Original text at the nekoheadz.org forum

Good news: early review. Bad news: one review (and mild spoiler warnings). I’ll be out of town for the weekend, hence the early-ness, and I’m also waiting for things to download. And for Frostii to finish subbing the last episode of Ride Back. (C’mon guys, the other groups finished the series, but you do it in such lovely HD I’m actually waiting on YOU.) Also, I need to stop writing these when I’m tired. It took me a while to find Binbou Shimai Monogatari, as I found it on Anime Encyclopedia some years back and was intrigued enough to want to watch it and never got around to downloading it until lately and there weren’t any seeds. I love run-on sentences. Anyway, this week I’ll be reviewing Binbou Shimai Monogatari, also known as Poor Sisters Story or Flat Broke Sisters Story. Frankly, the only reason I have this title in Japanese is that it’s the only way anyone seems to reference it and I have no idea why. (Maybe the English titles aren’t as endearing.) As a general rule I try to use English titles unless it involves rolling up the cosmos. I’ll call it Binbou for the rest of the review, but please try not to imagine the sound of the bell at the end of a Japanese school day; it’s all I can think of. Binbou. Are you going to club? Binbou. I’m meeting the girl I like behind the gym, maybe she likes me, too! Binbou. Oh, I need to get to the market to get the special. Binbou. I need to get to my job or we’ll lose our house…

Binbou Shimai Monogatari is a 10 episode series from Toei dating about 2006. Binbou, as you can guess from the alternative titles, is a story about two sisters who are flat broke. Kyo and Asu Yamada, middle school and elementary school aged respectively, lost their mother to illness not long after Asu was born and their father skipped out on them due to gambling debts not long after that. Kyo earns money delivering papers, tutoring, and doing whatever other odd jobs come her way while Asu takes care of all of the household chores and cooking. They live in a tiny old apartment building (age for certain buildings or items in Japan is a sign of poverty rather than history, for those of you not familiar with some of the Japanese norms for these things; I guess it comes from a primary building material readily available in the stationary aisle) and both attend school. The local shopkeepers, their neighbors, and even their landlord help look over Asu and Kyo in response to the girls’ marvelously sweet dispositions and strong sisterly bond. The series covers only a brief amount of time as the girls make friends, learn life lessons, and grow closer.

Music will only get a brief mention today as it’s cute, clichéd, and keeps the tone light throughout; not memorable but fittingly applied would be another way to put it. The opening and closing theme work well with the series, but aren’t worth watching every time. I’ll touch more on the music for the conclusion, as it works well with what the series was trying to do and I have lots to say about that. But before that, let’s talk about some art.

Let me just say this first: this series is cute. It is so amazingly cute that you could be a steak eating manly man that drives a truck made of steaks and you will still go “aww” at some of the scenes and art in this show. And when Kyo and Asu cry, well, their tears could fill buckets. Not that they cry all that much, as we join them after they’ve endured the most painful, character building hardships, but I’ll come back to that later. The art and animation in Binbou leans to the side of generic, but sickeningly sweet. Everything is cute with a noticeable lack of detail or wear (forty year old apartment my ass, it’s not a day over twenty) and the characters all look pretty standard. Actually, the characters are slightly more realistic wherein all their hair colors are naturally occurring, although the rich sisters that are friends with our not-so-intrepid heroines being blonde by default is a little weird. I imagine that symbolizes something in regards to the class divide, but I’m not really sure and the rich sisters play such a small role I don’t care. Still, blonde is natural and it’s nice to see as realistic a portrayal of real life as they can get with such a cutesy anime. The family picture Kyo and Asu keep with a picture of them with their mother and father is especially cute with the father’s face scribbled out with permanent marker. There is one thing, artistically speaking, that really stands out in this anime: the flower aura. You know how during one of those cute moments for a close-up of a character, a common one being when they eat and go “delicious!”, the background turns to sparkles or flower petals? Well, in Binbou that happens a lot, especially at the I-love-my-sister moments which are nearly constant, and the people behind the show seemed to realize how clichéd and tiresome it gets, as they mix it up a bit by having the camera pull back to show only the sister(s) with the aura while everyone around them just watches like the girls are from another planet. I think at one point a neighboring character has a gloomy aura and it makes for a cute sight gag while showing that the creators didn’t take the cuteness too seriously. Unfortunately, they seemed to not take the rest of the series too seriously, either.

