I don't have to always stay obsessively up to date with my anime watching, so I've finally pulled this one off the shelf and sat down to watch it. Now, the great subbed vs dubbed argument isn't going away, but I do have a soft spot for a good comedy dub. Blame ghost stories for starting me off on them. This was a recommendation I spotted on Reddit for another good example, but my god it hit me emotionally more than I expected it to.
The setup is that the Amagi Brilliant Park, isn't. It's been failing to hit its visitor number targets for the past five years, and it now has only three months to attract a few hundred thousand visitors or be closed down. Luckily, Seiya, a local schoolboy has been playing far too much Rollercoaster Tycoon (not actually his backstory) and might be able to offer some assistance in getting people through the door.
But it's not just financial failure that looms. Amagi Brilliant Park is actually a haven for fairyland creatures, and the staff are all magical. Without the love and support of visitors to the park, they're all going to have to find other places to live out their fairy dreams. And worst of all, the manager of the park, Latifah, the princess of Maple Land, the fairy world from which all the mascots appear, will probably die.
So can Seiya, with the assistance of the princess' royal guard Isuzu bring the park back from its knees and get people to turn up? Well, you'll have to watch it to see. The main point of the show is comedy, but I must confess to getting more emotionally invested than I really expected to as the plot reached a climax. Along the way to that ending, a lot of entertaining things go very funnily wrong. It isn't afraid to plumb the depths of absurdity.
It's a show full of ludicrous personalities. All of the mascots, who would usually be a poor sod in a poorly fitting suit, here are actually magical creatures with the appearance of a giant mouse, cat, sheep, what have you. They tend to be wildly flawed, either perverted, angry or slightly more threatening than they should be.
The characters are mostly the delight in this. There's four elemental spirits making up a dance troupe, who each have their own problems (and who utterly fail to match the expected behavioural tropes of their element, which is nice). Latifah is a bit weak, but is acting as a damsel in distress plot device, and nicely isn't the romantic interest. Instead that's Isuzu, the voice actress for who does a rather brilliant kuudere monotone, with a slow revealing of insecurity/attraction. Her gentle approaches towards Seiya, who is completely ignorant, being so focused on the saving of the park is rather beautifully expressed.
It's mostly a comedy, but there's a heart-warming core at the centre of it that gives it a bit more substance than you usually see. I can definitely say it's an excellent dub, and a rather brilliant series in general.
Tagged: Anime Comedy Workplace/Employment Supernatural Slice of life DVD Subbed