Gosenzo-sama Banbanzai is an anime I would not recommend to just anyone. It's an obscurity that won't be easy to appreciate. From its directing, it is similar to what Kunihiko Ikuhara first introduced in Revolutionary Girl Utena. From its execution, it reminds FLCL, but also goes into such levels of abstractity, it comes close to animated shorts such as 'Nekojiru Soup' and 'Inaka Isha.' I'd only ever recommend it to experienced viewers and old schoolers. The anime starts off by a doorbell ringing. Followed by a 10 minutes long debate over who should open the door. When it's finally opened, a person claiming to be atimetraveler is standing behind the door and declares she is the future granddaughter of the house owner's son. This is accepted by the father, and by the son (upon prove), but not by the mother. This breaks the family apart, and starts off a story so tragicomedic it could as well be originating from ancient Greek.

An aspect similar seen in titles such as Zaregoto, Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei and Jinrui -where the main characters are nameless personas such as I, Watashi and Boku- is introduced. What Babanzai does is on whole other dimension, however. It creates a character called "Audience", which is -you guessed it- the viewer itself. With this, the series starts addressing all sort of issues related to family, life, society, future, past, and even to issues such as how helpless it is for the characters to take controll of their own lives when they come to acknowledge that they are indeed puppets controlled by the creator of this anime. Is it okay just to give up? Maybe the viewer can offer some help?

In case this review got your interested, a word of warning. This series took me off guard so hard I had to watch it twice just to make sure I didn't miss anything. In case you plan on trying it, make sure to come with an open mind and mindset ready for a different type of adventure.