As mentioned in part one, TV Tokyo launched their late night anime with Those Who Hunt Elves. It aired on Thursdays at the fictional time of 2515 (0115 to normal people). That slot was fairly consistently given over to anime until 2002, when it got bumped for The Mini-Skirt Police variety show. REPEATS of The Mini-Skirt Police variety show.

I don’t know for sure what killed it, but looking at the ratings, when the cutesy, nothing really happens treacle of Kokoro Library was put in the slot, the ratings for what had mainly been a sci-fi/fantasy action slot halved and didn’t recover. People beat on NOIR for being some sort of harbinger of doom, and I’m not a fan of it myself, but in terms of ratings it was consistent with what had come before. It’s Kokoro Library that needs the finger pointing at it here.

So all you “moe is the cancer killing anime” believers out there, take a note of 12 October 2001, the premiere of Kokoro Library. Then tear it up and throw it away, because in part four we’ll take a look at the real problem.

Those Who Hunt Elves (1996)
Studio: Group TAC
Director: Kazuyoshi Katayama

High concept stupidity from Yu Yagami’s manga. It’s one of the many, many, many transported to another world series that were popular in the 90s. I’d say that the animation hasn’t aged well, but it was hardly state of the art in 1996. When people wax nostalgic for the pre-digital animation era, they probably should take a second look at Those Who Hunt Elves. It frequently makes the first Slayers series look like Akira. I do still like the Keiji Gotoh character designs though.

EAT-MAN (1997)
Studio: Studio Deen
Director: Koichi Mashimo

Loved the manga, but this first series was a huge let down. Completely ignored the interesting visuals and setting of the manga and instead deposited hero Bolt Crank into some terribly clichéd futuristic world. Had I been paying attention to who made what I was watching back then, I’d have never put myself through watching future Koichi Mashimo projects.

Hyper Police (1997)
Studio: Studio Pierrot
Director: Takahiro Omori

Post-Apocalypse fantasy cop show. Reminded me a fair bit of the RIFTS rpg in its hodgepodge of future dystopia, monsters and animal people. Not watched this in over a decade, but remember quite enjoying what I’d seen. Again, that had a fair bit to do with the Keiji Goto designs. Whether I’d enjoy it today, is a whole other question. Forgot that Omori (Baccano!, Durarara!!) had directed it.

Virus Buster Serge (1997)
Studio: JC Staff
Director: Masami Obari

This Masami Obari creation took an eternity between it’s announcement and actual release in the UK. And I’ve still not actually seen any of it. However as it is Obari, I will assume it features bizzare fashions, pneumatic women, periodically fantastic animation, nonsensical writing and the odd Go Nagai homage.

OUTLAW STAR (1998)
Studio: Sunrise
Director: Mitsuru Hongo

This seems to be one of those shows with a fairly large vocal fanbase of folks who are now in their mid-twenties. Never seen it myself. BECAUSE I AM OLD.

SHADOW SKILL – Eigi (1998)
Studio: Studio Deen
Director: Tsukasa Sunaga

Caught a little of this. Story didn’t interest me, but surprised to see some nice looking action animation that looked like I should recognise who animated it.

BETTERMAN (1999)
Studio: Sunrise
Director: Yoshitomo Kometani

The middle work in Yoshitomo Yonetani’s loosely connected trilogy of Sunrise productions.

EXCEL SAGA (1999)
Studio: JC Staff
Director: Shinichi Watanabe

I’m not sure how well this plays to folks who came into anime post-2000. In many ways it feels like a topper to the previous 20-30 years of anime, and I don’t know if its satire works if you aren’t familiar with that era in any way. For 1999 though, it was perfect.

Argento Soma (2000)
Studio: Sunrise
Director:Kazuyoshi Katayama

More Evangelion cloning, with some Frankenstein and ET thrown in for good luck, this time from Big O head honcho Kazuyoshi Katayama. Whatever merits this may have, history is likely to forget it in the mix of similar shows produced. And Katayama is likely to be remembered for the more idiosyncratic Big O than anything else.

Still, it’s much better looking that Katayama’s Those Who Hunt Elves adaptation.

NOIR (2001)
Studio:Bee Train
Director:Koichi Mashimo

Bee Train and Koichi Mashimo set the tone for their 00s output with this show. That tone? UTTER BOREDOM. I managed to make my way through one single episode of this at a Minami Con, and it’s an astounding piece of work in how it manages to animate scenes that should be exciting – like gunfights – in such a way as to drain all the excitement from it and replace it with a ponderous seriousness.

Kokoro Library (2001)
Studio:Studio Deen
Director:Koji Masunari

Moe librarian anime based on moe librarian manga. With horrible character designs.

Aquarian Age (2002)
Studio: Broccoli / Madhouse Studios
Director:Yoshimitsu Ohashi

Trading card game gets a late night animation. This draws on the gameworld of the card game, rather than make an anime about people playing the card game. Because it’s SERIOUS FANTASY and therefore doesn’t want to roll around in bed full of children’s pocket money.

Also stuck amongst these shows was something called SPORTS BEAT and another called face4/4. No idea what that last thing was. Can’t find a description of it on the internet beyond it being on the resumes of a former bandmate of DANCE MAN and some teenage idol of the time. So there you go.

US Success

All but one series has been released in the USA, can you guess which one?

If you guessed Kokoro Library, you would be right!

