Maison Ikkoku: Kanketsu-hen

I was expecting this to be a sequel, but it wasn't. It takes place before Godai and Kyouko get married, which means they have two options: they can fill in some of the year that got skipped before the wedding or they can do something immediately before the wedding. They do the latter; this is about one of the final (well, "final") parties at Maison Ikkoku before they tie the knot, and so it's a bottle episode with a ton of food porn. I'm here for it.

This is one of those movies that make you go "wow, it really is possible to make a good ... looking movie out of anything." Even though not a ton happens, there are still setups and payoffs throughout, small conflicts, and interesting camera movements. It keeps your mind engaged while letting the animators show off a bit, and it's always elevating otherwise trivial moments. I don't feel right picking out just one because it really was a constant stream, but the scene where Yagami and Kyouko talk in the attic was lovely. They could have just said what they needed to say to each other and moved on, but no. Yagami had to go to the bathroom, so she ran downstairs and interacted with Yotsuya. Then, when she came back, she decided to jump over the stairwell and almost fell because she was drunk. When Yagami confronted Kyouko, Kyouko swung her legs out over the stairwell, and jumped down when she was finished. Then Yagami yells after her and hangs her head down into the stairwell to look after her. And all of this times well with the theme of their conversation, where they are in relation to each other and with Godai. It's a very dynamic, beautiful movie.

The series itself is a strong 9 and this, due to its scope limitations, is a bit of a downgrade in the story department, but it maintains the show's delightful atmosphere. It sparks such joy.

I dislike the artwork. Why did they change Godai's face, but the others look close to the TV series. There were also several scenes where characters were just drawn badly. Like the scene where Godai and Kyoko talk by the front door - their necks are absurdly long. And who ever did the shading should be ashamed of themselves. At times, the art reminded me of whoever did Macross DYRL (another movie where I loved the story and characters, but really hated the artwork).

I think the thing I disliked the most was the lack of new material. I kept asking ... myself, why did they bother to make this movie? Seems like a cash grab to me. Instead, we just revisit what we already know, and this "mystery letter" only takes like 5 minutes. What a wasted opportunity to explore other aspects of their wedding, honeymoon, or early married life.

I’m going to be real with all of you this isn’t going to be a review, this is going to be a rant. You can already see my score, I disliked this movie greatly, I felt it spat in not only my face, but the masterpiece that is the original series. Before I really get into it, I just want to prestate that Maison Ikkoku is my 2nd favorite anime, at times being my favorite anime. I love everything about it from its characters, its realized setting, its heart-touching love story, the comedy, the drama, I love Maison Ikkoku. The series was such a masterpiece ... I even wrote a review on it, but that’s besides the point. I’m about to rip this movie to shreds, possibly spoil it rotten, & rage like a bitch boy, you have been warned.

Lets start off simple, fuck this artstyle. The original TV series was gorgeous. It’s beautiful backgrounds, amazing character designs, superb shot composition, the TV show was a visual treat & stayed consistently well made from start to finish. For whatever reason, the people who worked on this movie decided to go with a completely unnecessary art-style change. Yuuji Moriyama is the person I have to blame for taking what once were these absolutely beautiful character designs adapted by both himself (eps 1-26) & then later on Takada Akemi (eps 27-96) and absolutely fuck them up. Moriyama tried taking a more realistic approach to designing the characters in this movie, but what Moriyama failed to realize was that the characters already looked about as real as you could believably make anime characters look in the original series, so I don’t understand why he made the characters so ugly in this movie. Remember earlier that I was praising the excellent backgrounds of the TV series? Yeah, those took a hit too. What once where beautiful, lush, involved backgrounds have now become lifeless, dull, devoid of soul, & largely flat. There’s a couple of good looking backgrounds in this movie every once in awhile, but they’re outweighed by the amount of bland backgrounds that are devoid of effort. I will give this movie some slight credit, the animation quality is actually good. I still like the way the TV show animates better, & quite honestly, the best animated moments of the TV series far surpass the best animated moments of this movie by a long-shot.


