Key: The Metal Idol, episode 1, “Startup.” Written and directed by Hiroaki Satō. Produced by Shigehiro Suzuki and Atsushi Tanuma. Music by Tamiya Terashima. Studio Pierrot, 1994-1996. 13 episodes and 2 movies. Rated 16+.
Available on Amazon Prime.
A bizarre OVA that appeared from 1994 to 1996, this is a series I have wanted to see for a long, long time. I noted some time back that it was out on Blu-Ray, but after that it fell off my radar.
In the meanwhile, it has appeared on streaming services. Amazon has added the English dub, but Crunchyroll has the Japanese original. I only discovered the sub while writing this post—so I watched the first episode in the dub, but will watch the Japanese version from now on.
It is a noirish version of Pinocchio, the story of a girl robot on a quest to become human—a quest that draws her into both an international conspiracy and the seedy underbelly of Japan’s idol industry.
Coming as it does from the early Nineties, when a lot of Japanese anime creators thought unintelligibility equaled depth and when both Blade Runner and Neuromancer were casting long shadows across Japanese pop culture, this show is famously weird. It’s weird perhaps most of all because of its mysterious director, Hiroaki Satō, who as far as I know has no other credits to his name. He crept onto the scene, made a competently directed anime skewering the world of Japanese idols, and then crept away again.
I am really excited to finally watch this series, so I am going to review it one episode at a time. I have not seen it previously, so my comments here are off the cuff. Any criticisms I make come with the caveat that they may be satisfactorily answered by later episodes.