However, how many are still in print is a whole other question…

ADV Films - Those Who Hunt Elves, Aquarian Age, Excel Saga, Noir and Shadow Skill. These all appear to be limbo following ADV’s demise, but most have stock still available.
Image Entertainment – Hyper Police. This is in a similar position following Image’s bankruptcy
Bandai Entertainment – Eat-Man, Outlaw Star, Betterman and Argento Soma. Eat Man only got a VHS release to my knowledge. Betterman is out of print now. Collections of Outlaw Star and Argento Soma are still available.
Manga Entertainment – Virus Buster Serge. A collection is still available.

When it comes to anime, Nippon Television have a reputation for being classy, second only to NHK. Daytime shows they air at the present include Detective Conan, Yumeiro Pâtissière and Anpanman. All very pleasant and family friendly.

While not necessarily family friendly, they’ve similarly brought a touch of class and quality to their late night programming. For much of the last 13 years they’ve had just one, sometimes two, late night anime series airing at a time. And what they’ve lacked in quantity they’ve more than made up for in quality.

If I was to pinpoint what ties most of them together, it’s that while they are aimed at much the same demographics as much of the late night shows (initially men in their late teens and early twenties, but eventually women too), they aren’t the part of that demographic who then spends loads of money on associated character goods. No Herr Docter Tenma hugging pillows for this audience. These are shows that are more likely to drive sales of the source material, rather than merchandise.

So why don’t these shows get the attention from some of the people who decry the rise of otaku-pandering shows? Well a lot of those people came into anime through sci-fi, and what they are actually complaining about is that they themselves aren’t being pandered to any longer. What they want are sci-fi shows, and for the most part the series NTV broadcast aren’t sci-fi. Why would they be? Sci-fi as a whole has been in a downturn in the last decade or so, so why should anime have been any different?

Secondly, a lot of these shows aren’t that easy to lay your hands on. Of the ones that came to the USA, a number are out of print and some had poor original releases. Of the ones that remain unlicensed, they haven’t necessarily been the favourites of the fansub community. Even if they have been fansubbed, they don’t necessarily have the vocal fanbase to evangelise about them to the extent that other titles do. At the bottom of the post I’ve provided a summary of the status of the titles that did get US releases.

The following list is how the Japanese wikipedia entries described the flow of the core post-midnight titles on NTV. As the title of the post hints, the majority come from Madhouse Studios and given that a number of their directors make their debuts directing an entire show, I wonder if they use this to nuture and develop talent. On the flipside of that though is the fact that Masayuki Kojima and Yuzo Sato have directed multiple shows in this slot.

Berserk (1997)
Studio: OLM
Director: Naohito Takahashi (Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot & Marple, Steel Angel Kurumi)

In retrospect, this adaptation of Kentaro Miura’s long running manga is somewhat anaemic. Certainly Takahashi and OLM would not be my first choice to be the creative forces behind adapting it. At the time though, it definitely felt like a breath of fresh air from the roleplaying tropes that your average fantasy anime regurgitated.

Master Keaton (1998)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Masayuki Kojima

This episodic adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s manga about an archaeologist and insurance investigator ran on Monday as opposed to Tuesday, but maintained and arguably raised the quality set by Berserk. Madhouse, Urasawa and Kojima would return to late night NTV to even greater success in the next decade.

Hidamari no Ki (2000)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Gisaburo Sugii

This Tezuka adaptation, while making sense for slot and the channel, seems to have slipped down the back of the sofa of history. Even the scans of DVD covers on Amazon were all blurry and full of artefacts. However someone in Japan has uploaded it all to Youtube, so maybe those few who do like it, love it, but not enough to take clear screenshots. Gisaburo Sugii tends to be hit and miss, so I’m not sure if this is worth your time.

Hajime no Ippo (2000)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Satoshi Nishimura

A prime example of a long running show scuppered in the US by its release format. 15 volumes at $29.98, you’d have dropped around $450 on this buying it as it came out. With Geneon now gone from the US market and no-one in a hurry to re-license it, the volumes are very varied in prices, some under the original price, others rising in price. Looking at Amazon UK, I can see the first box set (volumes 1-8) is now going for £190.85, as opposed to the original price of $79.99.

Tenchi Muyo GXP (2002)
Studio: AIC
Director: Shinichi Watanabe

Now this one seems a little odd compared to what we’ve had so far. A pseudo-sequel to AIC’s 90s phenomenon, directed by one of anime’s more satiric minds. There’s another AIC title further down the list that’s even more out of place, and what I’ve seen of GXP was certainly fun.

Hanada Shonen-shi (2002)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Masayuki Kojima

Masayuki Kojima is back, with this adaptation of Makoto Isshiki’s supernatural comedy about a boy who can see the dead. Another show I’ve not see much of, but certainly wouldn’t mind catching more of it. In terms of production it’s a step up again from Master Keaton, might be my favourite of Kojima’s shows based on my small sampling.

Air Master (2003)
Studio: Toei Animation
Director: Daisuke Nishio

Sitting between Hanada and Harlock, this seems a little trashy, but it’s fantastic trash. And as this whole thread started with Berserk, it kind of made sense they’d look to Young Animal again for more material. In terms of choreography, this is the stepping stone for Nishio between the shonen action shows he’s famous for and the physicality of the first Pretty Cure show.

Space Pirate Captain Harlock The Endless Odyssey (2003)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Rintaro

TV broadcast of the OAV series that was originally meant to be a TV show in the first place. When we get to the second programming stream they started, we’ll see they used other material that wasn’t first run then to begin with.

