This Week in Anime

Spotlighting Eve's Big Netlix Debut

Jean-Karlo
Alright, Nicky. Start on "one, two." "One, two" is the signal.

You've been seeing him too? He's all over the city lately!

This one is a fun concept. Eve's music has been featured in Jujutsu Kaisen and the recent Dororo adaptation, but I never saw those⁠—and I'd never heard of Eve. And this film is an attempt at reworking several of his animated music videos into a longer narrative. It reminds me a lot of INTERSTELLA 5555: 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem in that regard, only the songs are chosen after the fact instead of being an album-long music video.

Man, how about that Miku, kickstarting people's careers. Not bad for the little green girl. What will she make next?

I watched Niconico stuff too, but uh... it was sort-of Vocaloid-related?

Good times, to be sure. But enough about the classic era of YouTube Poops and deep♂dark♂fantasies. Adam by Eve starts us off with two high school girls: Aki and Taki. The two are the best of friends, and also very similar: besides their names, they have most of the same interests, both play violin (and dropped out of the school orchestra), and both have been having dreams of a tall man with one eye.

A thing that surprises me is how restrained the use of animation is; many of the music video sequences are of Eve himself singing in silhouette while tiny figments from the videos pop in and out. "Tokyo Ghetto" is a really good example: while it had a fully-animated music video, much of what we get in Adam by Eve is the masked figure doing his little dance from the chorus. It's less the music video and more of a re-take on the video, recycling certain details from the video while focusing on Eve's performance.

Discussing these music videos is a little hard because many flow into each other and it's hard to know what their titles are if you don't already know the songs. Or if you can't read Japanese, because Netflix can't be bothered to translate the credits. Because of course not.

There also isn't much in the way of actual development for Aki or Taki. Aki spends some time reminiscing about Taki and her violin playing. She runs around the city looking for Taki. Then she wakes up and it turns out to have all been a dream. It sounds far more disappointing than it really is, the music videos add a lot to the whole thing and Aki's racing through the city does a lot to punctuate Eve's performances. This just isn't a thing you can watch as a concrete narrative.

Clocking in at just under 60 minutes, it would have been nice to have one more music video tossed in.

I like all these creepy dudes. Yeah, even Hitotsume-san. He's such a dapper fellow. I feel like he'd make for a good mascot character of some sort—and he appears in music videos outside of Adam by Eve too, so it's not even like he was exclusively made for the film! They have him showing up occasionally in the IRL scenes as a guy in a costume, it's a charming look albeit one not seen terribly often (or in full light).

"Why are a gaggle of high schoolers committing cannibalism?", you may ask.

I didn't say I had an answer, I just wanted to recognize a question you might have had.

It's a really cool visual, helped by Aki wandering the school with a bloodstain on her shirt. Was she an escaped victim? Who knows? Or maybe the visuals of people feasting on another person is meant to symbolize Aki's inner pain at Taki's disappearance.

There's also a running theme of shadows taking over the windows in the city while Aki wanders in search of Taki. The shadows are possibly connected to Hitotsume-san, given that they're also covered in eyes.

It's a really nice bit of recurring imagery, and it ties in with the phantasmagoria Eve uses in his own segments.

Again, it's a really good example of Eve using his silhouette. You can see him dancing within it.

See, I had no idea this one was from Dororo! There isn't much else to say about this song, it's another one interspersed with clips of Aki with Taki. Once it ends it segues right into the next song, which is more of Aki racing through the city while Eve sings. This is where more of Hitotsume-san's influence comes around—and where he finally appears before Aki...

You know what else was really popular? "ME!ME!ME!"

You could easily consider "Mob" a sequel to "ME!ME!ME!" Sure, it has cheeky callbacks, like the mob of girls doing the sexy hip-waving dance, or a streamer playing its shooter sequence on TV, but it's also a good answer to "ME!ME!ME!'s" sexually-charged trip. Where "ME!ME!ME!" has a guy trying to shoot down a mob of oversexed predators, "Mob" has the titular mob of girls in schoolgirl outfits arm themselves and riot against the horde of men that try to force them into being the same template girl doing the hip-dance.

This is all predicated by a misfit girl (who lives with Hitotsume-san) being very unhappy with being forced to fit the mold. Inspired by a streamer (and priced out of becoming a streamer herself due to the outrageous costs of PCs—the plight of would-be VTubers everywhere), she falls into despair before a payload comes from above.

There's definitely some trans-allegory going on here. The main figure is pretty androgynous and could be wearing a binder under their shirt. I know a lot of trans VTubers who find freedom in presenting with the avatar of their choosing, so using streaming as an allegory is also pretty on-point. It doesn't help that so much of the binary world is one-eyed monsters leering at the dancing girls. Maybe the schoolgirls are right to gun the creeps down.

How much this binary world is Hitotsume-san's fault isn't clear, but the central figure sure blames them plenty (and hey, he's at least guilty of forcing them into the uniform every day). Once she puts one into his ribcage, the world changes to a much brighter place with people of all ages, races and body types. Also, the central figure's face is revealed!

For sure, it's the climax and the highlight of the whole film. Hitotsume-san is used to great effect; where he was spooky and ominous in the live-action segments, he's a lot more charming here. Sure, he's forcing someone into a mold they're uncomfortable with, but look at him. He's a little character. He's got a top-hat and a scarf.

There's a great emphasis on eyes while Eve wears a creepy mask that resembles a red eye, as if to show the lingering remnants of Hitotsume-san's influence.

The world healed from... a forced gender-binary from a one-eyed guy who's horny for TeddyLoid? Hey, it's a good of a reading as any other.

With that, Aki finds herself back where she was at the beginning of the film: at the rooftop where she and Taki used to play violin together. Remembering that Taki leaped from the roof in her dream, Aki steps off with a "one, two"...

...and it was all a dream. (I told ya!)

It amuses me that of all the songs in Adam by Eve, it's this one that is recreated in its entirety. Not sure what makes this one worthy of the honor, but it's cool enough to stand toe-to-toe with "Mob" even though "Mob" is still the centerpiece of this film.

The new remixed versions definitely help the music videos fit into the narrative of Adam by Eve, and as I said earlier, it's cool that you get to see bits and pieces recontextualized. But it's very much worth tracking down the original videos—they're stunners, all of them. As for Adam by Eve, I'm happy to have seen it and I strongly encourage folks to check it out. It's a quick affair, barely an hour long, and at the very least the music is extremely catchy. If nothing else, it's worth it for the "Mob" sequence—but the rest of the music videos are no slouches either.

The music video is billed a bit misleadingly—I expected a Roger Rabbit affair where live-action characters interacted with animated characters, but this works just as well. The costume work and miniature narratives offered by the music videos are an art unto themselves.

I'd never heard of Eve before Adam by Eve, but I'll be keep an eye out for the guy now that I've seen just how good he is at this stuff.

Anyway, Nicky, wanna go for some omurice? There's a new place downtown that just opened up. It's called.... heeeeeey...