Review for Paniponi Dash: Volume 4 - Iron Teacher

Introduction

Comedy is a subjective beast, and zany, surreal, out-there comedy is the most subjective-est. I prefer to have some character to a comedy to warm to, some narrative hook to it, no matter how small. It's why it took me a good while to get into Paniponi Dash. simply because of the utterly random and quick-fire nature of the gags that left little room for anything else. That changed somewhat in the previous volume, where it seems that the writers found a lower gear and the space to explore these characters more. That certainly made the prospect of this fourth volume more appealing, although there's no guarantee that the comedy will continue on in that vein.


Rebecca Miyamoto is an MIT graduate who is returning to Japan to teach at Momotsuki (Peach Moon) Academy. She'll be the homeroom teacher to class 1-C, and to keep her company, she has her melancholy toy rabbit, Mesousa. The only problem is that she's only eleven years old. Well that's not the only problem. The school is zany weird, her class is full of weirdoes that keep making her cry, and all the while, an alien spaceship watches from orbit, determining the future of the human race depending on how Becky performs. And while the class may be thrilled to have a genuine omega cute mascot of a schoolteacher, Becky's prone to tantrums, foul mouthed tirades and sheer obnoxiousness.


This fourth volume of Paniponi Dash from ADV comes with plenty of extras, and four episodes in which, Becky takes the class on a school excursion, only for the coach to wind up in an Italian Job situation, except no one says "Hold on, I've got an idea"; Ichijo's acting weird… well weirder than usual, and it has her classmates concerned. It's when they find her looking at a wedding dress and weeping that things really get out of hand; It's the 40th annual School Festival, and Becky hates the extra paperwork, but Rei Tachibana insists that the Class 1-C café turn a profit; The melancholy bunny Mesousa has a time bomb in his head, and just three hours to defuse it. Just when things were looking up for the despondent rabbit...


The four episodes on this disc include

15. Endure Patiently And You Will Not Wilt
16. Adversity Makes a Man Wise
17. The Way to Heaven Does Not Favor Anyone
18. Good Things Come to He Who Waits

Picture

It's a Region 1 disc, so as you would expect Paniponi Dash gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer in the NTSC format. You have a lower resolution, and with it an imperceptible flicker to deal with (for some people), but you get to live without the conversion artefacts like ghosting, softness, and judder. Paniponi Dash is a visual explosion of a show, and having seen Shaft productions like Moonphase, Negima!? and Natsu no Arashi, that's really saying something. The character designs may be simplistic, but surreal is the order of the day with the animation. Anything goes, the screen is always filled with visual gags, the school blackboard offers countless opportunities for humorous graffiti (translated by the captions, explained by the Vid-notes), and breaking the fourth wall is the order of the day. The school is often portrayed as a television studio (on one occasion a member of the crew wanders on set in the middle of the take, then hurriedly sneaks off again). It's also replete with pop culture references and winks to the audience. It's a frenzy of a show that makes you glad for the invention of the pause button, just so you can take it all in.

Sound

You have a choice between DD 5.1 English and DD 2.0 Japanese. As for subtitle tracks, you have minimal signs, full signs, optional translated subtitles with minimal signs, optional translated subtitles with full signs, oh, and the AD Vid-notes tracks as well. The difference between the minimal and full signs is that more of the background blackboard gags get translated, and some people may not want the extra distraction from what's happening in the foreground. Also, the vid-notes come with a popping sound, so that means the audio tracks are here in duplicate (with added pops).


I went for the Japanese track, and as usual was happy enough with that, with some interesting character voices livening up the show. As for the English dub, I survived about 10 minutes of it. Taking a leaf from Excel Saga, ADV's approach to Japanese anime comedy is to make it as loud as possible, which quickly gets annoying. Also a 5.1 surround track is a tad overkill for what's really just a simple comedy show.

Extras

The disc comes in an Amaray case, and the sleeve has the 4-panel manga from the episode previews printed inside so that you can read them at your leisure.

Inside you'll also find an 8-page booklet, which offers a look at some of the pop culture references in the show, an interview with series director Shin Onuma, and some untranslated comments from the Japanese voice actors (with a link to a website that should give the translations, if only the website hadn't expired).

You will be glad to see the return of the AD Vid-notes feature, especially with this gag rich title. The AD Vid-notes are those little subtitle pop-ups that appear to explain and translate cultural specific gags, point out odd references, little bits of trivia, just so that you don't miss any of the jokes.


Also on this disc are all four textless closing sequences, a clean opening sequence, and the third part of the In Class With The Cast featurette that runs to 18 minutes. In it, more of the English cast get quizzed on their high school experiences, and even less about the show. It's still annoying.

The previews on this disc include Kurau Phantom Memory, Gravion, 009-1, Divergence Eve: Misaki Chronicles, Ghost Train, and UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie: Bride of the Celestial Souls' Day.

Conclusion

I think it would be a little unfair of me at this point to expect big things from Paniponi Dash, when it has been going on its merry way for the last three volumes, doing its own zany comedy thing, and ploughing its own furrow. So despite my initial high hopes, it's with more enthusiasm than reluctance that I say that this fourth volume gives you more of the same. Paniponi Dash delivers bucketloads of funny, fast-paced, quick-fire gags that are all over the place in terms of comic potential, but so thick on the ground that you're guaranteed to be laughing more often than not, even if it is at just ten percent of the humour.


This disc begins with its weakest episode, with the whole school going on an excursion, loaded up on school buses, but we rapidly cut to the crux of the story, with class 1-C's bus hanging off the edge of a cliff. Of all the comic shenanigans, this episode's are the most random and nonsensical. There are plenty of bright moments in the nonsense though. But if this episode is the weakest, then the next is the strongest of the series so far. Last volume I decided that Paniponi Dash worked best for me when it focused on a character and then developed the story. Last volume it was Number 6, this time around it's the resident class weirdo Ichijo, who may just have a beau hidden away, and may even be contemplating matrimony. The identity of that special someone comes as a surprise, and with Ichijo's surreal nature surpassing even the scriptwriters' best intentions, how she deals with her inquisitive classmates is a marvel to behold.


Next comes the staple of the high school anime genre, the festival episode. There comes a time in the school year that students and classes are supposed to work together to contribute to a festival, and come up with ideas on how to put their class forward. Paniponi Dash of course puts a madcap spin on things, with classes taking their ideas to extremes, and for once 1-C's seems pretty normal, just the standard café. But Rei's avaricious nature puts paid to any normality, while the rest of the school provides the extra-weird quotient. Finally is another character-centric episode, although in this case it's Mesousa, the melancholy rabbit. For once though the sun is shining for the downhearted one, the skies are blue, and his heart is beginning to lift. Which is when a jinx shows up and plants a time bomb in his cranium. It then becomes a matter of finding a way to remove it, a race against time, topped off with the most ridiculous, and predictable punchline yet.


Accepting that Paniponi Dash is never going to be elevated into the ranks of the sublime, I can begin to enjoy it for what it is, an anime sketch show of a comedy, more hit than miss, and a great way to kill 90 minutes. There are the occasional episodes like the Ichijo story here that are a cut above the rest, but they are rare exceptions, and best to be appreciated when they come along, rather than indications of future excellence. Paniponi Dash ticks the right boxes for oddball comedy, and this fourth volume ticks them in permanent marker.