I’m going to get around to TBS’ late night anime in general later on, as it is taking a little longer to get a good overview of. Early on there seems to be more of collaboration with non-Tokyo based broadcasters in production of the shows, so I want to see if I can figure all that out first.
Instead, I’ll begin with looking at show that’s part of a lineage of anime that represents both its past and its future – Wonderful.
TBS’ Wonderful slot ran Monday to Thursday, 23：55 – 24：50 from 1997 to 2002. It contained a variety of content, of which anime was but one element. What unites a lot of the series that Wonderful featured is that they were based on gag manga.
Ping Pong Club
Director: Masami Hata
Studio: Grouper Productions
Table tennis themed juvenile delinquency. Brought to the US by CPM. Uniqlo have some Ping Pong Club T-shirts coming out soon. Of course they do.
Sexy Commando Gaiden: Sugoiyo!! Masaru-san
Director: Akitaro Daichi
Studio: Madhouse Studios
Kyosuku Usuta’s first major work got this anime adaptation on its completion. It is near perfect, actually improving on the manga. One of my favourite TV anime of all time.
AIKa
Director: Katsuhiko Nishijima (who else but!)
Studio: Studio Fantasia
TV broadcast for the first 4 episodes of the underwear obsessed action OAV. Nishijima must be the anime industry’s top lingerie fetishist, but he’s also a solid animator.
Futari Kurashi
Director: Futa Morita
Studio: Public & Basic
I remember the video release advertised in Newtype back when I was buying it in the late 90s, but history seems to have completely forgotten it. Here’s the truly awful opening, see if you can figure it out.
Super Radical Gag Family
Director: Akitaro Daichi
Studio: Studio DEEN
Scatological buffoonery. For everything bad I say about Studio DEEN post-Kitty’s demise, they have had a decent track record with minimal budget gag shows.
Momoiro Sisters
Director: Noburo Shirohata – I believe this is the name Bob Shirohata (Hetalia) used to use
Studio: Studio DEEN
Hardly a moe show, but this Young Animal manga turned anime contains a lot of the elements that were popularised in moe shows during the coming decade (or possibly un-popularised, as the Anime Encyclopedia suggests that Wonderful outperformed most standalone late night anime). It’s a gag strip for an audience of young men, about elements of the lives young women that young men may not be privy to, written by a woman, Tamami Momose (Doki Doki School Hours). Unlike the shows that followed in its path, it’s much more bawdy and explicit in its approach, having more in common with Ebichu than Chu Bra.
Let’s Nupu Nupu
Director: Issei Kume, Jouji Shimura, Shigeru Kimiya, Kazuhiro Sasaki
Studio: ????
Another gag manga adaptation, this has elements of absurd comedy, sexual comedy and manzai. With those last two elements oddly tied together in the skits involving a school nurse sexually harassing one of her pupils. They have the manzai style, but with the boke’s idoicy manifesting in the sexually harassment of the tsukkomi. Given that no one over-riding director or studio is listed, I wonder if the material was split up between them, as there’s little to no overlap in the scenes of the perverted nurse, the cat, the hamster and the Melmo parody that make up the show.
Only · You: Viva! Cabaret
Director: Mitsuo Kusakabe
I have no idea about this show. Even the Japanese wikipedia page is distinctly lacking detail, let alone there being much English language information.
If I See You in my Dreams
Director: Takeshi Yamaguchi
Studio: J.C. Staff
This got an release in the US via ADV. Despite that I had never heard of it until writing this post.
Most Spirited Man in Japan
Director: Hiroyoshi Yoshida
Studio: Studio DEEN
According to the Anime Encyclopaedia this got a 9.2% rating. That seems insane compared to what typical late night anime get. Haven’t found any stats for other shows in this slot (annoyingly I used to have them years ago, but threw them out) so I don’t know how accurate that is or how it compares. It’s another show that Bob Shirohata worked on, this time as Animation Director and now using the Bob name.
Iketeru Futari
Director: Hideki Okamoto / Takeshi Yamaguchi
Studio: Geneon Entertainment
Despite the tiny running times, this sex comedy still feels really slack. Avoid.
Petshop of Horrors
Director: Toshio Hirata
Studio: Madhouse
Like AIKA, another OAV on TV
You’re Under Arrest Specials
Director: ????
Studio: Studio DEEN
Shorts of the Kousuke Fujishima light-hearted cop manga. Not seen them, but I’d imagine that the manga is probably best served by this format.
Most Spirited Man in Japan 2
Director: Hiroyoshi Yoshida
Studio: Studio DEEN
More from this hit sex comedy.
