Kyousogiga – ONA

Yep. Still makes about the same amount of sense.

What in the world am I about to watch? I remember drooling over that amazing trailer! My first thoughts went straight for FLCL based on first glances of their animation style and character designs. Anyway! It is time to join Kara, anaaga and Jrow as we talk about crazy looking OVA! Enjoy.

Toei does One Piece, and sometimes they can do that series so damn well. In my opinion, Toei > Pierrot/TV Tokyo. Anyways, Kyousogiga was a bit intriguing when I saw the trailer, so I’m gonna watch this and join up with Kara, anaaga and Fosh for impressions.

Uh ‘kay, is this going to be like another Black Rock Shooter? I hope it’s not. Seriously, I don’t want another Black Rock Shooter OVA (ironically, it seems that I’ll be watching BRS anime. Just sayin’)

Ever since the preview, I’ve been extremely SUPER excited for this. Mainly because I have absolutely NO IDEA what this is even supposed to be about based on the preview. Anyways, Fosh, anaaga and Jrow are tagging this with me! So yep, on to the summary! Also, I apologize for the completely crap screencaps.

After a bit of Engrish poetry, Kyousogiga starts of with mass chaos. Koto and her brothers A and Un run around and battle men in white suits (the mafia?! lol) while some girl in a lab coat watches all this from a very scientific looking room. Everything explodes. Also, Koto beats the crap out of things with her giant hammer. The battle ends with Koto sending a car flying and Myoe, a monk, beating the siblings over the head because of all the damage they caused (no one else seems to care though).

Together with Myoe, the siblings have some sort of weird family relationship going on. However, that’s not all that Myoe is part of. Together with the youkai Yase and the Chief Priest, the three form some sort of committee thing with a plan for Koto. However, Myoe doesn’t seem as keen about the plan as the others. Or maybe he just doesn’t like dealing with them. Either way, they have a connection with a certain red eyed, white haired woman.

Someone should probably tell them that their writing of “Koto” looks like  “Kojo”

Later, Koto and her brothers go off and Myoe says to call him if anything happens. The siblings head to a shrine that people associate with the land goddess, Lady Koto, but apparently people are forgetting about her since she’s been missing for so long. The siblings then talk about how they need to find the black rabbit in order to go home. Koto is dead set on this plan, but A and Un think that it might be impossible.

…Here comes to wtf part. The twins somehow wind up trapped in some video game screen thing set by the Hakase character from the beginning and Koto has her birthday celebrated after she runs into Yase and Myoe at a festival. …Only it’s not actually her birthday. Suddenly, Koto is named the new Lady Koto and she has to fight a giant gold robot. Meanwhile, Myoe doesn’t like where things are going so he has a showdown with Yase just because.

Myoe loses and Koto looks like she’s winning, but then is swallowed by the robot. Everyone looks let down for a bit. However, the Koto look alike with the kitsune mask unsheathes her sword and cuts through the technicolor orb…thing… that I assume everyone is inside. We then see Koto falling towards some planet. After asking Koto what her wish is, Lady Koto then flies to/embraces/kisses Koto.

Kind of like the last episode of Madoka, only there’s more clothing and it makes less sense.

Suddenly, Kyoto starts glowing green and things start exploding for no reason again. Koto is devastated to have had a woman kiss her, the twins don’t look like they really care and everyone else is ecstatic to have Lady Koto back. Lady Koto apologises for misunderstanding Koto’s wish. The kitsune mask Koto is seen chilling by a shine gate and everything looks like it will be okay from now on. However, Lady Koto then tells Koto that going home is impossible for her.

Whoa just what did I watch?! All I can say is AWESOME! Right off the visuals are completely amazing and mind blowing. This is the kind of art style I really like; it comes down to just completely ignoring anatomy and going crazy with the angles and character designs. That is pretty much how most episodes of FLCL always ended up being just straight up what the hell did they just do? But with Kyousogiga we don’t get a clear “plot” well I understand that Koto isn’t from this strange world. And I just lost it after I learned she was voiced by Rie Kugimiya who plays one of best Gintama characters ever as Kagura.

So basically throw Kagura into a FLCL like world and let her go nuts while she swings a giant hammer around. Speaking of characters that use hammers, this OVA has me wishing and praying they will animate Hoshi No Samidare! Koto really looks a lot like Asahina from that manga. I will keep dreaming but the fight scenes were easily the highlight of the entire OVA. Watching Koto’s twin brothers A and UN fly around as demon monsters was so cool! Not to mention a random scientist girl with blue hair named Shouko voiced by Chiwa Saito, I think I just loved her character design and the fact she is into Science.

 Near the end things got really confusing! Like what the hell was going on? Koto’s birthday party turned into a giant mecha battle out of nowhere. But really that is one great birthday idea, just to have some random machine burst through your wall to start an epic fight? So I guess this Lady Koto was living inside of Koto? So in order to save this chick they beat the crap out of Koto. Interesting way of helping someone…but the other amazing moment Myoue’s fight against Yase was really fantastic! It reminded me of a Bleach style of attacking or Naruto. Speaking of Myoue’s character he is voiced by Kenichi Suzumura who plays another popular Gintama character Sougo Okita, he was riding around on a vespa. I wonder if that was a shout out to Gintoki’s character or just something random…

I won’t spend any time on the story. From the start it looked like a Sakuga Nerd Delight, it only lasts 25 minutes and pointing out plot developments and such is, in my opinion, irrelevant (and it’s possible Kara and Fosh might’ve touched on story business already). Sometimes it’s nice to just take off your thinking cap and watch some animated action that’s supposed to be very high-quality. I watched this twice, first with subtitles and second without.

