This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. Given this item’s short length, I would strongly recommend watching it before reading this.
Sometimes you are really left with no choice but to try, probably in vain, to, if not properly review, at least talk about something.
I’ve done this before, and it’s always for very odd short-form animation projects. “Ruru’s Suicide Show on a Livestream” is a poignant miniature generational touchstone about the depths of despair one can become stuck in by mental illness. ENA is one of the most singular artistic achievements of the decade so far, and remains one of the very few non-anime cartoons I’ve ever written about here. Artiswitch is a uniquely artistic prism through which six different life stories are viewed. This is the exclusive club that gets a new member today.
THE IDOLM@STER CINDERALLA GIRLS: Spin-Off! The all-caps being their doing for once, not mine, is not any of those things. What it is, however, is six of the most utterly bugfuck minutes of animation ever put to the silver screen. Or whatever artistic turn of phrase we use for a computer screen, since something this beautifully batshit could only ever exist online. It truly defies description.
And really, what point is there in recapping what plot this thing has? You want a plot? Fuck you, you get a really cool chase sequence, some “trapped in the matrix” technobabble that vaguely implies Idolm@ster idols might all be robots or something, and Risa Matoba (Hana Tamegai), an obscure franchise character who has never had a main role in anything else, toting a pump shotgun that she uses to blast holographic cars.
Okay, fine. The “plot” is that a minivan full of lunatics rescue a young bride named Chitose Kurosaki (Kaoru Sakura) from a sham wedding. But they do that by kidnapping her. And the only reason the wedding is a sham is because Chitose’s husband doesn’t actually exist. They flee the scene, but are pursued by unmanned hot-rods with holographic tires. And then hot-rods that are manned, but only by android dummies toting rocket launchers.
It all caps with the “reveal” that the entire reality of the short is some bizarre VR future-nightmare. Nothing makes any goddamn sense. It’s amazing.
3DCGI is often criticized for looking stiff or primitive. But for the Reboot-esque virtual plaza that Spin-off! appears to take place in, that’s a benefit, not a detriment. Everything looks exactly as whacked-out as it should. The dialogue is delivered mile-a-minute, from a cadre of voice actresses who range from experienced to industry novices, but all of whom absolutely nail their performances here. And that’s good, because the dialogue forms a huge part of what makes this so damn weird. What does any of this mean? Why does its acknowledgement of its own nonsensicality somehow make it seem all the stranger?
This is to say nothing of the finale, where what few rails remain are so thoroughly disintegrated that the entire thing watches like being struck by lightning. You could put this on one of the Genius Party compilations and no one would bat an eye. Our girls escape their reality itself, their van hitting warp speed as they “clip out of existence” and into a new world. Our own, maybe?
Is there an explanation for any of this? Is there some deeper meaning? Or is it just a full-on defacement of its parent franchise? A hastily-scrawled WTF-bomb left on The Idolm@ster‘s doorstep, with the full knowledge that it’s still one of the most popular idol series around? Risa’s bizarre crack about “not getting updates” might be some sort of meta-joke about her character card in the game all of these characters are from. But beyond that, it’s a baffler.
Well, one very limited kind of explanation can be found, not in the short itself but in the credits. Spin-off! is one of just two full projects to have been directed by one Naoki Yoshibe. (So far, anyway.) The other? Another bizarre web anime; The Missing 8, which, incredibly, I have actually covered on this site before.
While it’s impossible to prove that Yoshibe is “the reason” this short is so out there (scriptwriter Nanami Higuchi, who has also contributed to some TRIGGER anime, likely had a role in that, too. Perhaps we can thank them for the short’s shockingly tight, playful banter dialogue, which shines through despite all the surreality), it does provide, at least, some kind of reference point. Even if Spin-off! and The Missing 8 are pretty distinct forms of weird internet animation. (If I would compare this stylistically to anything, it might be the particularly far end of [adult swim]’s “is this deep or just stoner comedy” school. Off The Air, eat your heart out.)
Beyond that, what else is there to say? The net is vast and infinite. God bless every inch of it that produces wonderful nonsense like this.
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