Don't start this party

Monday, June 11, 2007

Just when I think I have plumbed the depths of anime stupidity a new series has to come along and muck it all up. Many thanks, Coyote Ragtime Show. Metaphor will probably not return: the silent treatment makes me imagine my readers shocked at the inanity on their screens. I'll stick to complaining about others' stupidity rather than contributing my own.

So, what is Coyote Ragtime Show? It's a "cool" version of Cowboy Bebop.

What's that you say? Cowboy Bebop was already cool? It was and still is the coolest show ever made in Japan? Ah ha, how right you are. And why is that show cool? Well, because the characters do cool things, not because they are genetically engineered to be cool.

I'm going to stop using that word now. Coyote Ragtime Show is about this Baloo the Bear of a man called Mister (when you say that in Japanese it comes out, gratingly, as "Miss-tah"). He is a "Coyote," which is a space pirate spelled "B-o-u-n-t-y-H-u-n-t-e-r." One day Mister's friend Bruce gets shot by the evil Madame Marciano and he takes on Franca, Bruce's talking German poodle. Daughter. Sorry. I have a hard time imagining any man called Bruce naming his daughter Franca unless he was dating Eva Braun. Franca's pendant contains the location of Bruce's greatest theft: ten billion double dollars. I mean regular dollars. Damn.

Franca's disgustingly handsome father went to a hell of a lot of trouble to get this money. First he applies for a job at the Banking Planet (i.e. Trantor). Over the course of a year he works his way up through the ranks and becomes the President's right-hand man. The employees love him, the bank's business is booming, everybody adores Bruce. This was all part of a plot to steal ten billion dollars out of the ridiculously poorly guarded Gigabanks (singular) and run away.

Bruce even constructs a model of the Gigabanks security system to help him train for the theft. The cost? One hundred million dollars, surely the result of cooking the books at the bank. I am reminded of Number Two telling Dr. Evil about his success with Virtucon. The writers don't give us anybody to tell Bruce how stupid his plan is and have him reply "I'm doing it for the thrill" or some nonsense. No, despite being a shoo-in for the Vice President position and its inevitable five billion dollar annual salary, Bruce steals the money.

He does this by exploiting the bank's moronic disaster recovery procedures: in the event of a natural disaster, fire, or terrorist attack, all the money in the bank is to be removed from the vault and transported to another planet. Not by private spaceport, but by bringing the money up to the roof of the building and having some guy in a space copter come and take it away. Really: any guy. You don't need to show any identification. And there are no guards around. Bruce's two company suck-ups follow the money to the rooftop and are shocked to see their idol in the space copter that's stealing all the dough. Perhaps tomorrow they'll be shocked by a rejection letter from MENSA.

Did I mention that the bank planet doesn't tell anyone about the caper because "the world's economy would collapse?" As though the removal of that amount of money wouldn't do it regardless of how damaging the news of the theft would be.

The show has so many clichés I can barely list them all. Bad guys shoot dozens of rounds at Mister and miss him completely, while every single shot he fires is lethal. His spaceship looks like a flying Hungry Hungry Hippo - and it works in space, planetary atmospheres, and goes underwater. It's never been hit even when pursued by a dozen attack helicopters, and the turret delivers one-hit kills to anyone in or out of range.

Franca, the sweet and innocent little girl, is obviously Shinji Ikari's little sister. Well... maybe that's giving her too much credit. Shinji, bless his whiny heart, at least had a personality. Franca (1) is a perfectly happy, perky, insightful twelve year-old, and (2) thinks that Mister might just be nice to her because she has the keys to the ten billion dollar treasure. Except that #2 is resolved in the second episode, leaving Franca with only one note to play. (Un)interesting side note: the removal of her suspicions also removes Mister's only possible character complexity. Is he after the money or does he really care for the girl? He cares for her completely? Well, problem solved. Let's just run around and try to look suave for ten more episodes.

They fail at the suave part, but not for lack of trying. Mister and his crew pose more than Obi-Wan Kenobi in Clone Wars. Coming down the stairs to your bar? Don't walk in a straight line like normal human beings: get Mister in front flashing a big smile, his obnoxious mechanic Katana above and to the left, and the unnecessary metrosexual Bishop above and to the right. Just blew up a robot with a bazooka? Put Mister in front flashing a big smile, a grinning Katana to the left and smug looking Bishop to the right. "Think about it," cries the ADV Films executive, "every fourth frame from the show can be turned into a fifteen dollar wall scroll!"

There is so much English in this show I can forgive someone for thinking it wasn't made in Japan. Aside from "Mister" and Bruce, you have the federal inspector Angelica Burns chasing after Mister, her perky assistant Chelsea Moore, the profession "Coyote," Mister's bar "Pirate," and a black minister named Swamp Gordon who Don Imus would find offensive. Every other sentence contains a word in English as though the writers were being tortured by Pixy Misa. Angelica tells Chelsea "nice oppai (boobs)," Katana remarks "sugei building (what an awesome building)" and you're gonna hear the word "pendant-oh" until you're ready to strangle Franca with her damn necklace.

In the middle of this animated disaster are some tolerable characters. Angelica Burns is supposed to be the sexy female with the big boobs, and in this case the writers must have done more than their usual ten seconds of research. Angelica eats like Lina Inverse at a state fair. Scene one of episode one is her scarfing down two in-flight meals and horrifying the flight attendant. Scene two is her walking out of the airport terminal with a cheeseburger in her mouth. Scene four is her researching inmates at a computer at the jail, inhaling biscotties. No doubt Rob Reiner wasn't amused, but I was stunned. This is the first anime to display a female character whose breast size is not inversely proportional to her waist size.

But not even Hungry Hungry Angelica, her amusingly juvenile partner Chelsea nor the dozen emotive robotic marionettes creatively named the Twelve Sisters can rescue this show from the black hole of suckitude. The final anchor around this show's neck is very simple. The intro song is sung by a male J-Pop artist.

See you, space cowboy.