Title: Welcome to Irabu’s Office – Complete Series (Episodes 1 – 11)
Alternative Titles: 空中ブランコ / Kūchū Buranko
Produced by: Toei Animation
Published by: Siren Visual (Australia / New Zealand – WORLD FIRST!)
Based on: Psychiatrist Irabu Series
Audio: Japanese dub
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Full-Frame
Runtime: 330 Minutes
Cost: $AUD 49.95
Classification: Rated M for Mature Themes, Sexual References and Coarse Language
My Blurb: Welcome to Irabu’s Office is one of those series that makes an attempt at pulling off something incredibly weird. The animation, music and storyline are all very different from the norm, merging the 11 unique storylines into a period of a few days with cross-overs, changing animation styles from anime to live-action and overall showing that weirdness, can turn into a confusing, yet enjoyable watch!
Special Thanks: Special thanks to the PR team at Siren Visual for supplying me with a review copy of this title.
First of all, this may come off as a brag but it is very rare, if ever that us in the Oceanic region get to say this…… we managed to get an anime title in our hands, before it has been announced for publishing by any other English speaking country! This may be why there is absolutely no English dub present in this series, however it is something that is nice to see, home country made anime, makes a nice change….. However, this shall not change my opinion of anything in this review.
When I received this in the mail on Friday, alongside When They Cry, I chose to watch this all the way through, despite the fact I was guaranteed to enjoy watching Higurashi, I suppose it was because I remember this being announced years back for Japanese television, and I chose not to pay much attention due to its child-like appearance…. and therefore thought… “This was subbed in Australia” and “It came out over here”, so I was curious. 30 minutes later and having watched the first episode, I was at a loss for words… half the content seemed to random for my brain to process. However, I am now finished all 11 episodes, so you can read my thoughts in this review of Welcome to Irabu’s Office Complete Series.
A pro baseball player with the yips, a man with a permanent errection, a hopeless yakuza underboss, an obsessive compulsive university lecturer, a mobile phone addict and an anxious circus performer… Welcome to Irabu’s office!
Irabu Ichiro is a psychiatrist who lives in a colourful alternate version of Tokyo. His methods of dealing with his patients are unorthodox to say the least. 11 patients visit him for psychological help, each one recieving an injection from Iraby’s sultry nurse – a practice Irabu seems to take obscene pleasure in witnessing.
Despite Ichiro’s zealous attitude, he does succeed in helping out each of the patients via psychological exhaustion and life-changing psychedelic experience.
This series has some very warped storyline writing that, unlike a number of medical shows, does not dwell on the boring day-to-day cases that you may see in every Western medical show, instead focusing on a number of more interesting psychological disorders, or common ones with some sort of major impact on their life. Common disorders being an OCD reporter who would be classified as an “extreme risk” to a patient who has a permanent erection and is placed in a number of close encounters which may result in his stiffy being revealed. The storyline may come out as a surprise to most viewers originally however after a few episodes, you will be able to enjoy the amount of time they put into each of the character developments.
Each of the episodes begin in one of two ways, either the patient arrives in the office with their problem or their backstory is shown, in which they then arrive at the office stating their problems. They are then given a “vitamin shot” from Mayumi, the nurse and only other individual in the office. Whilst this is a recurring trait through all 11 episodes, this never seems dry. The episode then continues with the patient trying to face their fears, mostly through the occasional push from Irabu or through accidents they do whilst trying to help themselves. Throughout the episode, all of Irabu’s patients run into each other taking part in their own events that appear in the other characters episode, and whilst this is more for visual effect and to show that they aren’t just jumping back in time, it is still a nice little addition and a few times it has led to an overall progression.
Irabu has three separate personalities, seemingly getting more serious the younger he appears. The primary form shown at the start has him more child-like then the other two and results in him wearing a green bear head, the second form which has him as a middle-age man who is generally cheerful and a third form which has him as a more serious young boy with a strong sarcastic side. The confusing thing is that he can change forms at any moment, seemingly not noticed by his patients. However, this is beneficial as too much of his first form does get on your nerve after a while. However, Mayumi has a rather cold personality, this works much better and is used in a number of episodes, especially in Episode 6 where she plays a much more important role in “curing” the patient of his cell phone addiction. The patients are also a mixed bag, some having more interesting personalities then others, however they only really have any importance in one episode, and after that they become background characters for the most part. The last character of interest is Fukuitchi, who has no importance to the overall storyline, however delivers somewhat more relevant medical information and also acts as a gag character, by opening warp holes on the screen to provide this information…. however it is a nice touch them trying to add some proper information on the disorders mentioned.
