Volcano Collection
This is one of those things which would probably register as being “weird” as opposed to merely “curious” if it were happening in a different show, but the ninth episode of Sengoku Collecion threw in a bunch of references to the Korean martial arts movie Volcano High…
I mean, if you’re thinking this stuff is generic enough to coincidence, there’s a shower scene at the end of the episode that I’m not picturing here which really gives the trick away. It’s kind of cute, I guess, though not really all that interesting. As far as it goes, most episodes of Sengoku Collection references, to varying degrees of blatancy, some movie or other I’m not cine-literate enough to pick up on.
Sengoku Collection is a really strange beast of a show. I was pretty much ready to write it off after the first episode proved to be somewhat of a rote magical girlfriend show, but it kind of won me over when the second episode was about a Sengoku general being an, errr, aspiring idol (the humour value of a general known for the persecution of Christians trying to sing with a gospel group wasn’t lost on me). It then lost me with the third episode. Then won me over again with the fourth. Yeah, it’s a peculiar show.
I think it’s just that I have an inordinate amount of affection for shows which display such a ludicrous degree of genre shift. I mean, the reason that spoofing Volcano High didn’t register as weird in Sengoku Collection is because this is a show which had already spent an entire episode mocking Michael Moores gun-control documentaries.
As far as the episodes aired thus far go…
Episode 1 – Kind of boring, rote magical girlfriend show.
Episode 2 – Ieyasu as an aspiring pop-idol, playing very little on the whole fish-out-of-water thing. Very cute.
Episode 3 – Back to the fish-out-of-water antics. Kind of ruined by Kanetsugus kind-of-derpy character design.
Episode 4 – Rather straight-laced and curiously humourless gangster/prison drama. Moderately interesting.
Episode 5 – Michael Moore spoof. Rightfully kind-of-not-really legendary.
Episode 6 – Gennai tries to invent a time machine so she can go further into the future, minor drama ensues. Kind of uneventful – I thought it was cute, many thought it was tedious.
Episode 7 – If I was being cute, I’d write this line in Haiku, since that’s how Basho tends to speak. Either cute or really, really annoying.
Episode 8 – Hideyoshi the rice-lover travels into a mysterious world where she gets involved in a war between Rice and Wheat. Gloriously surreal.
Episode 9/10 – Volcano High-referencing two parter. The first part was fun, the second part I actually found a little dull.
Episode 11 – Mardock Scramble. Sort-of. In a way that only those who’ve read the novel will understand. Wasn’t too hot on it, personally.
Yeah, it’s a strange show. It’s kind of worth watching for that reason. If nothing else, it’s probably got a better hit:miss ratio than certain other higher-profile largely episodic shows airing this season.
Also, PenguinDrum poster?
2012-06-18
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wow, mind blown.
the references to films do make sense now though. in that a lot of the episodes feels like they had been ripping off a different style of directing.
2012-06-18
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Is there actually any kind of season-level story, or is it entirely satire/parody?
2012-06-18
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The show occasionally hints at there being an over-arching story of some sort, and Nobunaga does – admittedly increasingly less – occasionally show up to tie episodes back into what was going on in the first episode.
Largely, though, it’s just episode.
2012-06-18
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To be fair to Sengoku Collection, there’s only maybe 2.5 scenes which directly reference Volcano High (the shower scene probably being the most super blatant) in episode 9, and I didn’t pick out any obvious direct pulls in episode 10 (but then it could have been spoofing something entirely different), though there’s a few obvious thematically similarities.
Of course, Volcano High just happens to be the one film they’ve supposedly referenced that I’ve seen three or four times in recent years (being by far the trashiest) – I gathered after noticing this that the Japanese fan community have been trying to put films-to-episodes, but most the films that’ve been coming up I’ve never seen (because I don’t generally go chasing surrealist Czechoslovakian versions of Alice in Wonderland) or I’ve not seen anywhere near recently enough to pick up specifics. I kind of wish someone was making an effort to document this stuff pictorially, purely for my own amusement, but I guess that’s too much to ask. I’d endeavour to do it myself, but I’m finding it hard enough to keep up with my anime right now as it is.