PopSyndicate.com

From Wallflower’s freaky Sunako and her surgical doll fetish to the beautiful kill in Shigurui Death Frenzy, two of Funimation’s shows entrench themselves in entrails, but in radically different ways!

The Wallflower is a very silly and strange little show about an unkempt and almost feral high school girl named Sunako who lives in a mansion with four swoon-worthy boys who are tasked to turn Sunako into a lady. Their problems are thus: Sunako is obsessed with medical dummies, horror films, murder, skeletons and anything remotely grotesque or macabre. She has no grace, and anytime her four roommates come near her blood squirts from her nose like a gyser of sexual frustration.

And did I mention the little flayed corpse guy who dances through the credits?

In the complete collection part two, the group battles pirate curses, arranged marriages and torture by beauty spa, all accompanied with ghostly curses, suicide attempts and adorable little chibi artwork. Nothing is better than ghastly dismemberment daydreams than adorable ghastly dismemberment daydreams.

Silly, wacky humor has no place in the world of Shigurui: Death Frenzy - neither does cute, for that matter. The world of Shigurui is a world of samurai, of battles to the death and a philosophy where the only thing that matters is the beauty of the kill. The story centers around two men - Fujiki, the brightest pupil in the Kogan method at Sensei Kogan’s dojo, and Irako, a strong, fast warrior who wants to climb the societal ladder.

The anime begins with a tale of a particularly morally void lord who calls a tournament of the greatest samurai. Unlike most tournaments, this one will not be performed with practice weapons; in this tournament, real swords will draw blood, and kill. It begins with Fujiki, who has only one arm, and Irako, who is blind and crippled, facing off. The rest of the anime attempts to answer the how and why these two men, both no longer whole, would come to fight to the death.

Fujiki is the brightest of the Kogan disciples. Kogan Iwamoto, the master of the Kogan style, is a man free of sanity and emotion. He kills with ease, maims his own followers on a whim, and is immensely powerful. One day a challenger arrives at the dojo, Irako. He challenges Kogan, but the dojo rules permit him to fight Kogan only after defeating two others - Fujiki, who falls quickly, and Ushimata, a gigantic man, who does not. Irako, after his defeat, begs entry into the Kogan school, and is given it.

From here, the story goes - Fujiki and Irako, both immensely talented, compete for the right to succeed Kogan and marry his daughter,  Mie.  Through their competition, the dojo goes through a series of uniquely violent tales with mesmerizing art and animation. This is not a show that can be watched casually; it demands your full attention and concentration. The storytelling method is often richly dense, but it is a fascinating tale. The art is very different then what we’re used to - in moments of great tension, it focuses on the body, the parts that make up strength, and the disassembling of said parts. Whether cutting men in two, slicing a mouth open into a large, grotesque maw or burning nipples off unfaithful women, it is unflinching from violence and gore, and therefore amazing.

Two shows, as different as can be but both highly worth attention. Shigurui with take your attention and leave you spent, and The Wallflower will give you silly, mindless fun.