Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-08-21 (updated 2010-11-10)
• 0.5 stars out of 5 (?)

Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy isn't a normal take on a tired premise--it's a disaster. The art is weak, the stories are truly off-the-wall but for the most part sadly uninspired, the characters are so annoying you want to strangle them (particularly Techno), the directing is uniformly weak, and the acting (Japanese only--Bandai didn't even bother to dub it) is awful. It mainly stands out for Techno's irredeemable pursuit of Hitomi; he's more a villain than a sympathetic loser, and as if that weren't bad enough Hitomi inevitably starts to forgive his extreme psychosis and give in to his "charms."

The only, tiny, glimmers of interestingness buried in the mire are a few bits of extreme weirdness and the minor character Yamakawa X. A lovable loser to the core, he's "just alone because he's the cool punk type, not because he has no friends," and 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.

Despite being a seriously weird interpretation of a classic plotline, this series is obscure for a reason--in everything but a few bits of creativity (that it fails to capitalize on), Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy is a fine example of anime with everything done wrong.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-08-21 (updated 2010-11-10)
• 0.5 stars out of 5 (?)

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 yet sadly uninspired and a bit scary, the characters are so annoying you'll want to strangle them, the directing is uniformly weak, the art is unremarkable, and the acting 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 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, 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 can tell it wasn't even supposed to be a savage mockery of just how ridiculous the pairing is--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.

Now let's see if I can say something nice about Don't Leave Me Alone Daisy. To its credit, some of the weirdness is 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 that made me want to like it, and I really did try... but no, that wasn't nearly enough.

The directing and writing are so poor the series doesn't seem to know what to do with all these crazy ideas. 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 and 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.

There is, however, one shining point in the 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 background music is unremarkable at best, but the edgy hard-rock opening theme stands out. 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 it's no surprise this was Kisa Iinuma's first and last role of any significance. Yasufumi Hayashi's Techno is just as bad, and remains annoying throughout. Yamakawa X, voiced by veteran Toshiyuki Morikawa, is again the high point; if only the series had been about him. There is no English version--Bandai didn't even bother to dub it.

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.

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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 quality. The arty, gritty intro is somewhat reminiscent of the Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei openings, of all things, but nothing else is.