Kenya Boy-
I suppose there is something that ought to be said here, and I feel like that something should probably just be about the racism in this piece. As something written in the 1950s you really cannot expect that much out of this, I suppose. Youd be hard pressed to find a society that wasnt racist back then. Granted, the piece came out during the 1980s, and I dont really feel the rest of the content is entirely worth commenting upon, so one must ask why someone didnt really think about it in the 80s. There really isnt any character in this who isnt a racist caricature in the piece. The Africans range from the noble savage archetype of Zega, to the just plain savage of the witch doctor, to the outlandishly bizarre of the lizard men. Not a one is really that positive, though, and the fact that there are some who are BLUE only makes it worse. Theres nary a white who isnt brilliantly blonde, but the real humor here is that the Japanese man is filling a role one normally sees of a white man in Hollywood movies, learning and becoming even better at the natives skillsets in a wildly short amount of time. The long story short is that its all wildly racist, but as something written just barely after the end of WWII, its hard to really be that surprised.
Moving away from that for a moment, there are two other, lesser points worth commenting on in Kenya Boy. The first is that, at its heart, the story is about a young mans quest to become a man, and to reunite with his parents. In that sense, its not that bad. Yoshi definitely grows up over the course of the film, and his efforts to reunite with his father, and his relationship with father figure Zega are appreciable for what they are. It was hardly moving and rarely engaging, but it did what it wanted to do, and I respect that.
The other is that the setting of the story is less Africa and more Batshit insane The Lost World. At first it SEEMS like Africa, since there are lions and rhinos and hippos oh my! But as time goes on, we discover that there are also giant frogs, giant snakes, giant komodo dragons, and when a nuclear bomb explodes, there are dinosaurs. Like a T-Rex fights the giant snake at the films climax. Why this is I have no idea. I suppose the Technicolor atmosphere, black lightning, and draconic battle is meant to demonstrate just how truly horrifying a nuclear explosion is (since Zega comments this will always happen when humans are possessed by demons.), because, you know, nuclear explosions arent scary enough on their own.
But thats Kenya Boy for you.
Kuttsubikoshi-
Ive said it before, and Ill say it again: yuri really doesnt do a whole lot for me. Were not here to explore the reasons why that is, though, so Ill just stress the point and then explain its relevance to the OVA: namely, the first episode of Kuttsubikoshi is pretty much a super softcore yuri hentai, and as such, was incredibly boring to me. I mean, maybe I just dont appreciate romance in general, but honestly seeing two naked anime high school girls roll in the hay for 20 minutes was not time well spent in my book. I get that there are those of you who must surely find this definition highly scintillating, but hey, there it is.
Now, the SECOND OVA is what I want to talk about. Cuz thats where everything went crazy as fuck. I mean, the first one ends with the one girl walking in on her girlfriend with her girlfriends brother. The next one begins with said girlfriend kidnapping her, holding her hostage, and then raping her repeatedly for at least the space of a day. Which, I guess, lead to a love epiphany? And the whole sex with her brother thing? Thats because he had a brain tumor! Hes dead now! And did I mention that psychic powers are involved here? And now teleportation onto an airplane? And now were falling to our deaths? No I lied were naked on a beach on a planet far, far away from Earth. TA DA!
If I gave a fuck Id make a pie chart showing the amount of time dedicated to pointless super ultra softcore sex scenes in increasingly inappropriate circumstances versus the amount of time dedicated to something resembling a plot or a romance, but the point is that no human relationships seen onscreen in Kuttsukiboshi are anything I would describe as healthy. They have all the health one might attribute to Florence during the Black Plague.
As I said the other day, Kuttsukiboshi is somewhere between The End of Evangelion and a really bad hentai written by a drunken SDBurton in my nightmares.
Like what the fuck. Its only two episodes.
