Kuuchuu Buranko

Hideo Okuda’s 2004 award winning novel is adapted into an anime series about a trippy psychiatrist and his random patients.

Yea… so this series is… trippy. It uses a hybrid animation style that mixes 2d animation with live action and some rotoscoped scenes and then some composite images with animation around them. The result is… well awkward and difficult to watch. A character will go from a standard stylized anime character to having detailed stills for heads and then randomly morphing to a live action person. Overall the animation of the series just ends up looking cheap and rushed.

Another kind of annoying feature it the main character, psychiatrist Irabu Ichirou and his random 3 forms. The good doctor starts off wearing a lab coat with polka-dot clown pants and a green bear head. He then will randomly switch forms to become a long haired blond guy with red horn-rimmed glasses and green bear ears or a small blond child. The annoying thing is that there is no explanation as to why the doctor changes forms but he keeps doing it through out the series.

I believe the aim of all the randomness is to inspire a feeling of delving into peoples psyche but it just comes across as awkward. The shows redeeming factor is that some of the patients stories are quite interesting. For example a patient who seeks help with his condition of having a perpetual erection. Also in each episode, one of the secondary back ground character will become the main character for the next episode.

Overall if your looking for a mind trip anime… I recommend “Paprika” but if you have some free time then go ahead and give this series a shot.

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