Photon Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-06-15 (updated 2012-10-02)
• 4 stars out of 5 (?)

Roughly speaking, Photon is an old-school AIC/Pioneer harem show that features an odd emotional infant as the male lead, forsakes most of the romance, almost all of the drama, ratchets the humor up four or five notches, and fills the rest out with of totally tasteless situation comedy. The series has two huge plusses: a characteristically imaginative world, and the villain Papacha: The perfect, lecherous combination of posturing vanity, self-centered megalomania, and outlandish habits backed by a spectacular performance in Japanese by Kouichi Yamadera. Add in spot-on comedic timing, and you've got the potential for an outright hilarious series. Just two problems: It's relentlessly stupid, and there's zero plot until the first half of the last episode, which is so dark, wrenching, and random it seems to have come from another series entirely. Oh, and the dub doesn't have as much going for it--an even weirder take on Photon, weaker performances, and Aun is even more savagely annoying.

How much you enjoy the series as a whole will depend a lot on how much the random serious turn near the end bothers you, whether it's too silly and base to appeal to your sense of humor, and how willing you are to ignore (or enjoy) the mass stupidity and complete and total lack of plot. Personally, I think Photon is funnier than it has any right to be.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2006-06-15 (updated 2012-10-02)
• 4 stars out of 5 (?)

Photon is superficially a standard harem show--a collection of lively women, a villain or two, and a clueless male at the center of it all. Within this genre it stands out as crude, cartoony, and having an odd emotional infant as the male lead. Most importantly, though, Photon is funny. Very, very funny.

Up front, it has two problems: It is outrageously stupid (if that's even a negative) and it has a confused bout of seriousness near the end.

The last couple of episodes are comparatively straight, but that's almost expected in any comedy with even a passing amount of plot, and the transition isn't jarring. The problem is the first half of the last episode, which comes out of nowhere and seems to have been spliced in from an entirely different series.

That dark, borderline-disturbing fifteen minutes or so introduces a totally new villain, hauls out a bunch of confusing and entirely meaningless plot, and nearly inverts the mood. In whatever (serious) series it belongs in it would have been an effective climax, but it has no business in Photon. Fortunately, it doesn't last long; the remainder of the episode goes on to have exactly the sort of wacky, mildly dramatic, generally humorous climax that you'd expect.

As for actual plot, there really isn't any. People are doing stuff, there's a lot of incoherent babbling about some sort of Aho/Anti-Aho mumbo-jumbo, and in the last episode it all turns out to relate to a plan for galactic domination and some other incomprehensible sidestep. None of it makes the slightest bit of sense, but frankly I was laughing too hard to care.

And that's the good: Photon is hilarious. It's also pure stupid and requires a slightly warped sense of humor, but something funny enough to bring me to tears more than once is rare, so I have to give Photon its due. Bawdy, chaotic, multi-layered, and full of tasteless humor and outright cartoon slapstick, this is a Pioneer/AIC comedy taken to the limit.

Without question it's the villain who makes this series. Papacha is the perfect, lecherous combination of posturing vanity, self-centered megalomania, and outlandish habits. He is simultaneously so vile and so pathetic that you can't help but love him. He's followed everywhere by the Pochini, a band of tubby gofer/cheerleader/yes-things who do their darnedest to set up his dramatic entrances. Oh, and he spends the bulk of the series wearing nothing but a pair of striped boxer shorts (it's a hot planet). In most of the rest his hirsute form is covered by naught but a censor spot or two.

The other unique character is our hero, Photon. Part sweet innocent, part powerful superhero-type, and part simpleton, the original Japanese version and the English dub seem to disagree about whether he's a mentally underdeveloped child or--in USM's rewrite--an adult who looks and acts like mentally underdeveloped child.¹ His doe-eyed innocence and loyal personality make him hard not to like, his emotional and intellectual underdevelopment and extremely needy nature make him passably interesting as a character, and his superhuman strength makes him meaningful to the plot and a tad mysterious. On the annoying side, it's uncomfortably unclear whether his "suitors" want to be his girlfriend or his mom, and it doesn't make any sense that they're falling over themselves for him either way. Still, he's an unusual center for the plot to revolve around.

The rest of the cast are a stock lot from Tenchi Muyo, El Hazard, et al: Feisty Keyne (an appealing mix of normal, mean, and a touch of honestly sweet), "cute" Aun (even meaner and viciously annoying), and the innocent, naive princess Lashara. There's also a cute squirrel/computer Ryo-ohki rip-off. Later in the series, one of the yes-things, Pochini #1, takes on a bigger role, and is, ironically, the most sympathetic character in the whole show.

