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Jack and the Beanstalk *

1974. jpn: Jack to Mame no Ki. Movie. dir: Gisaburo Sugii, Naoto Hashimoto. scr: Kenji Hirami. des: Shigeru Yamamoto. ani: Shigeru Yamamoto, Kazuko Nakamura. mus: Morihisa Shibuya. prd: Herald, Tac. 98 mins.

Farmer’s son Jack believes a traveling salesman (similar to the portrayal of the Wizard of Oz back in Kansas) when he tells him that his beans are magical. Willingly exchanging his cow for them, Jack is chastised by his mother and throws the beans away. The beans grow into a massive stalk overnight, and Jack’s dog, Crosby, is approached by a mouse, who entreats them to climb up. The beanstalk leads up through the bottom of the well into the courtyard of a castle in the sky that is occupied by the witch Mrs. Noire (Hecuba). Keen on stealing treasure, Jack is eventually convinced by Crosby that he should rescue the imprisoned Princess Margaret (whom Mrs. Noire intends to marry to her ogreish son, Tulip) and break Noire’s spell that has turned all the castle’s former occupants into mice. After a final confrontation with Tulip, Jack saves the day, though it becomes patently obvious that Margaret is a clearheaded girl of 18, determined to get on with restoring her people’s fortunes, while Jack is merely a child in love with the idea of being a hero. In an original and poignant twist on happy-ever-after, Margaret stays on in her castle while Jack returns home (happily) to his farm, where he soon forgets all about her. This feature debut of future Tale of Genji–director Gisaburo Sugii is an excellent musical anime that could easily have given Disney’s films of the day a run for their money, but one which sank without a trace on a very limited U.S. release.

Jack and the Witch *

1967. jpn: Shonen Jack to Maho­tsukai. aka: Boy Jack and the Sorcerer. Movie. dir: Taiji Yabushita. scr: Shinichi Sekizawa, Susumu Takaku. des: Reiji Koyama. ani: Akira Daikuhara. mus: Seiichiro Uno. prd: Toei. 80 mins.

The mischievous Jack and his friends are racing through the forest when they meet Kiki (Allegra), a girl on a mini-helicopter. With Chuko (Squeaker) the mouse and several other companions, he is taken to the Devil’s Castle. Kiki is revealed as a Devil-child, working for Grendel (Queen Iliana), the master of Devil’s Castle, who uses a Devilization Machine to turn children into monsters (or “harpies,” in the U.S. dub). Chuko is turned into a devil, but Jack escapes. Kiki is sent after him but falls out of the sky, where she is nursed back to health by Jack. Accompanied by bear, fox, and dog companions, Jack returns to the castle to confront the witch. Grendel captures the animals and leaves them imprisoned to watch through her crystal ball as she kills Jack. The animals are keen to watch events unfold, but seeing that they are anxious to see what is happening, the spiteful Chuko (who is still devilized) smashes the crystal ball. This breaks Grendel’s spell, and she dies trying to escape in a balloon. Chuko, Kiki, and all the other occupants of the castle are restored to normalcy and pile into Jack’s car for the journey back to his place.

A bizarre updating of the Old English poem Beowulf, originally entitled Adventure in the Wonder World, JatW was originally commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of Toei Animation. Pushing the envelope at the time for Japanese animation, it features a striking change in style after Jack enters the “witch-world” and was the first anime work to win a Mainichi Film Award for best score.

Jakobus Nimmersat *

1980. jpn: Nodoka Mori no Dobutsu Daisenso. aka: Great War of the Animals of Placid Forest. TV special. dir: Yoshio Kuroda. scr: Toshiyuki Kashiwakura. des: Yasuji Mori. ani: Kazuko Hirose. mus: Tatsumi Yano. prd: Nippon Animation, Fuji TV. 70 mins.

When people from a nearby village discover a hole in their church roof, they unthinkingly rush into the forest to cut down trees to repair it. Agreeing that they should warn the humans off, Peter the Root Fairy and his animal friends attempt to shoo them from the forest, and when this tactic fails, they embark on a campaign of careful resistance and nuisance—compare to Pompoko. Based on the book by Boy Lornsen, this TV special reduced the age of the original Peter to make him more appealing to young viewers and dropped all child characters in order to allow the young audience to enjoy watching little people avenge themselves on the folly of grown-ups. Released in English under differing titles, including Peter of Placid Forest and Back to the Forest.

Janken Man

1991. aka: Scissors-Paper-Stone Man. TV series. dir: Toshiya Endo, Hiroshi Yoshida, Naohito Takahashi. scr: Satoru Akahori, Yoshiaki Takahashi, Tsunehisa Arakawa, Takao Oyama. des: Nobuyoshi Habara. ani: Nobuhiro Ando, Naoyuki Matsuura. mus: N/C. prd: Ashi Pro, TV Tokyo. 20 mins. x 51 eps.

A superhero who defeats adversaries by playing games of scissors-paper-stone with them hardly seems like a pitch for a successful show, but Janken Man’s fight against the evil Osodashi Mask kept young viewers hooked for a year.

Japan Inc.

