Reviewing Un-Go and some thoughts on anime overall

Siren Visual have re-positioned themselves over the last couple of years as an impressive second voice in Australian anime licensing. A few years ago their anime focus was hentai and the occasional mainstream title, but they've since identified a valuable niche: off-beat anime that isn't easily categorisable, in contrast to Madman's preference for more established genres and styles.

That's an overly reductive assessment of both companies, but Siren's approach clearly leans toward bringing less conventional anime to the Australian market. Some titles like Casshern Sins and Tiger and Bunny are more 'mainstream', but Siren have gone as far as releasing titles completely unavailable in English-speaking countries as subtitle-only editions. They brought the highly acclaimed Kaiba to Australia last year after most territories no doubt saw its hallucinogenic fusion of Tezuka-style character design and SF spirituality as too uncommercial a prospect. Likewise, the younger-skewing but thematically rich augmented-reality SF series Dennou Coil was released here late last year. Siren is no doubt prompting anime fans in the UK and US to now start looking to Australia for anime imports.

I admire Siren for taking a chance on material that bigger companies have rejected, and without having any financial figures to hand it certainly seems to be paying off for them, with a steady stream of quality titles hitting the shelves.

Siren have also teamed up with Anime News Network to stream anime series within a day of their broadcast in Japan in advance of an eventual DVD release. Thanks to websites like Crunchyroll and the big US licensors like Funimation, instant streaming is becoming a fixture in order to combat piracy. Madman have streamed certain series for Australian fans for a couple of years now.

One of these shows from Siren/ANN is Un-Go, part of the Noitamina line-up of shows on Japan's Fuji Television network. Noitamina is intended to showcase more experimental and unconventional anime, so Siren has naturally licenced several of its shows. Un-Go is one of the most traditional Noitamina shows I've seen, but it fits with the block's ethos by cramming in a bewildering array of concepts.