The Gokusen (2004)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Yuzo Sato

Despite what Anime News Network’s site and the English wiki page claim, I believe this is a Yuzo Sato directed show, which makes sense as there’ll be three more to come. Kozueko Morimoto’s manga about teacher/yakuza heir Kumiko Yamaguchi attempts to balance her two lives was a bigger success in its various live action incarnations, but this anime version was fun too. Though what was up with that dog?

MONSTER (2004)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Masayuki Kojima

Masayuki Kojima returns to Urasawa with this lengthy, overly faithful adaptation of the Fugitive-inspired thriller. If you don’t like reading, then check it out. Otherwise, the manga is a much more enjoyable option.

Akagi (2005)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Yuzo Sato

As good as Gokusen was, this was the show that made people notice Yuzo Sato. The first of two Nobuyuki Fukumoto adaptations that Sato’s been responsible for, and a great example of the gambling genre.

Ouran High School Host Club (2006)
Studio: BONES
Director: Takuya Igarashi

I’ll hazard a guess that this shojo manga adaptation got made due to the success of Honey & Clover on Fuji TV and NANA on NTV itself (see below). It’s a good choice, much like those two hits, it has an appeal that crosses gender boundaries to a degree, and a lot of that can be attributed to Igarashi’s direction and Norifumi Nakamura’s art design. It’s one of those anime that look far better than the manga they came from.

Death Note (2006)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Tetsuro Araki

Obviously this show was going to be made. I’m not convinced the material works in animated form, but Araki does about as well as you can with it and the pre-made fanbase seemed to love it.

Buzzer Beater II (2007)
Studio: TMS Entertainment
Director: Shigeyuki Miya

Odd one this, the original Buzzer Beater series had aired in 2005 on satellite channel WOWOW, but this sequel aired on NTV. Liked what I saw of the first series, loved original the web manga, but haven’t seen this sequel. Same production studio and director, so possibly more of the same.

Kaiji (2007)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Yuzo Sato

This second Fukumoto adaptation from Sato is probably a career best so far, and reportedly due for a sequel in the future.

Real Drive (2008)
Studio: Production IG
Director: Kazuhiro Furuhashi

A rare foray into science fiction for this timeslot. Yet another Production IG/Shirow collaboration, and as such I totally ignored it.

One Outs (2008)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Yuzo Sato

Taking a break from Fukumoto, but not gambling, Sato returns with this adaptation of Shinobu Kaitani’s tale of baseball and unfair wagers. The actual wagers are actually a smokescreen for what the story is actually about – sportsmanship. It’s much more about manipulating the rules of a sport to your advantage than the gambling itself.

Souten Kouro (2009)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Tsuneo Tominaga

A Three Kingdoms period manga adaptation notable for mainly using historical records rather than the Romance of The Three Kingdoms as a source and portraying Cao Cao more favourably. Despite that it still manages to be ludicrously over the top. How over the top? People are throwing horses around in the first episode. I’m not pointing fingers, but let’s note that Fist of The North Star director Toyoo Ashida was in the “Chief Director” chair.

Kimi ni Todoke (2009)
Studio: Production IG
Director: Hiro Kaburaki

The current series in the slot is this well received adaptation of Karuho Shiina’s shojo romance manga.

—

There was a secondary anime stream that started in 2004, to begin with it mainly contained syndicated series rather than first run series.

Ghost In The Shell SAC (Aired 2004)
Otogi Zoshi (2004)
Studio: Production IG
Director: Mizuho Nishikubo

First original show for this slot.

Ghost In The Shell SAC 2nd Gig (Aired 2005)
Angel Heart (Aired 2005)
Sasami Club (Aired 2006)
WAIT… WHAT?

Claymore (2007)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Hiroyuki Tanaka

Norihiro Yagi’s fantasy manga got a brief run on TV. Not a big fan, as it definitely suffers from some of the flaws of the shows that NTV air. For a show about swordswomen there’s an awful lot of walking and talking, rather than fighting.

Neuro -Supernatural Detective- (2007)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Hiroshi Koujina

Suffers similar problems to the Shonen Jump manga it’s based on, namely poor design on the human characters and lame mysteries. Koujina will be directing 50’s reform school drama Rainbow for NTV in April.

Top Secret – The Revelation (2008)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Hiroshi Aoyama

Sci-fi detective show involving reading people’s memories.

Moryo no Hako (2008)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Ryosuke Nakamura

Over-rated adaptation of a Natsuhiko Kyogoku mystery novel. Notable for having CLAMP character designs.

Hajime no Ippo New Challenger (2009)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Jun Shishido

Continuation of Hajime no Ippo.

It then went into repeats of Kaiji

—

There were also a couple of other titles that fell on different days and times on the schedule:

Kaze no Yojimbo (2001)
Studio: Studio Pierrot
Director: Hayato Date

Misjudged cartoon based on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. In a round about way.

NANA (2006)
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Director: Morio Asaka

Like Death Note, this is one of those shows that was always going to happen. The manga is one of the monster successes of the last decade, and the anime was a huge success too. Arguably I shouldn’t include it as it technically started before midnight (23:55) but it’s worth making note of it.

—

Success in the US?

Its hard to say if this really reflects the strength of titles or the strength of DVD distributors and how they package their releases. But here’s the status of the titles that made it onto DVD in the USA.