1987. jpn: Manga Nihon Keizai Nyumon. aka: Manga Introduction to Japanese Economics. TV series. dir: Takenori Kawata, Masamune Ochiai, Yoshimasa Yamazaki, Teruo Kigure. scr: Takashi Yamada, Shunichi Yukimuro, Miho Maruo. des: Shotaro Ishinomori. ani: Nobuhiro Soda. mus: Sunset Hills Hotel. prd: Knack, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 25 eps.

In the middle of the 1980s, yuppie career girl Sawako Matsumoto graduates from Harvard Business School and returns to Japan. As the country struggles under the export pressures brought by the high yen, she works through the night to produce a business plan that will drag her company out of its rut. Based on the manga by Cyborg 009–creator Shotaro Ishinomori that was originally serialized in the high-class business paper Nippon Keizai Shinbun and even published as an economics textbook by the University of California. The anime version was broadcast in a ten-o’clock evening slot when hard-working salarymen stood a better chance of seeing it.

Japanese Folk Tales

1975. jpn: Manga Nihon Mukashi­banashi. aka: Manga Japanese Folk Tales. TV series. dir: Rintaro, Norio Hikone, Hidenori Kondo, Gisa­buro Sugii, Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, Hiroe Mitsunobu, Isao Okishima. scr: Isao Okishima, Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, Tsunehisa Ito, Ryohei Suzuki. des: Tsutomu Shibayama. ani: Masakazu Higuchi. mus: Jun Kitahara. prd: Ai Planning Center, Tac, TBS. 25 mins. x 1467 eps.

Crammed two to an episode, the original Japanese Folk Tales series retold many old stories for a children’s audience. Some were old anime staples, such as Momotaro and The Monkey and the Crab. Others were commonly pastiched in anime but rarely seen in their original form, such as Snow Woman, the tale of a sultry siren who lures unsuspecting travelers to their deaths on a snowbound mountain pass. This was first animated as Nobuo Ofuji’s Dream of a Snowy Night (1947), but snow princesses often appear as characters in diverse anime from Dororon Enma to Urusei Yatsura. Similarly, Princess Kaguya, the story of a beautiful woman found inside a strip of bamboo who cannot find a husband on Earth and eventually returns to her home on the moon, was first animated in 1942 by Goro Araiwa and also appears here, but this tale is most likely to be known through oblique references to it in anime such as Rei Rei and Gu-Gu Gunmo. In Urashima Taro, first filmed as Nobuo Ofuji’s Cut-Out Urashima (1928), a Japanese man is carried away to an underwater castle where he lives happily with the daughter of the Dragon King, only to discover that centuries have passed back on the surface when he returns. This early time-travel tale is often referenced in modern anime, including Future Cop Urashiman and Gunbuster, where time dilation is called the “Urashima Taro Effect.”

Shown on several occasions in movie theaters, the series also inspired the Famous World Fairy Tales and Japanese History serials, as well as imitators such as Hajime Koedo’s 28 theatrical shorts Japanese Fairy Tales (1988) and Takashi Kurahashi’s adult video spin-off Flirting Japanese Fairy Tales (1989). Although new tales ceased after 1994, the series continued in reruns long afterward, and was remastered and rebroadcast for a whole new generation in 2005. It is one of the longest-running series in the anime world, after the unstoppable Sazae-san.

Japanese History

1976. jpn: Manga Nippon Shi Series. aka: Manga Japanese History Series. TV series. dir: Hidenori Kondo, Norio Yazawa. scr: Junji Tada. des: Oji Yutabe. ani: Oji Yutabe. mus: Takeshi Sato. prd: Nippon TV. 25 mins. x 52 eps.

A trawl through the centuries of Japanese history, beginning in myth with the Birth of Japan then speeding through the early cultures, the rise of the Yamatai nation, the Heian era, the civil war, and finishing with the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century. The series’ look was deliberately haphazard, with character designs changing with each historical period in order to give a sense of the passage of time. Ironically, for treatment of Japan’s more modern history, the anime medium descends once more into myth-making. Apart from the dramatized historical events of Animentary, Japan’s descent into fascism in the 1920s and 1930s is rarely shown in anime except in revisionist shows like Kishin Corps and Sakura Wars that try to play down the harsh realities in favor of fantastic whimsy. Japanese history was also covered in the Manga Pictures of Japan series.

Jarinko Chie

1981. aka: Chie the Brat. Movie, TV series. dir: Isao Takahata, Masahiro Sasaki, Tetsu Takemoto, Takashi Anno, Katsuhito Akiyama. scr: Noboru Shiroyama, Hideo Takayashiki, Kazuyoshi Yokota. des: Yoichi Otabe. ani: Kazuhiko Udagawa, Yuki Kishimo, Kazuyuki Kobayashi. mus: Kiyoshi Suzuki. prd: Tokyo Movie Shinsha, MBS. 45 mins. (m), 25 mins. x 64 eps. (TV).

Eleven-year-old Chie Takemoto runs a restaurant for her father, until the fateful day that the local gang boss comes around to collect her father’s gambling debts. In an attempt to scare the girl, the gangster sets his cat Antonio on Chie’s cat Kotetsu, but Chie’s pet is the tougher, killing the gangster’s. The distraught gangster decides to go straight, opening an okonomiyaki restaurant and hiring Chie’s father Tetsu as a bodyguard. Everything goes well until Tetsu sees Chie having a secret meeting with his estranged wife.