Whilst the storyline is overall enjoyable, there are a few gripes I have with it. Whilst the storyline is meant to go from the period of the 16th of December – 24th December, the characters do not get a solid ending and usually end without a final ending. This is a small gripe of mine however it would be nice to know if their future ended out somewhat okay, especially considering that each episode ends with a “To Be Continued”. Also, whilst it is a personal issue I have with it, I do feel that they went overboard with a couple of the disorders and someone like me who has had experience with people with said disorders found it a little bit agitating, however for the most part, it was a really enjoyable watch. Oh, and did I mention the storyline is just plain weird at points?
In terms of the environment settings, the promotional blurb “Colourful alternate version of Tokyo” is not an understatement by far. For those looking for realism in this series, you should just move on since there is little to no realistic anything in this series. Everything from the wallpapers to buildings of every house and office is covered in multiple colour schemas that may or may not go well with each other. Taking Irabu’s office as an example, it is vibrant, colourful and nothing is a straight line, showing that the designers must have had a field day designing these rooms, and whilst it may seem like over-stimulating at the start, eventually comes out as a normal occurring in such as world. In the environments that are normal, they will often do some sort of twist to make the room look less normal at some point in the episode, with this twist usually being the patient psychologically breaking down. For a number of scenes, they seem to use real life area images and have them photoshopped to have unique colours and items in them, which isn’t original, but it also suits the randomness of the designs.
Character designs also differ per character. Irabu is one of the few primary characters in the series who retains his anime design throughout the whole series, most probably for the better. The other characters often shift in and out of the live-action and anime style design, however even in the live-action segments, the characters still turn out more anime then real life. It is a nice difference that is done well at parts and badly at others. For characters like Mayumi, the quality remains high for the live action segments, however for the episodes main character, their live action facial designs all seem sort of sameish, especially since every patient is a male. However for the most part, the anime character designs are good, are unique and has the animation and posture suited to the character. For the minor characters, quite often they appear as cardboard cutouts and move as if they were, which is both interesting as whilst it is common for them to reduce the quality of the background characters, they took it further and used their choice and animate them as such.
Opening Theme: Upside Down by Denki Groove
This is a song that jumps between English and Japanese lyrics, with most of the english lyrics being “You aren’t quite upside down~” or similar. This is a very enjoyable song and after a few listens I found myself humming to the catchy tune and singing quietly (To myself) the “Upside Down” parts of the lyrics. The animation utilizes real life imagery of the environments used in each of the episodes and displayed them in visually creative ways. Alongside this, it adds some random, unrelated components to make it seem less like a photo montage. However, there is nothing to do with the characters or actual storyline in it. Still, an overall enjoyable song.
Ending Theme: Shangri-La by Denki Groove
A faster paced song then the opening, but not as enjoyable in my opinion. The animation technique used is similar to the opening, but uses less images and differs with each episode, usually having something to do with the episode itself. Whilst it wasn’t as good as the opening, I would consider it one of the better ending themes I have heard.
The music in this series is present and noticeable in a significant number of occasions and is generally as random in terms of genre as the rest of the series is. The music can range from the seductive “injection” music, to a more softer mysterious theme when unveiling a character past and so forth. In comparison to a number of animes that I have watched lately, I would consider this series to have the widest variety of appealing music. More importantly however is the voice acting. Sadly there are no english dubs available in this series, therefore resulting in Japanese dubs and English subtitles. The Japanese dub isn’t all that bad, and whilst the main characters all sound blandish, Romi Park (Young Irabu) and Yuji Mitsuya do a good job of voicing our lovable psychiatrist whilst Yumi Sugimoto does an excellent job at maintaining the seductive voice of Mayumi, and on that note, keeping the voice suitable to her emotions and movements in the live-action segments.
In terms of the extra content included on the disc, there isn’t that much on there. For one of their exclusive series, I would have hoped for a fair amount of bonus content, however all that has been included on the second disc is three trailers (For “The Tatami Galaxy” – Coming out next month, “Welcome to Irabu’s Office” – The Japanese trailer I presume and “House of Five Leaves” – Due out in April. Whilst this is all on the disc, within the DVD case was a 10% off voucher and information on their mailing lists and all that, and most importantly to me…. the obligatory Siren Visual Slipcase Cover, which features both Irabu (Bear) and Mayumi, whilst the actual DVD cover has just the young Irabu on it. The covers are a really nice collectible item and look much nicer on the bookshelf in my opinion.
Personally, I think this is a damn good series and whilst it would have benefited much more from an English dub in my opinion, the translation was good and the series had enough content to keep me interested through the 11 episodes. It seemed confusing at first, however once I adapted to the wonky storytelling, I found it full of humorous moments, which after the eleven episodes, left me disappointed that there wasn’t more.
Final Score
Storyline: B
Character Development: B+
Visuals: B+
Opening/Ending Themes: A
Music: B
Voice Acting: B-
Extras: D
Personal Opinion: B
Overall Score: B+
You should read the books! They are awesome~<3