Berserk - released by Media Blasters. In Print. Complete collections released 3 times.
Master Keaton - released by Geneon. Out of Print. Never collected.
Hajime no Ippo – released by Geneon. Out of Print. Two boxsets.
Tenchi GXP – released by Funimation. In Print. Complete collections released twice.
Air Master – released by Toei. Out of Print. Never completed.
Gokusen - released by Media Blasters. In Print. Complete collections released 3 times.
Monster - currently airing on Sy-Fy.
Ouran Host Club - released by Funimation. In Print. Complete collection and Blu-Ray due out end of March.
Death Note – released by Viz Media. In Print. Two boxsets.
Otogi Zoshi - released by AnimeWorks. In Print. Complete Collection.
Claymore – released by Funimation. In Print. Complete collection and Blu-Ray.
Kaze no Yojimbo - released by Bandai Entertainment. Available. Never collected.
Space Pirate Captain Harlock The Endless Odyssey - released by Geneon. Out of Print. Collected.

I’ve decided to break my analysis of the post midnight anime into a series of smaller, more easily digested posts. You will be able to identify these by the prefix and tag “Past My Bedtime”.

There is a single driving factor behind this – TV Tokyo. As best as I can tell TV Tokyo’s approach to scheduling anime is this:

• Put a lot of it on TV.
• Hope someone watches.

While I believe it was they who started the boom in 1996 with Those Who Hunt Elves and have been the most prolific broadcaster of late night anime, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious strategy or particular audience they are going for. It’s going to take a lot of breaking down to try and make sense of anything going on there, and I don’t want that drowning out some of the clearer scheduling ideas other channels have had over the last 13 years.

So what is my point?

Well, I wanted to illustrate that if you ignore the shows that air after midnight or on satellite, the sort of content that makes up anime on television hasn’t really changed all that much in the last 30 years. The shows up there are pretty much occupying the same slots that existed for anime before the 1997 late night boom, in some cases literally the same slots (more on that in an upcoming post).

When you are comparing the anime of today to the anime of the past, you’ve got to compare like for like and people often fail to do that. A lot of the shows that get the most fervent defenders and attackers belong to a section of the market that is less than 15 years old, so it’s spurious to compare them to shows that were never aimed at the same hardcore audience. I know I’ve done it plenty of times myself.

So what has changed?

Well there’s one big change if you compared this to a listing from the 80s – the lack of robot shows.

Despite what some writers would have you believe, robot shows haven’t been edged out by the otaku pandering shows that air late at night. Those shows are going out in time slots that were never occupied by the classic robot shows.

Robot shows were edged out by the videogame, toy and card game shows. Though there’s also an argument to be made that they simply evolved into them. The anime industry chases the money, and for over a decade now, rather than in shows that sell toy robots, the money has been in shows that follow the Pokemon formula, be that for the purposes of selling monster fightin’ videogames, collectable card games or rev-em-up vehicular beetles. This means we’re probably due a “mature”, post-modern take on Pokemon at some point in the next decade. Gird your loins for that one.

There’s been a softening of the number of literary adaptations too. In part that’s down to the World Masterpiece Theatre and its copyists hitting a malaise in 90s that ultimately lead to WMT’s demise (probably part of a general TV anime malaise in the late 80s/early 90s that I’ll get around to writing about eventually). WMT returned in 2007, but is now relegated to satellite TV.

It’s not all gloom on the literary front, the adaptation of the Thriller Restaurant books was a success in 2009 and continues to be in 2010. While light novel adaptations enjoy some success in the post-midnight slots, Beast Player Erin is the only one that made my list above. Unlike the 13/26 episode adaptations you see late at night, Erin was a old school WMT-style year long work.

It’s also worth noting the couple of late evening, pre-midnight shows that had some success in ‘09. Golgo 13 Best Selection began while the original run was still airing, but at an earlier time slot. This resulted in better ratings than the first run had received. Following that we had Shin Mazinger in a similar slot, and again it was more successful than similar post-midnight shows had been. There’s clearly a market for anime targeted at men in their 40s and older, and it will be interesting to see what tries to tap that market next.

Finally on the change front – there’s a lot of TV being made. I’ve listed 53 shows up there, and even then I’ve probably missed some. Admittedly, a sizable chunk started way before 2009 and others are sequels, but even taking that into account, when I compare them to my 80s overload posts I see that there’s more shows airing now than during the years Urusei Yatsura was airing. That being said, it has possibly peaked already. Prime time slots have been lost on Sundays and Saturdays over the last decade, damaging the overall ratings for anime, again, more on that in a later post.

Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same collection of adaptations of popular shonen & shojo manga, some magical girl shows created by studios to shift merchandise (and provide contrast with the tokusatsu shows they are scheduled with) and perennial old favourites the whole family can enjoy.

Last year showed a number of titles and creators that wouldn’t look out of place in schedules decades ago. As well as the returns of Yatterman, GeGeGe no Kitaro and Dragonball, you had Zettai Karen Children (author Takashi Shiina’s Ghost Sweeper Mikami had a successful anime in 1993) and Cross Game (author Mitsuru Adachi has had anime adaptations in every decade since the 80s). Alongside that, you’ve got shows like Shin-chan, Maruko-chan, Sazae-san, Doraemon etc that literally have been in the schedules for decades plus recurring franchises like Gundam and Pokemon.

If you see a malaise in the sort of content output before midnight, then you probably need to look towards the manga industry rather than the anime industry. Even then it may be more down to changes in society and how different demographics are viewed. In the 80s, City Hunter would have been the equivalent of a Naruto or Bleach in terms of being a Shonen Jump manga turned anime, but outstripped them in success. However in the 21st Century, Tsukasa Hojo’s follow up Angel Heart is published in Comic Bunch and the anime adaptation went out in the middle of the night.