Based on the manga by Haruki Etsuji, who also worked on I Am a Cat, the Jarinko Chie film is a loving look at life in Osaka, a city with a very different attitude from the more famous Tokyo (see Compiler). Featuring Diet politician Chinetsu Nakayama as Chie and the anime debuts of a number of Kansai comedians in other roles, the movie was promoted with a second anime sequence shown as part of the Kao Master Theater TV program as the 84-minute TV special Jarinko Chie: Anime Stand-Up. The manzai comedy tradition of an abusive straight man and an eternally stupid joker is popular in Japan, and it’s mixed with anime here in several scenes of live-action comedians spliced with footage from the anime. The best part is the dream sequence between the anime character Tetsu and his real-life voice actor, the manzai comedian Norio Nishikawa. Following the success of the film, JC returned to television on the TBS channel, where it survived until 1983.

JC Staff

Originally “Japan Creative” Staff, although the full title is rarely used. Founded in 1986 by former employees of Tatsunoko as an outsourcing studio for Kitty Films, some of its notable directors include Hiroaki Sakurai, Akira Suzuki, Yasuhisa Kato. A major contributor to the modern anime scene, often to be found on the credits of the kinds of anime that get picked up for foreign release—representative works include Ai Yori Aoshi, Maburaho, and Slayers.

Jeannie with the Light-Brown Hair

1979. jpn: Kinpatsu no Jeannie. aka: Golden-Haired Jeannie; Girl in the Wind. TV series. dir: Keinosuke Tsuchiya. scr: Iwao Yamazaki, Kenji Terada, Yasuo Yamayoshi. des: Masami Abe. ani: Masami Abe, Masahiro Kase. mus: Harumi Ibe. prd: Dax, Tokyo 12 Channel. 25 mins. x 13 eps., 25 mins. x 52 eps.

Fifteen-year-old Jeannie Reed has grown up on a farm in Agarta, Virginia, and is disgusted at the outbreak of the American Civil War, when her father uses his position to profit from both sides. Turning her back on her profiteering family, she volunteers to care for orphans and becomes a nurse for the soldiers of the Union army, fretting all the time about the whereabouts of her soldier boyfriend, Robert.

A drama from the same era as Little Women, though this original work owes more to Gone with the Wind in its depiction of the Civil War. Popular tunes of the time were interwoven into the scenario, including “Oh, Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” and the titular “I Dream of Jeannie”—a song by the American Stephen Foster (see Great Composers).

The story would return in a 52-episode run of Girl in the Wind: Jeannie with the Light-Brown Hair (1992, Kaze no Naka no Shojo Kinpatsu no Jeannie), directed by Makoto Yasumura for Nippon Animation. The new version took considerable liberties, including the introduction of nobleman Count Kurt Russell(!). New Jeannie actress Mitsuko Horie would also star in the ill-fated final remake of Nobody’s Boy.

Jetter Mars

1977. aka: Jet Mars. TV series. dir: Rintaro, Sumiko Chiba (pseud. for Toshio Hirata), Noboru Ishiguro, Wataru Mizusawa, Masami Hata, Katsuyoshi Sasaki, Yugo Serikawa. scr: Masao Maruyama, Masaki Tsuji, Shunichi Yukimuro, Ryohei Suzuki, Hiroshi Yamamoto. des: Akio Sugino. ani: Akio Suzuki, Kazuo Mori, Akira Daikuhara, Wataru Mibu. mus: Nobuyoshi Koshibe. prd: Madhouse, Tezuka Pro, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 27 eps.

In 2015, Dr. Yamanoue, chief researcher at the Ministry of Science, creates the boy-robot Jetter Mars and prepares to teach him how to fight as a super-soldier. However, he is opposed by the cybernetic specialist Dr. Kawashimo, who is responsible for Jetter’s brain. When a storm threatens his island home, Jetter saves the day by cooperating with Kawashimo’s robot daughter, Miri. Soon, he becomes a superhero saving the world from harm, though his two mentors war constantly about his true purpose.

A lackluster copy of Astro Boy (if Astro was 10–12 years old, Jetter is 6–8) commissioned by Toei from creator Osamu Tezuka, though the studio’s interference would lead him to lose all interest in the project and claim that they had chipped away everything that made it anything other than a poor imitation. Early episodes involved a will-he-won’t-he crisis, as Jetter decided whether to do the altruistic thing as advised by Kawashimo or to follow Yamanoue’s more mercenary advice. However, Yamanoue was soon edged out, and the show became an almost carbon-copy of the relationship between Astro and Ochanomizu in AB. To compound the resemblance, JM featured AB voice actors Mari Shimizu and Hisashi Katsuta, and even lifted AB scripts wholesale, pausing only to change the names.

Jewel BEM Hunter Lime *

1996. jpn: Takara Ma Hunter Lime. aka: Treasure Demon Hunter Lime, Jewel BEM Hunter Lime, Homa Hunter Lime. Video. dir: Tetsuro Amino. scr: Kenichi Nakamura. des: Atsuko Nakajima. ani: Atsuko Nakajima. mus: N/C. prd: Asmik. 30 mins. x 3 eps.

Self-explanatory adventures, as the pretty, scantily clad Lime busts ghosts and steals valuables; based on a computer game but bolstered by designs from Ranma 1⁄2’s Nakajima.

