Welcome to the Space Show, whose story "surpasses Star Wars in its scale" according to its producers, tells of the four adventures of five schoolmates and an alien dog in space during summer vacation.[2]
The plot revolves around five elementary school kids on their "school trip". In the process of looking for their missing class pet (a rabbit named Pyon-Kichi), the children rescue a dog they find injured in a corn field. The dog turns out to be an alien called Pochi Rickman, and he invites them to visit the moon as a reward for helping him. However, through a series of strange events, they become stranded and must make their way across the galaxy to get to Pochi's homeworld, Wan, so that they may return to Earth. Along the way they are pursued by the aliens responsible for Pochi being injured in the first place. The aliens work for the host (called Neppo) of the universe's most popular entertainment, "The Space Show", which appears to be a variety act broadcast from a mysterious moving spaceship.
This leads to a show down at an interstellar festival, where with the help of friends they've made along the way, the children manage not only to defeat Neppo and rescue Amane but also save the entire universe. The children are then able to return home (along with Pyon-Kichi, who had been kidnapped by Neppo's henchmen as well) and arrive at the school just before their parents show up to retrieve them.
Anime World Order reviewed the show at the Otakon 2010 premier and praised it for its imagination, but also echoed the issues such as other reviewers as Tim Maughan have stated, primarily about the length of the movie.[15] Tim Maughan did comment on the similarities to works by Hayao Miyazaki, stating that the film has a "much edgier attitude than any of Miyazaki's works".[16]
"Welcome to the Space Show" is a 2010 anime film that most anime fans likely never have heard of. The original movie seemed destined to never even get a home video release in North America: it eventually did from GKIDS in 2014, using a pre-produced English dub from a UK release. It's also hard to describe the movie: it crams so much in its 2+ hour runtime, that you'll feel you've watch three or four separate movies at once.
Let's start from the beginning of the story: a group of students (ranging from about 5 to 14 years old) are playing outside, when they discover a sick dog. After caring for it, the dog politely thanks them in English. Pochi isn't an Earth dog, but a dog from space, and as a reward, he offers to take them out to space to see it themselves. This results on an epic adventure, mostly surrounding the planet Wan-Bow, and the universe's most popular entertainment program, "The Space Show."
Often loosely associated with the also busy 2009 film "Summer Wars," "Welcome the the Space Show" involves a variety of tangent plots. Pochi quickly realizes that bringing the kids back to Earth will be difficult, and tries to manage this without worrying them. Some of the children wander off to explore. Some have to work part-time jobs to earn money to get back to Earth. Some argue and make up with each other. There's also a plot regarding why Pochi was injured to begin with, resulting in a climactic and flashy final battle.
If there was ever an example of too much story in a single movie, "Welcome to the Space Show" is it. It feels as if they intended to have a series of television episodes, realized they only had enough content for about five or six, and decided to cram everything into a single theatrical feature. It doesn't help that the movie is as long as it is either. "Space Show" is always interesting, but quickly wears out its welcome.
One of the few ways "Space Show" cleverly uses inspiration is in the visuals. It portrays a wide variety of aliens in space, after all, and uses the opportunity to display fun and colorful characters and environments (mostly featuring, but not limited to, humanoid alien dogs). Some animated vignettes almost cross into Masaaki Yuasa territory. It's a shame that there isn't really a consistent style to follow and better market the movie: the varied visuals don't blend into a cohesive whole, at times further proving that this feels like multiple movies crammed into one.
A child with a short attention span will be curious about the movie, but even then I'd be surprised if they could stay awake all the way until the end. "Welcome to the Space Show" desparately needs to be edited down into something shorter, or possibly into separate episodes as an OVA series. On the other hand, the wild abandon is almost impressive, and for a single viewing, it may leave you stunned in amazement.
