One of the strangest tales in all of the anime industry is the story of a writer named Katsuhiko Takayama. This guy has written for dozens of series ranging from at least 1 universally acclaimed masterpiece to several of the most despised anime ever conceived! He was 1 of the 4 script writers for Fullmetal Alchemist, but he also single-handedly wrote Boku no Pico! He has also written garbage like Triage X and Mirai Nikki, which is extremely popular despite my personal hatred for it. I guarantee that if you are an anime fan, you have seen SOMETHING that this man worked on! Today I am reviewing what is probably his most obscure series, even though it is also one of his worst! Considering that I am talking about the man who wrote Boku no Pico, that is REALLY saying something!
A small musing about anime writers and translations:
If you wish to avoid my pretentious philosophical ramblings and just see me bash a terrible anime, move ahead to the plot section!
Otaku around the world frequently argue over the merits of famous anime directors like Gen Urobuchi or Hideaki Anno. On rare occasion, fans will discuss famous anime artists like Masami Obari (the Rob Liefeld of anime), Yasuomi Umetsu ("the Anime Wizard of Gore"), and Satoshi Urushihara ("The King of Breasts"). However, in my experience absolutely NO ONE ever talks about anime writers! This is sad because they play a vital role in the production of any great anime! I believe one of the main reasons the writers get neglected by fans is that all credit goes to either the original mangaka or to the series director, both of whom usually also offer input for the anime's writing, plot, and characters. The writer's main job is to create the dialogue, which is difficult to objectively critique for a non-Japanese speaker. Whether I watch an anime subbed or dubbed, I would be judging the skill of the translator more than judging the prose of the original writer.
The writing elements of plot, character, and philosophy can easily translate across languages, but prose and dialogue usually can't. Obviously things like puns or "word play" will only work in the original language and be lost on everyone else. However, there are other serious difficulties with translation that are far less obvious. Due to major differences between languages, the original author's intent and the "tone" of the writing can be totally changed accidentally in translation. Let's look at the dialogue in the novel "Beloved", one of the most celebrated American novels of the last 30 years. The novel takes place before, during, and after the American Civil War and deals with the long lasting psychological effects of slavery. In the novel, any English readers will instantly notice that the freed slaves speak with their own system of grammar because they were denied any education under slavery. The slave owners all speak with correct English grammar in order to show that they benefited from a basic education. This all makes sense to an English speaker, because the English language is extremely flexible with its grammar. You can absolutely BUTCHER every law of English grammar and yet remain perfectly understandable. However, that is NOT the case with many other languages. In the German translation the slaves and slave owners will have to speak with the same grammar because in the German language, you either speak grammatically correct or you speak gibberish that no one will be able to understand. Since we have established that "Ebonics" German is an impossibility, the German translator may try to capture the difference present in the original English text by giving the slave owners extremely high vocabulary instead. However, the slave owners did NOT have high vocabularies in the original English text. The author's intent was to show a difference in basic education due to the many injustices of slavery, NOT to make the slave owners appear well-read or innately genius! Now that we have covered why translation is so hard, we can appreciate why it is so difficult to judge an anime's original prose.
Plot:
Mouse is a story about a master thief from a famous family of thieves. He goes around the world stealing art with the help of his 3 assistants while avoiding an inept but extremely determined detective. If you hadn't guessed, Mouse is an absolutely SHAMELESS ripoff of Lupin the 3rd, one of the most beloved anime of all time! However, Lupin was actually funny and had lovable characters whereas Mouse...not so much. Mouse is one of the most painfully stupid and unfunny "comedy" series I have ever seen. I actually injured my neck from cringing so much! Mouse only has a couple jokes and repeats them over and over again, even though they weren't funny the first time! As an "homage" to Lupin's constant unwanted advances on his assistant Fujiko, Mouse's assistants constantly sexually harass him... even though this torments him and he is highly suggested to be gay! Another running gag is Mouse's ability to steal impossibly large objects like buildings. In one episode he does this by sinking the building into the ground and presumably carrying it away using a gigantic burrowing vehicle that can fit entire buildings inside it! I guess Mouse stole the Technodrome from the old Ninja Turtles cartoon?! In another episode, Mouse somehow convinces the ENTIRE Soviet submarine fleet to help him drag a building into the ocean using giant grappling hooks! Seriously! Did I mention that Mouse is a REALLY stupid anime!? Mouse is apparently a ninja, but this series is too lazy to show any actual fight scenes. Instead Mouse knocks out all the guards offscreen while random characters narrate how great he fights! This is some of the laziest shit I've ever seen! Finally, the series takes a break from being extremely unfunny and completely failing in its action by instead being morally repulsive! We get to see how Mouse's assistants belong to families that serve the Mouse family and are tortured and beaten from a young age in order to make them both tough and subservient. They then willingly serve Mouse as his slaves and wish for him to dominate them!
Art:
The art in Mouse looks like shit even relative to its age. The boobs are some of the worst drawn I've seen since Eiken and to top it all off, Mouse doesn't even feature full nudity or even nipples for that matter! The ONLY reason you would conceivably watch this bullshit unless you are a masochist like me is for the echii...and Mouse doesn't even deliver in this category! No one could possibly whack off to Mouse, ergo it fails in every category!
Sound:
Apart from having an absurdly annoying theme song, Mouse suffers from a HORRIBLE English dub thanks to the fine people at Media Blasters! This company has always been very hit or miss and despite doing a fine job for some anime like Berserk, they have also been responsible for many of the worst dubs in anime history.
Overall:
Let us examine the many qualities of Mouse: defecates on a classic anime, is painfully unfunny, headbashingly idiotic, terrible characters, horrible art, ear raping music and voice acting, and morally reprehensible. I have NOTHING positive to say about Mouse! Fuck this anime and FUCK Katsuhiko Takayama for writing this bullshit!