In part that’s down to writing for an audience that has grown up with you, but also due to the “me too” approach of how editors develop talent and series. Editors will be wanting the next One Piece now, but telling people to copy One Piece isn’t going to result in that, but that is what they’ll do. Additionally, there’s also the element of toning down that Daryl Surat has mentioned on Anime World Order, where the content in shonen manga is frequently a lot tamer than it was decades ago (as you may have deduced from my Violence Jack posts). That also goes for TV anime too, notoriously there was a clamp down after Evangelion on violence and sexuality that in part led to the late night and satellite anime shows that now dominate fan chatter.

I’m currently working on a couple of other follow ups to the post about what is mainstream anime, this post sprung out of them and seeing the same arguments going back and forth, again and again. In part those arguments come from the fact that much of Anglophone fandom has a view of anime that’s shot through the prisms of DVDs, streaming and fansubs. That removes any idea of how the show was originally marketed, who the audience it is intended for is and most of all having a reliance on a small number of gatekeepers of taste. This post won’t put a stop to those arguments but it’s part of shoring up some critical thinking on my part and how I approach anime criticism. And it might help drive home the point that anime doesn’t end where the internet chatter ends.

The main post I’m working on at the moment is an analysis of the Sunday anime schedules over the last 10 years, but I’ve also just started an overview of late night anime since 97, and seeing if there are discernible trends. The main trend I’ve decided on so far is that a lot of people scheduling anime late at night do so seemingly without rhyme or reason. Just look at what previously aired in the time slot Durarara!! currently occupies:

• Big Windup! Season 2
• Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Ite Kureta Koto~
• Sengoku Basara
• Linebarrels of Iron
• Itazura na Kiss
• Noramimi
• ULTRASEVEN X
  
• Romeo x Juliet
• The Galaxy Railways: Eternal Divergence
• Witchblade

Are they really expecting the same audience for each of those shows? After looking at this and what works during the Sunday daytime slots, I’m increasingly of the opinion that part of the noitaminA slot’s success is due to the fact the scheduler has a specific audience in mind for that time slot.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough, more on all of that another time!

Tim Maughan is trying to get people to share recipes over on his site today. As all my recipes involve production lines, HACCP plans or confectionery equipment I’ll never personally afford, in response I am finally launching Horrors of Animated Food Hygiene, an idea I’ve had in my head ever since seeing Yakitate Japan.

Today: Higepiyo Episode 28

Higepiyo is a 2009 anime about a bearded chick. Not just any bearded chick, but the last man in Japan with the heart of a samurai. In this episode, he drunkenly falls into a cake shop’s flour, and the shop’s staff debate whether they can use it. With the help of some very spurious logic, they decide it’s fine to use the flour. Because chicks come from eggs and cakes often contain eggs and alcohol. That’s some gloriously spurious logic right there.

Despite Higepiyo being upfront about the contamination, the cakes sell like they are hot.

There are no depictions of any negative health repurcusions in this anime caused by the sozzled hirsute avian contamination of the raw ingredients. In fact it suggests dipping hairy drunk yellow birds in your flour will increase your business.

It is truly a HORROR OF ANIMATED FOOD HYGIENE.

Kaede, the lady ninja from the spring special makes a belated return, as she once again flees the life of a ninja in search of a new job. She’s afraid that if she keeps up the ninja lifestyle it will make her as ugly as her ninja leader.

Of course she is pursued by her leader and the clan of tiny Bomberman-looking ninjas, and after a brief stint as a drive-thru rollerskating waitress (did/do these actually exist? It seems like a piece of Americana I’ve only ever seen in fiction), she ends up in Tomobiki.

Starving and homeless, she is found by Mendou and taken in. After she saves him from one of Ryoko’s attempts to blow him up, he offers her the job of his bodyguard. Ryoko however demands a test, Kaede must run from the Mendou Estate to the school and launch a rocket by a specific time. Ryoko booby traps the route and tips of the ninja clan in an attempt to prevent it.

This leads to a great second half of the episode where we get two comedic devices that Urusei Yatsura does repeatedly well.

The first is the chase. I’ve discussed before how the use of the chase scene is lacking in modern anime. Admittedly, these later UY episodes have a ridiculous budget for their time, but even the lower budget Oshii episodes frequently made use of the device too. I don’t think it’s just down to animation talent and budget though, the nature of the material being adapted has also changed. A lot of recent comedy manga have a stage-y feel that is absent from Takahashi’s work, likely a reflection of the boom in variety comedy Japan has experienced. Just look at Astro Fighter Sunred, that uses a number of stage comedy troupes in its voice cast.

The second device is the reversal of expectations. This does still get used a lot in anime comedy. Here, we have the ninja leader call on the help of sleeper agents who lead normal lives in Tomobiki, but are secret ninjas. The whole sequence is played totally straight, as a parody of serious ninja fiction. That is until the sleeper ninja’s actually try to do something. The first’s sword has rusted into his sheath, the second’s certain death technique is just the ability to climb trees really well and the final one has the special ability of falling.

Despite Ryoko’s and the ninja’s best efforts, it is Lum who accidentally thwarts Kaede at the last second, when she catches Kaede in a lightning bolt meant for Ataru. And so she must disappear from the show once more, in search of a new job.

