Pipiru piru piru pipiru pi!
Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan (Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan in Japanese) is a series of Light Novels written by Masaki Okayu and illustrated by Torishimo, which was published from 2003 to 2007 for 11 volumes under the Dengeki Bunko imprint. It was adapted into six "pairs" of anime episodes under Hal Film Maker, 3 volumes of manga, and a PlayStation 2 video game.
The story centers around a boy named Sakura Kusakabe, a fairly nondescript junior high student that was marked for death by God because he will invent a form of immortality in the future that prevents women from aging after 12 years of age (creating "a pedophile's world", as one character comments). God sends Dokuro, an angelic assassin, back in time to kill him.
But alas, Dokuro finds herself enamored with him and decides that she can prevent this horrible future by keeping him too distracted to ever stumble upon the method. However, due to her irrational nature, she ends up wrecking his life in the process. One Running Gag is that Dokuro does, in fact, kill Sakura... repeatedly. Usually if he touches her in a way she views as inappropriate... or says something she misinterprets... looks at her funny... is just there... but she always resurrects him immediately afterwards. Drama unfolds when another angelic assassin, Sabato, is sent to do the job that Dokuro is putting off and Dokuro ends up taking on a role as Sakura's "protector" (death by Sabato seems almost preferable).
The series derives most of its humor from crossing every line in parodying the whole Magical Girlfriend genre (and plenty of other Anime tropes). In that in has quite a few similaries with Magical Witch Punie-chan; incidentally, both Punie-chan and Dokuro-chan's anime adaptation share the directing and screen-writing talents of Tsutomu Mizushima. Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan manages to often be far more brutal in its violence though. Sakura doesn't just get killed, he gets splattered in the most creatively gory ways possible (it actually becomes comedy when he doesn't get killed).
Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan provides examples of:
- Accidental Pervert: Sakura almost never has any overtly sexual thoughts when he provokes Dokuro's wrath. In fact, these moments are the only times he isn't having sexual thoughts.
- Achilles' Heel: Possibly an angel's only weakness is removing the halo from above their head. (Unfortunately for Sakura, who does this several times, the edge of the halo is as sharp as a sword and always manages to humorously cut his hand.) It strips the angels of their power and gives them explosive diarrhea.
- And I Must Scream: Something noted by Sakura in the novels and mangas is that Dokuro never truly kills him. He remains conscious even when she tears him to smithereens.
- Animated Shock Comedy: While originally a light novel series, the anime adaptation definitely counts. It's a parody of Magical Girlfriend anime, where the "girlfriend" in question violently kills the main character over and over for the smallest slights only to bring him back to life again. The series as a whole has a rather crude and raunchy sense of humor.
- Art Shift: When a classmate's head turns into a howler monkey's head, the howler head is photorealistic, instead of animated. It's quite jarring, to say the least. Later, the same style is used when Dokuro turns another guy's head into a dog head, and another guy's head into the head of a deer.
- Beach Episode: In the light novel's seventh volume, Sakura and his friends spend their vacation at a beach in Okinawa.
- Bestiality Is Depraved: Dokuro starts reading A Dog of Flanders, but then alters the story so that Patrasche the dog raped his master.
- Black Comedy: It's a wacky comedy about repeated bloody murder and dismemberment in order to prevent a lolicon paradise. It gets to the point where one joke in the second season is that Sakura somehow avoids getting killed simply because several angels can't agree on how to do it.
- Blood Sport: Who knew that dodgeball could be so bloody? They are playing with a heavy basketball, but even the lightest blow seems to result in showers of blood all throughout the series.
- Book Ends: At the beginning of the first episode of season one, Sakura walks in to find Dokuro dressing and she proceeds to kill him. Then in the season's final episode, Sakura walks in to find Dokuro dressing but with a Modesty Towel on, but it falls off and she kills him again.
- Bulletproof Human Shield: Sakura once uses Sabato as an Excalibolg-proof Angel Shield. It works, and the impact merely makes her vomit whereas it would have killed him, but he ends up dead in a few seconds, anyway, because Dokuro won't stop at one hit.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Sakura. Besides repeatedly getting killed by Dokuro, the poor kid's even got a girly-sounding name.
- Zanzu even more so, to the degree that he is treated as a Butt-Monkey by Sakura.
- Sabato is especially one, considering she lives in a cardboard box under a bridge and is almost always unsuccessful in killing Sakura.
- Calvinball: According to one episode, Dokuro likes to make up her own board games. The only one we see is the mystifying "Gothello".
- Came Back Wrong: Dokuro's resurrections of Sakura don't always go quite right, though it's Played for Laughs.
- Carry a Big Stick: Dokuro frequently uses a kanabō named Excalibolg to frequently kill and revive Sakura.