Now we have the story, oh my fucking god the story. A point of criticism that often comes up from Maison Ikkoku detractors is that the misunderstandings of the show are far too frequent, sometimes farfetched, & can easily be solved by Godai taking action. While I can understand these complaints, they aren’t ones I agree with for the most part. Until I watched this movie, & I then saw the complaints about the misunderstandings first hand. First of all, why? Why does Godai have such a lacking trust in Kyoko in this movie? We were treated to scenes in the series that clearly established these two shared a mutual trust betwixt one-another, & Kyoko never did anything particularly sleezy in the series in the first place, & Mitaka had already become married, why does Godai have any reason to believe Kyoko would be cheating on him? Did this idiot fuck-girl writer called Michiru Shimada go & misunderstand Godai’s character entirely? She shouldn’t have, she wrote 8 episodes of the series, some of them being my personal favorite episodes of the series. Let me be clear on one thing, Godai isn’t the brightest person out there, & he’s indecisive, gullible, & weak willed, but he isn’t completely fucking stupid. Now we have Yagamai & oh my god why? Ibuki Yagami was one of my least favorite characters in the series, but I didn’t completely hate her, because Yagami was still a realized character & contributed to the overall narrative at play. Nearing the end of the series, Yagami gives up on Godai coming to the realization that Godai likes Kyoko instead of her, while this admittedly concludes anti-climatically in the series & sort-of plays out in a way to where it feels anti-climatic, it was nevertheless a good conclusion to Yagami’s arc. SO WHY DID THEY BRING HER BACK? On top of that, why did they allow Yagami to be at her absolute worst that she’s ever been at this point in the series. Once Yagami’s arc concludes in the series she only appears infrequently, & never around anybody from Maison Ikkoku. Yagami had absolutely no reason to be in this movie. Her arc was concluded, she moved on with her life in the series, & that was that. It was a nice bittersweet ending to a character arc in the series, yet in Kanketsu-Hen her she is for absolutely no reason other than to stir up some drama because of course. There’s also a subplot going on this movie about the master from Chachamaru trying to propose to Akemi, while this is a somewhat sweet plot, it’s really not explored & is only used for a few scenes that add nothing but padding to an already short movie (coming in at a runtime of 1 hour 6 minutes), what a waste, & I’m sorry you had to be in this terrible movie master. Another disappointing aspect of this movie is that one of the most important characters to Godai’s development Lioka decides to show up, great, I’d love to see Lioka & Godai have a sort-of mini-reunion & see how far Godai has come ever since he stopped working at the cabaret because sakamoto fucked him over & the tenants of Maison Ikkoku are assholes who keep piling up his tab. But oh wait, he gets trapped in a room with Kyoko’s dad for the whole movie, just for 2, 3, maybe 4 gags that, contain some pretty slick transitions, but are otherwise unfunny gags repeating the joke that Mr. Chigusa doesn’t want his daughter to remarry, especially to someone like Godai, a man he finds unworthy of Kyoko’s heart, what a fuck-up. Now we have an absolutely pointless character that you would only need to make one minor plot-change, & he could be entirely useless & not contribute a damn thing to this movie. Nikaidou only contributes showing the letter to Kyoko that started this whole dumbass misunderstanding in the first place on accident. That’s all, he’s barely used for gags, & he has nothing worth contributing to the story. This guy was actually not in the original TV series, but was present in the manga. I’m guessing he was cut from the TV series because he contributed nothing of value to the narrative of the original source material too. This movie was anime original, why would you include a character from the manga that wasn’t even in the fucking anime in the first place? But I digress. All in all, the story of Kanketsu-Hen is all the worst aspects of Maison Ikkoku, that weren’t even that bad in the original series to begin with, amplified by 20K & then had the shit-switch cranked up on top of that, god I hated this movie.

You wanna talk sound? Because I’ll do that too. The voice acting isn’t bad, but it’s nothing impressive or special like the original series was. All the voice actors reprise their roles as their respective characters (Sumi Shimamoto as Kyoko), (Issei Futamata as Godai), (Shigeru Chiba as Yotsuya), so on. But the voice actors here all sound like they’re phoning it in and only doing this for a paycheck, I guess because the realized how terrible this movie was while they were recording their dialogue for it. The music is pathetic, not terrible, but an absolutely pathetic effort coming off of Kenji Kawai’s god-like OST from the original series. The movie didn’t even have the decency to open with either a unique OP, or a reused OP from the TV series, what the fuck gives guys? Maison Ikkoku had some of the best OPs out there, why didn’t you flex those in this movie? The sound design is actually a salvageable part out of this mess though, there’s some great SFX used for some actually funny & well timed moments in the movie, footsteps sound good, beer cans sound good, I’ll give the sound design some honest to god credit here, it was by-far the part that had the most effort put into it.

So in spite of all the shit-talking I’ve given to this movie, why did I not rate it a 1/10 like I should’ve? Because there were some honest to god really good character moments in this movie. Like the scene between Yagami & Kyoko in the attic of Maison ikkoku, Yagami asks Kyoko, “So the princess has two lovers, one of which being deceased, & the other being a young man, which one does she choose?” Kyoko thinks for a minute & answers back with “I never thought about comparing Godai to my late husband”. The banter between these two, & the structure both surrounding this scene before & after, & during the dialogue, it’s brilliant, & actually reminded me that I was watching something related to one of my all time favorite things for a little bit. Another scene I loved was close to the end of this movie, when Kyoko actually reads the letter to Godai. She tells a story about how Ikari Godai sent her a photo of Yusaku Godai in his childhood, she accidentally ripped the picture & wanted to apologize to Ikari for it. After Ikari writes back & the contents of the letter were revealed, Godai & Kyoko have some beautiful dialogue between them, again, the way this scene & the dialogue are structured is what makes it so good, & once again reminds me that I’m actually watching something that can be related to Maison Ikkoku twice throughout this god-damn movie. Another point of praise is that some moments of storyboarding in this movie are actually pretty slick & seamless, it’s one of the few good directing moments in this movie, as the directing from the TV series that was so insanely awesome in the first place has been stripped & gutted. I’ll also give credit that in the beginning of this movie I received a few laughs. I didn’t have many laughs throughout this movie, but hey, credit where it’s due I guess, I’m already being too easy on this movie as I am.

Maison Ikkoku Kanketsu-Hen is absolutely pathetic. Why did this need to exist? What point did this serve to the overall narrative? What value did this add to the series? How much did the people who work on this get paid? Really, there was no reason for this series to exist. The story would be a plot point that absolutely nobody would’ve cared about seeing as this wasn't in the the TV series or even the manga to begin with. The story sucks, the art sucks, the directing sucks, the music sucks, my favorite characters are a shell of their former selves in this movie & devoid of their personality & comedic moments (except for Yotsuya). This movie is a disgrace to the masterpiece that is Maison Ikkoku. If you have any shred of self-respect & love this series, please. Don’t watch this terrible movie. It will bring nothing but disappointment & anger. Final rating for this one is gonna be a 2/10. This was a shameless cash-grab that was made only to capitalize on Maison’s popularity at the time & is an absolute disgrace to this series and any & everyone who is a fan of this series.