Binbou’s cuteness doesn’t stop with the art, as the writing and story also swell with flower-aura powered sweetness. As it has probably occurred to someone to ask by now, by story I mean the tale the series wishes to tell and by writing I mean application of that story through character development, dialogue and scenario planning. Binbou’s actual story is surprisingly short, covering less than a full spring of the girls’ lives. The goal seems to be exploring a bit of the sisterly bond without getting too bogged down in the logistics of the girls’ situation, meaning that they are both too young to be romantically stolen away from one another and yet too old to be totally lost and helpless in the face of a surprisingly caring world. It makes for characters and situations that are pure and surprisingly feasible. The supporting cast is exactly that: supportive. The landlord even has two full episodes dedicated to him since he works the most in the background to help take care of the girls. The sisters are amazingly well characterized as the most loveable, selfless pair of goodie goodies I’ve seen in anime in ages (a bit of fresh air to my cynically stifled lungs), and the desire everyone has to care for them is understandable. Hell, if these girls lived next door, I’d pay one of their bills or something. I say that in the nice, generous way, mind you; not in the lecherous asking for favors later way. I’d just make sure I intercepted the bill before it reached them so it would always just be magically paid. It would reach the point where the bill itself would have a little flower aura around it in response to my nice gesture.

Anyway, the supporting characters are also fairly complex and flushed out enough to give the series a little depth and keep us from drowning in sisterly love. As a clever measuring stick and potential moral maker a similarly aged pair of rich sisters (mentioned earlier for the crime of being blond) are introduced and become friends with Kyo and Asu, and of course the poor girls are happier and closer than the rich girls could ever hope to be. The rich girls even build a fancy upscale apartment complex next door. Unfortunately, the side plots always run a little shy of the goal and end up rushed to warm fuzzy conclusions, a natural consequence of which is that our wonderful side characters end up with as much depth as a mirror. The rich girls have a forced making-up scene and only make brief cameos later. The woman next door is never explained all too well. See, walking mirrors and measuring sticks make for great characterization but are poor for adding diversity to a series. Save for the landlord, none of the other characters get that close to the sisters, something I’m tempted to blame on the overall shortness of the series, but I think a better job of pacing would have fixed that.

Binbou tries to run the gamut between hope and despair, but given that the major homelessness threat happens mid-series and all of the major conflicts stem from those inherently unimaginative conflicts that drive so-called ‘drama’ in anime productions that lack clever writing. Yes, it’s a mild spoiler but the girls almost end up on the streets for all of five minutes, but it happens so wonderfully smiley that, call me cynical if you like, I can’t help but feel that it would be good as it would be some good character development for the girls as they’d have to endure a little more hardship where we can actually see it. See, all of the hardship they’ve endured before conveniently happened in the time before the series starts, so it’s just sort of implied that life was hard. Being out in the street would be some hardship we could observe for a change. And it would be real hardship instead of those overblown-common-misunderstandings that are used as a gimmick when the writers aren’t willing to do anything serious. I see it happening more and more in anime and either it’s a sign that anime is aiming lower or that Japanese psychology needs to go out and play in the sun more. Good drama occurs when characters have genuine conflict between each other’s values and/or circumstances or when they are forced into situations where they have to fight, compromise, or flee and the internal/external struggle that results. Drama stemming from a dying cell phone battery and a resulting miscommunication are not entertaining or character building. See, hardship builds character; it may sound clichéd but think of what that means in relation to fiction: a character is defined (built) through the suffering they endure. The more suffering, the more we know a character. The Yamada sisters only suffer briefly in this series, and we hardly know them for it. That landlord on the other hand…

Binbou is like a cute little rich girl: she’s cute, shallow, and only thinks she has an idea of what poverty and suffering is like. It’s a wonderful piece of appropriate-for-all-ages fluff that fails to invoke any real emotion beyond “aww that’s so friggin’ cute!” If I were to print this review out and submit it for publishing or something, I’d use pink, fuzzy paper and lots of glitter. This series was that sweet. I mentioned earlier that the music suited the series perfectly: it’s sweet and never too dark or dreary. The music functions for the bit of fluff the series is supposed to be, but I think they missed the mark. Unfortunately, I was under the impression that this was about the lives of two sisters on the other side of the tracks. Never once are they starving (or even hungry). Never once do they freak out about missed work. Never once are we the viewers given that sense of despair that comes from life on the brink. If you are having that much trouble getting by each month, getting sick is one of the darkest specters that lurks behind you. I have to say it’s not very heartwarming when you are watching these girls work so hard, knowing that there’s actually a very large number of people who would take them in in a heartbeat because they are so sweet. You could argue that desperation brings out the best or worst in people (in this case the best), but I never get the impression that they are that desperate. The only real moment of desperation is not even related to how poor the girls our. I actually get the impression that these support characters watch these girls like we would watch small children pretending to be independent: we say “that’s good” as we watch them “earn” money to buy a comic book when we are prepared to step in and pay it ourselves just in case it doesn’t work out. We let them pretend to be grown up because it’s cute and it would hurt their feelings otherwise. And it would totally hurt Kyo’s and Asu’s feelings if all of their hard work was rendered moot by someone stepping in. While the writing really drives the bond between Kyo and Asu, it’s like the writers cared too much to subject the girls to any of the hardships of real life. Well, that’s assuming that they knew what the hardships of real life are.