A great episode, particularly in terms of animation. It pretty much feels they are showing off how great they are for much of the episode, something else that is all too rare nowadays. And despite that sense of showing off it avoids being too self-indulgent, the showing off is in service of the story, rather than an attempt to do a segment that feels like a completely different show (see Episode 130).

—

Screenplay: Shigeru Yanagawa
Storyboard: Junji Nishimura
Director: Junji Nishimura
Animation Director: Takafumi Hayashi

A return to a common theme in Urusei Yatsura and a return to a better class of episode.

Something that comes up a lot in Urusei Yatsura is the idea that any woman who is acting overtly “girly” is doing just that, acting. Ran, the obvious example, being a direct parody of the Burriko girls of the time, but other characters indulge in it too – Shinobu often acts weak to try attract Mendou, even though she’s clearly the toughest character in the series, Ryu hangs onto to a warped, overly romanticised, view of femininity, rather than being herself.

In this episode we meet Katsuragi Anna, a Tomobiki High School student from the year below Lum, Ataru et al. She admits early in the episode that she feels like she’s acting like a girl rather than actually feeling like one. And she appears to be a parody of female manga/anime leads, in that she’s excessively girly and has excessively sparkly eyes.

She gets mugged by Soban and Lum comes to her rescue. She asks if Lum could beat him without her powers, and Lum says yes. This is all done in a way that comes across as a parody of the schoolgirl romantic friendship genre, though not as obvious and all-out as Project A-Ko would do it. However, Anna then goes and challenges Soban to a fight on Lum’s behalf, so that she can see Lum beat him and Anna can become really brave.

Lum, foolishly accepts, only to discover that without her powers she is really weak. There’s an hilarious line at this point from Shinobu who claims that “It’s too much for a girl. We just don’t have the strength” that leads to a fun visual gag.

We then get a training montage, and for once it shows great restraint in not doing a Star of the Giants or Tomorrow’s Joe homage. We do however get an Ultraman homage with Ryu and her dad, and a Rocky homage with Lum. There’s some fun physical comedy in this sequence and some very Eighties keep fit outfits.

Lum realises she can’t get stronger naturally in the three days Anna had given her, so uses some power boosting alien bracelets and strength boosting pills.

We then get the fight and the resolution, and this is probably where it comes undone a little. Soban eats Lums bracelets and she has to rely on the pills which only last 3 minutes and get less effective each time. Eventually everything descends in chaos, but as well the Oshii era episodes did. Could have used one really strong punchline to end everything on.

—

Screenplay: Shigeru Yanagawa
Storyboard: Iku Suzuki
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Yuichi Endo

Be warned. This is long and rambling and may not arrive at a point. It was originally a completely different post and has ended up somewhere else. And yes, I ignore animated feature films, as I am want to do.

Kidfenris asked on twitter today:

Question for the anime crowd: what’s the worst T&A fan service you’ve seen in an
otherwise mainstream, please-take-this-seriously anime?

Response to this question highlighted a frequently made misconception, that please-take-this-seriously anime is mainstream. On the rare occasion it is, but for the majority of the time it’s as much about otaku decadence as any other late night anime. They aren’t sticking a show full of tired old sci-fi or cyberpunk cliches on TV on Sunday afternoon any time soon. And chances are they won’t break through late at night either. Plus, if you’re a non-sci-fi, non-fantasy serious minded manga, you’ll probably get a live action adaptation before an anime one anyway. And chances are you’ll get higher ratings than a cartoon.

The fact is that the mainstream is mainly made up of shows that don’t want you to take them particularly seriously – namely kids shows and family comedies. Of the shows that broke the Top 10 anime in Japan last year you’ve got just three shows made for primarily adult audiences. Two of them were from the successful noitaminA slot, namely Eden of The East and Dezaki’s The Tale of Genji adaptation. The other was the final episode of Shin Mazinger. I’ll let you argue whether any of them were begging you to take them seriously.

Obviously noitaminA has been a success in finding an elusive adult audience, both in the ratings and that we’ve seen Fuji TV try and recreate the success with Noise and other networks have taken note too (TV Tokyo’s Power of Anime). I do wonder though if the live action Moyashimon due in the slot later this year will prove a death knell should it get better ratings than anime in the same timeslot.

Now, a short diversion to what this post originally started out as. Back in January Tim Maughan was complaining about the number of kid protagonists in anime, and I questioned if that was really the case – producing this list over at one of my 15 or so tumblr accounts.

I then thought that it was perhaps skewed a little by shows people weren’t actually watching in any great numbers, so made another list from all the shows that Anime News Network listed in the weekly top 10 anime charts over the whole of 2009.

It broke down as follows:

ADULTS 29.4%
TEENAGERS 17.6%
CHILDREN 23.5%
ADULT ALIEN FROGS 2.9%
CURIOUS PRIMATES 2.9%
DIGITAL PETS OF INDETERMINATE AGE 2.9%
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED ALIEN BIOWEAPON 2.9%
MICE 2.9%
LIONS 2.9%
RABBITS 2.9%
ROBOT CATS 2.9%
TEENAGER TRAPPED IN CHILD’S BODY 2.9%
YOKAI 2.9%

I only took the main protagonist, had I averaged the age of the main casts it would probably have had more adults due to parents in some shows being in the main cast, and the fact One Piece now has an 88 year old living skeleton as part of the cast. On the flipside, some shows are basically about children, even if their leads are technically not kids.

It’s those same shows that I’m looking at today when I take a look at what the mainstream is. Back to the issue at hand!

