noitaminA - Welcome to Irabu's Office reviewed

noitaminA is a suite of experimental, outside the box anime productions (produced by Fuji TV) premiering late night in Japan that have thankfully been licensed by the fine folks at Siren Visual (who notably released the Genius Party box sets; Ard's review of those can be found here

These stellar series comprise almost all of the elements that genre fare anime lack, and purposely avoids the fan boy tropes of magical girls, mecha and other tried and true themes and templates. The end result is an intellectually challenging and puzzling miasma of animated art, intended to provoke thought but also entertain in equal measure. I am privileged to review the Siren Visual DVD releases through late February to April and hopefully beyond!

Let's begin with Welcome to Irabu's Office (Kūchū Buranko 空中ブランコ). A warped psychiatrist Irabu Ichiro treats 11 patients in the lead up to Christmas. Each patient has a different affliction and his method of treating them are unorthodox to say the very least. These treatments mostly involve his nurse Mayumi injecting them with an obscenely large needle while he looks on in perverse pleasure. This needle forces metaphysical change on the patient by turning their head into an animal's head like a horse or chameleon, that has vague reference to their condition and also makes Irabu appear anytime and anywhere in their lives in an effort to treat them.

You are quite upside down! Sometimes you bring me down. It is this hook in the theme song that has been playing in my own mind since I viewed Welcome to Irabu's Office. It is not an anime that can easily be shaken off, it was a bizarre, yet meaningful experience. Looking past its mask of insanity, there are some grounded truths to be found, within each patient who vary in demographics and are unique in their complexity. Some cases (eleven in total) are more interesting than others, and the closer it gets to Xmas the more things pick up and this is representative of Mayumi ripping off the days on a calendar as each case progresses. As each episode nears the epilogue it becomes more dynamic. The dots can be formed and it becomes clear that this series, despite initial thoughts, is more than just random chaos.

Taking a step back, one of the most unique aspects of Welcome to Irabu's Office is the visual sensation that permeates every part of it. A super spastic palette of color is draped over every scene, creating a Neo-Tokyo experiment. Some scenes are just unrecognizable from the real world as bright colors and fabrics are used to wallpaper everything. It takes a little adjustment to become used to the dyed artificiality of the Tokyo that Irabu exists in.

Then there is the people, the protagonists are fleshed out; Irabu, Mayumi and each patient and supporting cast, but everyone else, appropriately so, are not! This is to the point that they are literally cardboard cutouts, 2D unimportant noise wandering aimlessly in the background. In the foreground everyone else is a combination of good animation, rotoscoped live action face shots (or full-body 90% of the time in Mayumi's case) and baby-faced Americana inspired expressions.  This experimentation adds to, and often enhances the repetitive scenes and locations that are constantly utilized in each episode. These same places are of course fleshed out and given different points of view per episode and it will soon become clear that the time frame of every patient is intentional, sequential and in unison. Cues and links to same-day events are evident in each case and the pacing could not be any more brilliant; Welcome to Irabu's Office could easily be one big feature length film, but ultimately works well as episodic and essentially it is the better of the two formats.

The series is already extremely original and memorable but the characters that inhabit it are an entirely different force driving the plot forward. Irabu the psychotic psychiatrist spins in his fancy throne-like chair, canary's surround his uber bright 'office' and he is initially presented as a colorful bear-man. Why he is this manifestation is not clear, but he also appears as a little girl and an adolescent feminine man. The show is constantly interrupted by the real-world Fukuitchi, a medical doctor who explains all the interesting facts of each psychosis and appears by literally sawing a square hole through the freeze framed screen. Mayumi is the nurse and mostly eye candy for the viewers. The fact she delivers the medicine is layers of psychoanalysis involved in this fact alone. The patients ranging from a sensitive Yakuza to a romance novelist and are all men (which is suspicious in itself regarding what this series is trying to say) and all experience a subtle break-through.

As stated the pacing is excellent, especially as everything comes together to void the randomness on screen. Irabu's canaries, the gangster with safety goggles and many more bizarre snippets from previous episodes are covered in later ones. Welcome to Irabu's Office brings the complex of Japanese society into focus and is effortless in its attempt to do so. What does this series really say about Japan and its denizens?

Perhaps the epilogue goes to some lengths to explain. With a focus on the canaries some advanced thinking comes into play and a deeper meaning is inhabited on what these birds represent. Perhaps we as the viewers are also being analyzed and the subtle explorations of the cognitive elements of the show are exhausted here, the final words (no spoilers) may even suggest that nurse Mayumi is part of our own complex (or not a real character at all) and the final, final words sum up society and all individuals of this world. Was it a cognitive impairment that drew us to watch Irabu's Office to begin with? The mind definitely ponders this and more after viewing this exquisitely bizarre, but intelligent anime.