Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan

Original Title: 撲殺天使ドクロちゃん
Romanized: Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan
Literal: Death-by-club Angel Skull-chan

Plot Synopsis

Sakura is an entirely average junior high student by anime standards: His parents aren't around much, he's sweet on schoolmate Shizuka, and he lives with an angel named Dokuro. Ok, not quite average; Dokuro, an assassin sent from the future by God to stop Sakura from unintentionally creating eternal life, wields the huge spiked bat Excaliborg, and has a habit of killing Sakura in fits of rage then bringing him back to life with the magical incantation "Pi-pirupirupiru-pi-piru-pi." Then even more angels from the future start showing up. Unlike most anime guys, however, he actually has reason to lament his predicament.

Quick Review

Rating: 2.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2009-09-25

The endgame in the arms race of ever-more-extreme parodies of the "normal kid stuck with crazy supergirl" genre, Dokuro-chan is equal parts schoolyard comedy, South Park, Fist of the North Star, and "My eyes!" In addition to the graphic answer to the rhetorical question "What would happen if comic violence actually did as much damage as it should?" it also features a wide range of dirty jokes and innuendo so blunt it's not really innuendo at all. On the down side, the unsympathetic characters, jerky humor (it periodically tries for something more "subtle," meaning sort-of-straight "drama"), and outright offensive material makes it as easy to cringe at as laugh. The American cartoon-style exaggerated visuals are also thoroughly unpleasant, and the decision to do a South Park-style "paste a photo on a hand-drawn-body" running gag don't help, either.

Whether you'll find it hilarious or just be left wishing you could bleach the horror from your eyes is going to depend a lot on taste. At best, probably both.

US DVD Review

Anime Works' 2-disc DVD set is cheap, functional, and that's about it. It includes this series in its entirety on the first disc and the short sequel series (reviewed separately) on the second disc. Each has Japanese stereo audio, acceptable if unimpressive video, and a soft English subtitle track of below-average quality as mentioned in the review. There's no dub (the amusingly minimal Setup screen consists of a single button, for the subtitles--"on"), and the only extra is clean opening and ending animations (they're on the second disc). On the plus side, the case is single-sized so it's easy on shelf space (the printing on the discs themselves is also unusually nice-looking--very cel-like).

The box's claim of "12 episodes total" based on the sub-episode count of eight in this series and four in the sequel; in terms of "chunks with opening and end credits" there are only six.

Content Guide

Leaving aside the unsettling fact that all of the characters are only in junior high, the combination of graphic violence, explicitly lewd behavior, and dirty jokes easily qualify for the 16-up Anime Works tags it with.

Violence: 4 - Fountains of blood and gory chunks abound, although it's so exaggerated it takes some of the punch out.

Nudity: 2 - It technically doesn't show anything detailed, but that's not saying much.

Sex/Mature Themes: 4 - Everything from blatant groping to graphic dirty jokes involving both genders and a variety of perversions.

Language: 2 - There isn't much swearing, though the descriptions can get relatively graphic.

Notes and Trivia

The series consists of four episodes, each of which is made up of two mostly-unrelated sub-episodes, a la early Urusei Yatsura. It's an original concept by writer/director Tsutomu Mizushima, who's mostly known for directing. His most notable directing credits are probably Genshiken and the spin-off Kujibiki Unbalance TV series.

Dokuro means "skull," particularly in the sense of "skull and crossbones." Obviously an appropriate name for the title character, and also explains the skull mark in the series' logo (and on her underwear). Sakura's name is probably something of a joke as well, since it's usually a girl's name, and he isn't exactly the most manly guy. For her part, Shizuka's name roughly translates as the appropriate "quiet flower."

The mohawked angel Zansu's name is also a joke related to a particular speech pattern that ends sentences with the unusual "to be" verb "zansu." He of course speaks this way, leading to particularly weird-sounding sentences when he introduces himself. He also uses English pronouns, a common trait of incredibly annoying characters of the sort.

Sakura's track suit on the camping trip says "loli"--"pedo," on the off chance you've never seen it used on the internet.

Some of the various anime references include: In the first episode Dokuro pulls out a manga that notes some of the most obvious series of which it is a parody--Urusei Yatsura (supergirl, normal girl, and dirty guy), Doraemon (from the future like Dokuro), and one in-between that I don't recognize. Later there's a horrifying reinterpretation of The Dog of Flanders (the famed French tragedy is quite well-known in Japan, in part because of a very popular classic anime adaptation). A variety of anime references pop up in the dark woods--a rather evil-looking Doraemon again (he also shows up in the 2nd series' ending), Miyazaki's Moving Castle, as well as folks from One Piece and Nurse Witch Komugi-chan.

Non-anime references include Gregor Samsa from Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," the Bush Bulge from the 2004 election debates (still reasonably topical at the time the series was released), a potshot at the sort of wacky trivia the Japanese news tended to report on related to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, a brief appearance by Michael Jackson, and of course the ever-present Admiral Perry. Dokuro's pillow is also illustrated with what appear to be positions from the Kama Sutra.

I could be mistaken, but the random insertion of Admiral Matthew Perry in this series and others was probably inspired by a not-really-animated Japanese-language Flash short that made the rounds a few years ago featuring "Perry" whining in humorous, English-accented monologue about opening Japan to the outside world. It was followed by an even more random sequel of him berating a girl he's trying to teach piano; I expect this latter short is to blame for the references.

Perry, if you're unfamiliar and don't want to bother with Wikipedia, was sent in the mid-1800s by the US government with a small naval armada to essentially threaten Japan into re-opening relations with the outside world after two centuries of extreme self-imposed isolation. One of the original examples of literal gunboat diplomacy, his exploits in part lead to the Meiji Restoration and the transformation of Japan from a feudal society into a modern industrial nation. He is well known in Japan for obvious reasons, and his popular image is one of both a brutish outsider and sort-of-savior. None of this, of course, has anything to do with his appearance in this series, other than (I think) those classic Flash shorts sticking his barely-animated image into incongruent situations.

Availability

Available in North America with the sequel series on a subtitled-only DVD set from Anime Works.

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