Aside from Papacha, Keyne and Aun's brutal one-upsmanship is the other main source of humor in the series. The field of battle ranges from cookoffs to an unrelenting stream of insults and breast jokes (lots of breast jokes).

It's a bit hard to get past the humor, but the bonus character is the setting. The world of Photon is just the sort of creatively constructed place that makes other AIC/Pioneer series so memorable. Imaginative locales, customs, and abilities--Aun can freeze time in a bubble around herself--abound. About the only generic thing is the obligatory hot springs. The series is also loaded with technology either so advanced that it looks like magic, or actually is--fanciful devices for starting fires, whimsical hoverskiffs, and write-on spells. Importantly, the characters treat all this in the nonchalant way they should--nobody explains how a bunch of magic marker (good pun) lines levitate a ship--making it that much easier to suspend disbelief. I love that sort of thing, so this series scores big.

Visually, Photon is surprisingly attractive. There's consistently fluid character animation, properly exaggerated gag animation, and even some snazzy action. As cartoony as it is early on, I was surprised how little it bothered me, and how little it affects the solidity of the world. The character designs are attractive, if not imaginative (excepting the almost-too-cute Photon and the downright weird-looking Papacha), and are drawn in the bright, crisp style you'd expect from a Movic/AIC production. The backgrounds are fanciful and detailed, and although most of the series takes place in a desert (it's called Sandy Planet for a reason), there are still a number of interesting locations. The mechanical design is equally fun, contributing hugely to the atmosphere.

The Japanese acting is good stuff. The unquestionable star is Kouichi Yamadera's Papacha: A perfect blend of studly, silly, and "I'm Bad!", with oodles of flourish and extra touches (clearing his throat before laughing maniacally, for example). On the opposite end of the spectrum, Junko Takeuchi gives Photon a likable, childish tone that matches his look and odd personality quite well. Her performance also manages to make his ultra-innocence believable without being annoying, and that's impressive. Yui Horie's Aun, on the other hand, is annoying, but she's written to be. Along with relative unknown Yumi Kuroda as Keyne, the two female leads do their part to carry the humor--their rapid-fire back-and forth banter, pot-shots, and outright insults are smooth and funny.

Speaking of which, the comic timing in Photon is absolutely dead-on, both among the cast and in the purely visual scenes (a particular situation involving a doll popping a seam and the half-asleep villain reacting in proxy comes to mind as a perfect, off-handedly hilarious example).

The English dub is far less remarkable--generally a little lower-key than the original, and the timing isn't nearly as sharp. Keyne is underacted for the part by Suzy Prue, and although Tara Jayne's Aun is true to the original, she's even more annoying, which I wouldn't have thought possible. The big difference, though, is Photon, who is a completely different character--Scott Cargle's deadpan, mature-sounding voice clearly establishes the character as an underdeveloped adult. This interpretation is weirder and somewhat less likable, though it still works. About the only cast member who lives up to the Japanese version is Pochini (Pochinis, actually)--high pitched and funny.

Music-wise, the series opens with an interesting, exotic instrumental piece (after the first two episodes--apparently they skipped the opening to fit in more jokes before that), and there's a lively, fun end theme (rather less silly than I would have expected). Haruhiko Nishioka's background score is sparse, but appealing and relatively creative--some exotic tunes similar to the opening and a couple of in-story gag songs and intro themes that had me laughing.

In summary, Photon is an old-school AIC/Pioneer harem show that forsakes most of the romance, almost all of the drama, ratchets the humor up four or five notches, and fills the rest out with heaps of tasteless situation comedy. It even manages to serve up an imaginative world as a side dish. How much you enjoy the series as a whole will depend a lot on how much the random serious turn near the end bothers you, whether it's too silly and base to appeal to your sense of humor, and how willing you are to ignore (or enjoy) the mass stupidity and complete and total lack of plot. Personally, I think it's funnier than it has any right to be.

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Shares a similar theme, characters, and style with all manner of harem shows. To single out a few of the most similar Pioneer series from around the same time, it shares creative worlds and characters with the variety of Tenchi Muyo and El Hazard series. Among those it is probably the most similar to either the wilder parts of GXP, or the final episode of the El Hazard: Alternative World series.