- Celestial Bureaucracy: Heaven is portrayed as a bureaucracy that can only send increasingly ineffectual assassins after a young boy. Though this may be intentional. After all what better way to teach someone a lesson than to send people that would decide not to kill him yet essentially torture him for the rest of his life. One might say god knows exactly what he is doing.
- The Chew Toy: Sakura. Also, Sabato, but to a lesser extent, as she's also frequently a flat-out Woobie.
- Comedic Sociopathy: For someone trying to help Sakura, it almost feels like (permanent) death would be preferable.
- Death as Comedy: Dokuro plays this straight with the unfortunate Sakura, who gets an explicitly animated horrible club to the wherever whenever he does something Dokuro finds vaguely inappropriate. She also possesses the ability to bring him back, which leads to a vicious cycle of this happening multiple times per episode.
- Death Is Cheap: Sakura gets turned into gibs and resurrected all the time, and his strongest reaction is "That really hurt!".
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Dokuro-chan's voice actress Saeko Chiba sings the anime's opening and ending themes.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Sakura endures abuse and misfortune from female angels, especially Dokuro-chan, which is played for Black Comedy. If Dokuro-chan and Sakura's relationship was about a guy torturing a woman instead, this would be a different series altogether.
- Embarrassing First Name: "Sakura" is still considered pretty feminine in Japan, and in the light novels, Sakura actively laments his name.
- Fetish-Fuel Future: What Sakura will create if he isn't stopped.
- Friendly Enemy: Dokuro and Sabato, who regularly hang out together.
- Girl with Psycho Weapon: All the angels qualify as this, but Dokuro especially counts.
- Gonk:
- Angels without halos. In the manga however, they still look normal.
- Sakura becomes this when Shizuki says she likes another guy, flailing his arms like a Garry's Mod ragdoll and screeching unintelligibly all the while.
- Gorn: Dokuro-chan runneth over with this one!
- Groin Attack:
- The most cringeworthy is probably right in the opening, where Dokuro is seen leaning heavily on her spiked club, embedded deep in Sakura's groin. At another point in the opening she punts him in the crotch, sending him flying. Yeesh.
- In an episode, Dokuro blackmails Sakura into joining her school club by putting glue on his crotch and letting it harden. The view is then treated to a Gory Discretion Shot where she rips the glue off as Sakura can be heard screaming in pain.
- Happily Ever After: The final scene of the anime's first season shows Sakura-kun and Dokuro-chan embracing on a white background surrounded by a border of an assortment of carnivorous plants.
- High-Pressure Blood: Taken to extremes. On one occasion Sakura's severed lower body flies around like a rocket from the blood escaping.
- Horned Humanoid: Both Sabato and her mother have horns on their heads.
- Human Shield: Sakura uses Sabato as one in Episode 4.
- Hypocritical Humor: Sakura's classmates are probably even more perverted than he is, yet they always seem to be on his case when it's Not What It Looks Like.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The name of each episode ends with "Dokuro-chan!"
- Image Song: Rather bizarre and disturbing ones, at that.
- Immortality Immorality, type 2: The reason Dokuro came to Sakura to stop him from making all girls stop aging at 12 years old, creating a lolicon's world and granting women immortality, which is God's domain.
- Improbable Use of a Weapon: There's plenty of bizarre weapons in the show, but Dokuro-chan's Excalibolg is actually a kanabō, a real weapon. You simply don't wield it with one hand, though... it was an Anti-Armor weapon.
- Improbable Weapon User
- Dokuro wields a kanabō (a huge spiked club) she calls Excalibolg.
- Sabato wields an electric baton "capable of zapping a blue whale in seconds" she calls Durandal.
- Zakuro wields a wet towel (no, really) that she calls Eckilsax.
- Kids Are Cruel: Sakura's classmates lead to many uncomfortable moments when they're picking on him.
- Lacerating Love Language: The main premise of the series, as Dokuro is sent to kill Sakura. She doesn't want to kill him, as she falls in love with him. Unfortunately for him, she can only express this love through beating him senseless and reviving him to do it all over again.
- Last Episode, New Character: In the light novel's final volume, two angels named Zebulu and Dachura arrive with the intention of having Dokuro return to the future.
- Ludicrous Gibs: Sakura is constantly reduced to these thanks to Dokuro's antics.
- Lyrical Dissonance: The Anime Theme Song is an upbeat J-Pop number that also flat out states the horrible things that Dokuro does to Sakura.
- Made of Plasticine: Sakura. Arguably also Made of Iron for the (very few) times Dokuro's abuse doesn't kill him.
- Magical Girlfriend: Deconstructed and parodied relentlessly; Dokuro may be a cute angel, but her habit of violently killing Sakura over and over again for the smallest slights doesn't exactly make her prime girlfriend material. In the first episode of the anime, Dokuro talks about having studied various manga, including genre classic Urusei Yatsura, to get an idea of how she should behave.
