HOUSE OF FIVE LEAVES DVD Review

(You take "Samurai Champloo", strip it of nearly everything that made it awesome, and you get... something equally awesome?!)

"House of Five Leaves" is a sedate boy-meets-gang coming-of-age story, only the boy is a traumatized shy ronin in feudal Japan and the gang is a band of enigmatic kidnappers.
An anime series of twelve episodes, it was quite recently aired in Japan but caught the eye of fans worldwide for its recognizable style and its creators' reputations.

Although the series has been licensed by several English-friendly distributors already, Siren Visual is the first one out of the gate with an actual English-friendly release. Their version is on shelves this very month and as "House of Five Leaves" is an excellent series which we've been waiting for, this edition demands a review.


The Story:

In medieval Japan's capital Edo, disgraced samurai Akitsu tries to earn a living as a "ronin" doing bodyguard-for-hire jobs. Thing is, he keeps getting fired because of his meekness and his prospects are dire.

Then he meets the charismatic and confident gangster Yaichi, who hires him for help on one job. Thinking the work to be honest Akitsu accepts, but to his dismay he discovers afterwards that he has assisted in a kidnapping scheme.
Disgusted yet intrigued, Akitsu keeps visiting the kidnapping gang which calls itself "The House of Five Leaves" and despite being a distrusted outsider he slowly but surely starts to integrate.


The Series:

Last year Fuji TV broadcast studio Manglobe's "House of Five Leaves" as part of their "noitaminA" ("animation" backwards) selection. This is a timeslot late at night meant for anime aimed at non-standard audiences, meaning mature viewers instead of teenage boys. Often the "noitaminA" anime are very "artsy" and unconventional fare, but not exclusively so: in the past it also included the stellar and commercial "Eden of the East" for instance.

And make no mistake, while "House of Five Leaves" is certainly unconventional it is at heart a simple, well-told tale unencumbered by artsy embellishments. Sure it has a distinct visual style, most apparent by the way faces are drawn. Everyone looks gaunt and pale, a look lifted by animator Kazuto Nakazawa straight from the original manga by Natsume Ono on which the anime is based, but this distinction never overshadows the narrative. Director Tomomi Mochizuki focuses completely on the interactions of the members of the gang and newcomer Akitsu, who stumbles around the kidnappers like a fifth musketeer.

It is this pinpoint focus which might have become the "Achilles' Heel" of the series, had it been handled by less sure hands. Though the backgrounds are lovingly painted and often very beautiful, for most of the time you are watching stylized talking heads in a room or one of the several indistinguishable streets which make up the outskirts of Edo. Likewise there are no spectacular action sequences, chases, explosions, massacres or assassination attempts at either the Emperor or the Shogun. And there are none of the quirks, jokes and spectacles which made Manglobe's earlier Edo-aged series "Samurai Champloo" so much fun to watch. "House of Five Leaves" is a remarkably low-key affair, the kind of intimate which is the very other side of epic.

Nevertheless, once the story and its characters sink in (the low-key realism helps a LOT here) they do not let you go. Like in a good soap you do want to find out how everyone will react to every new revelation forced aboveground by Akitsu's blunt and clumsy manners. All protagonists including Akitsu have a few deeper layers and these add to the richness of the narrative. For me, the twelve episodes flew by in a breeze and while there are some subplots warranting a possible follow-up, the series stops with enough issues resolved to leave the viewers content.
Seeing people interact at the end looks very different than when they did it at the start, even though they sometimes say and act exactly the same things. Marvelous.


Conclusion:

Sedate is not the same as boring and "House of Five Leaves" is proof of that, its slow pace a result of excellent plotting rather than lack of subject matter.
It may not have any big "money shot" moments and the facial animation takes getting used to, but I found this series to be a thrilling piece of character-driven drama.

This series is one of my absolute favorite anime and comes highly recommended.


On to the DVD-set:

Several distributors have told me that it is not economically viable to release anime in English-speaking regions without an English dub. People watching anime in Japanese with English subtitles are a minority, albeit a vocal one on the Internet.

Enter Siren Visual who apparently has taken the gamble to cater specifically to this minority. Their recent string of releases often is strictly subtitle-only. And I truly hope this is a business model which works for them, as it allows anime to be distributed less expensively and (above all) a lot quicker.
It helps of course that these releases target mature audiences. I'm not saying series like "Naruto" with its strong younger fanbase would not benefit from having an English dub attached, but something like "The Tatami Galaxy" or "Welcome to Irabu's Office"? Certainly not any more than live action does.

So the Siren Visual DVD-release of "House of Five Leaves" has just the Japanese track and English subs. Both audio and video quality are excellent, although I was surprised that the Japanese track is only a straight stereo one. That fact did not distract me in the slightest while listening to the series though, and the beautifully haunting score seems to have been done justice as it touched me.
The video quality was so good that taking screenshots for this review was a delight. It's not a BluRay of course but for DVD the image quality is nothing short of stellar.

As for extras: this edition is basically barebones, the only extras being a textless version of the opening and closing credits and some trailers for "The Tatami Galaxy", "Welcome to Irabu's Office", "House of Five Leaves" and "Durarara!!".

But the true value of these discs is in the series itself. Siren Visual is to be commended for releasing this series so quickly in so high a visual quality. This edition comes recommended, barebones though it is.
Do note that Siren Visual employs regioncoding (grrrrr...) and the discs have been coded for region 4 (Australia),so if you choose to import this edition make sure your hardware can handle that.


Check out Siren Visual's anime catalogue here (link).