Review for Oh! Edo Rocket: The Complete Series

Introduction

Of all the genres to review, comedy is pretty much the hardest. The temptation is often there to take the easy way out and just relate all the good jokes, which defeats the purpose. But the real reason is that humour is in the eye of the beholder, nothing is more subjective, and what might make me laugh, may leave you stone-faced. That’s doubly true for wacky, surreal comedy, and triply so for wacky, surreal anime comedy. On top of that, tastes change with time, or with familiarity. What might provoke laughter the first time, could very well leave you flat the second time around. That is something that happens to me a lot. US sitcoms are strictly a onetime only deal for me, and I found the same to be true for Nabeshin’s sense of humour. The ‘best thing ever’ sense I had about Excel Saga completely vanished the second time around. So I can read as much as I can about a show, even watch a trailer or two, pick up on fan opinions on anime forums, but when it comes to buying an anime comedy, it’s as close to a blind buy as I get. I just have to hope that I’m in the right mood to bust a gut when I watch it. What attracted me to Oh! Edo Rocket was the anachronistic premise, and the fact that it was directed by Seiji Mizushima, the director of the first Full Metal Alchemist series... that and the fact that it was a full series at a bargain basement price. I was also fascinated by the idea that unlike most anime, which are based on manga, light novels, or may even be original, Oh! Edo Rocket is based on a stage play.


It’s the mid nineteenth century, Edo era Japan, and fun has just become a criminal offence. Lord Mizuno has declared an era of austerity, meaning all luxuries have been outlawed, and Commissioner Torii enforces this edict with an iron will. Above all, that means no fireworks, which is a bit of an issue for the city’s number one (debatable) fireworks artist, Seikichi Tamaya. He’s on a mission to make the biggest, the best, and the most crowd-pleasing fireworks around, and he’s not going to let a stupid law get in his way.


Fortunately for his ambition, the authorities appear to have bigger fish to fry, two Sky Demons on the loose in the city, battling each other, and picking off innocent victims. They appeared after a couple of meteors fell to Earth, only these are the oddest looking meteors anyone has ever seen. Actually it’s the Blue Sky Demon attacking nubile young girls, and the White Sky Demon trying to stop it, but Commissioner Torii’s MIB team isn’t differentiating the threats. Then one day, an odd girl named Sora appears on Seikichi’s doorstep, declaring she’s a fan of his fireworks, and that she has a job for him. She wants a very special firework, one that she can ride all the way to the moon...


Disc 1
1. Bright Red Fireworks Bloom in the Great City of Edo
2. The Man Was Waiting
3. A Silver Fox Bound By Fate
4. No Need to Get Excited
5. The Argument
6. Duel to the First Love
7. That Crazy Girl Just Flew

Disc 2
8. Love, Murder... He Does It All
9. Betting on Love
10. Madhousecatincarnations
11. Poppycock!
12. If You Don’t Like Worrying...
13. Whaddaya Think of These Guts?


Disc 3
14. Just to Let You Know: I Caught a Glimpse of Tomorrow
15. Out of Nowhere! Air Raid at New Year’s
16. “That Thing” Is Me!
17. Killing Melody at First Light
18. Up Against the Divine Lord’s Dungeon
19. Utter Nonsense
20. Woman Who Smiles in the Face of Hardship

Disc 4
21. You Get Three Digressions
22. It Was Just a One-Night Dream
23. Some Fireworks for the Sword Dance
24. Hijack the You-Know-What!
25. When a Master’s Work Cries for the Moon
26. Somehow or Other, Liftoff

Picture

Oh! Edo Rocket gets the, by now usual 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, progressively encoded NTSC on these Region 1 discs. The image is clear and sharp throughout, and there are no visible issues with compression or digital artefacts. This is a bright, colourful and vivid animation, with character designs crafted more towards the comedy. The main characters tend to the cute and appealing, while the supporting cast can be heavily caricatured. But it all works very well. The animation is fluid and energetic when it need to be, while the world design captures a period setting with a heavy dose of anachronism. This is a rather modern looking historical Japan, although not in quite the same way as Gintama.

Sound

Oh! Edo Rocket offers you the options of DD 5.1 Surround English, and DD 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. The volume is a little low on both, easily remedied, and it should be noted that the subtitle translation tends towards the profane if you’re of a sensitive bent. The Japanese audio is definitely the way to go here, as what little I sampled of the English dub, reminded me of the overcooked comedy dubs that tend to replace the comedy with shouting into the microphone. The subtitles are timed accurately and free of typos, although given the preponderance of on screen text, this may be one that sees regular use of the pause button. Where Oh! Edo Rocket really shines is in the music. The theme songs are excellent; particularly the catchy opening from Puffy, but the incidental music really sparkles as well, going for something a little jazzy and stylish. Yet again, another anime that has you looking out for the soundtrack CD.

Extras

You get 4 discs in an Amaray case, two central hinged panels, with one disc on each panel face. The sleeve is reversible, with the episode listing on one rear, the disc blurb on the other rear, and the whole thing is wrapped in an o-card that repeats the outer sleeve art and blurb. The discs present the show with static menus and jacket pictures.

Disc 1 autoplays with a trailer for Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood Part 2.

