AniMania: THE WALLFLOWER

A couple of weeks ago, AniMania ran a spotlight on Welcome To The NHK. While NHK is a great series, admittedly, it is aimed mostly at a male audience, what with all the jokes about internet porn and dating sims. In light of this, I thought it would be nice to give the girls a treat (more of a trick or treat, actually) and highlight a series that caters to the ladies.

The Wallflower is a harem show — for girls. The first clue to this is the cover, which features four naked boys, covered only by rose petals. If that didn’t tip you off, the opening animation features the same four boys, still naked, lying in a circle around our female star (also naked). Nudity aside — and there isn’t much of it in the actual show — The Wallflower tells the tale of four young bishounen (impossibly handsome men) who live in a mansion, courtesy of the extremely wealthy and eccentric Auntie. Life is idyllic, and consists mostly of picking roses from the garden and complaining about being swooned over by too many fangirls, until one day their rich hostess announces that she has a challenge for them.

The wealthy widow has a niece, whom she wants to see turned into a perfect lady. If the boys succeed, they can live in the mansion rent free, with all expenses paid, but if they fail, their rent will triple. Being bold of heart, and impossibly good looking, they accept, and wait in the garden to meet their new subject. Enter Sunako.

And Sunako doesn’t just make an entrance — she rises up from the ground like something out of The Ring, terrifying the boys with her appearance, her surly attitude, and her total lack of fashion sense. After freaking out at their radiant beauty, she rudely dismisses them, and shuts herself inside her room. It’s at this point that the fearless foursome realize their little bet might be more of a challenge than they had bargained for.

On one level, The Wallflower is clearly a harem show. Ladies, take your pick. Kyohei is the resident bad boy, as foul tempered as he is handsome, and always fighting or complaining about something, usually food. Takenaga is Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome. He’s also the intellectual sophisticate of the bunch. Ranmaru is the resident playboy of the group, known for his wild outfits and raging innuendo, while Yuki is something of the group pet, a kind of boyish, gothic shota counterpart to the whole goth lolita trend.

The series comes to us from Nabeshin, creator of the legendary Excel Saga, and Wallflower has all of the wackyness you’d expect from that lineage. The show leans heavily on various conventions and stock elements. Every episode, Sunako gets lessons on the so-called “Road To Womanhood”, which is introduced by tribal screams from dancing natives in loincloths beside a giant gong. Episode introductions and previews are given by Hiroshi, who is Sunako’s beloved anatomical mannequin, and quite possibly one of the strangest mascots of all time. Another regular appearance comes from the Goth Loli girls, who look about forty years too old to be considered anything approaching Loli, and lampoon the whole gothic subculture.

But when it comes to being goth, Sunako is the real deal. She makes Winona Ryder look bright and perky (or should I say Helena Bonham Carter, who seems to have become the favored darkling these days?) Sunako’s room is littered with horror movies, skeletons, books on torture and death, and anatomical specimens. Early on, we learn that Sunako turned to the dark side after being utterly rejected by the object of her freshman year crush. Retreating inward, she decided that the best way to insulate herself from more pain was to accept that she was hopelessly ugly and unlovable. Thus excused from any attempts at wordly beauty, she was free to pursue her own macabre interests. But Sunako has a secret. Unknown to everyone, including Sunako herself, she is actually very beautiful . . .

The premise for the show is surprisingly touching, dealing with issues like rejection, self esteem, and questions about the nature of true beauty, as opposed to the purely superficial. Like so many really great shows, The Wallflower somehow manages to reach beyond its initial silliness to strike some really deep chords. But some of the conventions wear a bit thin after a while.

One of the major cinematic techniques that pops up throughout the entire series is that for the VAST majority of the time, Sunako appears in chibi, as a super-deformed little blob. The technique is used to emphasize Sunako’s own sense of inhumanity, especially alongside the boys, who are always impossibly handsome. Only occasionally do we get to see Sunako in her true, full sized form. This technique is taken from the original manga, and while it works, it also gets a little annoying. I would have liked to see a progression where Sunako appears more and more in her true form over the course of the show, until at the very end, she is “human” the entire time. This would have greatly increased the dramatic effect — and been a bonus for male viewers. I know I said the show was mostly for the ladies, but Sunako is HOT. When she’s not a little blob. Which is most of the time. But those rare moments when we do get to see what she actually looks like, however few and far between, are worth hitting the pause button for.

The series’ other weak point is that it suffers from that same second half slump that troubles so many anime titles. The first season is perfect: the jokes are funny; the content is edgy, rife with risque humor that regularly goes over the top. The opening and ending themes, “slow” and “Carnation”, both by Kiyoharu, are suitably brooding and moody, with an authentic gothic rock feel. Unfortunately, things taper off for the second half of the series. While we do get some really nice scenes, like the introduction of Sunako’s parents, or the real explanation of why Auntie is so eccentric, and why she travels so much, the second half just doesn’t have many moments that are laugh out loud funny. The ending is sweet, but hurried, and obviously leaves the door open for the rest of the story, either in the ongoing manga, or for a possible second season. And the beautiful, haunting guitar of “Carnation” is replaced by the sounds of BON-BON BLANCO’s “Changing”, which is a good tune, but feels out of place for this series.

The acting, however, is top notch all the way through, with relative new comer Heather Alacorn (Marin from Magikano) turning in a great performance as Sunako. Josh Grelle (Kaze no Stigma, Venus Vs. Virus) does a perfect job of making Kyohei brooding and ill tempered yet still sympathetic. Vic Mignogna (do we really have to TELL you he was the voice of Edward Elric?) gives a solid performance as Takenaga, and Chris Patton (FMA, NHK) seems made for a role like Ranmaru. And as for Greg Ayers, in addition to teaching magic to school girls in Negima and programming dating sims in Welcome to the NHK, he also voices Yuki. I’m still waiting for the Hellsing remake where they have Greg do the voice of Alucard — I know he could do it! But for now, he’s staying in his usual character.

Wallflower is a lot of crazy fun with the occasional detour into some pretty serious territory, and its just in time for Halloween, so even with a less than stellar ending, I still give it the thumbs up. Be sure to stay tuned for the upcoming Claymore review. Funimation has really pulled out all the stops for this one, including a return of those dearly beloved extra features, so watch for it, coming soon to a column near you.