Jul 2, 2024
Early 2000's to 2010's were the time when many independent creators and lesser known anime production companies tried to venture into short animations. But instead of utilising major social network type Video streaming services like YouTube, these animes tended to stream on some very obscure Japan-only webcomic/mobile comic website (with geo-restriction and/or foreign currency paywall) which failed to gain popularity and some being totally lost media due to the website being shutdown and the documentation being scarce. Majority of these Anime's selling point came from hiring prolific voice actresses with the opening credits shows the VA's name way larger than their character's name.
Walpurgis Night
...
Fever is a short anime which mostly falls into that (minus being lost media, thanks to the DVD being sold and vbeing streamed on Bandai Channel), a rather obscure shitpost anime short which was produced for a very short-lived Japanese phone manga website called 'Biweekly Comic! Gekkin' (only lasted an year and 4 months) which relied on popular VAs, parodies of 70's-00's manga, sport athletes, video games, Hollywood movies and Japanese TV documentaries, psst, There's an Akira Toriyama reference but no Jojo reference
...The less talked about the DVD cover art, the better.
Plot [4/10]:
The anime does technically has a very tiny Sci-fi backstory: The humanity of planet Walpurgis 3 gone extinct, with the only survivors being two girls, Crystal Crystal (Cris) and Garnet (along with Carrot the mecha-bat and the ridable robot Koutetsu-maru) and the two girls attempts to send out an S.O.S. in a form of a TV programme. The story doesn't matter much, since it's a slapstick comedy where The girls tries to set up the S.O.S. programme whilst commiting to Carrot abuse and messing up in a weird way or actively enjoying major havoc within the ruins. To keep it simply, the anime's not for the plot but for very random humour.
Art [6/10]:
The character design is cute, the 3D presentation and animation is well put together without much of the messy low budget feeling. Koutetsu-maru's mech design is well detailed, giving a good gap between the comical nature.
Sound [6/10]
The Opening theme sung by Tomoko Kaneda (who also voiced Carrot) is peak chaos, basically indicating that the creators were honest that the anime was pretty much a deliberate shitpost. Other songs are okay with some not so subtle parody songs added in here and there.
Characters [3/10]:
Typical slap stick archetypes voiced by mainline VAs. that's pretty much it.
Enjoyment [6/10]:
I did quite enjoy a slapstick nature and subtle background details which hinted how Walpurugis 3 once used be a peaceful colony which turned to ruins after having the serious and how 100s of usable tanks and missles being abandoned, but I've also though that in areas of the comedic structure, it does get a bit repetitive in areas mostly due to the previously mentioned lack of character depth.
Overall [5/10]:
I do feel that there are some parts of the Anime that I like (the world setting with potentials of digging further) alongside giving some laughs ocasionally, but I do feel that there were so much missed opportunities due to the anime's short length, minimal character depth and overreliance on TV programme tropes a bit too much. It ain't bad...but there's so many animes with simillar concepts which were able to pull better execution. Watch as a form of a 2010's comedy anime time capsule.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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