(Writers note: If you read this review, RATE this review. Authors thrive on feedback, whether it be a simple happy face, or an in-depth critique.)
Summary/Outline: Sashi and Arumi live in the Abenobashi Shopping District with their respective families. The district is slowly shutting down, however, making way for Skyscrapers and the like. Arumi is moving to Hokkaido, where she won't be seeing Sashi anymore. Everything changes, however, when one of the 4 magical icons that protect the Shopping District is destroyed, sending both Sashi and Arumi into multiple parallel dimensions... of the Abenobashi Shopping District! Will they ever find their way back to reality? Do we care? Do THEY care?
For those of you who want a short review, here it is: Any series that does... NOT ONE... NOT TWO...
BUT THREE SEPERATE PARODIES OF MONTY PYTHON SKITS!!!...
Is a must-watch.
Now, for the longer review:
To get it out of the way: Animation was top notch for a TV series. Few still frames unless for comedic effect, and the artists had to draw something completely different every episode as Sashi and Arumi travel to different alternate dimensions. It was not noticable whether the audio or music were good or bad, so I gave them an 8. Expect to see a lot of eights for audio and music in the future as well. Sorry, but I'm not an audiophile. Unless it's extremely bad or extremely good, it's probably gonna get an 8.
Explaining the plot is pointless, since it exists merely to allow for more and more parodies. Off the top of my head: Terminator, Terminator 2, The Exorcist, Rocky, Air Force One, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Titanic, Jaws, Twister, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Dark City (yes, Dark City), Superman, Spider Man, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, AI, Robocop, Die Hard, Star Trek, Escape From L.A., The Muppet Movie, The Thing, and at least two dozen others I either can't remember, or couldn't quite place.
Then the series goes on to parody other anime, such as Ninja Scroll, Love Hina, Tenchi Muyo, VanDread, Fushigi Yuugi, and plenty more.
We also have the genre parodies of basically every genre ever made. Film Noir, Drama, Action, War, Other Comedies, Dating Sims, Hentai, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Fish-out-of-Water, Magical Girl, "War is Pointless", Shoujo Ai (Girl Love), Shounen Ai (Uh... Boy Closenessness), and of course, a thousand others I can't remember. Seriously, this series covered an awful lot of ground in 13 episodes.
As I said before, explaining the different alternate dimensions is pointless, since they're just there to help the different parodies along and make you laugh. There's no real story per-se; There is a small bit of drama towards the end regarding whether someone they know will be alright if they return, but it's dealt with sparringly.
Most of the time, I laughed. When I wasn't laughing, I was smiling. When I wasn't smiling, I was nodding, with a "lost in nostalgia" look on my face. What more can you ask for from a Parody? There are a couple episodes that don't quite work, even though you still laugh quite a bit, and there is one in particular that should have been left out completely. I believe it was in Episode 7, where they dumped the parody angle and went with a drama about how this alternate universe stuff came to be. There is a scene involving a young man's feelings being trampled upon when a woman he loves sleeps with his best friend. This is dealt with WAY too realistically and painfully for a comedy. This episode is a work of art, though, and should be cut out and pasted into a REAL drama. Seriously, it would be great if it didn't feel so out of place. It really made you feel the sting and sadness of betrayal. Great drama, but not appropriate for a pure comedy.
The best of the best: The episode involving the Dating Sim alternate universe, and Episode 12. Scene from Episode 12: A highrise building modeled after Die Hard, housing about a dozen or so characters, half of them naked, are tossing oxygen tanks at Jaws, who is riding towards them in a Tornado. Jaws eats about 30 something tanks, at which point everyone breaks out a machine gun and unloads, causing the building to partially blow up, sliding away like in Titanic, when the characters fall and bounce off the propellers, and... but you get the picture. It's stupid, it's insane, and I couldn't stop laughing.
In closing, any series that does a parody of Monty Python's "The Lumberjack Song" can't be all bad, can it?