Jibaku-kun

1999. aka: Bucky the Incredible Kid. TV series. dir: Naoyoshi Kusaka, Atsuko Nakajima scr: Atsuhiro Tomioka. des: Miyuki Shimabuke. ani: Masashi Hirota. mus: Gen Sawada. prd: Ashi Pro, TBS. 25 mins. x 26? eps.

In this madcap Pokémon clone, nasty exploding pink balls called “Trouble Monsters” fall into the hands of spiky-haired hero Baku (“Explosion”), who has his life turned upside down when he bumps into Great-Child Dan—a traveler through the Twelve Worlds. Featuring a love interest called Pink, a cameo appearance from Ali Baba, and more cute mascots than you can shake a stick at (which also happen to explode). Based on a manga by popular Papua-kun–creator Ami Shibata.

Jiburiru: The Devil Angel *

2004. jpn: Makai Tenshi Jibril. aka: Hell Angel Jibril. Video. dir: Ao Amamoto. scr: Kazunari Kume. des: Shinichiro Kajiura. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Studio Ten, Animac. 30 mins. x 4 eps. (v1), 30 mins. x 4 eps. (v2).

The magical-girl genre gets another pornographic twist, as average Japanese girl Rika is told by the angel Loveriel that she can transform into Jibril, a powerful angel, but only if she charges up her magical powers through sexual intercourse. Different acts, positions, and orifices lead to different “special attacks.” Meanwhile, Rika’s bespectacled love rival Miss Otonashi gives herself to the demon lord Asumo as a means of getting enough power to transform into her own superheroine, Misty May; cue tentacle rape and abuse as she powers up with abilities from the Dark Side.

Although modern viewers would probably find it most similar to Beat Angel Escalayer or Magical Kanan, Jiburiru follows the lead of Urotsukidoji in taking the anxieties of teen life and extrapolating them into demonic conflict. It borrows the tropes of superhero shows in order to mix its fantasy sex with more everyday tensions when the cast are all wearing their secret identities and doing mundane things like going to the movies. It’s a long way from Little Witch Sally, but the signposts are still there. Jibril is the pronunciation of Gabriel favored in the Quran, although the English-language release steadfastedly refuses to acknowledge that. We do not believe there is any connection between this Misty May and the heroine of Otaku no Video. A sequel, Hell Angel Jibril 2 (Makai Tenshi Jibril 2) followed in 2007. NV

Jim Button

1974. jpn: Jimubotan. TV series. dir: Rintaro, Katsuhisa Yamada. scr: Masaki Tsuji, Seiji Matsuoka, Noboru Shiroyama. des: Katsutoshi Kobayashi. ani: Toshimichi Kadota. mus: N/C. prd: Eiken, Top Craft, Imamura Pro, Yoyogi Studio, NET. (TV Asahi) 25 mins. x 26 eps. (TV).

Adventure series for young children, in which the naïve and unworldly dark-skinned boy Jim Button and his best friend Luke the engine driver leave their peaceful island home and travel the world in Luke’s amphibious steam railway engine. On the way they learn that a beautiful princess named Lisi has been kidnapped by pirates and handed over to the evil dragon Grindtooth (Drinka), ruler of Sorrowland, so of course they decide to rescue her. The characters are heavily inspired by Western, rather than Japanese, children’s graphics; they are based on the 1960 German children’s book Jim Button and Luke the Train Driver (Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer) and its 1962 sequel Jim Button and the Wild 13 (Jim Knopf und die Wilde 13) by Never Ending Story author Michael Ende, illustrated by Franz Josef Tripp.

By a strange coincidence, a decade after the anime appeared, the shareware revolution was founded by two Americans, one of whom had the same name as the German edition of this show—Jim Knopf. He has trademarked the name and its English translation Jim Button in the U.S., so web searches will return a high percentage of fascinating but unhelpful results unless you include the term “anime.” Two puppet versions of the original story were issued on DVD in 2004 by the Augsberg Puppet Theater.

Jinki: Extend *

2005. TV series. dir: Masahiko Murata. scr: Naruhisa Arakawa. des: Naoto Hosoda, Katsuyuki Tamura. ani: N/C. mus: Kenji Kawai. prd: feel, Gansis, Mag Garden, TV Asahi. 25 mins. x 12 eps.

When hostile robot weapons known as Jinki are uncovered in Venezuela in the 1980s, their initial attacks are held off by Angel, a secret government organization. All seems calm, but a generation later the world is rocked by a series of city-leveling explosions, revealing that the aftereffects are greater than previously realized. Meanwhile, amnesiac Japanese shrine maiden Akao Hiiragi tries to remember the point of her existence and finds a new purpose in life when an encounter with a Jinki robot turns her into a pilot for a new counterattack, utilizing Moribito, a “guardian” Jinki that can be turned against the rest of its race. We would like to say that this is an intriguing allegory for the effects of U.S. foreign policy since the Reagan administration, but actually it is just an excuse for girls in giant robots. Based on two manga by Shiro Tsunashima, Jinki: Extend and its plain Jinki prequel, tracing a long line back through Evangelion to Giant Gorg. The poses and shots in the credits sequences are made in distinct homage to two other shows: Mazinger Z and the original Gundam.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade *

2000. Movie. dir: Hiroyuki Okiura. scr: Mamoru Oshii. des: Hiroyuki Okiura, Tadashi Hiramatsu. ani: Kenji Kamiyama. mus: Hajime Mizoguchi. prd: Production IG. 98 mins.

