In Neo Tokyo in the year G.C.0051, humans have known of aliens for the last 50 years and obtained super light-speed navigation technology and formed a commonwealth of planets. Self-proclaimed freelance reportage writer Robby Yarge fails at work, so his contract is cut. His girlfriend leaves him, he nearly dies in a traffic accident, and debt collectors are after him. One day, a bag snatcher steals Robby’s bag, and a young man helps him. Hatchi Kita, an 18-year-old part-time worker, catches the criminal and returns Robby’s bag. However, Hatchi turns up again in Robby’s life as a debt collector. Hatchi explains that it’s his part-time job working for the loan shark Yang. A cat-and-mouse chase begins, and Yang takes his subordinates Allo and Gras along for the ride. – ANN
Streaming: Funimation and Hulu
Episodes: 12
Source: Original
Episode Summary: Robby Yarge is in a bit of a financial pickle, having cultivated champagne tastes on a soda-pop budget. He’s averse to actually working, and he’s experienced the failure of several get-rich-quick schemes after striking out on his own from his wealthy family. But this latest investment won’t fail, he just knows it – even though it involves a loan from a mob boss and a highly questionable shrimp-farming business. Unfortunately, Robby’s seed funds (which he’s been toting around in a duffel bag) have been stolen right out of his hands. He’s only saved by the chance intervention of a man named Hatchi, who’s no superhero; he’s just a bored, gifted guy looking to inject some interest into his life.
After the two part ways, that seems to be that. Until Robby’s “investment” goes awry and Yang the loan shark comes calling. Hatchi’s taken a job as Yang’s collector, so he and Robby trade blows while Yang and his other cronies approach Robby’s apartment. As it turns out, Robby has one more trick up his sleeve – his abode is actually part of an old space ship. The bucket-of-bolts still works, and Robby pulls into space with Hatchi an unwilling stowaway. When Yang and company give chase, it turns out there’s yet another escape option; two single-pilot space planes (just the right number!) that join to form a giant robot!
Recently my anime club powered through the truly unique anime classic, Samurai Flamenco. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s the story of a male model who chooses to become a vigilante superhero heavily influenced by the super sentai characters he admired as a child. The situation he’s in keeps evolving and escalating – street criminals become malevolent alien invaders as the titular hero’s powers are realized in greater and more varied ways. There are giant robots, super suits, and questionable science, all in a package that pays homage to the heroism of our favorite TV characters. I jokingly call it “Escalation: the Anime” when describing it to others, because just as one settles into the narrative’s “new normal,” it takes yet another turn into the more bombastic and surreal. It’s a lot of fun and truly unique.
RobiHachi takes the same sort of goofiness one finds in series like SamuMenco, Space Dandy, and Tiger & Bunny and crams it all into an introductory episode that increases from zero to sixty in a very short amount of time, with somewhat mixed results. There are elements of the episode that are snappy and fun, and some that seem over-designed and rehearsed. It’s a bit off-kilter and I think has the potential to be very entertaining, but the first episode is really “a lot” to deal with right away.
The episode wastes no time establishing and playing up the odd-couple dynamic between its two leads. Robby is a goofball who fancies himself as some sort of wealthy womanizer – as a former “rich kid” he’s familiar with a certain kind of lifestyle, but not the work (and the extreme amount of good luck) that generally comes along with establishing that lifestyle from scratch. He’s a man searching out the societal short-cuts that many people fantasize about, but which don’t actually exist. His “schemes” all reveal themselves as ways in which the already-wealthy take advantage of people without means, sort of like the MLM schemes that I see dotting some of my social media feeds. Robby’s a man in pursuit of a certain image of himself that possibly can’t exist in this society, and while his personality reads as “lovable dirt-bag,” I can see a little bit of tragedy and class commentary peeking through, too.
Hatchi, on the other hand, is more a sober literalist type. He abstains from junk food, is forthright and matter-of-fact about his goals in life, and takes a job that ends up directly conflicting with Robby’s lifestyle – not necessarily because Hatchi has any overwhelming beef with Robby in particular, but because taking a job as a debt-collector for a known mobster aligns directly with Hatchi’s goals – he’s looking for an interesting life and this type of employment is a sure-fire way to achieve that. Together, the two characters form the requisite matter-antimatter conflict that’s bound to result in all sorts of humorous and argumentative situations.
In an ideal world I think the conflicting chemistry between the two characters would basically write itself, but there’s just something that seems a little awkward and rehearsed about how their meetings unfold. Storytelling is really all an illusion; we buy into the reality a storyteller has created based mostly around how convincing they are in establishing its reality. Stories like SamuMenco have the benefit of starting from familiar times and places, slowly convincing us, the audience, that everyday objects can be converted into great hero weapons, that a hero’s identity can actually stay hidden (until the time of a plot-advantageous reveal), and that aliens really might be lurking out in space planning their attack, as we’ve seen in so many tokusatsu series over the years. Future-based science fiction has the added task of updating the audience on society’s changes since the current time and ensuring that they’re believable, in addition to filling those worlds with characters who express believable personalities and motives.
For what it’s worth, I feel like the first episode of RobiHachi tries to take a lot of short-cuts in establishing its setting, it’s plot, and its character relationships, undercutting its own potential success in any of those areas. Honestly, there are a lot of things that appealed to me, so it’s not as if any part of the intro episode was outright bad. I thought the metropolitan setting was bright and appealing, and represents one type of future I hope humanity can reach someday. I think the character designs are stylish and the character animation is very good. And the idea of a couple of guys who can’t get along stealing away on a space-ship as they’re chased by gangsters is a fun one (and gets my fujoshi sense tingling, too). But the first episode spends a lot of time establishing Robby as a grifter with no prospects, then allows him access to a gigantic, still-operational space ship and finally a giant combining robot (the operation of which is reliant on his partnership with a second, very different character who has every reason not to play nice). It’s the juxtaposition of these two very different aspects of the same property that make it unconvincing as a whole.
I don’t really like the term “guilty pleasure” because in most cases I don’t feel like one should feel guilty about consuming something they think is low-quality in some way. I tend to use the term “trash favorite” to describe these things for myself – things like, well, Samurai Flamenco, which is a wonderful, overly-ambitious and endlessly-entertaining disaster, or Gakuen Handsome, which is so unabashedly stupid and purposely-ugly yet makes me laugh with every stupid gag. RobiHachi has the stink of a possible trash-favorite – it might very well be about two stupid dudes getting into trouble (and more…) together in the candy-colored space future, which is fine by me. I just kind of wish that it’d spent some more time laying its own ground work so that it might be easier to recommend. “Surprise! Giant robots!” is funny for one episode, but doesn’t speak to the series’ potential for longer-term appeal.
Pros: The visual quality, animation, and design are all very appealing. The first episode is pretty fun even considering the extreme amount of escalation.
Cons: The odd couple relationship feels overly-constructed and unconvincing. There’s a giant robot… now what?
Grade: C