Quickly onto some other points of interest. The seiyuu cast is pretty strong with the likes of Kugimiya Rie (who goes loli-voiced towards the end) and Suzumura Kenichi as Myoe (who it seems has trouble keeping bitches out of his bed). Eri Kitamura also gets a decent bit of voice work as Yase, but everyone else only tosses a handful of lines with little value to the events unfolding. The OST is pretty decent, and I’d like to find a full version of the ED theme. All in all, Kyousogiga isn’t great or terrible or one that failed to meet super lofty expectations, but if you thought about watching this, I’d say pass unless you’re looking for a +1 on your MAL account.

What the hell was that? Wait, let me try to digest it. So Kyoto Koto and her brothers are lost in the Capitol? And they can go back home only when they find the black rabbit? But then Yase and Head Monk decided to use Koto to resurrect Lady Koto, Koto’s other self in the Capitol? Is that it? And who the hell is Inari? Well that’s what I got from all of that confusion. Whatever it is, I am so glad that it’s not like Black Rock Shooter. Fantasy version of BRS? Hmmm. Anyhow, it’s confusing, but it was definitely entertaining. I actually like how they manage to tell plot with all those confusion. It’s hard to catch the plot, but it’s not impossible to do that. The 100% FANTASY makes it ENJOYABLE, and if you pick up everything properly, you CAN actually GET the explanation of WHAT’S GOING ON (Now I’m being mean). But remember, everything I said just now applied to me only, so you can’t apply this to everybody. Unfortunately, I know not everybody can get the story because of how it’s being told. Confusion is not for everybody. And most of the time, too much confusion is not good.

One thing that I enjoyed the most here is the animation and the art of it. Well, not really animation, more like the colors and the pretty scenes. The video quality is kind of crappy. Every scene is just so colorful! It was definitely eyegasm for me because I love the mix of the bright colors. The fights are both fun and full of crazy just like out hyperactive Koto. The brothers are really adorable, and Myoue is a bishie monk; I can understand why girls want to give their ovaries to him. Overall the characters are also fun, none of them are the same. Their personalities and styles are clearly distinguished from each other’s.

Overall, this OVA is pretty entertaining. It’s definitely for those who love crazy and fun anime full of irrational fights. It has enough materials for a series, and I am so watching this if it’s turned into a series. I mean, if Black Rock Shooter has its own series, so why can’t Kyousogiga?

So since Fosh has covered the amazing team behind this production and Jrow and anaaga have covered pretty much everything else, I guess I’ll focus on trying to come up with an explanation for wtf just happened. This took me WAAAAAAAAAAAY longer to write than I thought it would because I tried to come up with answers to EVERYTHING. However, in the end, I kind of realised that it didn’t really need all the answers (plus there were a few spots where I have NO IDEA wtf was going on), so here’s the VERY abridged version of my explanation:

Taken alone, this is a story about Koto and her brother being in some strange version of Kyoto. Everything past here is based on assumptions. So what I took this story as is that Koto and her brothers were transported (how they were isn’t really important) to some fantastical world. At the beginning of the OVA, the kids wreaking havoc and nobody really caring is all about them enjoying their freedom and being able to do what they want. Just look at Koto destroying things with that giant ass hammer and try telling me that it wouldn’t be fun. Anyways, despite all of the fun that they’re having, the kids still want to go home and for need the rabbit (Lady Koto) to do so since she’s a goddess or whatever. Meanwhile, the trio of Myoe, Yase and the Priest serve as some sort of guardians for wherever they are. Despite Koto wanting to go home, she still has some doubts and so the trio try setting her up as the new Lady Koto because of it. So they test her, but Koto doesn’t want it so this somehow summons Kitsune-mask Koto (who I assume is the embodiment of Koto’s desire or something. I dunno, the official site even said something about “Can a person have multiple selves?” in the character profiles.), which frees Koto/ brings back Lady Koto. I’m not 100% sure what the kiss was all about, but I imagine Lady Koto’s misunderstanding was about her thinking that Koto wanted her position. (Plus I think Lady Koto might be Koto’s ideal or something along those lines.) …As for Saito’s character, I can only assume that Koto and her brothers are in some kind of video game world….? I honestly have no idea why that was in there.

So as far as my understanding goes, this whole OVA is roughly based on the novel Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (the poem read at the beginning in Engrish was from the end of the novel).  So for those of you who haven’t read that, in that novel, Alice (the same one from Alice in Wonderland) travels through a mirror and is told that she’ll become queen (since the countryside is a chess board) if she makes it to the other side. What does this have to do with Kyousogiga? Well, I assume (there’s that word again) that Koto’s brothers are based on Tweedle Dee and Dum from the novel. Also, the whole thing with Koto becoming the new Lady Koto is somewhat like Alice becoming a queen in the novel. Alice had to work her way up to queen, like how Koto had to take a test. In the end, despite all of the wild things going on, she just wants to go home, as does Koto. However, Alice gets out of the world by placing the red king in checkmate because there was a bit in the novel about the entire world being the red king’s dream and that if he wakes up, none of them will exist because they’re part of the dream. I don’t think this was even in the OVA (which might explain why Koto can’t get out). I might be completely wrong with this, but whatever. The writers meant for this to be extremely confusing.

As for the ONA overall, it’s probably a good thing that I watched this in a lower definition, or my eyes might have started bleeding from all of the awesome going on. The visuals are amazing. The characters were certainly unique and all of them likable. Despite wondering wtf the team was on while they made this and being confused half the time, I rather enjoyed this production. Whatever it was about. Personally, the best thing I read about it was that it was like the entire anime of Penguindrum being shoved into 26 minutes. Awesome yes, but confusing as hell. Like anaaga says, this should get it’s own anime.

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.