I pride myself on being in possession
of strange anime. Project A-Ko was my first taste of quirkiness,
which was recently surpassed by Chibi Ah! My Goddess. But now there
is a new king of the mountain. Well, actually, make that a queen, as
the 16-episodes of DiGi Charat are bound to blow away your previous
conception of oddness.
The series revolves around the
exploits of DiGi Charat and her three ‘friends’ after
crash-landing in Japan’s infamous electronic haven, Akihabara, in
their cat-shaped spaceship. Point in fact, the characters in DiGi
Charat are actually mascots for "Gamers", a store in
Akihabara. Each episode normally entails Dejiko (DiGi Charat) and
co. in some odd fashion doing odd things, whether it be the task of
buying ‘something’ from the Something Store (yes, I’m
serious), or causing general havoc in their own special way. Dejiko’s
friends include Petite Charat (an adorable, wide-eyed and
emotionless sap), Gema (an odd yellow floating thing) and Rabien-Rose
(an odd girl with bunny ears and dice on her head). There are also a
cast of other oddities, including Mr Long-Hair (no, I’m not
kidding) and Dejiko’s fans (who are two of the funniest otaku’s
I’ve ever seen), among others.
So what is it that makes this anime
so obscure? First up, the characters are beautifully realised
super-deformed creatures, have a habit of adding little quips at the
end of their sentences (DiGi Charat’s ‘-nyo’s become
infectious at times) with story lines that, as illustrated above,
are completely odd, bizarre, unpredictable and innately Japanese
humoured. This is the stuff that will make you go nuts, and rightly
so; there isn’t a sensible moment to be found, and if ever it
begins to approach such a moment, you can be assured that the air of
seeming normality will be shattered by some bout of wackiness.
As is probably obvious, I love this
series. I love odd Japanese things, and while watching this series
could probably turn somebody off anime due to how far off the scale
of normality it is, I still have to recommend you take a look. If
only we had game mascots like this in the West…
Anime Inferno is developed and managed by:
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