See, one of the most infuriating things in Binbou can be summed up in the words of the one of the youngest rich girl: “so that’s how a poor person thinks.” In Ouran Host Club there’s a scene where the rich boys visit the home of the “poor” heroine and they say “so this is what the poor are like” in the exact same manner: wrong. They got it all wrong. Wrong Wrong WRONG. Whereas the writers for Ouran Host Club knew it was a mistaken leap for those characters, they used it to mock how embarrassingly ignorant those boys were. Binbou, by comparison, is the anime those boys made thinking they knew what being poor is like. I can’t tell if the writers took the teeth out of poverty on purpose to make the series more pleasant or if they really think poverty is simply having to hunt around for sales and going without things like cell phones and meat. Oddly enough, going without meat where I’m from is a privilege for the rich. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a series, movie, or OVA from Japan that accurately depicted poverty. Nodame Cantabile came close with the girl that played the Kontrabass, but I can’t think of a series that really took the concept and ran with it. Again, there’s the possibility that they took it out on purpose. I may not know that much about current Japanese culture, but I do know that there is a strong emphasis on keeping things pleasant and not causing a bother. Maybe mentioning poverty in any realistic fashion is a taboo. Imagine that, a taboo in Japan.

I often talk about what an anime could be, but I don’t always get very specific. Well, I can tell you exactly what I would do with Binbou to make it a better series. First off, I would make it longer and have it cover more time in the girls’ lives. There’s an entire period of learning and hardship that we missed when the girls were more-or-less orphaned and they had to learn to survive. Remember in Full Metal Alchemist when we saw Ed and Al lose their mother and then they went through all of that training in alchemy and wilderness survival? Imagine how much that series would have lost emotionally if it didn’t have those scenes. Second, with the additional episodes I would devote time to flushing out some of the supporting cast, particularly the parallels you can draw with the rich sisters. The side characters in this series are genuinely interesting and I actually feel Kyo and Asu came off feeling a bit flat by comparison. Third, I’d use the longer length of the series to cover more as the girls got older, opening a lot more room for conflict development as they learn to get some distance from each other and function as individuals (but presumably not very much as these girls will probably live either in the same house or next door to each other for the rest of their lives). Subjecting these girls to the pains of growing up and the horrors of the real world would make for a potentially breath-taking spectacle. Kyo and Asu are so pure and so kind that seeing them question those ideals and still cling to them afterwards would make for compelling story-telling and if I were in the anime business I would totally remake this series just for that.

So, to sum things up: Binbou was a Disney-ized glimpse of poverty drowning in sisterly love and lacking any real depth. It’s cute and worth a watch if you want something that’s only going to tickle your warm and fuzzy bone. However, the sugary taste will rot your teeth out if you don’t brush properly and I’ll bet by the end you’ll be searching for something with more depth and taste to drown yourself in like a kiddie pool or a bowl of soup.

~Whim

PS – I’ve got some more shows cued up for you guys. If you have any requests, let me know as I’m sort of taking shots in the dark here. That said, the more distance I get from Windy Tales the more I look back and think better of it.
PS2 – There’s a difference between something that’s great to watch once and great to watch a dozen times. I realized this playing Zelda: Twilight Princess and it totally applies to some anime I’ve seen recently. Namely, as much as I loved Sky Crawlers I don’t know if it’s something I’d wanna watch once a week. It’s like listening to Beethoven’s 9th too many times: it dulls your appreciation for it and everything else you experience will seem lacking for your constant exposure to greatness. Moderation is the key to certain things. Although I can never ever get enough of Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto.
PS3 – So yes, there’s been a lot of slice of life anime for my reviews lately. I like the genre. While I try to be open to everything, my other preferred genres of mecha and romantic comedy have dwindled down to juvenile male power fantasy and harem-esque sex fantasies respectively, both chock full of fan-pandering. Pray I never review Code Geass if you liked that series at all. Also, I had some great ideas on how to make a compelling Gundam series and I hear tell they’ve done that with OO Gundam, so I’ll have to give it a watch and see if it’s any better than SeeD was. Granted, a five year-old playing with legos is better than SeeD. No, I’m not looking for a fight I just thought you should know that some of your favorite series are crap.