When you get down to it, this series is some pretty dark stuff.

If nothing else (and in truth, there actually is a lot else) Osomatsu-san is making me very curious about the original – it can’t be this out there, can it?  This show is a black comedy to an extent I never expected going in, and on which doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of boundaries – anything is fair game, and it can and will be mined for laughs.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but Osomatsu-san is always going to the limit trying to sell the joke.

By way of explanation, we now know that the Matuno sextuplets are NEETs living at home with their parents – which was always the most plausible explanation for their lifestyle.  Those parents are played by Kujira and Inoue Kazuhiko – who, by the way, may just be my choice as the most versatile seiyuu in anime history.  We rarely get a chance to hear him do broad comedy like this and while he’s (as usual) almost unrecognizable, he nails every line.

That whole interview sequence…  Boy, that was a dark ride.  A mother making her six pathetic adult sons humiliate themselves to try and convince her to take care of them?  It’s certainly funny (I loved the gag with the dirt at Koushien Stadium – taking home a capful of dirt is a tradition for high school baseball boys who make it to Koushien) but it’s one of those comic sketches that feels more and more like a tragedy the more you think about it.  The comic peak?  When Okaa-san asks her sons which one was the horniest – the drive for grandkids is a powerful thing.  And it ends with a spoof of the NPB draft – with both parents wanting Choromatsu, who seems to offer the best chance of actually getting a woman to sleep with him.

As for the second sketch, it was another slightly surreal one – with Totoko as what may be the worst idol ever (it’s no wonder she didn’t sell a single ticket).  But it’s kind of overshadowed by the finale featuring Todomatsu and Dayon doing “Little Red Riding Hood”, which Dayon blaming his grotesque features on “Genetics!”  Most comedy, they say, comes from a dark place – and Osomatsu-san seems bound and determined to go about proving it.