Name(s): Popful Mail Promotion Video / “No No Pessimist” / ぽっぷるメイル
Format: Music Video
Studio(s): Studio Fantasia
This five-minute music video set to Megumi Hayashibara’s song “No No Pessimist” was meant to pitch a potential Popful Mail OVA to producers, but in the end, nothing came from it. Popful Mail itself was originally a Falcom video game, a role-playing and platforming genre hybrid released for multiple consoles in various versions with the most notable of those being the Sega CD. The game itself is quite fun and a fascinating piece of niche game design, though not without its faults (many exacerbated by Working Designs’ localization and gameplay changes). This short anime which is literally all music and no other audio pumps the tiniest bit more life into Popful Mail which always seemed like something Falcom wanted to be bigger than its commercial success justified. For that alone, this short has enough in it to rejuvenate the same feelings the games did with its strong sense of humor and childish, manic characters. If the plot featured here is any indication of what the OVA would’ve been, then it would have had an original storyline where Mail is transported to the real world and teams up with a young human girl against a new villain with magical powers who sends his troops through the same portal. In that case, maybe it’s a good thing the OVA didn’t happen because video game/reality crossover stories have always been weak from my memory (Ganbare Goemon, Captain N, arguably Sonic X). Other than that, the song is all right, the animation is fluid but nothing spectacular otherwise, and the scene where Mail is surrounded and swooned over by bespectacled otaku in the real world is the most ongoing legacy this forgotten short ended up having.
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