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Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 9

Key: The Metal Idol, episodes 9, “Return.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

This episode continues to ease us into the second phase of the series. Still without any major action sequence, it largely centers around Akane and Key’s efforts to break into the idol industry

As the episode proceeds, they get false leads but also talk to several people who like their recommendations. In particular, the name of Tataki apparently has clout, though he had earlier demurred when they went to him for references.

Sakura talks to that one guy in the video store — That, unfortunately, is what she said.

Tataki is at this point an ambiguous character: He’s a square-jawed, masculine guy, but at the same time he is president of a Miho fan club and apparent lives for nothing but fannishness. However, he has real influence in the industry, indicating he’s not just some geek.

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Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 8

Key: The Metal Idol, episode 8, “Go To.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

There has not been any distinctive shift in tone or content, but this episode nonetheless represents the beginning of Key’s second arc.

Although the story here picks up immediately where the previous episode left off, this is in a sense a transitional episode as it has little action and only minimal advancement of the story.

A naked dude holds a business card — NAKED DUDE WITH BUSINESS CARD. NAKED DUDE WITH BUSINESS CARD.

Sakura has taken on the role of Key’s manager and now tries to get her work as an idol. Having no connections of her own, she first goes to her best friend Suichi Tataki. Tataki is the president of a Miho fan club, and Sakura hopes he has connections. He doesn’t, but he does warn Sakura and Key away from working with Minos Productions, which hosts Miho; Minos is a front organization for Ajo Heavy Industries, and it apparently exists for no reason except Miho’s promotion.

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Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 7

Key: The Metal Idol, episode 7, “Run.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

Man, this show can be brutal. The first third of this episode is an extremely bloody and magnificently directed action sequence. So far, I’m consistently astonished at how good this show is: Arresting imagery, compelling story, intriguing characters. It’s a brooding nail-biter.

This episode continues from the cliffhanger of the episode previous: Sergei, the stone-cold killer working for Ajo Heavy Industries, has marched into a meeting of a snake cult and begun killing everyone to get to Key, who’s currently unconscious after performing an apparently miraculous healing. Key’s longtime bodyguard Wakagi shows up, and he and Sergei proceed to seriously maim each other. Prince Snake-eye, foolish yet sympathetically portrayed, tries to intervene—and pays for it.

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Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episodes 5 and 6

Key: The Metal Idol, episodes 5–6, “Scroll,” Parts 1 and 2. Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

We are six episodes into the show, and young Key still hasn’t got down to the business of becoming a music idol, though she is apparently convinced that is her only chance of getting 30,000 friends. In this two-parter, however, she manages to become a literal idol when she is taken in by a snake cult.

Key and Snake-eye sit in a temple — Snake cult.

Miho, or rather, the pilot who operates Miho, is in the hospital and is extremely sick after her encounter with Key. Nonetheless, Ajo insists that she will be forced to perform again shortly.

We begin to get more details about Ajo and his robots. The machines are powered by some kind of material called “gel,” which must be kept at very cold temperatures.

We have no real details at this point, but it’s apparent that piloting the robots is a painful experience, as Sergei appears to be in great pain when he does it and Miho is actually dying from it.

Close-up of Miho in bed with breathing mask — Miho’s in a bad way.

At the same time, the robots are hilariously vulnerable for machines built for war. Akane encounters one outside her apartment and destroys it by stabbing its eye. Another goes out of control, apparently because Key is having an emotional moment again, and begins strangling Sergei—so he too destroys it by breaking its eye.

Sakura deactivates a robot by stabbing its eye — Sakura takes out a robot.

They need to do something about these machines so that damaging one optic sensor doesn’t deactivate the whole thing.

Continue reading “Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episodes 5 and 6”

Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol’, Episode 4

Key: The Metal Idol, episode 4, “Access.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

A harrowing episode, “Access” shows us what the show is capable of when it’s at its best. It can be a good thriller when it wants.

Let me get you up to speed and mention a few points I didn’t bother to discuss or got wrong in our essays previous. First, when Key went to Miho’s concert, she met up with Tataki, the guy who is close friends with Akane and also, apparently, president of Miho’s fan club. After Key prematurely ends the concert by killing Miho’s robot avatar, Key and Tataki wind up at a rooftop restaurant.

And we have to appreciate Tataki’s financial shrewdness here, taking Key to a restaurant: Key is undoubtedly a cheap date since she doesn’t eat.

Key and Tataki look on in panic — Key and Tataki.

Meanwhile, Sergei is hunting for Key. We now know that he’s the one who killed Key’s grandfather, and to find Key, he sends a robot after the sleazy photographer, Seiichi Tamari. First killing Tamari’s bodyguard, he confronts Tamari on a high tower that just happens—another unlikely coincidence—to overlook the rooftop restaurant where Key and Tataki are.