SURF SIDE HIGH-SCHOOL
Director: Hiroyoshi Yoshida
Studio: Magic Bus
Ken Sawai’s almost unfinished manga (he finished it off this year in collections) got this brief, and mostly forgotten, adaptation.
Let’s Dance With Papa
Director: Bob Shirohata
Studio: Studio DEEN
Adaptation of Chuya Chikazawa’s long running gag manga.
COLORFUL
Director: Ryutaro Nakamura
Studio: Studio Wombat / Triangle Staff
The most successful in the US/UK of the Wonderful shows, this gag manga compilation from Torajirou Kishi’s original work got a release from ADV and aired on G4.
Ippatsu Kiki Musume
Director: Hiroyoshi Yoshida
Studio: Group TAC
This is great. A rare combination of cerebral and slapstick comedy as the laws of physics are applied to life threatening farce.
Itsumo Kokoro ni Taiyou wo!
Director: Hiroyoshi Yoshida
Studio: Studio DEEN
I have zero idea what this about. Has the same name as the Japanese translation of the Lulu film “To Sir, with Love“. There was also a song by that name used on an earlier anime – and that’s what you get when you do an image search. So no image for this one.
I do note that the mystery person Hiroyoshi Yoshida is involved in many of these final shows. They then appear to have had no career in anime after this. Anime Encyclopaedia lists them as Tokio Yoshida and Nobuyoshi Yoshida, rather than the Hiroyoshi Yoshida that Anime News Network uses. But those names lead nowhere when searching for other works too. Possibly pseudonym?
Di Gi Charat
Director: Hiroaki Sakurai
Studio: Madhouse
It’s somewhat fitting that Di Gi Charat should close Wonderful’s anime programming in 2000, as it feels like the transitional phase in the move from the sharp edged gag manga that many Wonderful shows were based on, to the softer gag manga that many of the modern shows are based on. Plus it has an otaku in-joke element missing from a lot of the Wonderful shows that would be driven into the ground over the next decade. This particular incarnation is still weird and misanthropic, even with the cute designs for the female leads, but it would get cuter and less funny as the years went by. And also they would move to morning slots on the weekend.
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While we’ve not seen such a concentrated amount of spikey, often outright ribald, gag manga adaptations in subsequent years, in terms of form, you can point at a number of shows that follow in their footsteps. Frequently low budget and with short running times, the Wonderful approach represent the ideal form for animation for the web. It’s no coincidence that the recent big web anime hit, Hetalia Axis Powers, is directed by Wonderful alumnus, Bob Shirohata. Even if you don’t like the material, in terms of its format and direction, it’s definitely one of the better gag anime in recent years.
Akitaro Daichi of course has enjoyed success all over the schedule and in a variety of forms, but his work on Gag Manga Biyori has clear echoes in his Wonderful shows (Sexy Commando, Super Radical Gag Family). Other shows like Astro Fighter Sunred also share the “give a joke the right amount of time” approach that many of these short form anime have.
It’s not all good news on the gag anime front. In the wake of Azumanga Daioh (is there an earlier precedent I’m unaware of?), we’ve also had the rise of the moe gag manga and their anime adaptations. Though once again, the moe-ness (moeosity?) is probably a red herring.
In some cases the flaws in the anime are inherent in the source material. Hidamari Sketch is relatively free of the chuckles because the original strip is just as anaemic as the anime. The anime might be better than the wet lettuce that is the manga simply because it has the usual clever SHAFT shots that cover a multitude of animation sins. Well one really – too much talking, not enough moving.
On the other hand Kyoto Animation’s Lucky Star and K-On anime actually have jokes in them, but it frequently feels like they are sabotaged by being dragged out to fill the allotted time. Considering that many are pretty weak jokes to begin with (especially in Lucky Star‘s case), they just can’t survive this bloated approach. If they animated the same material in half the running time and added less lackadaisical soundtracks, then the series would be much improved and closer to the quality of their manga.
Working with tighter time and budgetary constraints might hone some of the creative forces’ sense of comic timing. It doesn’t have to be at a Daichi-style machine gun pace, I think you can work with a slower pace if you get a rhythm that works – Azumanga Daioh had a more Bill Melendez-esque pacing that was helped by the soundtrack in the same way the Peanuts cartoons were helped by Vince Guaraldi’s music.
Given that gag manga is being increasingly turned to once again, people need to pick their game up and stop relying on the appeal of the character design to soft boys. Comedy is the hardest things to get right, and the big dogs in anime like Sazae-san, Chibi Maruko-chan and Shin-chan relied on delivering laughs for their success not how many Figmas they could sell. Like I said, I think the whole moe-ness of modern gag shows is a red herring. If these shows simply told their jokes better, they’d broaden their appeal further.