3 Episode Taste Test: Kuchu Buranko (Trapeze)

Kuchu Bur­anko (Trapeze, lit. Sky Swing) is like a late night bevy of cock­tails: all bright col­ours and mind alter­ing effects. The first three epis­odes are an all out assault on aes­thet­ics, everything is awash with lumin­ous col­ours and tex­tured with polka dots or gar­ish swathes of clash­ing pat­terns. Some­times barely dis­cern­ible from the back­drops, the char­ac­ters are anim­ated haphaz­ardly when they are at all, often devolving into poorly filtered live-action or blatant roto­scop­ing and other times jerking between poses with little warn­ing. Like its closet mere­tri­cious sib­ling, Gankut­suou, the visu­als are only meant to allure and the real meat of the epis­odes is worth risk­ing sens­ory overload.

“Bey­ond the scratchy, haphaz­ard style it often feels like a tech­ni­col­our slideshow”

The mostly stan­dalone stor­ies are about indi­vidu­als who have some sort of men­tal afflic­tion which is examined by the whim­sical psy­chi­at­rist Ichiro Irabu who changes form between an obnox­ious green rab­bit with per­man­ent facial stubble, a pre­co­cious young boy whose lab coat is sev­eral sizes too large for him and an andro­gyn­ous bespec­tacled boy in his late teens or early twen­ties. Even the patients are not immune to switch­ing states, often depic­ted as anim­als which suit their con­di­tion; top­ping all of this mad­ness off is a sup­posedly real life psy­chi­at­rist Fukuic­chi who sporad­ic­ally pops out of a scene for an aside on the cur­rent dis­order being explored. The series so far is rauc­ous, visu­ally bog­gling and bril­liant fun to watch.

There seems little this series won’t cover with the second epis­ode ded­ic­ated to a man with a per­man­ent erec­tion who has to go through great pains to hide his con­di­tion from his work col­leagues who are mostly buxom but bossy females. Other epis­odes deal with a cir­cus per­former and romance nov­el­ist and, com­bined with the sul­try and pro­voc­at­ively dressed nurse and a cor­nu­copia of other oddball char­ac­ters, everything is sat­ur­ated with an energy that matches the neon tones. It is on the strength of the cast that the show relies and by the third epis­ode the par­tic­u­lar brand of lun­acy wiel­ded by the psy­chi­at­rist has dulled and isn’t helped by a com­par­at­ively flat lead; this could be a portent of epis­odes to come but with only eleven in total and the strength of prior offer­ings, the lull is more likely a hic­cup than a devel­op­ing flaw.

Given the bar­rage of col­ours, the visu­als are always going to be under scru­tiny and they are the easi­est ele­ment to pick fault with. Bey­ond the scratchy, haphaz­ard style it often feels like a tech­ni­col­our slideshow than anim­a­tion and it is left to the faux live-action char­ac­ters to fill out some of the motions. There are brief flashes of the tal­ent some­times seen from Toei Anim­a­tion but oth­er­wise it is back­drops and stills which make up the major­ity of the runtime. The audio is befit­ting of the tone of the show with almost Euro­pop open­ing and end­ing songs and kitschy sound effects dropped into the epis­odes at oppor­tune moments; the soundtrack remains as con­spicu­ous as the rest of the show.

In just three epis­odes Kuchu Bur­anko proves a beguil­ing mix of psy­cho­lo­gical expos­i­tion and riot­ous design; often funny and layered bey­ond expect­a­tions it is a blast to watch and the lengths to which it will go with the remain­ing eight patients is tan­tal­ising. It will likely be lumped into a cult cat­egory with other sur­real treats such as Kaiba but it is, so far at least, well worth poten­tially jeop­ard­ising one’s col­our per­cep­tion to watch. ¶