This is one of my least favourite episodes, so excuse the sparse nature of this post. If I remember correctly it’s fairly close to the manga. Certainly the meshing of modern-day, myth and sci-fi is something that Takahashi was aiming for more than Oshii was.
—
Ten and Lum find Kintaro (and his bear) in a carp streamer. The best gag in this first story is Lum assuming Kintaro is Shinobu’s little brother based on his hair cut. Kintaro has lost his people, who turn out to be an extra terrestrial pre-school class, and he was in the streamer because their spaceship looks like a carp.
Actually it looks like there was another good gag. When they visit a rocket launch site and mistake the lauch controls for a videogame. The unbridled energy with which they ignore the scientist and just bash buttons was a funny bit.
They find the carp ship, Ataru hits on Kintaro’s teacher and goes with her to the space ship. Only to find that the other kids are all (literally) monsters. And then Kintaro wets himself. HILARITY.
—
The second story involves the alien kids going on a field trip to earth. The teacher’s idea of famous sights on Earth is rather mundane, showing off telephone poles and dustbins. Kintaro demands more interesting sights, so Ataru suggest they go to an Earth preschool class.
The Earth kids however are not impresed and bad mouth Kintaro as being old news. Kintaro gets upset at being compared to Earth’s Kintaro, and decides to show Earth’s children a “true way of living”. The only problem being he doesn’t know what that is. So he does some research, and it turns out that the true way is to go Oni hunting, and tries to attack Ten. That doesn’t work out so he decides to go on a journey to live like a man. Later on the news we learn that he and his bear are rampaging across Japan committing armed robberies.
—
Kintaro is played by Masako Nozawa. That’s right. Son Goku. Not to mention Son Gohan AND Son Goten in the various Dragonball shows. On top of that she was also the voice of Tetsuro in Galaxy Express 999, Rascal in Rascal the Raccoon, and a whole load more. But really, Dragonball and Galaxy Express are going to cast a huge shadow over both your career and everyone elses. Iconic stuff.
The screenplays for this episode come from Yu Yamamoto (Braiger, Baxinger, Sasuraiger), who as we shall see was responsible for a lot of these early episodes.
The first story is storyboarded and directed by Kozima Tamiko, with animation direction from Hayao Nobe. The second is storyboarded and directed by Masuji Harada, again with with animation direction from Yuji Yatabe.