Just mentioning the mere premise of Upotte is probably going to be enough to put the vast majority of people of from watching it, unless you’re the kind of person who has gone through enough classical conditioning to be immune to what ever the minds of the people of Japan could throw up next, then you may as well try to forget Upotte’s name entirely and just leave it at that.
At a glance ...
Just mentioning the mere premise of Upotte is probably going to be enough to put the vast majority of people of from watching it, unless you’re the kind of person who has gone through enough classical conditioning to be immune to what ever the minds of the people of Japan could throw up next, then you may as well try to forget Upotte’s name entirely and just leave it at that.
At a glance Upotte may just appear to be your typical clichéd Japanese school girl anime, but there’s a catch, a safety catch, the girls who appear to be your pretty standard anime school girl aren’t in fact girls at all. Their guns.
Every aspect of the characters, be it their appearance, nationality, eating habits, what they wear, their relationships with other characters, how confident they are and even how the react to certain environments both physically and socially is entirely dependant on the gun model that they just happen to be. Subsequently, this can lead to a lot of humour of the eye rolling variant as Thompson submachine gun is given large breasts as a result of a large drum magazine and a T91 assault rifle is given a g-string as a result of an adjustable stock.
It’s worth noting that not all the characterisations of the guns are this perverse, there does exist other parallels such as height dependant on gun type and family relations influenced by manufacturer. This said, more often then not, the aspects that Upotte wish’s to bring to light are often perverse.
This taken into consideration, one thing I can assure you is that if you have not had any previous experience either in the military or owning a firearm, then your going to learn about guns, and your going to do so in a way that you probably never though that you would. Beyond the aforementioned character interactions, Upotte often takes the time to deviate away from what plot there may be in the episode to explain gun history, varying ammunition sizes, what purpose certain gun types have and other pieces of gun related information. While it may seem odd to call Upotte educational, given its niche subject matter, odds are you will probably come out knowing more then you did going in.
But Upotte doesn’t have its sights focused solely on teaching you about guns, as mentioned, this is an anime about school girls and their varying emotional happenings with one another. The main characters of Funco, Sixteen, Elle and Sig (respectively a FN FNC, M16A4, L85A1 and an SG 550) provide a varying amount of characteristics. Each one has their own strengths and weaknesses ranging from the cocky and brash to the shy and humble. All of the characters are fairly likeable at face value but throughout the series there is very little development to their characters.
What’s worse is that Upotte has a habit of introducing new characters that serve no purpose other then to fill up time during the episodes, they are incredibly shallow in character and their interactions between themselves and the main characters feel poorly thought out. The only exception to this is Japanese Teacher (note this is how he is referred to through the entire series), a recurring character throughout the entire show and the only one aware to how odd it is that the girls are all assault rifles. His casual interactions with the girls provide some light-hearted comedic moments aside from his interactions with FN FNC which range from dull to emotional in a way that doesn’t quite work. While not a hugely likeable character he does fit quite well into the show as he finds himself questioning just what is normal anyway?
This said, there is one big draw to Upotte and its characters, at times the show can be very funny, while I’m sure that its type of humour won’t appeal to all, but there where times when I found myself pausing the video to laugh out loud, not because it was so poorly executed but because it was honestly funny. There are jokes that were lost in translation and others that only the most grizzled of gun enthusiasts will get, but there are many that are pointlessly hilarious and unsurprisingly, often involved the imaginative use of guns.
In contrast to this though, and as a result of this being a show about guns, there are five episodes housing two over arching storylines with an emphasis on action sequences not seen in the rest of the show. The action sequences aren’t really anything to behold, they aren’t animated any better then the rest of the show and most shots really boil down to a character standing still firing a gun. Instead their entertainment value derives from an emphasis on realism, seeing the characters work together as teams to accomplish a goal, executing plans laid out by one another and working around their flaws holds some undeniable charm and the setting contrasts well as it explores the characters enough to further their likeability.
But as mentioned, these sequences suffer from a similar issue that the rest of the show falls under, an impossibly average animation quality. The animation is rarely ever smooth even in times when the show could easily benefit from it, and during certain frames the characters might appear off model which is also a big downer. This isn’t aided by the mediocre art direction that the show takes, while the gun’s do look nice and it’s quite clear that there has been a decent amount of effort put in place to get them to that stage, the background art just remains purely functional throughout, I never found myself even noticing it, and while this could makes sense from a composition stand point to draw attention else where, the show never takes advantage of this opportunity and suffers as a result.
Where Upotte really suffers however is in how it’s earned its age rating of 17+. Through out the show there are many scenes taking place in bath rooms. While the interactions between the characters are appropriately casual for good friends, the amount of nudity in these scenes, while never explicit, feels forced and contrast's with the feel of the show somewhat. This isn’t aided by the near constant panty shots throughout the show which again, feel forced. Other pandering’s to fan service include the unexplained cat ears and tails on AK-47’s, the unexplained dog ears and tail on a Galil and the unexplained elf ears on a Finnish rifle (das racist).
I understand that such things like cat ears are common place in anime, but the creators of Upotte realised that they could get away with just about anything so long as they provide some half arsed justification for it, in all the cases I mentioned above, no parallels are drawn between the guns and these features so in all cases it just feel's like the creators where trying to expand their audience as much as possible by appealing to varying sexual fetishes. One scene in particular depicting a sadistic lesbian Sako Rk. 95, contains content of a masturbatory nature and it feels neither well executed nor consistent with the feel of the rest of the show. While nothing on show throughout Upotte’s length can be considered flat out gun porn, the show does dip near to such low’s and consistently doesn't benefit as a result.
In short Upotte is not all that great, but what is has going for it you won’t find executed is such a fashion elsewhere, when it’s good, it is thoroughly enjoyable, don’t go into it expecting a masterpiece, but at only 10 episodes long, it’s hardly going to waist much of your time either.
Tl;dr- Operation Flashpoint: Kawaii Crisis
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