Thursday 23 January 2003

Pic of the day: Does he look like 11 to you? (And does that young woman look like his mother? OK, perhaps she does.)

Guu!

"The jungle was always nice, then came Guu!" This is the title of another anime, and possibly the weirdest one I have seen yet. Well, actually the title is like "Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu". I believe this is a TV show from a while ago that has lately been fansubbed. Did I mention it is weird?

Basically there's this village in the middle of the jungle, and they have small but fairly normal homes with TV and video games and CDs. Admittedly most people go to hunt instead of work, and they seem to need to do this less than ordinary work. But kids still go to school, except the teacher is so sleepy each morning that the first class is nap hour. I like that! ^_^

Hale is the main character, a 10-11 years old boy who looks quite a bit younger. (Evidently there is a wordplay there, since this word Hale also appears in the title where it actually means something.) Hale lives with his mother who is like 25 and acts no older either. She likes to drink and party. The story about how Hale came into being unfolds after a while.

The second to main character however is Guu, an orphan girl who is not quite what she seems. Or at least as seen through Hale's eyes, she has mysterious powers. She can swallow people and things, and they live inside her until she chooses to regurgitate them, if ever. She also has many other mysterious powers.

At first Guu seems to be unfamiliar with human ways, and weird things happen when she tries to act like an ordinary human. Guu is very beautiful when she smiles, but she usually only does that once to any one person. The rest of the time she has this lifeless face. (I can kinda empathize with her so far.)

Sometimes Guu seems to be out to create mischief, but it is hard to say how much of this is evil and how much is just her unfamiliarity with human ways. Anyway, the end result is usually trouble for poor Hale.

The series so far is very weird and mixes realism with surrealism. I am kinda confused that this seems to be targeted at children. There are some things there that I really don't think will make sense until you're a teen at least. And some that don't make sense at all...

Still, it's great fun. But not all people like this series. Perhaps you must be a bit weird already.