February 9th, 2019 
Charles Solomon 
In the first two minutes of Anime-Gataris (literally “Talking about Anime,” 2017), the filmmakers offer a hilarious send-up of Gundam, Sailor Moon and the component series of Robotech. If the rest of the show never quite meets that admittedly impressive bar, it’s still very silly, very meta and a great big inside joke for anime fans.
Minoa Asagaya (Dawn M. Bennett) is a new student at Sakaneko High School, an upscale private academy. She’s not an anime fan, and doesn’t really watch very much. But when she was a little girl, that opening sequence made a huge impression on her. Although she can’t remember the name of the show or what happens after the first few minutes, the scene haunts her, even appearing in recurring dreams.
When her rich, beautiful classmate Arisu Kamiigusa (Alison Viktorin) mistakes Minoa for a fellow otaku, they immediately bond. Minoa knows next to nothing about anime; Arisu knows almost everything. Minoa is so impressed with her new friend’s passion for the subject, she suggests they revive the school anime club.
When they explore the dusty old clubroom, Arisu is delighted to find back issues of anime fanzines in the store room. Minoa meets a mysterious talking cat whom she dubs Neko-Sempai (Brad Smeaton). Neko’s disgruntled, wisecracking persona and New Yawk accent suggest a cross between Kon, the stuffed lion in Bleach, and Ted in the Mark Wahlberg films.
Arisu and Minoa have no trouble signing up Miko Koenji (Elizabeth Maxwell), a bright girl who reads the light novels many anime series are based so she can compare the different versions of the story. She recalls Yuki Nagato in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Kai Musashikai (Alejandro Saab), who swaggers around campus declaring he commands the powers of a supernatural anime figure, is almost too eager to join.
But a school club has to have at least five members. The first four are worriedly seeking recruits when two sempai (upper classmen) join: Erika Aoyama (Felecia Angelle) and Kouki “Aurora” Nakano (Jordan Dash Cruz).
Once they have a quorum, the six members strive to keep club going despite the determined efforts of the student council president to force it to disband. They assist other clubs, offer anime-based advice to athletic teams and even put together a brief animated film of their own for the cultural festival that’s the highlight of every high school anime series. Much of the fun comes from the excited discussions of spoofs of anime titles, from “The Girl Who Slept Through Time” to “The Fresh Prince of Tennis” to “Autumn Wars.“
Like Martian Successor Nadesico, the satire is good-natured, and the comments about anime clichés (“If the hero’s mecha is mass-produced, it’s a classic!”) ring true. But what was the mysterious series Minoa remembers so vividly?
Just when she discovers the answer—and how it relates to the efforts to disband the anime club–the wheels come off the show. In the last few episodes, Minoa’s reality threatens to dissolve into an anime simulacrum. Director Kenshiro Morii steps up the satires, including visual parodies of standard anime designs, line work, explosions and other tropes, down to “God of Manga” Osamu Tezuka’s trademark beret. Eventually, everything gets sorted out, but with more complications than necessary. Anime-Gataris is often very funny, if over the top.
Anime-Gataris: The Complete Series
Crunchy Roll/Funimation: $64.98 4 discs, Blu-ray and DVD
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