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Saki Sanobashi: Why it probably doesn't exist and why it should

Plenty of terminally online nerds have heard of "Saki Sanobashi" (also known as "Go for a Punch") at this point, but for those who haven't I'll give a brief introduction. A few years back there was a 4chan thread asking users what the creepiest thing they'd seen on the deep web was. One user described a 30-minute 80s-style anime featuring 9 girls trapped in a bathroom with no exit. The girls wax philosophical while slowly starving to death, until they all kill themselves in extremely detailed and gruesome ways.

A manhunt for this supposed anime began, though it only picked up speed a few years later. People REALLY wanted to find this thing. Eventually, someone claiming to be OP confessed the whole thing was made up, but due to the anonymous nature of 4chan it's essentially impossible to verify if this really was OP.

So is Saki Sanobashi real?

... probably not, unfortunately. But it should be.

A 30-minute self-contained story like this would almost certainly be an OVA- that is, a production made specifically for direct-to-video distribution. The anime OVA boom started in 1984 and ended around the early 90s, which is the time period OP described the anime as being from. Problem is, if it existed there would be VHS tapes floating around. OVAs in the 80s and 90s were produced specifically for the rental market, so even the most obscure OVAs from that era still have tapes.

It's unlikely to have been an episode of a TV series, as the level of gore described wouldn't have been appropriate. There are indie 8mm anime films from that time period as well, but nothing as ambitious as a 30-minute production. Again, there would be reels or tapes.

So Saki Sanobashi probably doesn't exist. But it should.

The 80s is considered the golden age of anime for several reasons, one of which was the unbridled creativity the OVA format allowed. At that time, pretty much anyone with a little money could make an anime. That lead to a lot of really unusual, experimental stuff getting released around then (and yes, gorier stuff than what is allowed today). Saki Sanobashi is absolutely the sort of title that could've been released in the 80s.

It would be wonderful if anime *could* go back to that time of unrestricted creativity, when the economy allowed for riskier ideas to be tried. The massive popularity of Saki Sanobashi online - an anime that doesn't even exist - seems to indicate a lot of people are ready for that.

[lostintimeanime]

Review: The Satisfaction

While I don't get into very explicit detail, please be aware this review is of an adult anime.

When you're thinking of declaring a title "the worst anime ever," there are multiple factors to take into consideration. For example, what if the anime is entertaining in how awful it is? Can such a title really be called "the worst?" Can a title with extremely sick and depraved content be "the worst ever" if it has nice character designs and animation?

Nothing like this factors in when I say "The Satisfaction" is the worst anime I've ever seen.

This is a very early hentai title from 1984, produced by Orange Video House. They're known for making almost entirely low-budget sleaze, mainly porn and gore. As far as anime goes, the only title I can think of that had any sort of impact was Dream Hunter Rem.

And "The Satisfaction" is beyond sleazy.

The anime features a high school girl named Reiko, who is apparently a star student and the envy of all. She falls asleep during class and has a dream about a very goofy-looking demon that proceeds to violate her and then rip her open in a very disturbing reverse-birth scene.

The thing is, none of this is well-animated. At all. Everything looks hideous, and characters constantly look deformed and off-model as they move. Even scenes that are supposed to be gory are extremely half-assed. The animators couldn't even draw a vagina correctly.

So after this disturbing dream, Reiko heads home and is attacked by a creepy man who takes compromising photos of her and uses them as blackmail. He repeatedly violates her over several days, and for some reason keeps shoving very random objects into Reiko. It's all very unsexy and extremely creepy.

At the end, Reiko shows up one day to their meeting place and finds that he's gone. She leaves and sees a random student... who she immediately runs up to, screaming like a lunatic, and starts sucking him off. It's the only funny part of the entire anime for how dumb it is.

And hiding behind a tree is her abuser, who - what a ~twist!~ - was the demon all along.

There's nothing redeeming about "The Satisfaction." It isn't sexy, it's ugly to look at, and it's extremely creepy.

Recommended? Is this an actual question? No, you're not missing anything. I wouldn't even recommend this to people interested in early hentai.

