Review for Pumpkin Scissors: Collection

Introduction

This year has seen something of an ADV rediscovery, with a fair number of titles showing up again on UK shop shelves. 101 Films have led the charge with their releases of Elfen Lied, Lady Death and Rahxephon, while Manga Entertainment have found the ideal partners to some new releases, the original Hellsing to go with their Hellsing Ultimate, and Last Exile to go with Fam, the Silver Wing. But it’s MVM’s choices of ADV content that has tantalised me the most. They’ve gone for the titles that were never completed in the UK, shows which fell at the last hurdle when ADV UK gave up the ghost. A couple of volumes of Red Garden were released here in lacklustre fashion at the end by ADV, while Pumpkin Scissors only had one disc released, although some lucky reviewers got to see volumes 2 and 3 as well.


It’s been almost five years, but MVM have decided to give these shows another chance in the UK. I’m glad, as I’ve hovered over the import button for Pumpkin Scissors on more than one occasion. MVM have decided to release these shows as very reasonably priced complete collections. You should be aware though that these shows never had an Australian release to my knowledge, and the UK release was never completed. PAL masters do not exist for these shows in their entirety. MVM have instead licensed the shows from Funimation, and present them in their NTSC form.


War is bad and peace is good, right? You’d think that was the case, and that people would have breathed a sigh of relief when the bitter conflict between the Empire and the Republic of Frost was signed into history with a cease-fire. It should have been a chance to rebuild, but three years later, the Empire still lies in ruins, its people stricken with plague and famine, with former soldiers now setting up little bandit kingdoms. There is still hope though. Section 3 of Intelligence has been assigned the mission of bringing War Relief to the people, resolving their problems, dealing with the bandits, and restoring the nation to its former glory. The problem is that Section 3 comprises a weary Captain, a secretary and a dog in an office, and three soldiers in a jeep, led by the gung-ho and out of her depth 2nd Lieutenant Alice L. Malvin. She may not seem to be the most effective bulwark against the spreading ruin in the land, but then one day the trio run into former Anti-Tank Trooper Randel Oland.


24 episodes of Pumpkin Scissors are presented across four discs by MVM.

Disc 1
1. The Invisible 9
2. War Relief Unit
3. For That is a Precious Thing
4. The Cracked Portrait
5. Shallow-Minded Men
6. A Fruitful Time

Disc 2
7. The One Who Leads and the One Who Follows
8. Burn in the Snowfields
9. The Woman in the Morning Mist
10. Pumpkins and Scissors
11. The Quiet Quickening
12. Unseen Pain


Disc 3
13. Crude but Elegant
14. The Flame Still Burns
15. Decisions Run Astray
16. The One Who Slashes
17. The Darkness That Can’t Be Saved
18. A Small Military Power

Disc 4
19. A Sweet Trap
20. Enter the Performers
21. The Puppet and the Idol
22. Lonely Scales
23. And Then, An Alluring Trap
24. The Military, the Commoners and the Nobility

Picture

Pumpkin Scissors gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer on these discs, with the content presented in NTSC format. As far as I can tell, it’s an interlaced transfer, and you might get a hint of combing, depending on your player. I did when watching it up-scaled to an HD panel (remedied by using my Panasonic player’s Video mode), but had no problems when watching it on an old CRT on my Sony DVD player. The image is clear and sharp throughout, and absent any visible compression artefacts.


It’s a studio Gonzo show, but the character designs are a tad more generic although pleasant to look at. The animation is adequate in terms of putting the story across. The colour palette is bold and bright, often at odds with the subject matter, and it really looks like a show where Gonzo did just enough, rather than go out of their way to really make the story shine.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 5.1 Surround English, and DD 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. I went with, and was happy enough with the Japanese audio, which finds voices that suit the characters well, and puts the action sequences across with a degree of emphasis. I sampled the English dub; the surround is one of those glorified up-mixes that you used to get from ADV, which do have the expedient of giving the show a little more space, but not much more than that. This show was from the latter days of ADV’s aegis, and the dub cast for the main characters is mostly a bunch of relatively unknown voice actors, and what I sampled of the dub was unimpressive and workmanlike. I quite like the theme songs for the show, the main end theme is one of the few in anime where you’ll hear an accordion used in anger.

Extras

These are the Funimation discs rebranded for the UK. The odd thing is that they become multi-format discs as a result. The MVM logo and copyright screens are PAL, but when the discs menus load, everything becomes NTSC, which is something I thought that DVDs weren’t mean to do. Regardless, the discs work without problem on all of my players.

The menus are static and present their options simply and clearly.

Disc 1 and Disc 3 hold the textless credits sequences, the latter with two end credit scrolls.

Discs 2 and 4 have the Funimation trailers, some of which are available in the UK from local distributers. You get trailers for The Galaxy Railways, Samurai 7, Dragon Ball Z, Vexille, Darker Than Black, Hana, Claymore, Dragon Ball GT, Solty Rei, STRAIN: STRategic Armored INfantry, Robotech: Shadow Chronicles, and Genghis Khan.

