The topic of mental illness sees very little exposure in modern Japanese culture, given the heavy stigma against it. Some disorders do show up frequently on account of being extremely prevalent, disorders such as depression, social anxiety and withdrawal, and a need for complete isolation from the outside world. But studies show that conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia are considered extremely taboo, and the general populace believes them to be rooted primarily in social causes such as being weak-willed rather than inherent biological dispositions or trauma. This is not specific to Japan by any means; only recently have deeper psychological issues of identity and illness come to the table for discussion in many first-world countries, and in developing nations a person having these “invisible disabilities” can be outright deadly. The most telling fact about the state of modern stigma is the belief held by the overwhelming majority, particularly in Japan, that mental illness is untreatable and incurable. And so it's a rarity that a show like Kuuchuu Buranko, which tosses all those beliefs out the window to face the issue of psychology and laughs the whole time, comes along.
The first thing to notice about Kuuchuu Buranko is that it starts its challenge to modern thoughts about psychology by challenging the standard form of anime with ridiculous color palates, bizarre meshing of animation with the live faces of the actors, and other quirky techniques that serve to thematically drive its points home. Without any introduction to the characters, we are thrust into a circus routine by an aerialist whose trapeze partner fails to catch him during a performance. The aerialist blames the partner, who speaks no Japanese and is completely new, but we get hints that the aerialist may have also had a part in the malfunction. He is not sleeping well, and so he goes to the psychologist to try and work out his insomnia issues for the future.
A child’s dream of a playhouse opens up before him as a man in an animal suit and a lab coat sits in front of him, speaking like a spoiled brat. He is the psychologist Irabu Ichirou, a strange man who is represented at times by the animal suit, at times by a somewhat young doctor, and at times by a tiny kid. His assistant, the nurse Mayumi, is not even animated, and is simply the actor Sugimoto Yumi dressed up in a skimpy pink punk outfit with a filter. A few seconds later the story freezes and a man calling himself Fukuicchi drills a literal hole through the scene to pop out and explain some of psychology details. His face is also a literal representation of the actor Fukui Daisuke, whose mouth moves on a hinge in a JibJab-esque fashion.
Nothing indicates any sort of coherence or regard for the norms of anime. At this point there has been a few times where the aerialist’s animated face swaps out for the voice actor’s face, clearly with no animation besides a layer of color. We also see background characters represented by cardboard cutouts, as if to indicate their insignificance. Is it laziness on the part of the animators? Either way it certainly makes ordinary shots seem more surreal. There are two or three pieces of recurring background music with a few other tracks used on occasion, all done by Denki Groove, an electronic group known for odd lyrics and a borderline atonal sound. The visual style is not quite as inventive as Mononoke, and whether or not it serves a purpose beyond pulling us into the strange world of atypical mental health is up for debate. One recurring theme that is clearly intentional is the representation of Irabu’s patients as animals, each of which can be seen as having some relation to their illnesses and actions. A boy with a cell phone addiction is depicted as a penguin, feverishly pecking at the screen of his phone nonstop, while an office worker with a nonstop erection is given a rhino’s head (which turns out to have more relation to him than just the obvious pun). These heads appear after Mayumi administers them a “vitamin shot” in a crazy recurring scene fraught with sexual tension that once again reinforces just how absurd the situations seem.
While the show is episodic, with each episode following a new patient with a different ailment, there is are many commonalities between each individual story, all of which take place in the two weeks leading up to Christmas. The same events are referenced again and again as different characters pass each other by, only to lead small effects on one another. Here is a message from Kuuchuu Buranko, telling us that we could walk down any street on any day and not know who may be afflicted in some unknown, unseen way. There are also some patients who are directly related to one another, and we get a sense of the stress they exert on one another simply by them not understanding the other’s point of view. This is an aspect of mental illness that receives less attention than the illnesses themselves, namely the effect it has on the mental health of those around it. I will note here that the best example in the show, of a son with a cell phone addiction and a workaholic father, passes over the mother of the family, who is clearly shown to be caught dealing with the worst traits of both of them, and that it is unfortunate that she did not get an episode to herself.
In fact, there are no female patients in the show, unlike in the original source material, and this is slightly puzzling to me. One character even appears as a female in the original short story only to have their gender changed in the anime. That is extremely upsetting for me because it shows that despite its attempts to break down a boundary that has existed for as long as anime has been around, Kuuchuu Buranko fails to acknowledge the even more apparent issue of gender discrimination, and even sweeps some fairness under the rug. Granted, that statement could be taken as a little extreme with a strong female character like Mayumi featured in every episode, but as the only recurring female character, she receives little to no characterization. Another boundary the show does not cross is to get into the much harder conditions, conditions like schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and multiple personality disorder. This is a bit more understandable, as there could be an argument made that these disorders are tougher to tackle in the space of 25 minutes. Indeed the show does a good job of portraying differing versions of obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as having great accuracy when it comes to talking about treatments and medicines.
It is clear from the fact that Irabu handles all 11 cases the show presents in the same span of time that time and space do not really exist for him, and the fact that his patients accept him being in their homes or on their shoulders hours after meeting for the first time shows that he certainly exists more as a force for them to be cured rather than a doctor in an office. Once he converts between different ages and outfits without any time gap, the viewer is forced to concede that he is not the same existence as the other characters. His past remains a secret, his shots that force out the patient’s inner characteristics are left unexplained, and he bends all normal laws to treat his patients. But he does more than just diagnose mental conditions; he forces his patients to recognize the factors in their lives that forced their behavioral change, and in time they all grow to accept these factors, whether or not they attempt to fix them and move away from their conditions. The show ends with Fukuicchi coming on screen to say “Irabu truly is a great doctor”, and while his treatments are completely infeasible as a doctor, as a choice for how to deal with life as one afflicted by mental illness, they do represent an attainable ideal for moving forward with life.
And it is important to look at the cases and treatments in Kuuchuu Buranko as an abstract for the presence of mental illness in society rather than as any reflection on the terrifying struggles people have to face as a result, nor the hard and exacting work psychologists perform to counteract these hardships. When the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest first premiered, with its comical depiction of mental ward inmates and the cruelty of the nurses overseeing them, there was a huge backlash against the psychiatric community, and it is said that the public image resulting from the controversy persists even today. When it comes to representing such stigmatized issues in fiction, there is a balance to achieve that confronts the issue head-on without creating too radical an image, and Kuuchuu Buranko walks this balance while remaining a fun and enjoyable watch. In its worse episodes, things can get predictable, with the underlying cause signaled in spades at the start of the episode and the resolution playing out exactly as one would guess. In its better episodes, there are themes such as the rigors of academic society, the downfall of the modern family, and the rapid changes that Japanese society still undergoes today. It is an odd watch for sure, but to tackle the issues it does, safety would never cut it.