Another page on the calendar, another anime season. It starts with a show that was pretty far off my radar, Paripi Koumei – known in English as Ya Boy Kongming! (the difference being down to the pronunciations of the Japanese reading of the original Chinese). It’s a P.A. Works show, which at one time would have made it subject to considerable interest from me. But to be frank there hasn’t been much from PAW that I’ve found even middling in recent years. Once upon a time they were one of my favorite studios but alas, that time is long past.
That said, Ya Boy Kongming! does have quite an interesting footnote – it’s the first manga adaptation P.A. Works has ever done. I knew they were more focused on originals than almost anybody but even so, I did a double-take when I read that – it’s hard to believe. This seems like an odd choice for their first – it’s way outside their normal strike zone, though they’ve veered away from their core style more in the last couple of years. If I’d gone into this blind I don’t think I would have guessed the studio behind it.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind. And this wasn’t a bad first episode. The comedy worked better than the previews implied it would, and the visuals were rather nice. Japanese pop and literary culture is obsessed with anything Three Kingdoms and has been forever, but this is an unusual take. It finds the legendary strategist Koumei – real name Zhuge Liang – of the state of Shu dying and being reborn in modern Tokyo. He thinks he’s gone to hell at first (which I could see), but it’s just Halloween. And after hammering some tequila he winds up at a club, where he’s entranced by the music of going-nowhere singer Tsukimi Eiko.
I do have one major issue with Paripi Koumei, which is that Eiko’s music is supposed to be something wonderful and I find it utterly forgettable. This was a bone of contention I had with Carole & Tuesday too, and in a musically-themed series (as this seems to be and C&T certainly was) that’s not an inconsiderable problem. As for the banter between Eiko and Koumei that works much better, and I liked the gag that her boss at the club turns out to be huge Three Kingdoms otaku. I don’t think he actually believes Koumei is who he thinks he is – more that he’s a nut job who believes it himself, which makes him entertaining.
In many respects this is a pretty recycled premise. The fish out of water main character, a variation on the isekai theme, workplace humor. But so far at least it’s just distinctive enough to be interesting. The notion of Koumei turning his Confucian strategic genius towards managing Eiko’s career has some comic potential, and there could be an interesting father-daughter vibe there (especially as it’s hinted she has serious family issues). And it’s nice to see P.A. Works trying something really different – again, since you could certainly say the same about Appare-Ranman!. That was a mixed bag to be sure, but PAW’s efforts at regurgitating what people expect a P.A. Works series to be have become almost impossibly generic and feeble, so I’ll take this sort of risk-taking any day of the week. Ya Boy Kongming! seems like it’s worth keeping an eye on, at least for now.