So what is the mainstream?

Well, the biggest TV anime hit last year, as it almost always is, was the Lupin III TV special. This time boosted by being a crossover with another mainstream anime show – Detective Conan. It’s light adventure fare, not really asking the viewer to take it any more seriously than an episode of The Avengers or The Saint would. With an aging (and in some cases, increasingly frail) cast, I’m wondering if Lupin III will remain as popular once the inevitable cast changes have to made. While it survived its lead actor changing in the 90s, it definitely took a while to find its feet again. I should really look at how Doraemon was effected when it went through with its wholesale cast change a few years ago.

Here are shows that made up the mainstream for much of 2009:

Sazae-san
Chibi Maruko-chan
Crayon Shin-chan

These three are on a plateau above everyone else in terms of being mainstream. Sazae-san is arguably another step above everyone else too. They’re all family comedies and when you take into account the success of Mainichi Kaasan last year and the occasional charting of ATASHIn’CHI, it suggests that family comedy is the true mainstream TV animation in Japan. Just as it is everywhere else in the world.

Doraemon

Another evergreen title, though one that doesn’t quite fit the family comedy mould of those other three. Given that parents grew up with the character and now have kids of their own, its continued success makes a lot of sense. That, and the fact the character is both a work of genius and a true icon.

Detective Conan
MAJOR

Shonen Sunday still proves a strong source of anime. Conan’s been running for over decade on TV now, and each MAJOR season proves successful with their return. The inevitable Rin-ne adaptation is pretty much guaranteed to be the next big Shonen Sunday anime hit.

One Piece
Dragonball Kai
Naruto Shippuden
Gintama

The Shonen Jump gang. One Piece and Dragonball Kai are the massive successes of the group, the other two dipping in and out of the top 10. While aimed at kids, One Piece and Dragonball Kai have cross over appeal due to being based on two of the biggest manga of all time. Gintama is an odd one, for reasons we’ll get to later. Dragonball Kai also has nostalgia appeal like another recent success…

Yatterman

The revival of Tatsunoko Pro’s classic kids show was a massive success to begin with, but it started to trail off last year. However it was still far more popular than the majority of anime produced last year.

Battle Spirits
Pokemon
Inazuma Eleven
Beyblade
Tamogotchi

Toys and games still put kids in front of the telly. For better or worse, these are pretty much the giant robot anime of modern times. Too often the sci-fi elements are attributed to being the reason for old giant robot shows’ success, rather than their toyetic nature. And modern shows in the Pokemon mould do that toyetic thing far better than modern giant robot shows do. Talking of which…

Mobile Suit Gundam 00
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

The various Gundam, Fullmetal Alchemist & Code Geass series have been alternating in and out of a shared time slot for years now. Currently it’s Sunday, 1700 on TBS, which they’ve had since mid-2008 (Geass R2, then Gundam 00 season 2, then FMA Brotherhood). They’re pretty much guaranteed to slip into the low end of the top ten a few times a year with that slot. Before that they had the 1800 slot on Saturday since 2002 (when Gundam SEED took over from Ultraman Cosmos), where they performed much stronger in the ratings. I think some analysts have judged this a sign of them not being as popular, not taking into account the timeslot change from their earlier incarnations.

Shugo Chara!! Doki-
Whatever two Pretty Cure shows aired in 2009

The twin giants of magical girl shows. Well one giant – Pretty Cure – Shugo Chara was sort of bubbling under and snuck in the chart once. That there were only two shows aimed at specifically at girls has less to do with the shows themselves, and more to do with the unisex nature of the other shows. Particularly the toy based shows like Pokemon, where the toys & games they are based on are no longer just for boys as the robot toys of yore were marketed. When you do market them like that, you tend to fail, as the makers of Kabuto Borg VxV are probably all too aware.

GeGeGe no Kitaro
Thriller Restaurant

Supernatural shows for kids! And their parents. And adults who grew up reading/watching the originals. The latest Kitaro revival ended last year after another successful run, and the successful Thriller Restaurant storybook series got an equally successful anime.

Stitch!
Curious George

Stitch is the Madhouse version of the Lilo & Stitch TV series (sans Lilo)for Disney, but Curious George is the US series. Both performed well. In fact shows with cute animals / genetically engineered monsters tend to do well.

Tale of Genji
Eden of the East
Shin Mazinger

Eden of the East is the most consistent performer of these, Dezaki’s Genji show charted early, but later ones didn’t. Personally I think the expectations from the name value of the story and director weren’t really met. Shin Mazinger’s finale was a bizzarely high jump in the ratings. It was doing fine throughout for a late night show, but certainly spiked with that last episode.

There’s a few specials I’ve not mentioned – most of which involved talking animals. Plus Sgt Frog scraped the chart once or twice too, along with Sanrio’s Onegai My Melody Kirara. But that should give you an idea of what the “mainstream” is in terms of eyes in front of TV sets. It’s really not all that different from cartoons elsewhere in the world, save for a few things like that TBS slot for Gundam etc. and noitaminA. There’s just more of them.

But what of DVD & Blu-ray?

What of it, indeed…

It’s clear from the sales figures that in 2009 Blu-ray was the domain of the Otaku. Shows like Bakemonogatari & K-on, which didn’t set ratings on fire on TV, tore it up in the Blu-ray sales chart, but didn’t see those sales matched on DVD. In fact they outstripped sales for similar shows, pre-Blu-ray. It’s like that hardcore otaku niche finally had a medium that matched their obsession with detail. Or that before they were shunning DVD in favour of hanging onto hi-res HDTV rips. Probably a bit of both.