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Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episodes 2 and 3

Key: The Metal Idol, episodes 2–3, “Cursor,” Parts 1 and 2. Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Crunchyroll.

Critics of Key: The Metal Idol often complain that it is a slow-moving show, and they’re not wrong. We’re already three episodes in (episodes 2 and 3 are a two-parter, sort of), and the story line still hasn’t taken off. However, the visuals are arresting, and there are enough intriguing details that it doesn’t feel sluggish.

Key holds a bouquet and lies on a park bench — Key being sluggish.

Sakura, the best friend Key improbably ran into while in Tokyo, has taken Key into her apartment. What brought Sakura to Tokyo in the first place, we aren’t told, but she survives there by working numerous part-time jobs. After an evening of pizza delivery, she works all night at a video rental.

The sleazy pornographer we met in the first episode comes after her, though less aggressively than the first episode’s cliffhanger implied he would. As it turns out, he not only photographs naked children in his bedroom, but also works for a corporation that produces music idols. He wants Sakura to sign on and is willing to harass her until she agrees. Although tempted by the money, she turns him down, and she has a male orbiter named Tataki with a knowledge of martial arts who’s able to drive the sleazeball off.

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Review: ‘Key: The Metal Idol,’ Episode 1

Key: The Metal Idol, episode 1, “Startup.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.

Available on Amazon Prime.

A bizarre OVA that appeared from 1994 to 1996, this is a series I have wanted to see for a long, long time. I noted some time back that it was out on Blu-Ray, but after that it fell off my radar.

In the meanwhile, it has appeared on streaming services. Amazon has added the English dub, but Crunchyroll has the Japanese original. I only discovered the sub while writing this post—so I watched the first episode in the dub, but will watch the Japanese version from now on.

It is a noirish version of Pinocchio, the story of a girl robot on a quest to become human—a quest that draws her into both an international conspiracy and the seedy underbelly of Japan’s idol industry.

Coming as it does from the early Nineties, when a lot of Japanese anime creators thought unintelligibility equaled depth and when both Blade Runner and Neuromancer were casting long shadows across Japanese pop culture, this show is famously weird. It’s weird perhaps most of all because of its mysterious director, Hiroaki Satō, who as far as I know has no other credits to his name. He crept onto the scene, made a competently directed anime skewering the world of Japanese idols, and then crept away again.

Key's new body — Key examines her new body.

I am really excited to finally watch this series, so I am going to review it one episode at a time. I have not seen it previously, so my comments here are off the cuff. Any criticisms I make come with the caveat that they may be satisfactorily answered by later episodes.

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Nyanzi on Dark Magical Girls

The other day, I posted a link to Christopher Kinsey’s discussion of how the magical girl genre has grown darker and more adult in recent years. Shortly thereafter, senpai noticed; that is, Rawlye Nyanzi took up the subject and gave his own speculation.

He looks at the subject from a different angle and makes an interesting observation: Japan is facing a devastating population winter. That is, the Japanese are not reproducing at replacement rate. And that means that the traditional target audience of magical girl anime is not getting replenished.

Nyanzi writes,

Remember that child-focused anime aren’t only trying to sell themselves, but associated merchandise as well. Before, they could aim at parents. Now, since there are way fewer parents and way more childless adults (who have way more disposable income), magical girl anime no longer have to be child-friendly. There’s no money in the children’s market anymore because there are too few children.

He also points out that there were grimmer magical girls even before the most recent spate. He gives My-HiME as an example, but we could easily refer to others—and even some of the great classics have their dark elements. Let’s not forget that Sailor Moon was forced to watch all her friends die and that the girls of Magic Knight Rayearth were tricked into committing a cosmic mercy-killing.

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History of Magical Girl Transformation Sequences

This video from Get in the Robot, although alleging to focus on the rationale for transformation sequences in magical girl anime, is actually a history of the genre with some critical interpretation thrown in. And it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen, so you should watch it. It mentions a lot of the major milestones in the genre, but smartly avoids getting sidetracked by rabbit trails or minor titles while at the same time pointing out some influences that others often miss.

My only small quibble with this video would be in its claim that the genre has shifted away from an early focus on coming-of-age stories. I think that’s something that’s been muted by the infusion of superhero tropes, but by no means eliminated.

Grown-Up Stuff: The ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ Rewatch, Part 18

The bird is fighting its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The god is named Abraxas.

Herman Hesse, Demian

Revolutionary Girl Utena, episode 18: “Mitsuru’s Impatience.” Directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. Character designs by Chiho Saito. Be-Papas, Japan, 1997 (Nozomi Entertainment, 2011). Approx. 24 minutes. Rated “16+.”

Watch for free.

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Hmm, haven’t done one of these in a while. I think it’s time once again to dive into that greatest of LCD-laced art-house-style anime from the 1990s—and, of course, to do with copious helpings of Texts from Last Night.