Conclusion

Pumpkin Scissors could have been good, in fact with its concept, subject matter and setting, it could have been great. It’s just that in the execution, the show turns out to be something of a damp squib, letting its premise go to waste, with a pedestrian and predictable storytelling style, and the usual anime handicap of ignoring the manga storyline to fashion its own less inspiring ending, ridiculously open-ended, and obviously hoping for season 2 to be commissioned. On the other hand, Pumpkin Scissors is a reminder of the Gonzo shows of the period, shows like Trinity Blood, and Black Cat, that would mix up a bit of sci-fi fantasy action with some clichéd comedy, establishing something of a routine for storytelling at that time. It almost makes me feel nostalgic watching this show, although it does have a completely different look to it than those other Gonzo shows of the time. When all is said and done, I did find entertainment value in Pumpkin Scissors, and for three-quarters of it at least, I was looking forward to each new episode.


It’s an intriguing idea, a story set in an unnamed country that is apparently based on post World War I Germany, having capitulated to its opponents, signed a ceasefire, and now left with the daunting task of rebuilding the shattered country. It was a bitter conflict that cost the people of the country heavily and the very ceasefire itself after such waste felt a little like a betrayal. It’s contributed to deep divisions in the nation, with the people struggling to maintain their existences, while the elite aristocracy continue to live like kings in lavish estates. At the same time, the military, no longer having a foe to fight against, is struggling to maintain its position of import in the nation, and with money drying up; some of the military have simply resorted to banditry instead. It’s become a self-feeding circle of hate and resentment, between the haves and have-nots, and it makes reconstruction a fairy tale goal.


It’s for this goal that Intelligence Section 3, Pumpkin Scissors has been created, a unit tasked with healing the rifts, and finding and punishing those who are profiting from the end of the war, whether it’s soldiers turned bandits, or aristocrats siphoning off war reparation funds, and also getting their hands dirty with the work of rebuilding too. For such a laudable goal, Section 3 is considered a joke by the military, a sop to the populace, and it’s where the misfits and idealists of the army end up. There aren’t too many of them, as at the start of the show, Section 3 comprises just six people, with their most vocal member the ultimate idealist, daughter of a noble family Alice L. Malvin who will restore the nation if she has to do it herself. They don’t have the most immediate impact, but it’s when facing a group of bandits at the outskirts of the country that they encounter the former Anti Tank Trooper Randel Oland, that things begin to change for Pumpkin Scissors.


The Anti Tank Troopers were trained to be fanatic, almost suicidal in their tactics with dealing with tanks, and Randel Oland has seen more than his fair share of horrors in battle, and bears the scars to prove it. But seeing Section 3, especially Alice L. Malvin so passionate about healing the wounds in the nation and rebuilding, he finds a positive cause to support. But when it comes to battle, in the fight against the criminal elements that Section 3 faces, Oland still has that fanaticism and singularity of purpose that strikes fear into the hearts of his foes. Suddenly people are taking Section 3 a whole lot more seriously, and suddenly they are beginning to make a change in the country. Of course there are people for whom this is a threat, and suddenly Section 3 is no longer the joke assignment, but a life-threatening mission.


For one thing, the period of Pumpkin Scissors makes it initially quite interesting, that post World War I age when the world was coming to terms with the new way of fighting wars, where tanks had changed the face of the battlefield, where new forms of weaponry, new technologies were coming to the main, and where old ideas like chivalry and nobility were rapidly being left in the past. With new technologies comes new defences, and the Anti Tank Trooper is one such defence, armed with a powerful hand gun, capable of penetrating tank armour at close range. He’s trained and conditioned to singlehandedly face tanks and destroy them. It seems suicidal for the average person, but Randel Oland really has had such conditioning. When he opens the will ’o’ the wisp lantern at his side, he enters into a post-hypnotic trance that erases his fear, and puts only thoughts of killing and destruction in his mind, at total odds with his gentle and timid personality. It’s no surprise that he spends much of his free time adding to his scars and recuperating in hospitals.


For the first three quarters of the series, it really does unfold in an interesting way, with the everyday activities of Section 3, interspersed with conspiracy theories about new military technology, the scientists that created Randel Oland and his ilk, and the idea that despite Section 3’s goal of restoring the nation, there are elements who are intent on moving the country and its people on a far darker path. It’s not told in the best possible way, with action filled episodes, moments of darkness and ominous intent, interspersed with the generic comedy episodes that totally jar in comparison. There’s one episode where Section 3 have to deal with a psychotic aristocrat who uses peasants for target practice for his tank, then a few episodes later we have Section 3 in the clichéd baby-care episode (see Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, Tenchi Muyo, and countless others). It is the same mix of narrative and random comedy that informs most of Gonzo’s output from the period, and it’s watchable enough.


It’s just the final six episode arc that lets the series down. All of the conspiracies, the mysteries in the show aren’t going to be resolved. They aren’t even going to be addressed in the slightest in the final arc. Instead we have a confrontation between the peasantry and the nobility, with Section 3 caught in the middle, which tries to crudely put across the inequities of life in a post war nation. It boils down to a fight of course, but in true shonen anime fashion, it’s a fight that is stretched across five episodes, complete with commentary from bystanders, flashbacks and the usual nonsense you find stretching shows like Naruto and Bleach beyond rational expectations. It’s a story that could have been told in two episodes, but instead it takes up a quarter of the series, and it only makes it more obvious just how much of Pumpkin Scissors is left hanging.


Still, three-quarters of Pumpkin Scissors is really quite enjoyable, wholly watchable stuff. And you have to respect a show about post-war deprivation, trauma, darkness and the horrors of war, which can still squeeze in a few egregious knob gags. In the end you’re left with the thought that Pumpkin Scissors really should have been a lot better than this.