- Male Gaze: Again, Sakura. Used in the first episode when Dokuro-chan is flailing around on a table, and he states clearly that her panties are showing.
- Meaningful Name:
- The angels' weapons are named after weapons belonging to heroes of legend. Dokuro's club "Excalibolg" is a portmanteau of Excalibur, the legendary sword of King Arthur, and Gae Bolg, the spear belonging to the Irish mythological hero Cu Chulainn. Sabato's shock baton Durandal is named after the sword belonging to Roland, the paladin of Charlemagne.
- Ichiro Binkan, star of the Show Within a Show: "binkan" meaning "sensitive", and well...
- Mundane Made Awesome:"It's the Wood Glue Club!"
"And what are we supposed to do?"
"To continuously watch the process of wood glue drying, hardening and eventually turning transparent."
"I QUIT!!!" - Named Weapons: Dokuro's club Excalibolg, Sabato's shock baton Durandal, and Zakuro's towel Eckilsax.
- Nerds Are Naïve: Chieri Ono is a shy, sweet, smart girl who doesn't know how to ask out her crush and is very embarrassed and uncomfortable when asked to read out loud from a book about the reproductive system.
- Noodle Incident: Everyone is... extremely disturbed... by Sakura-kun's painting at the sketching contest — even Dokuro-chan herself, whom actually starts crying because of it — but we never get to see the picture itself.
- Ondo: The second OVA's ending .
- Only Sane Man: Sakura, though you do have to wonder how well his sanity is holding up after the eighth reincarnation.
- Our Angels Are Different: And not very angelic either!
- Pervert Revenge Mode: Probably the ultimate form of this trope in anime, and the most frequent cause of death for Sakura.
- Potty Failure: Removing an angel's halo gives them a bad case of diarrhea, apparently. Could also be seen as Potty Emergency since they're never shown failing to make it to the bathroom.
- Purely Aesthetic Glasses: Kim Jong-il is stated to sport these in Episode 1.
- Rearrange the Song: The anime's Expository Theme Tune was modified for the second season.
- Satellite Love Interest: Parodied with Shizuki. Both Sakura and Shizuki love each other, but circumstances conspire to prevent them from ever making that official.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: It is speculated that Sakura would create his Pedo-World because he met Dokuro-chan.
- Shout-Out:
- Dokuro-chan coming from the future to "help" Sakura is a screwed up take on the premise of the Doraemon series. And so, there are references to the blue cat robot everywhere you look.
- The manga makes one to To Love Ru in the first chapter, where Sakura demands Dokuro to show her (non-existent) tail, claiming that it is her weakness.
- Episode 6 has Dokuro-chan admit that she doesn't believe in ghosts, with Sakura retorting that since Dokuro-chan is an angel, anything is possible, including a cat robot from the future, a reindeer who's a doctor, a witch who's a nurse, and moving castles.
- Show Within a Show: Sensitive Salaryman Binkan, along with the accompanying Merchandise, a sausage that makes you extremely sensitive to every sensation. We probably don't want to know all of the implications of that.
- Slasher Smile: Dokuro, Sabato, Sakura's classmates... anyone who is about to beat the crap out of Sakura generally sports one of these.
- Stock Footage: Subverted, in that while resurrection is done in a manner that looks like stock footage, it actually changes to accommodate what Dokuro is wearing at the time.
- Super-Strength: All of the angels in the series have this ability.
- The Tease: Dokuro, though she doesn't really indulge this in the anime. It is mentioned in the Expository Theme Tune, though.
- Too Dumb to Live: Sakura, in spades. One would think he'd get a clue to stay away from Sabato the fourth time she tried to kill him in ten minutes. Or as soon as he saw the halo and horns, especially given Dokuro's record of killing him repeatedly. Considering how much he's died, he just might not care that much anymore.
- Unwanted Assistance: Sakura ends up telling his guardian angel to stop helping him a lot.
- Verbal Tic: "~zanzu!"
- Sabato with "desu".
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: Dokuro keeps her holographic cellphone in her panties, somehow.
- Judging by how the thing's shaped like a cone, she probably keeps it somewhere a bit more specific.
- Weirdness Censor: Nobody but Sakura seems the slightest bit weirded out by Dokuro and her antics. When she turns one guy's head into that of a photorealistic howler monkey, the teacher shrugs it off as though it were normal and she had nothing to do with it. Sakura repeatedly lampshades this throughout the whole series whenever nobody takes any notice of something especially odd that Dokuro-chan has done."It can't be helped that the class representative has been turned into a monkey, so Dokuro-chan may sit next to Sakura-kun."
- Wistful Amnesia: Even though there's really no reason for them to miss her.
- With Friends Like These...: The real reason Sakura's classmates waited for him before eating dinner was to find out if it would kill him. Sakura's classmates (sans Shizuki) are really only slightly better than Dokuro-chan, in that they only regularly abuse and demean him, instead of outright killing him.
