The concept of Sekko Boys is brilliant. Following up on the criticism that the idol industry is based on the exploitation and sexualization of youths without concern for their emotional well being or development, it presents a world that has slowly begun to opt out of most subjective views of “attractiveness”. The common folk now rally behind the art world’s objective, long-standing take on beauty resulting in the most beautiful men in existence becoming modern day pop stars. Of course, those men are actually the depictions of various mythical and legendary figures preserved as busts. Sentient stone and plaster busts.
That concept alone would have sold
...
me for a quick viewing during this fairly gloomy anime season, but there’s also the addition of various comedic actors from the legendary Gintama and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, a side order of the ever flamboyant Jun Fukuyama, and all topped off with a script half dedicated to the mythologies these characters hail from and half admonishing of the media world as a whole. All together, that creates (arguably) the most intriguing set up this season.
Was the resulting short series actually able to sell and expand upon that hook for its nearly 90 minute total run time? Surprisingly, yeah.
Miki Ishimoto is an art student who had a heavily traumatizing (and in my case, highly relatable) experience through college that ultimately led to her violently abandoning the medium shortly after her university years started. She accepts a job working for an entertainment company which immediately pushes her to become manager of their new idol group, Sekko Boys, if solely due to her intact spine (which one might find ideal for when lifting heavy objects). She imagines the most beautiful bishounen at her beck and call, her cemented future successes, and the inevitable grandeur she'll earn as their organizer. Upon face-to-face introduction to the stars she’ll be working with, the talking busts of Saint Giorgio, Hermes, Medici, and Mars, she promptly explodes in rage.
The average three-hundred-eighty second episodes contain plots that start by treating the boys as regular idols, but escalate into absurdity through their dual presence as, not statues, but legendary figures. Mars/Ares loses his composure when asked about his yandere-esque escapades with women during a TV interview, Hermes confesses to giving baby Dionysus wine thus invoking his manager’s fury, Giorgio has no sense of humour and earns a cult following because of it, and so on. Though its humour is primarily based around references, it’s a significant improvement over the idea reference’s existence is worthy of being a full punch line. They build off of the existing material like a good Gintama sketch to create amazing situations, such as Giorgio’s dramatic bar scene in which he agrees to “bed” a woman in order to erase a scandal, only for a post-credits reveal to hilariously bring the joke back around to his existence as a statue. It’s that each episode somehow expands on the culture of this world and expansive rules of the statues’ biology that keep things fresh each sitting. For example, did you know they can body swap to other statues of themselves? Still, this is your chance to either run away from the complicated Greco-Roman mythos or find yourself intrigued enough to dive in and compensate for the references you don’t get with research later on.
LIDENFILMS continues using their animation standard, creating a short that, if you plugged a few episodes together, could have taken a full time slot a few years back. It’s rarely stiff and the twist of photoshopped statues is surprisingly unobtrusive to immersion, heavily thanks to the pool of shots they fish through having been taken from numerous angles, heights, and lighting types to match the scenes. More necessary praise needs to be given to Miki’s design, who manages to be cute not due to weakness, blushing, or child-like features but by her comically outrageous stress level. So rest assured, even if Kagewani wasn’t your thing with its shaded paper style, Sekko Boys “looks like anime”.
Likewise, the music is standard background fair used to accentuate scenes and has the same level of comedic editing you’d expect from a fairly respectable studio; a surprise for a short series to have, but nothing high above competence. It’s rare for a show with a thematic touch in music to lack leitmotifs, but like most pop idols the Sekkou Boys are putrid beyond belief in that category. “5/5 So Bad, It’s Good”, says one of their own in-universe reviewers.
Like any short series, Sekko Boys is filler for the viewer, but it’s filler with heart and a skosh of wit put into it. It comes off as a way for its animators to vent some rage at contemporary art schools, put a few nails in the Miss Monochrome coffin, and unleash a writer’s repressed love for art history, mythologies, and juxtaposing the classy art we’re often told to praise with the absurdities of the medium they've found work in. It’s knows this is about as far as it can go in its exploration of its concept and it was definitely a ride worth sharing.
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Mar 31, 2016
Sekkou Boys
(Anime)
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The concept of Sekko Boys is brilliant. Following up on the criticism that the idol industry is based on the exploitation and sexualization of youths without concern for their emotional well being or development, it presents a world that has slowly begun to opt out of most subjective views of “attractiveness”. The common folk now rally behind the art world’s objective, long-standing take on beauty resulting in the most beautiful men in existence becoming modern day pop stars. Of course, those men are actually the depictions of various mythical and legendary figures preserved as busts. Sentient stone and plaster busts.
That concept alone would have sold ... 
Feb 2, 2015
Nihon Animator Mihonichi
(Anime)
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Why do we watch anime? Some people for the characters, some for the stories, others for the culture. But hopefully all of us can get an appreciation for some gorgeous, if brief animation, right? Of course, that fails to do NAM justice.
Nihon Animator Mihonichi plays host to a number of unrelated shorts with storytelling as varied as the artstyles of each piece. The one common factor is that the stories themselves are rarely direct and you'd be forgiven for wanting to watch it again until you have an understanding for what it is. This isn't a bad thing, as it's sign of the rare occasion ... 
Oct 10, 2014
Persona 4 the Golden Animation
(Anime)
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Watch Episodes 6 & 7, Persona fans! As for the rest, well, my (first) review.
The Golden Animation, simply put, is all the scenes from the updated rerelease from the game, animated and stretched out a bit. As opposed to the strange combination of social life, school days, and vigilante-Shadow-fighting-crime-solving that was Persona 4, Golden, when taken at face value, comes off as a typical Slice-of-Life with a mystery sub-plot that isn't even explained well. Which is admittedly understandable, though it doesn't improve the series. Our returning characters have their previously established relationships hinted at, as with their slightly more complex personalities, but they're mostly shoved to the ... |