In a Japan torn apart by riots, an officer from the paramilitary Third Force is almost killed by a suicide bomber from the fanatical Sect. He begins an affair with the bomber’s sister, not realizing that they are both pawns in a power game played out by opposing factions in the government.

Scenarist Oshii has tackled this subject several times before—not only in his manga Hellhounds, but also in the live-action spin-offs The Red Spectacles and Stray Dog. However, it is notable that the acclaimed director of Ghost in the Shell should have avoided seeing this particular project through, instead handing it over to the younger Okiura. Although this is Oshii’s fourth pass at the same material, it jettisons the authorial input of his Patlabor-cohort Kazunori Ito, leaving a script with a hollow heart. Hellhounds had Inui (“Dog”), an officer who is almost killed by a sly female terrorist. It ended with Inui facing the same foe a second time and losing his life. Jin-Roh replays this story with Fuse (equally punning, since it is made up of the characters for “man” and “dog”) unable to shoot one of the Little Red Riding Hood activist girls who transport satchel-charges to the rioters.

Oshii’s original script employed the Red Riding Hood analogy throughout, retelling the story sympathetically from the wolf’s point of view. Elements of this remain in carefully composed shots of Fuse beneath a full moon, and a meeting-place in front of the wolf-pack display at the museum. Fuse himself has a lupine cast to his features, and, in the finale, the fairy tale’s use of disguises as bluff and counterbluff assumes Perfect Blue proportions—within the government, the paramilitary, the elite brigade, and, ultimately, the group that masterminds the whole affair.

Director Okiura, however, does not use the lupine imagery as much as Oshii intended, opting instead for a doomed romance between the softness of the impressionable girl Kei and the impenetrable steel of Fuse’s armor. His night-sights are literal rose-tinted glasses through which everything is reduced to straightforward good and evil. In his armor, he can fight the rebels without a thought; out of it, he is a whirl of contradictions. Unfortunately, so is the script, which presents an alternate Japan of the late 1950s, but like Hellhounds and The Red Spectacles before it, fails to explain why. Is it a Japan that was not economically rejuvenated by the Korean War? Or simply a Japan with a few more riots? What do the rioters and the wolf-brigade vigilantes want? What is the mysterious Sect fighting for? Advanced technologies like night-sights and tracers jostle with 1940s gear like Volkswagens and German antitank guns, but why? Jin-roh was premiered abroad long before its Japanese release in early 2000, possibly to drum up “foreign interest” among audiences who would assume that their failure to comprehend the backstory was a cultural problem and not simply lazy plotting—an issue that could be said to haunt the same studio’s later Blood. The end result is a skillfully animated but aimless film, with a desperate opening voice-over that tries to explain the foundation of the Third Force, in a failed attempt to convince that this is anything more than a Cold War thriller with a respray. LV

Johnny Chuck

1973. jpn: Yamanezumi Rocky Chuck. aka: Rocky Chuck the Woodchuck; Chuck the Beaver. TV series. dir: Tadamichi Koga, Seiji Endo. scr: Keiji Kubota, Takako Omomori, Hikaru Mori, Hiroshi Yamanaka, Hiroshi Saito. des: Nobuhiro Okaseko. ani: Nobuhiro Oka-seko, Toshio Hirata, Yasuji Mori. mus: Morihisa Yamamoto, Seiichiro Uno. prd: Zuiyo, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 52 eps.

Rocky the adventurous woodchuck is separated from his family and wanders the forests meeting many different animals, including Polly, another woodchuck, Peter Cottontail the rabbit, and the avuncular jaybird Sammy. Based on the output of the prolific Thornton W. Burgess (1874–1965), who wrote a syndicated Bedtime Story newspaper column for daily newspapers and was said to have penned 15,000 stories in his lifetime. Many of these involved the adventures of forest animals such as Chatterer the Red Squirrel, Danny the Meadow Mouse, Grandfather Frog, Reddy Fox, and Buster Bear, though it is his ninth book, The Adventures of Johnny Chuck (1913), that was used as a framing device for these anime adaptations. Compare to Seton’s Animal Tales.

Johnny Cypher in Dimension Zero *

1968. TV series. dir: Joe Oriolo. scr: N/C. des: N/C. ani: Tadakatsu Yoshida, Akinori Kubo, Kaori Izumiguchi, Isao Kumada, Fumio Ikeno, Akira Maeda, Takashi Aoki, Kenichi Sugiura, Akira Iino, Jiro Tsuno, Masaharu Endo. mus: N/C. prd: Warner, Seven Arts, Terebi Doga, Children’s Corner. 5 mins. x 138 eps.

