It’s come to my attention that we don’t get a whole lot of anime review out here, folks, so it’s fallen to me to fix this lapse.  For those of you what don’t habla, “anime” is a general catch-all term for Japanese animation.  Often maligned and seldom understood, some really great stuff has come out of this catch-all.

And today, we’re talking Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, a three-volume romp, from the boys at ADV.

Basically, we’ve got two kids, Sasshi and Arumi, two fairly normal twelve year olds who live in Osaka.  Their folks, meanwhile, work in the Abenobashi Shopping Arcade, a kind of enclosed strip mall that’s seen better days.  And with Sasshi and Arumi’s folks all considering closing up and moving on, things have never looked quite so bleak.  At least until, in truest anime fashion, Sasshi and Arumi fall into a series of alternate dimensions where they get to act out various roles like space fighter pilots and detectives and whatnot.  While it starts out entertaining, the more pragmatic and probably more mature Arumi starts to long for home.  But will Sasshi follow along?  And even if he does, can they find a way home?

This, like a lot of anime I’ve seen, has sort of a weird way of starting out light, fun, and comical but quickly expanding into this dark morass of sorrow.  I understand a lot of it, in this case, comes from character development, but I tell you, I’ve seen the common theme in more anime than I care to recall.  Excel Saga, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun….all of them started out light-hearted and fun but RAPIDLY became total downers.  And Excel Saga was supposed to be a lunatic madhouse of comedy.  If it hadn’t been for the last episode, Going Too Far, it would’ve been one of the biggest letdowns ever.

And that’s exactly what happens with Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi.  It’s great fun watching these kids romp around fantasy playgrounds.  But it falls apart in such random fashion that the original lighthearted glee is just plain lost.

And if a movie leaves you feeling BAD at the end, then what was the point of watching it?  You watch a movie for entertainment, not for suffering.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale rings up Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi with a whopping six out of ten for starting out great but not being able to keep up with its own opening.