This Week in Anime

What the Hell is Going On in Estab Life?

Steve
Nick, I know we like to kick these off with things like "jokes," and otherwise be "entertaining" during these columns, but I'm so mentally stunlocked by our featured show this week that I have no idea where to start. I mean, what am I to do when I have this picture of a communist penguin holding a handgun with his adorable little flippers? Where do I go from here?

That's Ikuhara for you. Ever the perfectionist.

So this is one of those always highly vaunted "mixed media projects," a.k.a. "you knuckleheads better scarf down this anime slop and regurgitate all your money into the eventual gacha game." Except a couple things set Estab Life apart from the soon-to-be-mobage chaff. First off, it's the brainchild of Goro Taniguchi, who's made some pretty darn good anime! I mean, he's not directing this particular one, but Back Arrow was probably last year's premiere hidden gem. And secondly, the anime seems to have been given the green light to do whatever the hell it wants, and apparently what it wants to be more than anything is an anthology of shitposts.

It honestly owns. Like, I'm so used to watching these interminable light novel adaptations that always go out of their way explaining exactly how many mana points it takes to cast magic missile. Estab Life just throws you in the deep end, and it's full of furries and robots.

I have to imagine nowadays that's the only reason anybody starts studying genetic engineering, so it's a future that's all but inevitable. As it should be.

Real winners quit!! But yeah, in this world, it's not quite as simple as hopping on the next train out of town. Mostly because the trains are guarded by creepy robot attendants who will literally and immediately kill you if you don't have the right papers.

So that's why normal people need the help of strangely named and dressed anime girls who are each varying degrees of gay for the other.


I also just noticed the little guy in the Extractors logo looks exactly that the Da Share Z0ne post. Excellent.

They're very professional and good at what they do.

To the point that, as early as week 4, the show breaks formula in order to give us a full episode devoted to the machinations of Martes' inner self. Oh, also Martes is a slime.

To be fair, I could do with a little more context about the science behind slime girls. Right now, all we've been able to glean is that it involves amino acids and a cordoned-off part of your personality that's obsessed with eschewing underwear.

I think that's just what the kids are calling tsunderes these days.

And that's the basic skeleton of Estab Life. Three eccentric girls and their dogman and robot sidekicks moonlight as rebels working against the societal oppressions that wear people down. But even all the jokes we've shown and made so far don't do a great job of communicating just how strange this anime is—and is constantly.

That's the first thing I was gonna bring up too! At no point do they actually stop and explain this, mind you, but every client is introduced with a double-digit view count YouTube video of them dancing like a jackass. I love it.

This is what REAL espionage looks like. [side eyes Spy x Family]

Estab Life eases you in episode one with a professor client who wants to die because he's sick of teaching Nietzsche. Relatable. And then it quickly ramps the stakes up with the aforementioned yakuza boss/aspiring magical girl. Which is also relatable, but you can understand how it's an escalation.

Most magical girls fly, when you think about it, so I think they're just giving him another boost towards his dream. A big boost.

I think my favorite gag in that episode, though, is the weather forecast for turf wars.

The timing isn't always there, but the show has a very droll sense of humor, and I'm weak to those.

This was the point at which I had to very seriously reckon with the possibility that Estab Life might be good. A lesser anime would explain why there's a communist bloc in Ikebukuro. A great anime just shows you a lot of penguins in hats.

The drama!

The stepladder!

The slaps!

Obviously this won't come across in an image, but imagine a little squeaky sound effect when the flipper makes contact.

And of course, the punchline is a bunch of penguins spanking each other. This is true art under the umbrella of capitalism. It's beautiful.

I'm sorry, Nick, I think you meant to say that this is a pointed political satire with a lot to say about society.

The real innovation to the mind parliament conceit here comes when a grenade bisects Martes' slime body into independent slime entities, which in turn fractures her brain into two separate diets: one governed by the lesbian party, and one governed by the dangerously lesbian party.

And as we all know, a lesbian divided cannot stand. She can, however, nuzzle her way like a slug into Equa's lap.

There are talking pandas in this episode too, because why the fuck not.

Which brings us to the moral of this story: JK there isn't one. Estab Life is beyond our puny human ethos. Now buckle up and drop trou, because we're going to Odaiba, and there's only one rule.

It is capital C Committed to the capital B Bit. For better and for worse.

It's neither good nor advisable, but no other show is going to spend 16 minutes building up to a throwaway sight gag like this, and there's a deep, dark part of me that admires that.

We should also mention that their god (who's an AI, but you can only pick up on that via context clues or by reading the synopsis on Wikipedia) manifests as the Statue of Liberty in a bathrobe.

And credit where it's due, I was expecting an easy Planet of the Apes nod by the end of the episode, but Estab Life chose to pleasantly surprise me instead.

"Pleasantly" might not be the right word.

She does, however, provide divine intervention by way of underpants cuneiform. And I'm so glad that's a sentence I was able to write thanks to this series.

With their overlords dropping wisdom like that, it's hard to imagine why so many people are trying to Orange Justice their way into a new walk of life.

It also feels really strange doing a TWIA column on it, because it's such an undiluted, unfettered progression of shitposts. Shitposts are supposed to be our thing! The unstoppable force is colliding with the immovable object, and both of them are making esoteric jokes about underpants.

We can't, dammit! And as such, I have to say I definitely enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. It's not incredible—the banter needs to be snappier, and the 3DCG doesn't do the cartoonishness of the writing any favors—but Estab Life is more amusing than it has any right to be. And occasionally, it touches the sublime. But that's mostly when the total screen area meets a certain quota of clothed and coifed penguins.