Square-jawed superagent Johnny can travel through inner space, Dimension Zero, and uses his superpowers to combat evil all over the universe. He is helped by the beautiful blonde Zena and tiny alien Rhom from the Black Star. An early Japanse-American coproduction by former Disney animator Joe Oriolo for Warner/Seven—a company formed by the merging of Seven Arts production after its merger with Warner Bros. Always intended for screening in both markets, Johnny Cypher appeared in short segments six nights a week for 23 weeks in Japan, and in various combinations and compilations in the U.S. and Australia.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures *

1993. jpn: Jojo no Kimyo na Boken. Video. dir: Hiroyuki Kitakubo. scr: Hiroyuki Kitakubo. des: Junichi Haneyama. ani: Junichi Haneyama. mus: Marco D’Ambrosio. prd: APPP. 40 mins. x 6 eps., 40 mins. x 7 eps. (series 2).

Joseph Joestar and his Japanese grandson, Jotaro, fight an ongoing blood feud against Dio Brando, an immortal vampire who caused the death of their ancestor Jonathan. Using the magical powers of the Stand, a deck of tarot cards that bestows psychic attributes on the possessor of each card, the Joestar clan and Brando’s minions face off in a violent battle that plays like Fist of the North Star at its most surreal.

With its warring secret elites and magical trumps, Jojo owes a considerable debt to Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber (1972), particularly considering the “immortal” undertones of its hero. There are several Jojos stretching from the 19th to the 21st century—a more correct translation of the title might be to put the apostrophe after the “s.” Baoh–creator Hirohiko Araki’s 1987 manga in Shonen Jump begins in the 1880s, when an Aztec death mask causes trouble for all who come into contact with it. Archaeologist Jonathan Joestar begins a vendetta against Dio, who tries to steal his inheritance and kills his dog. Dio eventually dons the mask and becomes a vampire, causing Jonathan’s death as his family flees for the U.S. The story jumps to New York in the 1930s, where Jonathan’s descendant Joseph continues the battle through the Second World War, before the story moves into the 1980s with Jotaro Kujo, Joseph’s half-Japanese grandson. The anime version deals primarily with the 1980s incarnation, as he and Joseph fight Dio, while he tries to heal his terrible wounds (his disembodied head has been sewn onto the body of Jonathan Joestar) and activate his ultimate trump card—the ability to stop time.

Following the series, the manga moved into the 1990s with Joseph’s illegitimate Japanese son, Josuke Higashikata, then the 21st century with the Italian Giorno Giovanna, who, though officially the son of Dio, had been sired using the genitals of Jonathan and is hence the uncle of Joseph. The most recent member of the family to take the Jojo mantle is Jolyne Kujo, Jotaro’s daughter, who uses her powers to escape from a Florida prison.

Gripping despite low-grade animation, the 1993 Jojo series was overlooked during the anime boom of the 1990s reputedly because of a prohibitively high asking price for the rights. The original Jojo remained unreleased in English for a decade, perhaps because the anime was always intended to sell the 87-plus-volume manga, and one could not be sold without the other.  Another possibility is that the license had been considered by U.S. companies but turned down because of the surreal in-jokery of the characters’ names—in the style of Bastard, the series is full of musical references, including psychic warriors Mariah [Carey], [Bette] Midler, [Ronnie James] Dio, Cream, the psychic dog Iggy [Pop], and even the titular character himself (“Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner”), who hails from the Beatles song “Get Back.”

In the wake of a Capcom computer game released in the U.S. as Jojo’s Venture (1998), the series began to reach the American market, released by the original production company, although episodes were reordered to make the chronology easier for viewers to comprehend if they had not seen the manga. This also handily ensured that the American release “began” with much more modern episodes dating from the year 2000 instead of the 1993 chapters. V

Joker Marginal City

1992. Video. dir: Osamu Yamazaki. scr: Chuichi Watanabe, Hiroyuki Onuma. des: Chuichi Iguchi. ani: Takako Sato, Takaaki Ishiyama. mus: N/C. prd: Studio Zyn. 45 mins.

Jokers are genetically engineered beings who can switch sex at will, among other, more powerful psychic abilities. A young man escapes from a secret research facility and goes on the run. He is befriended by a reporter, who then has to call on the help of other Jokers to keep the boy safe from his pursuer—a wanted killer known only as the Heartless Assassin. This stylish, well-paced science-fiction video plays with the notions of gender and genetic tinkering, combining the themes of Baghi with images from the pretty-boy subgenre of gay anime such as Fake. Based on the manga in Wings magazine by Archa Lyra–creator Katsumi Michihara. N

Josephina the Whale

1979. jpn: Kujira no Josephina. TV series. dir: Kazuyuki Hirokawa, Kazuo Yamazaki, Kazuo Tomizawa. scr: Hiroshi Yamamoto, Hirohisa Soda. des: Kazuo Tomizawa. ani: Satoshi Hirayama. mus: Hiroshi Kanodo. prd: Ashi Pro, Tokyo 12 Channel. 25 mins. x 22 eps.

Madrid schoolboy Sante Costas keeps a tiny whale in a bowl, invisible to everyone except him. Josephina takes him on many dreamlike adventures, but when Sante starts taking an interest in the outside world and gets to know his distant father, Josephina herself fades away like the dream she was. However, the final two episodes were unbroadcast in the show’s original run. Excerpts were shown in an extended version to rush the plot to a conclusion, but viewers had to wait for repeats in syndication to watch the friends’ final farewell.

