Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy

Original Title: みすてないでデイジー
Romanized: Misutenaide Deijii
Literal: Don't Abandon Me, Daisy

Plot Synopsis

Young Techno has spent his formative years hidden in a nuclear bomb shelter by his overprotective mad scientist grandfather, but after laying eyes on the pretty young Hitomi, he decides to come out of his shell, go to high school, and pursue love like a normal guy... or at least, his take on a normal guy. Poor Hitomi, however, is in for a shock, because her newfound mad scientist "boyfriend" lacks just about every basic social skill, and will do just about anything to get her affections. Throw in Yamakawa X, a rebel without a clue, Annie, a psychotic social-reformation-type-cyborg, and the class' buxom and entirely clueless young teacher, and you've got yourself a typical anime high school.

Review

Rating: 0.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-08-21

Here's a tired plot: Socially inept genius decides to come out of his shell to pursue the girl of his dreams. But Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy isn't a normal take on that already lame premise--it's a complete disaster. The stories are truly weird but for the most part sadly uninspired and a bit scary, the characters are so annoying you want to strangle them, the directing is uniformly weak, the art is unremarkable, and the acting (Japanese only--Bandai didn't even bother to dub it) is awful. The weird thing is, I couldn't quite walk away; partly on account of a couple of tiny glimmers of interestingness buried in the mire, but mostly out of a sort of morbid curiosity to find out where this train wreck of a series was going.

What really stands out about Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy is how wrong the story is. Most notably Techno is so irredeemable in his pursuit of Hitomi that he's more like a villain than a sympathetic loser--he does everything from try to trap her in a tank of bio-goo, to taking control of her body so she'll go out with him, to randomly deciding (among other, far stranger things) that she's actually named Daisy. An inexplicable curiosity to find out exactly how far he was going to go (world conquest), and how (or whether) the writer was going to bring his psychosis to some sort of romantic conclusion kept me cringing through one episode after another.

I'll save you the trouble: Not only does Techno not get much better, but in a feminists' nightmare made flesh, Hitomi eventually starts to forgive Techno's psychotic behavior and give in to his "charms." That made less sense than keeping cute nuclear missiles as pets. Worse, as far as I could tell it wasn't even supposed to be a savage mockery of just how ridiculous the pairing was--she just couldn't do better (as her "friends" repeatedly point out, she apparently doesn't have much going for her). Since the one redeeming part of her character was her pragmatic fear of Techno, it also made poor, beleaguered Hitomi seem tragically desperate.

Ok, now I'm finished with my tirade, I'll go over the couple of positive things I have to say. The best I can say for the production is that some of the weirdness was extreme enough to tickle my fancy, or at least get me to stare at the screen with a mildly disturbed expression. There are plenty of wacky standbys like biology experiments gone wrong, but a few are taken a step or two farther than usual--cute nuclear missile pets, a bizarre Godzilla re-enactment, and one of the most marvelously wrong backstories of an insane cyborg I've seen yet. Things like those made me want to like it, and I really did try... but no, it just wasn't enough.

The directing and writing are so poor the series doesn't seem to know what to do with all these crazy ideas. The episodes just meander around, and the few concepts that actually manage to be funny, rather than just strange, don't go anywhere--the chaos trails off rather than building to a climax. Similarly, I kept getting the feeling that the series was trying to become a parody of itself, its genre, or maybe some sort of social satire, but in the end there wasn't nearly enough cleverness for me to believe that was anything but an accident. Really, it's just weird.

If that doesn't sound like a glowing recommendation, it isn't, but there is one shining point in this series: The relatively minor character Yamakawa X. A classmate of Techno's, he's a lovable loser to the core, constantly talking to the camera pointing out that he's just alone because he's the cool rebel type, not because he has no friends. Better yet, in addition to being mercilessly abused by Techno, his ultra-traditional Nationalist mother and perfect Japanese older brother are constantly trying to kill him for tarnishing the family honor by being a nonconformist. A bizarre form of social commentary, taken so far that I couldn't help but enjoy it.

But again, don't get your hopes up--even Yamakawa X wasn't worth sitting through 3 episodes for, let alone 12. And that's it for the good stuff.

The art is unmemorable to say the least. It's brightly but rather blandly colored, the character designs are uninteresting and slightly awkward (though Techno looks exactly like me), and the animation is rather weak. The music does stand out--not the background music, which is unremarkable at best, but the edgy, hard rock intro theme. It's a surprisingly appealing song, and coupled with chaotic, relatively gritty visuals, it's about the farthest thing from an appropriate opening for this series that I can imagine--as much as anything because it's actually reasonably good.

The Japanese acting is... well, poor. Hitomi's hoarse, uninterested-sounding voice grew on me a little, but Techno remained annoying throughout. Yamakawa X is again the high point (if only the series had been about him). There is no English dub.

Despite being a seriously weird interpretation of a classic plotline and repeatedly threatening to become a parody of itself, Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy is obscure for a reason--in everything but a few nuggets of creativity, it's a fine example of stereotypical anime with everything done wrong.

Related Recommendations

Nothing with quite the same story comes to mind offhand, but any of the numerous harem shows are close enough and a lot more fun. Try Love Hina in particular, but Tenchi Muyo, El Hazard, or even something like Ranma 1/2 have plenty of wackiness, some romance, and are a whole heckuva lot more fun.

US DVD Review

At least the set is cheap. Similar to Haunted Junction and a few other Bandai releases, you get the whole series on one reasonably priced 2-disc set (and to make it even nicer, the case is the same size as a single disc instead of the fatter variety). There are absolutely no special features, but the episodes are well indexed, the video is a nice, clean transfer, and the stereo audio isn't bad either. Even though it's sub-only, the subtitles are still soft-coded, so you can turn them off if you feel so inclined, and the song subtitles alternate between English translation and Japanese transcription. The credits are entirely untranslated, but the full Japanese cast and main crew are included on the case insert.

Content Guide

Relatively clean, and probably fine for all but the youngest viewers. 10-up at the worst.

Violence: 1 - There's a variety of fighting, but it's never particularly serious.

Nudity: 1 - Some swimsuits and the teacher's tight-fitting outfits.

Sex/Mature Themes: 1 - Light romance and a couple of mildly off-color jokes.

Language: 1 - Generally mild, though there is just a bit of profanity.

Notes and Trivia

Based on a short manga series by Noriko Nagano.

Availability

Formerly available in the US from Bandai on a subtitled-only DVD set, now out of print.

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