Oruchuban Ebichu

Ebichu was one of the first anime series I watched. I got the DVD as a present and one dark and stormy day decided to watch it. Wow. For the first three episodes I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It is just plain weird. I can't describe it better. It_just_is_weird.

Ebichu is about a hamster called Ebichu. Her owner is a single office lady desperate to find a husband. Many jokes center around Ebichu's owner and her good-for-nothing boyfriend. What makes this show worth watching is its extreme humour that springs form this set-up. Warning to all American kids: Contains adult themes, watch this ... and be sued! Infidelity, sex in it's all forms (and positions... he-he-eeeeh...), gambling, violence and much more. Best advertising speech ever?

Ebichu is best watched with an open mind and maybe a couple of friends and some beverages with alcohol in them. Once in a while you can shout: "Oh those crazy Japanese!" After all I enjoyd Ebichu's twisted humour and recommend this to anyone who can fill all the conditions in the beginning of this paragraph. Try it - I can guarantee that you may or may not be disappointed.

I, like many other people, had never heard of this anime for the longest time. An obscure Gainax comedy show about a talking hamster? Never would've found that one. That was until a friend of mine showed me the famous scene from the show on YouTube, simply titled "Manko" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AAP1tmTn6tE . I don't know about you, but that was enough to sell me on adding it to the PTW. About a year and a half later, and I finally sat down and gave it a watch. And I'll tell you right now, it's a shame I hadn't found this sooner, because it is one of ... the funniest comedy anime I've ever seen.

Of course what caught my eye was the off the wall vulgarity in a show that appears to be a cute little slice of life about an adventurous housekeeping hamster. Consisting of an assortment of sexual comedy and somewhat violent slapstick humor. This show pushed the boundaries big time. The simplistic art style was probably the only reason I can gather as to why they were even allowed to show this on television. There's both explicit sexual scenes, as well as Ebichu getting absolutely decimated in the most comical way (if that makes any sense) by her OL Master or the "Useless Bum". It also shows the highly dysfunctional relationship of Ebichu's Master and her "Useless Bum" of a boyfriend. Portraying an incredibly real looking relationship that is so against the norms of most anime.

And through all that, this show remains impeccably charming, and adorable most of the time. Throwing adult themes into something that for all intents and purposes looks like a children's show, you can't find this stuff anywhere else.

The housekeeping hamster in question, Ebichu, is voiced by Kotono Mitsuishi, famous from her days as Misato Katsuragi from Evangelion. The story of how this show came to be was an interesting one too. Mitsuishi would read the Ebichu manga in between recording lines for NGE. She would often burst out laughing and that caused people to go up to her and ask what she's reading. After some time, they at Gainax, including Hideaki Anno (what?), decided they wanted to animate it, and thus made Mituishi the titular character of Ebichu. I just found it very interesting, both that the studio sees a manga and goes "what the heck let's give it a shot", and that Mitsuishi eventually got the chance to provide a voice for the character she'd grown to love. And what a voice it was. Never was there a break in character, Ebichu has an unmistakable voice and speech pattern that I can't compare to anything else I've ever heard before. Mitsuishi did an unbelievable job portraying her.

This show is a gem. However, it is a relic from the year 1999 that almost nobody ever talks about. And that's incredibly sad. I'm not someone who particularly loves straight up comedy anime, but this show hooked me from the start. It was a riot. It stayed true to itself the whole way through, and brought new things to the table that I'd never seen in comedy anime before. You won't find many shows where a character fantasizes about having an intimate relationship with a hamster. It's truly something unique for both its time and now and is something most everyone should at the very least check out. If you haven't seen it, I recommend doing so immediately by any means possible, and then feel sorry that you hadn't watched it sooner.

In retrospect, I'm not exactly sure what compelled me to watch this through - at a glance it didn't really seem to be my thing. I've never been huge on raunchy comedy, where styles of humour are concerned there are humour styles - and even styles of vulgar or otherwise dark humour - which I enjoy far more than sex jokes. But part of it was definitely that it was animated by studio Gainax - a surprise to be sure when I learned of it.

To date I have seen Tengen Toppa Gurren Laggan and Neon Genesis Evangelion from Gainax. The obvious choices, sure - ... but they give a fanciful, high-concept low fantasy mood to the studio - one that is in no way explored or so much as implied here. This makes sense to an extent; Makoto Moriwaki, largely known for family shows - most notably the 2005 adaptation of Onegai My Melody - so both her's and Gainax's involvement with this show do not seem particularly well at a glance. However, Gainax adapts the manga's style to a tee.

The animation is definitely the most praiseworthy aspect of the show, it moves exactly as a manga moves as one reads it while still feeling very lively visually. Gainax has shown both before and after this show that they are masters of doing a lot with a little and this show exemplifies this trait of the studio excellently. The backgrounds are often minimal and work as excellent backgrounds to the simple, thick-stroked characters on top of them. Both these designs and the usually muted colour palette contrasts with the sexual and violent themes of the show well - definitely an appeal of the manga's initial run.

The audio largely meshes well with the atmosphere the visuals build, Ebichu is goofy and cute but doesn't at all sound out of place in this world despite being a talking hamster and all. All the voice actors just sound like normal people and that's obviously what you'd want in a largely slice-of-life show. The soundtrack is minimal, often quiet melodies just ring out in the background, usually muting out when any sound effects are played. It all works in the service of the aforementioned mundanity of the setting.

Sadly, these praises mean little without a well-written show to back them. The show intentionally has a very bare-bones aesthetic so it doesn't really function as eye candy; and the cornerstone of a good comedy is good writing which I sadly don't think is accomplished here. Explaining jokes tends to be hard, but I can make two main points on why I don't particularly enjoy the happenings in this show. The first point is the most obvious, the over-reliance on simplistic sex jokes. A lot of the sex-related gags in the series mostly have to do with the sex words themselves - be it their mere existence or Ebichu screaming these terms out. I imagine a lot of the appeal to these gags is hearing the words being screamed by itself - an affect of the joke completely lost when I read the subtitle and hear what may as well amount to background noise.

Secondly, there is another formula which the show too often clings to is the cycle of Ebichu spouting something bizarre then getting attacked by her owner or her boyfriend. As the series progressed and the main cast started getting out more - particularly with the introduction of Maa-kun as a catalyst - the normally formulaic characters are at their best when there are other personalities around them to bring out different aspects of their character. Owner's boyfriend does this to a certain extent as well, but generally the more the merrier. It was fun to see these parts of the characters around the early middle of the series, but other than the occasional Ebichuman segment this aspect of the show fizzles out towards the end and not much of interest ends up happening for the majority of the series.

I feel like my not liking this could be better attributed to it not being my cup of tea. There is a lot to appreciate here, and it's very competently made, but the writing and style of humour generally made Oruchuban Ebichu a chore for me to go through. On the bright side the episodes are short, despite being a 24 episode series you could probably finish this in a lazy afternoon if you really felt like it.