Americans are fickle and they demand variety in all things. It doesn't matter that all twelve brands of chocolate sauce taste exactly the same, just that there are twelve brands available. In fact, most would ask why there isn't a thirteenth brand on the way promising something extra. We're no different when it comes to television. Sure, there's a demographic that wants to see the same thing over and over again, but it's getting increasingly difficult to feed the American public the same premise year after year. We want new actors, new styles, new ideas, or at least a new twist on an old idea.
We're not alone in this, mostly. Japanese culture is every bit as consumerist as our own. We don't really get a lot of their non-mainstream culture Stateside for the same reason they don't get a lot of our tiny independent films; there's just not enough potential distribution to justify the import. That's the category of anime to which today's entry belongs.
Ebichu the Housekeeping Hamster is to Japanese television what Aqua Teen Hunger Force is to American TV. It appeared as a segment on a one-season series called Anime Love Bubble Bubble Hour that aired in 1999. I was introduced to this oddity of a cartoon after my anime advisers got me drunk and uttered those universal, chill-inducing words, "You've gotta see this".
In short, Ebichu is about a talking hamster that acts as a live-in maid for a single, professional woman. She has a habit of interrupting her owner during sex and obliviously spilling embarrassing secrets about her to strangers. When I asked one of my other advisers to watch the show, the first thing he told me was that Ebichu is most definitely intended for a female audience. Research confirmed this. Based on just-shy-of-hardcore sex, graphic violence and a juvenile comic edge, I realized that my understanding of Japanese culture still needs a lot of improvement. No American media company would ever even think to market something like Ebichu to a female audience.
This show is not the type of thing you'll see on a network channel in Japan, nor is it likely to ever cross the Pacific in an official capacity. All of the versions with Western subtitles are fan-made. Ebichu aired in six-minute segments once a week. Even then, the premise wears dangerously thin by the closing credits. The animation is so simple it looks tossed-off and the scripts near self-parody on a regular basis. In the sense that it's ridiculous it's great, but by any other metric it's about as much of an achievement as Assy McGee.
Comprehension: 6/10- The plots are never that complicated, but the fan-subs are scatterbrained at best. Because this show was never intended to reach a large audience in Japan, let alone make it to other shores, the cultural references abound. I couldn't keep up most of the time. I honestly can't even tell you any of the other characters' names.
Enjoyment: 7/10- Yes, it's amusing to watch a hamster getting uppity about anal sex... the first time it happens. That Ebichu stretches to more than 20 episodes boggles my mind. Most of my enjoyment of this show came from sheer disbelief. I had to remind myself that, no matter how absurd it was, this show employed real people. For several days, possibly weeks, some woman in Japan stepped into a sound booth to record tiny-voiced lines like, "Ebichu... wants... to eat... a whole box of... Camembert."
Improvement of Understanding: 7/10- It's nice to know just how many different niches and dead-ends there are in the sprawling anime industry, but I've got a long way to go before I understand how demographics are determined.
Next Week: Blue Seed