The story revolves around a group of kids who are staying in a school building for a week or so during summer vacation. These kids include Natsuki, voiced by Stephanie Sheh, her cousin Amane, voiced by Michaela Dean, Kiyoshi, voiced by Michael Sinterniklaas, Noriko, voiced by Cassandra Lee, and Koji, voiced by Michael Jacob Wayne. One day as they are searching for a lost rabbit, they come across an actual crop circle, and decide to investigate. Upon the investigation, they find an injured dog. After recovering, the dog turns out to be an alien dog named Pochi, voiced by Marc Diraison. Pochi thanks the kids by taking them through an adventure in space. They get wrapped up in a sinister plan set in motion by an alien named Neppo, voiced by Mike Pollock, who wants to become a God and rule the universe with a special weapon. Can Pochi and the kids save the universe before they get back home?
Just like the kids' space adventure, Welcome to the Space Show is a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs, ultimately worth a look but not without some noticeable flaws. It's the feature debut of director Koji Masunari, who previously worked on a number of hit Japanese anime shows with screenwriter Hideyuki Kurata and character designer Masashi Ishihama. Together, the trio take the viewer on a visually spectacular, imaginative journey with a group of well-rounded and interesting characters, but they struggle to leave their television roots behind, with a story that frequently feels episodic and overlong. When the project was announced, the producers boasted that the story would "surpass Star Wars in its scale." Space Show has enough going for it that such a boast isn't entirely unfounded, but sometimes it feels like they tried to match the scale of the entire original trilogy.
The most refreshing thing about the film is its boundless inventiveness. The very first stop on the class' adventure is a massive outer-space plaza, complete with a vast artificial ocean surrounding, located on the dark side of the moon. What's especially pleasing about the scenes that follow is that they aren't just a collection of aliens walking around, but an entire world that feels as if it exists beyond the borders of the movie. The kids are asked to pass a test before being allowed to enter the station with interesting sociological implications. Minor details of Pochi's job are revealed. The characters even figure out what the currency conversion is between yen and the pods that Pochi pays with. The group later ventures on to other worlds and environments, each different and varied, each of which offers enough intrigue and invention that it seems as if it could sustain an entire film all by itself. Plenty of movies create worlds for the characters, but so many feel restricted to the story at hand. Space Show is more open-ended, as if we're only seeing one version of a Choose Your Own Adventure movie.
The flipside of this is that large chunks of the film can feel a bit aimless. The film's narrative momentum could charitably be described as casual, with more focus on characters and their emotional bonds than plot. It's certainly commendable for a film to take time developing its characters, but many of these scenes feel like tangents. At one point, the characters all get day jobs to try and earn some pods, which is a mini-arc unto itself. Each new location provides another opportunity for the characters to investigate it, including a rainy day montage where nothing of note happens. At times, this can make Space Show feel more like a television show than a movie, with each new world Pochi takes the characters to serving as another episode, complete with little cliffhangers. Frankly, spending time in the world of the film is enjoyable enough that a miniseries might not have been a bad idea, but the 136-minute film that was made instead is unwieldy.
The film's central conflict involves Pochi's target plant Zughaan, which is so rare in space that many of the aliens the characters encounter believe it's a myth. Three aliens chased Pochi to earth to try and poach it from him, but return to their mysterious boss empty-handed. When the students arrive on the moon, it turns out they may have Zughaan in their possession, and the result is a chase across various galaxies to try and get it from them, all building to some nefarious plan. As the film finally moves into its home stretch, it starts bringing elements together, including the fight between Natsuki and Amane, a young alien pilot named Ink (Mayu Iino) that Koji meets, and the universe's #1 television program "The Space Show", hosted by one-eyed alien Neppo (Ryohei Nakao) and Marie (Rei Igarashi), who may or may not be an old acquaintance of Pochi's. The final place the characters travel to is not just the most spectacular, but also the most exciting, serving up a complex series of action sequences involving all the characters. On the downside, these sequences, and the movie at large, is oddly saturated with emotion, piling on the regret and remorse so heavily that the film inadvertently becomes a downer from time to time. It's yet another case of Masunari losing sight of moderation, but maybe that's what makes the movie special: when so many films are packed with half-baked ideas and missed opportunities, a movie that is overinspired, overlong, and overemotional is kind of a breath of fresh air.
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