Level E Review

For this week’s ABC Challenge L is for Level E. This goes down as my first complete shot in the dark pick of this challenge. I literally knew nothing of this series prior to watching it, other than who the writer was. The writer is Yoshihiro Togashi or the man behind Hunter X Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho, if you will. I like both of those series, in fact Hunter X Hunter is one of my favorite series of all time. So I figured I would give this one an attempt based upon that. This series is vastly different from the other two. If you were expecting an action series with comedic moments, you will be disappointed because this is a pure comedy series. Just getting that out there before the review begins. Spoilers ahead.

Basic Concept

Level E is another anthology series where it has several short story arcs over the course of series each having minimal effect on the others. The only real effect you see is the occasional but very infrequent references to the other stories.

The main concept is that there are literally thousands of aliens that live on Earth with the only people not realizing are the Earthlings. Your only constant character throughout the series is a trouble-making prince from the planet Dogura by the name of Baka. He is a genius that only uses his genius to cause trouble for others.

Your other recurring characters are Baka’s bodyguards Captain Kraft, Sado, and Colin. Additionally, you have,  high school baseball player and Baka’s roommate, Yukitaka Tsutsui. You also have Yukitaka’s neighbor, friend, and schoolmate Miho Endogawa. Finally, you have Baka’s ‘Color Rangers’ Shimizu Yoshiki (Blue), Yokata Kunimitsu (Yellow), Akagawa Taiyo (Red), Momochi Osamu (White), and Mayuzumi Mayo (Black). Basically the only thing that these characters have in common is the annoyance and torment that they receive from Prince Baka.

A brief synapses of each arc is as follows. In the first arc, you are introduced to an allegedly amnesic Baka who moves in with Yukitaka and is chased by his bodyguards. His bodyguards are trying to get him to a huge intergalactic meeting that if he doesn’t attend will lead to interplanetary war. Turns out the entire plot was an elaborate way for Baka to test his guard’s loyalty. He attends the meeting and becomes Earth’s protectorate. The second arc is a horror story that has a family of alien males eating human females. The third arc has Baka make his ‘Color Rangers’ and test them against their ‘evil’ teacher and his ‘Demon Lord’ in an RPG. The fourth arc is a love story between the princess of Macbak and a human trans man. Macbaks are a hive-like species that only the Queen mates and she mates for life. The problem being that the species that she mates with dies within one generation because of a virus the Queen produces. The Macbaks turn the human trans man into an anatomically correct man and the Queen gets her prince. Thankfully, Baka has the foresight to replace the man with a clone with a vaccine so the Earthlings don’t die. Next, in the fifth arc you have the Color Rangers help an alien mermaid. The mermaid was being used as a slave and an assassin by a conquering race from her planet. She mistakenly believed that her inherit ability to tell when someone is lying would help her deal with her situation. She was wrong, however, and eventually she finds out her captors lied and sold her friends. The next arc has Yukitaka and his baseball team get transported to the mind of one of their teammates who was prepping himself for a big playoff match-up. Finally, we have Prince Baka’s brother and fiancée show up to force him to marry so that he could become king. He does not want to be king. He discovers that his brother and fiancée are actually rebel imposters. Baka develops an elaborate ruse to prove that they are imposters. Then his fiancée turns the tables on him and shows that she actually was his fiancée and he mistakenly marries her. Lest we say there’s a lot going on.

Commentary

If you didn’t realize it from my relatively short arc synapses this is a strange series. Not strange in a ‘my right hand became a cute girl who loves me’ or ‘I’m a sadist who’s in love with my dog’ way but still strange. And note for anyone that doesn’t know both of those two examples do exist.

Firstly for the strangeness is your main character. His literal name is Prince Baka. For those that don’t know baka in Japan means idiot or fool. So your main character is literally ‘prince idiot’ or ‘the stupid prince’. Now to get past his name and onto his schemes. First, he put the entire galaxy on the edge of interplanetary war to prove his guard’s loyalty. Then, he proposed a horror movie as the best way to introduce the alien’s presence to the Earthlings. After that, he kidnaps five kids and turns them into ‘Color Rangers’ because it would be fun. He then sticks said Color Rangers in a dangerous RPG game he designed but has no control over. When they decide they will continue to play the game because that is benefiting everyone he complains that, that would be boring. Finally, he doesn’t want to be king because he would have too many ‘kingly duties’ which would take away from his fun time. Basically his schemes are completely insane and he is a class A jerk.

Next, let’s look at the series as a whole. The series basically lampoons every pop cultural reference in Japan. You have the obvious Colors Rangers, a parody of the Power Rangers (Super Sentai) and other similar series. You also have the shoujo love ending of the fourth arc. The Dragon Quest references in the RPG episodes. The Japanese horror mystery movie played out like a Japanese horror movie…shocker. What I mean by that is that it’s mostly psychological with a subverted villain. Also it ended on a not necessarily positive note also very indicative of a J-horror movie. You could even say it makes references to baseball manga if you want to dig even deeper. The only thing it was missing was a magical girl reference and really the Color Rangers were similar enough to magical girls. Believe me, it makes fun of a lot of references and is very funny in doing so.

My only real complaint on this series is having seven arcs in a thirteen episode show can make the series difficult to fully invest in. I mean you literally change your main characters once every two episodes or so. Just when you think “Ok, I can get behind this character” he or she is no longer a main character. Again your only near constant character is Prince Baka and he’s a complete jerk. In fact, he’s just jerky enough to not be likeable, but also not quite jerky enough to be in the ‘like to hate’ category either. I like where they were going with the Color Rangers and Yukitaka, to a lesser extent, but they’re only leads in 4 to 5 episodes apiece. It was just difficult to invest in them. Note I am not faulting the series for being an anthology series. In fact, one of my favorite horror series is Higurashi: When They Cry which is another anthology series. The difference is that the story changes but your main characters do not, this adds to your investment in the story and, also to the characters.

Conclusions

Level E is a very unique experience. If you are in the mood for a show with great comedic references this is definitely the show for you. Again it’s not the best for personal investment in the characters but it does feature some unique plot lines. I would also like to point out that this show is great if you only have time for a couple of episodes. It gives you an opportunity to complete the arc in the relatively short time frame you have. Although, I will admit this is more of a preference show that most of the other ones I’ve reviewed. And by preference I mean, you will either like this show or despise it, there’s no real middle ground. Either way it’s definitely worth an attempt.