[lostintimeanime]

Review: Twinkle Nora Rock Me!

“Twinkle Nora Rock Me!” is no mere anime; it’s an experience. Allow me to explain: That gif isn’t edited. No, that is the actual frame rate. I have to wonder if they ran out of money before finishing the in-betweens.

“Twinkle Nora Rock Me!” is the sequel OVA to “Nora,” although the story is completely separate and you don’t have to watch the first one to see the second. I mean, you could, but it wouldn’t help you understand what’s going on. In the first OVA Nora (our titular protagonist) is on vacation at a space resort, and in the second one she’s suddenly a bounty hunter with psychic powers that were conveniently never mentioned in the prior release. 

“Twinkle Nora Rock Me!” is the sort of anime that is only known outside of Japan for how mind-bogglingly bad it is. I remember seeing the original OVA, “Nora,” quite a while back before it got a fansub release and wondered why I couldn’t find a VHS or laserdisc rip of “Twinkle Nora Rock Me!” anywhere on the internet. Looking back, the answer is immediately obvious.

The OVA opens with a chase scene in a spaceport, where there are no in-between frames and the “animation” is more akin to a Power Point slideshow. Many of the keyframes, especially of the background characters, look hilariously awful and there’s multiple shots where Engrish writing can be seen in the background. 

Nora ends up going to a backwater planet to catch a psychic bad guy, and for a short while the animation improves insomuch as the frame rate goes up. Almost immediately she runs into a terrifying-looking cyborg, who says nothing and walks away. No, this will never be explained.

After getting into a bar fight, Nora meets an extremely short man named Max who really wants to be a dancer. The frame rate drops again, and the infamous badly-animated dance scene of Nora and Max occurs, where Max’s head ends up on his body backwards in one frame.

Nora fights the bad guy, and defeats him with a wink. No, I’m not joking; she literally beats him with a psychic wink. What even IS Nora? This cute, bland, vaguely waifu-shaped thing can’t possibly be human, right?

Recommended?

Oh HELL yes. “Twinkle Nora Rock Me!” is terrible, but definitely in the “so-bad-it’s-amazing” sort of way. Definitely watch this with some friends (and maybe some alcohol) on your bad movie night.

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Review: Cool Cool Bye

A lot of the shorter one-shot OVAs (direct-to-video releases) suffer from the same problem; trying to cram way too much plot and character development into a runtime of 30-45 minutes. That just isn’t enough time to tell a thoughtful, epic anime story with characters you can relate to.

“Cool Cool Bye” sidesteps this problem entirely by intentionally keeping the story almost insultingly simple and the characters as one-note as possible.

“Cool Cool Bye” is about a rag-tag gang who go off to defeat a guy with a giant robot who’s kidnapping women. That’s it, that’s the story. Why is the setting post-apocalyptic? It doesn’t matter and is never addressed, nor is it really relevant. Why is the only main female character a fairy-type thing that can transform into a human? Because it’s cool, that’s why.

Most of the OVA is action-focused, with the group fighting the giant robot or weird fantasy creatures. It’s actually nice that there’s almost zero plot or character growth, I don’t have to ask myself every five minutes “Woah, where did THAT come from?!” when plot devices or character arcs whiz by at a breakneck pace as with other short OVAs.

It’s a fun bit of mindless entertainment, but what I can appreciate the most is the art. This OVA looks really nice, with fluid animation, detailed backgrounds, and a really good sense of scale with the giant robot. The only thing that really looked “off” to me was that some of the backgrounds that are meant to loop... don’t. You’ll have a character moving quickly in front of a background, then suddenly you’ll see the very obvious seam where the background begins again. It’s a really odd oversight when everything else looks so nice.

One thing I noticed is that stylistically, “Cool Cool Bye” looks very, very similar to “Greed,” a one-hour OVA from the year before. They actually had pretty much all the same people working on them, including character designer Tomonori Kogawa. However, where “Greed” is extremely confusing and pretentious with its attempt to tell a story, “Cool Cool Bye” keeps things simple.

Recommended? 

Sure, if you’re bored and have a half hour to spare, go check it out. It’s worth seeing at least once.