The Legend Of Black Heaven #1: Rock Bottom Pioneer 105 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 02/02/1999 Reviewed: 09/13/2005

Black Heaven is a show that is either unconditionally loved or unabashedly maligned in the anime community. Some are immediately swept up by its casual perusal of its family dynamics, some are put off because of the sometimes lackluster animation budget and stark character design. There are people attracted to the show simply because of the sheer ridiculousness of its premise and some driven to rage when that premise doesn't always deliver. Not like it matters, because 9/10s of anime fans are patently retarded anyway, so why should you take their opinion on anything? Either they're fourteen year old kids downloading a hundred episodes of Naruto at a time or they're creepy 40 year olds who want to marry Lina Inverse or, barring that, masturbating to her be-penised likeness on the internet holds a strong runner-up position in their fantasy lives. I don't do any of that, so you should probably take the time to listen to me. It's been my intention to write about Black Heaven for some time now. I wouldn't chalk up my avoidance of it to laziness, as certainly it's not like I haven't had other things to do in the meanwhile. So what was it then? I'd consider worry. Worry that what I'd see on the screen would be nothing compared to the memories that I've built up for this show over the past five years. My last, brief, encounter was back two years ago. Could the show's true appeal hold up to my overwhelming sense of nostalgia?

I guess I'm still too young to be complaining about lost dreams. At the tender age of 23 I haven't had enough time to find the spotlight, much less lose it after years of glory. Unless my greatest fantasy was having sex with twelve simultaneous women by age 16 I think I'm pretty much good to go. I'm not a rock, though. Even in my low 20s I can worry about the time when I feel like I haven't gotten everything I wanted. Say Skabs drinks himself to an early grave with potent concoctions of Jameson and original Canadian maple syrup and, because of this, Front Beat never had time to get off the ground. Well that would probably make me pretty sad. God willing that day will never come. I'd prefer to pre-empt it by cracking Skabs across the head with a brick and sending him into a coma. Six of one, half a dozen of the other I guess. I'll pour my 40 out on the curb either way. Oji Tanaka, voiced by the positively sexual Beau Billingsleau, is in a different predicament. His time in the sun has already came and went. Now in his 30s he finds himself in a dead end job with a wife that doesn't understand him and a kid he doesn't know. Sort of like that Talking Heads song that everyone overuses, but without as many references to water.

 

I'd say that Oji's problems supersede my own. The poor guy is stuck with a braindead job, his wife is a midget, and his son is probably brain damaged. At the very least the kid's got a serious case of mongoloidism. In a short series of days his wife throws his favored guitar in the garbage and his son uses his most prized record as a frisbee (with disastrous results). I think it's a fair assessment to say that Mr. Tanaka has seen better days. At a local fish stand he tries to sell his tale of woe to a lonely fishmonger while he drowns himself in bottles of cheap sake. That's when the blond alien lady comes down from space and offers to "take him to heaven". Naturally Oji accepts -- the woman has breasts larger than the rest of Japan combined!! -- but what he finds waiting for him is a different sort of heaven. I hope you're sitting down for this, because it promises to be quite a shocker. If you're guessing that she wets his willy, then you're wrong, despite how totally hot that would be. What actually happens is so much better than that. Our friendly Space Blonde explains that she needs Oji to play his guitar because it's the only thing in the galaxy that will destroy the enemy aliens and save the universe.

I am not shitting you. I don't think the show you should need any more endorsement than that, but I'll throw my hat into the ring anyway. "Hard rock saves the space" is a core concept that could be easily abused by a slew of half-assed low budget OVAs. If I had known what Black Heaven was about going into it who knows if I ever would have bothered to watch the dang thing. Thank god I did, because the show is superlative in all the places that really count. It's a tale that shotguns you with heartwarming energy. Between his space saving duties Oji struggles to maintain some semblance of a good family life while not letting on that he's having secret clubhouse parties with a sexy blonde woman. Black Heaven doesn't have the best animation, but I've seen a lot worse with stories that didn't contain half as much heart. This show isn't for you if you can't stand a couple seconds of repeated animation, but I consider it a pretty good trade for a story about someone above the age of fourteen whose hair color isn't blue or freaking purple. For every show stuffed with sixteen year old female wizard world-savers (who have penises) there should be at least one Black Heaven. Then maybe the fans of this hobby wouldn't suck so much.