Disc 2 autoplays with a trailer for Spice and Wolf.

On the disc, you’ll find the textless credits, and further Funimation trailers for Le Chevalier D’Eon, Dragon Ball Z Kai, Gun x Sword, Hong Kong Connection, the S.A.V.E. label, Kamui Gaiden (released here as Kamui: The Lone Ninja), and Blassreiter.


Disc 3 autoplays with a trailer for Sengoku Basara Season 1.

Disc 4 autoplays with a trailer for GunxSword.

On the disc, you’ll find the textless credits, and further Funimation trailers for Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z Kai, , Hong Kong Connection, the S.A.V.E. label, Kamui Gaiden, Initial D, and Blassreiter


This is one of those instances that you wish companies like ADV were still in operation. Funimation’s modus operandi back when this show was licensed was to get them out cheaply, quickly and with no frills. ADV on the other hand were the last big distro to release single volumes, and given the show’s period setting, and the real life characters translated into comedy-drama, you really do want production notes, the kind of booklets and guides that ADV used to slip into the Amaray case alongside the discs. Alas, if you want to know more about this period in Japanese history, you’ll have to do the groundwork yourself, and trust to Wikipedia. Where’s the fun in that?

Conclusion

If shows like Excel Saga are anything to go by, the real value of an anime comedy comes in its re-watchability, just how funny it is the second time around. If I were to wait for a re-watch though, I probably wouldn’t get a review of Oh! Edo Rocket posted until 2020 at the earliest, judging by how long it takes for me to get around to a second viewing of anime shows these days. But going by the first viewing alone, Oh! Edo Rocket is really quite good. It’s good indeed. Its humour hits right in my funnybone, its irreverent comedy, and tendency to destroy the fourth wall appealing to my sense of humour.


It’s also the juxtaposition of past and present that really gets the comedy juices flowing. A government imposing austerity, cracking down on luxuries to distract the populace has a certain to relevance to it, while going in the other direction, a 19th Century space race, reaching for the moon sparks nostalgia for the real thing, as you see similar events and milestones achieved with gunpowder and steampunk technology, not even steampunk, as there was a distinct paucity of steel and iron in 19th Century Japan... These rockets are built of wood! But every so often, an anachronism will appear, characters watch recaps of previous episodes on TV, they may take a train to another village, or pop into an internet cafe. There are also plenty of in-jokes and references, some of which even I got. I love the Full Metal Alchemist reference, while the Gurren Lagann bit tickles.


Oh! Edo Rocket has no shortage of characters and storylines to enjoy, and the character designs vary from the appealing and cute for the main cast, to the wacky and surreal for the comic relief, again upping the quotient of jokes. But beneath all the wackiness and far out comedy, is a solid and engaging story, and that’s what makes Oh! Edo Rocket work so well. Alien shape-shifting girl falls from space, and gets stranded on Earth until she sees Seikichi Tamaya’s fireworks. That gives her the hope that she can get back to where she belongs with his help, although for Seikichi that means building a rocket unlike any other. Of course put a pretty girl in proximity with a handsome young boy, romantic thoughts are bound to occur, only there’s a slight complication with Seikichi’s younger brother Shunpei developing a crush on Sora, and with Sora spending a lot of time with Ginjiro, another Row House resident. The big complication is Sora’s secret identity, that of the White Sky Beast, something which Ginjiro quickly discovers, but Seikichi doesn’t know about, only that the Sky Beasts are terrorising Edo.


Sora came to Earth to capture the criminal Blue Sky Beast, and the Blue Sky Beast continues its predations on Earth. The authorities, cracking down on the populace having fun in order to distract them from foreign influences, have the ultimate foreigners to deal with, with two actual aliens in the city, and they’re not differentiating between Blue and White. They create a group of MIBs, people with unique abilities to hunt down the Beasts, and Ginjiro, having a special ability of his own, gets blackmailed into joining, so he has his secret to protect as well. While the official line is to crack down on fun and fireworks, people like Gin are likely to give Seikichi a helping hand by diverting attention, while some in the government actually have an investment in seeing Seikichi succeed. Meanwhile, one of the police, an obnoxiously officious fellow named Nishinoya actually finds the Blue Sky Beast, but instead of capturing her and turning her in, he falls in love with her. Oh! Edo Rocket actually takes a turn for the dark here, the one odd note in an otherwise wholly comedic enterprise, but it serves the heart of the story well.


Actually, pretty much all of the main characters in Oh! Edo Rocket have two sides to them, and discovering these truths, their hidden halves are what make the show so engaging to watch, outside its comic antics. But the comedy is what Oh! Edo Rocket is all about, and it uses every weapon in its arsenal to provoke mirth, whether it’s wordplay, slapstick, winks to the audience, demolishing the fourth wall, wacky characters, blatant anachronisms, toilet humour, or just plain simple goofiness. What surprised me is that it all worked. It’s all pitched just about right, aiming directly at my ever so slightly twisted sense of humour, and if I wasn’t laughing throughout, I was at least grinning for most of it when I wasn’t chuckling. There were even a few guffaws to be had. Oh! Edo Rocket isn’t the funniest show around, but it is consistently funny, which in many respects is harder to achieve. This is definitely a show worth considering.