Shows like Gundam 00 and Code Geass, which had enjoyed something akin to mainstream TV success, had similar sales on both media, but couldn’t match the overall sales more niche shows enjoyed.

However, the bulk of niche shows released in 2009, and there were a lot of them, did absolutely nothing of note. If the business plan is that the late night TV acts as an advert for the BD or DVD, then it looks like its failing an awful lot of shows, even if it works great for a handful of shows.

One interesting trend is the success of Gintama. While outperformed by many shows on TV, it’s currently a bigger hit on video than its Shonen Jump peers (well, at least until the latest One Piece movie hits video). I’ve not watched any of it myself, is it tapping into an otaku audience more inclined to drop money on it than the audiences its peers get? I’ve noticed it trends higher in Google than Naruto, despite selling less manga volumes. I suppose I should really watch some and figure it out for myself.

Oh, and I should mention MTV’s Usavich. Always seems to be overlooked when discussing successful, mainstream Japanese animation. Probably because it doesn’t fit people’s expectations of what Japanese animation should look like.

What better way to celebrate Valentines Day than to look at a 15 year old manga/anime magazine?

Articles on The Legend of the 4 Kings (oddly enough a gateway anime in the UK due to it’s televised broadcast later on), Green Legend Ran (something I totally ignored back then, wouldn’t mind checking out now), Ushio & Tora and a review of the year just gone. The editorials now have become utterly worthless, just talking about the issue’s theme, but there’s still Trish Ledoux’s column. Here she’s talking bishonen, nothing ground breaking now, but it was news you could use back in 1995.

There’s also a column, Manga Watch, not sure if it’s new this issue, or so small I missed it before. Anyway, this issue has a few words on British artists working in Japan at the time. Obviously, the ubiquitous Tony Luke is featured, but so are Manga Mania’s own Woodrow Phoenix, who was working on Inseparable for Morning at the time, Carl Flint on Giant Baby and Chris Webster on Mr Pillow.

UK NEWS

• From Western Connection: Lupin III – The Fuma Conspiracy, Salamander 1, Devil Hunter Yoko 1
• From Kiseki FIlms: MD Geist, Adventure Duo 2, Macross: Do You Remember Love, Return of the Overfiend 4
• From Anime Projects: Bubblegum Crisis 1 (dub), Urusei Yatsura 5
• From Manga Video: Legend of the Four Kings Eps 1 & 2, Wings of Honneamise, The Guyver 11, AD Police File 3, Genocyber 3
• From Pioneer Video: Green Legend Ran 1, Tenchi Muyo 3, Moldiver 3

US NEWS

• Ianus Publishing released the Project A-Ko Roleplaying Game. I have this, but have never played it. Nor have I managed to sell it on eBay.
• No US video releases mentioned this time round.
• Just the one notable new US manga release – They Were 11

JAPAN NEWS

• Magic Knight Rayearth TV and Saturn game.
• Darkside Blues in the theatres.
• Red Baron on the TV.

More fun in the letters pages!

I’m not trying to pick on Paul “Otaking” Johnson, but these teenage fan letters he kept sending are full of value. If you are familiar with him it’s probably either through his rant about fansubs or his Doctor Who “anime”, but he has more strings to his bow than that. He also likes to complain about the lack of shading in anime and how everything new doesn’t compare to Madhouse OAVs of the 90s.

Well, this issue’s letter from the future self styled “Otaking” sheds some light on that viewpoint:

His first anime purchase was Cyber City Oedo, a show he turned into a manifesto! Though, considering the first anime I purchased was Urusei Yatsura, I probably shouldn’t be throwing too many stones from my glass house. There’s one more letter from him to come and it’s a real doozy, but that’s not until issue 26.

Boy, Rumiko Takahashi really likes stories where things get attached to peoples bodies.

A space duck is making a delivery, when he is distracted by a lady space duck and bumps into a space sign. This causes him to drop his load of strange green eggs over Earth. One of which flies past Ten and attaches itself to his stomach.

For most the first half of the episode Ten is moping around with this egg, worried it’ll take over a month to hatch. It’s full of the faux melodrama and melancholy you’ve come to expect from the show by now, but not many laughs. Once it does hatch, and out comes a bee with Ten’s face and personality, the episode gets going.

The bee torments Ten, much like Ten torments Ataru, eventually leading Ten to flee to Tomobiki High School to get Lum to help him. Of course all the girls are charmed by the bee in the same way first Ten charmed them, and the boys similarly see through the bee’s personality. The duck finally catches up with his eggs, and is shocked to see one has hatched.

The eggs, it turns out, contained “Mirror Bee” larvae. These take on the personality of the men they attach to, hence the name. This is, of course, the cue for the punchline and we learn that not only Ten has had an egg attach itself to him, but so have Ataru, Mendou, Megane, Onsen-Mark, Ryu’s dad and Cherry.

Cut back to outer space and we see a disgruntled delivery duck now “bee-ing” harassed by bee doppelgängers of the male cast.

Perfectly acceptable episode, though not as good as the same team’s work on episode 125. Definitely could have used more laughs in the first half and coming straight after the talking flower episode didn’t help either.

—

Screenplay: Tokio Tsuchiya
Storyboard: Tomokazu Kougo
Director: Tomokazu Kougo
Animation Director: Kyoko Kato