One could describe Dead Leaves in so many words. Crazy, over the top, wacky, crude, insane, bizarre, crazy, energetic, confusing, relentless, manic, vulgar, mindless, and loud. All of these words describe Dead Leaves perfectly. But it would leave little to be desired if that was the only way I described it. So let’s jump into it.
The plot follows two people awaken naked on Earth, a man with a TV for a head called Retro and a woman called Pandy, named for her panda patched eyes, with no recollection their past. Not even having the clothes on their backs, out two main characters embark on a crime spree in search of food, clothes, and transportation, and are soon captured by the authorities and are sent to the infamous lunar penitentiary called Dead Leaves. While they try to escape the penitentiary with the aid of their fellow inmates, they soon find out that it has a few secrets along the way.
From the outset, It’s really easy to tell that Dead Leaves is from Production I.G., and especially from director and key animator Hiroyuki Imaishi, being a stepping stone from his previous work, such as being a key animator on an episode of FLCL, along with the ending credits of Paradise Kiss, to what his animation style and presentation would become later with Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt and Kill la Kill. Dead Leaves is where Hiroyuki’s style becomes defined, but not quite as polished as his later works.
The animation moves by at a lightening speed, leaving little room for slow moments outside of it’s initial opening scene. So much of this is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it animation that it’ll take a second or even third watching with you skipping frame by frame to be able to see all of the background characters and events.
Since it’s so short and so fast paced, it doesn’t leave much room for character development or a lot of plot, but that isn’t really the point of this OVA. It wants to go fast, and that’s what it does. It doesn’t care if can’t or won’t keep up with it, it just wants to move from scene to scene to scene without trying to put too much focus on the wacky antics that are going on. It stars out crazy from out the outset, and it keeps up it’s fast pace, all while it gets progressively weirder and weirder the further it goes on.
While it doesn’t leave much for character development, it does tell a relatively cohesive story with what time it has. There is some mild open plot threads, but it doesn’t leave much to interpretation. It’s not trying to have depth or meaning. It just wants to be entertaining for the sake of being entertaining.
The music is also pretty good, good enough that at some point I might throw it in my rotation of music I put in the background when I’m doing something like playing a fast paced video game or going out on a run.
There isn’t much I’ll spoil here because it’s so short and it’s something you really have to see yourself just to take everything in.
Dead Leaves might be a love it or hate it anime aimed at a fairly niche audience, and is not something I would call amazing in any sense of the word, but it gets what it’s trying to get across incredibly well and the audience it’s aimed at would absolutely love what Dead Leaves is. A crazy, over the top, wacky, crude, insane, bizarre, crazy, energetic, confusing, relentless, manic, vulgar, mindless, and loud short
Cult Classic Corner - Anime 