Sometimes, not often, I look at a staked seasonal slate of anime and sigh. Not because the shows aren’t worth a watch, but because the modern landscape doesn’t allot for the era I grew up in, when OVAs and anime anthologies reigned supreme. Every once in a while, an original animated show like Apocalypse Hotel comes around and scratches that itch as an ultimately aimless show focused less on signposting toward some grand adventure with a clearly defined endpoint and more on just being a vibe. Unfortunately, original anime are harder to come across in seasons dominated by adaptations of manga everyone’s already prepared to sweatily compare to their source material with screenshots and manga panels. That, my friends, is diametrically opposed to the anime vibes I crave. Luckily, whenever I’m low on seasonal anime that evoke madcap whimsy, giving its creators carte blanche to do whatever so long as it’s dazzling, I catch said vibe by spinning the block and rewatching Project A-Ko.
Project A-Ko, animated by studio APPP (of Golden Boy and that JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA fame) and later by Studio Fantasia (Robot Carnival), is a cornucopia of rad hallmarks in anime all rolled into one work. Though for my kin who were raised on Cartoon Network, Project A-Ko is best described as the closest thing anime has to its own big-budget Ed, Edd n Eddy (I see you Nichijou and City: The Animation fans, let me cook). To underscore that point, Project A-Ko‘s genres include: adventure, comedy, sci-fi, mecha, slice of life, superhero, and a slightly peeled yuri label. But mostly, the OVA is concentrated whimsy and gorgeously fluid animation, and I love it.