Journey through Fairyland, A *

1985. jpn: Yosei Florence. aka: Florence the Fairy. Movie. dir: Masami Hata, Kazuyuki Hirokawa. scr: Tamanobu Takamasa. des: Sadao Miyamoto, Noma Sabear. ani: Sadao Miyamoto, Shigeru Yamamoto. mus: Naosumi Yamamoto (arranger). prd: Sanrio. 92 mins.

Michael, a struggling music student not unlike Gorsch the Cellist, loves flowers more than he loves music itself. Replacing a begonia in a broken pot, he is visited that night by Florence the flower fairy, who thanks him for his kindness. In this musical fantasy four years in the making, a depressed Michael, cut from the orchestra for the next concert, is whisked away to Flower World by Florence. Naosumi Yamamoto, a conductor with the Tokyo Philharmonic, selected 20 pieces of classical music, which were used in the film itself and, in an imitation of Disney’s Fantasia (1940), to inspire the surreal storyboards for the animators. Michael was played by Masaki Ichimura, a leading figure in Japan’s leading musical performance troupe, Theater Shiki. Released in the U.S. by Celebrity Home Entertainment.

Journey to the West *

1967. jpn: Saiyuki. aka: Xiyouji; Monkey; My Son Goku; Alakazam the Great; Spaceketeers; Paradise Raiders. Movie, video, TV series, TV special. dir: Gisaburo Sugii, Osamu Dezaki, Hideo Makino, Ryosuke Takahashi, Masami Hata. scr: Akihiko Kanno, Morihisa Yamamoto, Michio Sano, Michiaki Ichiwa. des: Osamu Tezuka, Gisaburo Sugii. ani: Shigeru Yamamoto. mus: Seiichiro Uno. prd: Tezuka Pro, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 39 eps. (1967).

Stone Monkey is born from a rock by the ocean. His boastful, irrepressible nature soon causes a stir on Earth as he makes himself king of all the monkeys. In search of the secret of immortality, he learns martial arts and magic from the Buddhist monk Subhuti, who renames him Sun Wu Kong (in Japanese, Son Goku), meaning “Awakened to Emptiness.” Back on his mountain, he finds that demons have taken over his cave, but the skills he has learned from Subhuti enable him to throw them out. The Demon King’s brothers trick him into sneaking into the Dragon King’s palace and stealing a famous weapon, a miraculous iron staff that can change size on command. Sun Wu Kong is brought before the Jade Emperor for punishment. Wu Kong eats the Peaches of Immortality and is chased from Heaven, only to lose a bet with Buddha. Immured beneath a mountain for 500 years, he is saved by the Buddhist Priest Xuanzang (aka Tripitaka), who invites Wu Kong to accompany him on a pilgrimage to Gandhara in India, the modern Punjab. En route, the pair meet a pig-changeling called Pigze and Monk Sand, a river spirit who was once a Heavenly guard. After Wu Kong defeats them, they both join the pilgrimage.

Possibly inspired by travelers’ garbled tales of the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman, Wu Cheng-En’s 16th-century novel Xiyouji is the Chinese story most often animated in Japan, perhaps because its trickster hero is more appealing to the children’s audience than the dour generals of Great Conquest or the hotheaded revolutionaries of Suikoden. Nobuo Ofuji’s Early Anime Legend of Son Goku (1926) used cutout figures animated by stop-motion and was soon remade as the two-reel Son Goku (1928), directed by Takahiro Ishikawa. However, Wu Kong’s real push into the Japanese market came through foreign influences. Amid the many propaganda Wartime Anime, the Wan brothers’ Chinese cartoon Xiyouji (1941) was screened in Japan under the title Princess Iron Fan. Featuring one chapter from the legend, when Wu Kong and friends steal a magic fan from Mount Inferno, the film inspired the 16-year-old Osamu Tezuka to write his manga My Son Goku (1952), based on the same Mount Inferno episodes.

Japan’s animation business was in ruins after the war, though Taiji Yabushita’s New Adventures of Hanuman (1957) was a 14-minute PR exercise funded with American money. Hanuman was chosen over Wu Kong as a subject, presumably because the former Occupying Forces of Japan felt that a character whose main aim in life is revolt against authority was not the most suitable folk hero for the times; for similar reasons during the war, the Japanese censor had lopped 20 minutes off the running time of Princess Iron Fan.

Yabushita returned to the story in 1960 when he directed the anime remake of Tezuka’s My Son Goku. Retitled Journey to the West (Saiyuki) in Japan and Alakazam the Great in the U.S., Yabushita’s film featured many similarities to the Chinese film that inspired Tezuka. Not only did it keep to the Mount Inferno scenes, but it also played up the moment when Wu Kong, Pigze, and Monk Sand decide to cooperate for the first time and featured a final aerial battle when the characters’ feet are surrounded by airbrushed clouds. Substantial name changes were made for the U.S. version, which is set in “Majutsoland,” ruled by His Majesty King Amo (Buddha), his wife, Queen Amas, and his son, Prince Amat (Tripitaka). King Alakazam (Wu Kong) tricks Merlin the magician (the Emperor of Heaven) into revealing his secrets and fights past palace guardsman Hercules to confront King Amo, who imprisons Alakazam until he is released to protect Prince Amat’s quest to India. Joined by Sir Quigley (Pigze) and reformed cannibal Lulipopo (Sandy), Alakazam defeats King Gruesome (ruler of Mount Inferno) and his wife (Princess Iron Fan), is reunited with his beloved Dee Dee (a new creation in the anime), and all live happily ever after. The film’s Japanese origins were further occluded by a big-name voice cast including Dodie Stevens, Jonathan Winters, Arnold Stang, and Sterling Holloway, music by Les Baxter, and the voice of Frankie Avalon whenever Alakazam sang. Released in the summer of 1961, coincidentally alongside fellow postwar anime Magic Boy and Panda and the Magic Serpent, it was Alakazam’s commercial failure that led to the perception in the entertainment industry that Americans would not accept Japanese animation at all.

