Saturday 30 July 2005

Pic of the day: "But he is very effeminate!" Not really the way you want your prospective girlfriend to praise you in front of her sisters. Especially not when you are a wolf.

Damekko Doubutsu

Since my second article about Multiple Personalities is not ready yet, I'll use this 1-year anniversary of my Pugyuru review to point out another children's anime that is also crazy, although not to the same extreme degree. Enter Damekko Doubutsu, a story about "useless animals".

In the Useless forest arrives one day a useless young wolf who is timid and cannot hunt. (Uruno, as he is called, is actually drawn as a young boy in a wolf fursuit. All the animals in the forest are drawn that way. Usually they are drawn very cartoonish, but during dramatic moments they are drawn as young adults, very handsome too. This happens just rarely enough that you are surprised every time.) In the forest, Uruno meets an assertive chain-smoking rabbit who beats him up routinely. There is a unicorn that drinks a lot and mostly hangs out with the guys, and whose brother is a shy pegasus who almost never says a word. And the love interest of our hero, a clumsy cheetah. All the animals are completely useless at what they are supposed to do. Turns out the Useless forest is under the dominion of a minor deity, the Useless God, never grants any prayers but is pretty good at curses. Uruno, as the most useless of all the animals, enters into a special relationship with the god, which basically means he gets a lot more divine punishment.

Every day the useless animals come up with some new crazy useless scheme. You keep rooting for the poor wolf, but he never amounts to anything, at least in the first 13 episodes, which are very short at that. Like five minutes each. The furry girls are quite hot though. Most guys like the cheetah, but I like the puma best. (The one in blue jogging suit in the picture above.) She reminds me of the main character from Gokusen, and when she sleeps she reminds me of someone I liked. Anyway! Short, crazy, available on fansub only. And it will probably stay that way ... most American kids would probably not get the point. I'm not sure the Japanese kids do either. Actually I'm not even sure there is a point. It's just a bunch of crazy kids in fursuits. I love it.