for 4 episodes straight. And while I know perfectly why that happened (I'll talk about it under spoilers), it got tiring reeeeeal quick. We got the usual Gainax, oh yeah did I mention this was a Gainax/Madhouse production?, REFERENCES humor but in a very exaggerated fashion + extremely juvenile in your face fanservice in the form of a character called Mune Mune, a mysterious woman neither Sasshi nor Arumi are familiar with. So by episode 4 and 5 I was struggling. Like it's fine for an episode or two, but it really went on longer than I expected it to. But then... episode 6 happened, and then the anime got really interesting again. After that there were a few more episodes that I wasn't a huge fan of, but the ending and the story-relevant episodes more than made up for it... I guess.
Minor story spoilers below, I won't be spoiling anything that would completely kill the point of watching the anime lmao:
So there's an, of course, story related explanation as to why there was so much fanservice. All the worlds Arumi and Sasshi end up in are actually a figment of Sasshi's imagination. Why that is, I won't tell you here, but it does put things into perspective (as much as I hate to admit it, and to be fair, fanservice is still annoying fanservice even if there's a reason for it). He's a horny 12 year old who plays VNs, is obsessed with weapons and likes chinese kungfu movies, dinosaurs and anime... So all the worlds will reflect that. This very much reminds me of FLCL and the y'know, METAPHORS... In his desperate attempt to not go back to the real world so Arumi won't have to leave him, he subconsciously traps them in these worlds. There's a whole OTHER layer to this that I didn't expect frankly, but it still boils down to the same point, which is a theme you often come across in other Gainax anime of the era - some people don't want to live in the real world and do everything to escape it, something something otaku. He's a child that's refusing to grow up.
Ending spoilers here, sorry about the spoiler-ception:
And this leads us to the ending, rather, the last few episodes of the anime. We find out that the man Sasshi's grandmother Mune was in love with is actually the mysterious sorcerer both Sasshi and Arumi have been bumping into in those fantasy worlds. Yes, that is Mune Mune the fanservice lady - Sasshi was told by someone in his family that Mune was super hot so he imagined her as basically the sex symbol lmfao. The man reveals to Sasshi that he is an onmyoji, which is like a court exorcist/medium/mystic of Heian era Japan. Except he wasn't any onmyoji, he was the famous onmyoji Abe No Seimei. I'll skip over his backstory but it turns out him and Mune had a child, Sasshi's dad. Sasshi inherited Seimei's powers and the reason why the world transportations were happening was because Arumi's grandpa died when he fell in the first episode and Sasshi didn't want to deal with that reality. From then on Sasshi tries to become a respectable onmyoji who will be able to transport them into a real (there's a difference between real real worlds that are almost like alternate timelines, original world and fantasy worlds) world where Arumi's grandpa is alive. In the last episode Sasshi finally decides he will transport him and Arumi to the original world, but he notices that Arumi is crying, probably because she realized her grandpa will be dead, and for the last moment he hesitates, wanting to go to a world where her grandpa is alive after all. So then he transports them, not into the original world, but a possible fantasy world where Arumi's grandpa is alive, Arumi never goes to Hokkaido, Mune Mune is alive and happy with Seimei who she's been chasing this whole time. Basically, the ending isn't clear on whether Sasshi managed to transport them into a shoddy fake world or a real alternate world but one thing is clear - in the end, he couldn't deal with reality and he refused to mature. I actually think the ending is very bittersweet, but also pretty open ended and hopeful. A lot of people criticize the ending for being an extreme copout, but I think they missed the point? It's not a cop-out, and it's not a "happy" ending. Just like all the funny gag episodes before, this world is also not real, and it isn't the original world. It just means that Sasshi didn't yet succeed in his mission of facing reality.
