 | | ▪ | RELEASED BY: | | ADV FILMS | | | ▪ | ASPECT RATIO: | | 4:3 FULL SCREEN | | | ▪ | AUDIO: | | ENGLISH DD 5.1 AND JAPANESE DD 2.0 | | | ▪ | RUNNING TIME: | | 300 MIN | | | ▪ | RATING: | | TV MA | | | ▪ | RELEASE DATE: | | 05/27/2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEW DATE: | | 05/19//2008 | | | ▪ | REVIEWED BY: | | DAVEY C. JONES |
SYNOPSIS:
Hideki, Ichiro, and Mako are making a modest living farming their sweet white radishes. The trio, by night a musical group known as the Nerima Daikon Brothers, are hoping to give their fans (that is, themselves) what they want- concerts! But fame and fortune cost money. How can they grab the cash needed to build their Concert Dome? Well, they’ll have to battle the slimiest villains and pad their pockets along the way! At least that’s the PLAN anyway! Almost everybody sings in this wacky, zany and sometimes naughty series where evil villains and cash are the springboard for crazy adventures, That’s not to say the group doesn’t have their problems. Hideki is madly in love with his cousin, Mako. Mako is madly in love with cash. And Ichiro is madly in love with the fuzzy-wuzzy panda bear, Pandaikon! Can they sing ever-more hilarious songs in their quest for JUSTICE, PEACE, and wheelbarrows FULL OF MONEY?
REVIEW:
A musical comedy anime series! Who’d have thunk it? Apparently Japan did with those crazy cats at ANIPLEX. A manga by Takamitsu Kondo, the anime has music (something a manga can’t really get across as well right? Get ready for The Blues Brothers meets Excel Saga in the insane comedy of NDB! Isn’t it every daikon farmers’ dream to build a concert stadium on their land to have musical concerts? No? It’s what those three crazy cousins want. And they’d be kissin’ cousins if Hideki, the loud one, has anything to say about it. He’s been crushin’ hard time for Mako. Mako though only has eyes for the loot, or anyone other than Hideki. Ichiro, former host club employee and all around pretty boy gets hit on throughout the show by anyone and anything. In case you wondered about the raunchy parts of the anime, it is present and accounted for right in the first episode when a sleazy record producer basically gives Ichiro the equivalent of a hand job! Whoa! Why such a zany show? The director, Shinichi Watanabe is infamous for other insane pushing the envelope anime like Excel Saga and The Wallflower. So get ready, brace yourself for a lot of weird, raunchy and always hoppin’ good time. It’s an escape from reality and then some in NDB! Just like in Excel, expect to spy a cameo of Nabeshin (the director’s anime persona) in NDB too. To get that stadium the trio is on one musical adventure after another. There’s sleazy record producers, scary nurses, scarier lizard looking fortune tellers, corrupt store owners and tabloid businessman who want that little land of daikon goodness all for their own nefarious purposes. There’s even a lady cop who chases after the trio and falls in love with their panda Pandaikon. By the end of the series, the trio goes up against the Prime Minister. Soon it’s all out war with the singing group up against the Japanese Self-Defence Force! Good thing they have an army of pandas! It’s a climatic finale like none other! You have to see it to believe it! The anime looks as zany as it sounds. It’s bright, it’s crazy and the character designs alone look hilarious. They look more “cartoony” than anime-like if you catch my drift. The show spoofs everything and everyone. And yes, it is a musical. The characters sing many of their lines, so do the villains. It’s very Blues Brothers. What’s even cooler is that the English dubbed director, Chris Ayres, had the cast sing and dub all the songs (ALL of them!) in English! So you have sort of two musicals in one! There’s the Japanese original and the English dubbed version for you to listen to, laugh and enjoy.
EXTRAS:
The extra goody in this thinpack is ADV previews. Plus it comes with a thick hard art box and the thin cases have cultural notes on the back of each volume.
IN SUMMARY:
It’s The Blues Brothers meets Excel Saga in a raunchy musical anime. Prepare for the experience only the Nerima Daikon Brothers can give! |
