Delusional Month-to-month Journal looks like a present that, by all rights, shouldn’t exist.
Once I was first entering into anime, one of many promoting factors was merely the best way it contrasted with American cartoons. As a substitute of cartoony mascot characters, it had cool-looking people and fantasy races. As a substitute of foolish tales that resolved roughly in a single episode, anime featured ongoing epic storylines. And as a substitute of incompetent antagonists, you can see villains who took lives and struck terror of their victims. Whereas this isn’t an correct description of anime as a complete, it was undoubtedly a standard sentiment on the time.
However Delusional Month-to-month Journal is like an anime homage to 80s–90s American cartoons, the form of factor you’d see on a weekday afternoon or Saturday morning. For those who put it subsequent to He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, some model of Scooby-Doo, Bionic Six, Mummies Alive, Street Rovers, or any variety of exhibits that usually get reviewed by Secret Galaxy, it could hardly look misplaced. And I don’t even imply that the present is harking back to these collection at their finest, like once they have magnificently animated openings. Quite, Delusional Month-to-month Journal usually calls to thoughts the sillier episodes the place the price range wasn’t so scorching.
Warning: Spoilers for your entire collection.
On the planet of the present, the eponymous Delusional Month-to-month Journal is a periodical devoted to exploring the occult, and its total workers consists of a bunch of weirdos. Their latest recruit is Goro, a researcher who’s obsessive about the lengthy misplaced continent of Mo (not Mu), and who units them on a path to discovering relics which may be clues to discovering the Mo Continent. They must compete with the mysterious White Pegasus company, who’s additionally in search of Mo relics referred to as MOParts (a play on OOPArts), however when one relic comes into contact with Taro, the girl-starved perpetual slacker on the staff, he transforms into an enormous tiger man straight out of Thundercats. Not lengthy after, allies and enemies alike uncover the power to show into these “Motarian” beastmen, and so they conflict in various and infrequently ridiculous methods.
Once I say ridiculous, what I imply is that the plots are straight-up Shredder-and-Krang affairs. They even have two Motarian beast goons not not like Bebop and Rocksteady, albeit with extra effeminate options. The dangerous guys arrange a faux cruise ship relationship service to steal the MOParts. The great guys attempt to cope with an actor possessed by a relic that makes him damage each efficiency he’s in, and Taro in tiger kind does a doubles’ determine skating routine. One of many characters, a 10-year-old with therapeutic powers, seems to have been a bull-form Motarian prince. A sudden canine present that’s extra of a canine triathlon features a dance part, the place the crew’s weirdly anthropomorphic shaggy canine (and never within the furry sense like with Taro) busts a transfer. Additionally, the canine is definitely a reincarnated Motarian human bard, and there are some delicate BL components too.
Given all of the above, it’s as if Delusional Month-to-month Journal is a Japanese animation that embodies all of the qualities that anime was supposed to face in distinction to. Is that good? Is that dangerous? It virtually doesn’t matter as a result of the mere proven fact that we now have a present like this to observe is sort of a miracle in and of itself. I continually discovered myself questioning how any of this may very well be actual.
Even the climax of the collection itself looks like the best way a long-running and episodic TV cartoon or a 90s anime that bought common within the West would do a season finale. The principally frivolous tales make means for a really sudden and dramatic double-triple twist. First, we uncover the quiet boss girl who owns the journal was as soon as a scientific prodigy who was ostracized for declaring that the Mo continent was actual, and that she is definitely a reincarnated Motarian. Second, she was very shut buddies with the chief of White Pegasus, who was additionally a scientist. Third, she’s truly the villain of the collection, and needs to revive the Mo continent to make use of its doomsday weapon to wipe out humanity. The heroes win the day, and the present will get to offer some fundamental closure that works each as an ending (ought to it not be renewed,) and leaves open the potential for persevering with.
Delusional Month-to-month Journal has a really intentional retro really feel, to the extent that the present itself makes a joke about how its episode titles are harking back to the dramatic and generally spoilerific episodes titles of older anime. However it’s one factor to name again to a earlier period, and one other to construction your total present in a means that not solely leaps again in time however reaches throughout the ocean to seize the angle of a sure period of American animation. In anime fandom, we throw phrases like “weeaboo” round to explain folks obsessive about Japanese tradition, and this looks like the opposite facet of the coin.
The creator of Delusional Month-to-month Journal, Umatani Ichigo, is credited with only one different work: a property referred to as Distant ☆ Host, which appears to be about rival host golf equipment that broadcast remotely? I’m not totally positive and could be serious about realizing extra about it. The rationale I appeared this up is as a result of I hoped to get some perception into no matter thoughts introduced this to fruition. I couldn’t discover any solutions, and I don’t understand how a lot the director and author performed an element in making such a weird work. Regardless of the motive, we now have an anime that defies expectations.
