Animation is not live action. It seems like a pretty simple concept but it's one that is often forgotten. Playing with design and style can vastly effect the impact that scene has on an audience. This can be an especially valuable tool when doing comedy. Shinichi Watanabe is a director that understands how to use the freedom of animation to really sell a joke. Watanabe constantly plays with character designs and animation styles in his adaptation of Tomoko Hayakawa's Shojo parody(?), The Wallflower, which is available LEGITIMATELY, FOR FREE, from Funimation. Can I just say, big ups to Funimation who clearly understand that Internet streaming is changing the way people watch anime and TV in general. Funimation offers The Wallflower as well as many other shows streaming for free on their website, which I highly encourage you to visit. And hey, if you dig it, show some support and buy some stuff.
The Wallflower tells the story of four bishounen (beautiful) high school boys as they attempt to turn one anti-social super goth into a real lady. The girl is Sunako Nakahara, and it seems that after her first crush called her ugly she gave up on fitting into normal society or caring what other people think. Sunako's hair is uncut and unkempt, covering the face that she's ashamed of, her manner is rude (well, for the Japanese anyways), and she only leaves her room when necessary. The room itself is dark, both literally as well as figuratively, as it's filled with skeletons, embalmed organs, and gory horror films. Also, she has a tendency to act super creepy and scare everyone around her. The four boys charged with turning Sunako into a real lady are the four best looking guys in school who take the case after Sunako's Aunt offers them free rent at her expansive mansion. The four boys; Kyouhei, Takenaga, Yuki, and Ranmaru, each represent a different bishounen archetype and seem to cause riots everywhere they go. Each guy also has his own subplot(s) and problem(s) to add depth to the story. So you have four beautiful boys and one, not so normal in this case, girl living in the same house and going to high school together. Pretty typical Shojo setup all be it with a slight twist the fun here is in the execution.
The director, Watanabe, is most (in)famous for the cult classic, and completely bizarre and frenzied, Excel Saga. The Wallflower never reaches Excel Saga levels of insanity but it still provides a steady steam of laughs with its over-the-top humor. Despite Sunako's insistence that she wants nothing to do with the four guys she's frequently faced with glowing, glistering man flesh, at which point a gust of blood explodes from her nose and she passes out. Watanabe often highlights the difference between the four guys, Sunako, and other members of the cast through animation styles with the guys typically being drawn in full on bishounen style while other characters are plain or even chibized.
The story progresses fairly typically but provides enough humor that you probably won't mind. I will say that I was a bit disappointed in the ending as I didn't realize going in that the Manga was still running in Japan. Like many shows before it (Berserk) The Wallflower is denied a true conclusion since the story is still ongoing. Not that by the end you don't already know where it's headed and who Sunako will end up with but you don't get that definitive conclusion wherein they embrace and all is right with the world so you can't help but fill a bit let down. I can't say that The Wallflower was a great show but it was amusing enough that a watched the whole thing and that's a rarity these days.
-egs
I can't believe I wrote a sentence that included the phrase "glowing, glistering man flesh."
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