Back in Japan, the experience of making the film further inspired Tezuka to consider repeating the process for TV, indirectly giving birth to Astro Boy and the inevitable TV remake of the Wu Kong story, Goku’s Great Adventure (1967, Goku no Daiboken). The first three episodes of this series stay close to the legend, but it soon becomes a gag free-for-all filled with surrealistic and adult humor. Viewers were puzzled or irate; the PTA complained about the level of bad language and the series ended after 39 episodes instead of the intended 52.

Leiji Matsumoto’s Starzingers (1978) was a science-fiction version that moved the events into outer space; redubbed as Spaceketeers, it was shown in the U.S. alongside the other anime in the Force Five series. The next incarnation was the live-action series Monkey (1978, *DE), featuring scripts from Japanese Folk Tales–scenarist Isao Okishima. The music was from the group Godiego, who also provided the theme to Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999—their mournful song about Son Goku’s final destination became a hit in its own right, in turn inspiring the otherwise unrelated anime Gandhara. The live-action series became well known in the U.K. and Australia through the BBC dub, supervised by future Manga Entertainment voice director Michael Bakewell, but the period following it produced only one TV movie in Japan, Gisaburo Sugii and Hideo Takayashiki’s anime musical Son Goku Flies the Silk Road (1982), and a number of SF pastiches, including Dragon Ball (1986), the Doraemon movie Parallel Journey to the West (1988), and Buichi Terasawa’s Goku: Midnight Eye (1989). Even Hello Kitty–creators Sanrio got into the act with Raccoon Fun Journey to the West (1991, Pokopon no Yukai Saiyuki). At the close of the 20th century, the character reappeared in several new incarnations, including the very loose adaptation One Piece. Another series, Monkey Magic (1999), was released on video and then recommissioned for TV. Based on a computer game, the 13-episode series retells the early part of the legend relatively faithfully, with a hero now named Kongo, though the actual journey to the west only begins in the penultimate episode. The same year saw a new Saiyuki (Gensomaden Saiyuki, a pun on the characters for Chronicle of Total Fun, aka Paradise Raiders), a two-part video based on Kazuya Minekura’s G-Fantasy manga that also graduated to a full-fledged 50-episode TV series. The Minekura Saiyuki is set long after the evil demon Gyumao is buried by the god of Heaven. After magic and science are mixed by parties unknown, Gyumao is brought back, and the monk Genjo Sanzo, accompanied by the usual suspects in updated form, is charged with heading west to determine the cause of the trouble. The movie GS: Requiem appeared in 2001 from the same crew. In 2002 came made-for-video Saiyuki Interactive (Saiyuki: Kibou no Zaika); second series Saiyuki Reload appeared in 2003, directed by Tetsuya Endo with characters designed by Noriko Otake and music from Daisuke Ikeda; third series Saiyuki Gunlock (Saiyuki Reload Gunlock in Japan, just to confuse matters) appeared in 2004 from the same team.

The legend shows no sign of letting up in the 21st century, with a Tezuka Production movie remake of Boku no Son Goku (2003), along with modern re-versionings such as One Piece, one of the Milmo de Pon TV specials, and Asobot Chronicle Goku. The story is also referenced or parodied often in other serials, such as an episode of Love Hina in which the cast put on a play version of it at a resort. The Journey to the West story also returned to live-action television in 2006 with a season on Fuji TV.

Jubei-chan the Ninja Girl *

1999. jpn: Jubei-chan: Lovely Metai no Himitsu. aka: Jubei-chan: Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch. TV series. dir: Hiroaki Sakurai. scr: Akitaro Daichi. des: Mutthuri Moony, Takahiro Yoshimatsu. ani: Takahiro Yoshimatsu. mus: Toshio Masuda. prd: Madhouse, Bandai, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 13 eps. (TV1), 26 mins. x 13 eps. (TV2).

Seventeenth-century warrior hero Jubei fights his last battle, and with his dying breath entrusts his servant Koinosuke with the task of finding his true spiritual heir. Three hundred years later, the magically sustained Koinosuke finds a suitable candidate, the Japanese schoolgirl Jiyu “Jubei” Nanohana, who has the large breasts and pert buttocks that mark her as the Chosen One. Koinosuke must convince Jubei to don the heart-shaped eyepatch that will call forth her spiritual ancestor, but the insufferably perky girl (who has paroxysms of joy if she manages to fry an egg) is a reluctant recruit. Transferring to a new school populated by the descendants of samurai, she is adored by all, even Shiro Ryujoji, whose family, wronged by the original Jubei, insists on sending evil supply-teachers to challenge her to duels.

Jubei-chan must have looked great on paper—a samurai spoof from the same Madhouse studio that produced the kinetic Ninja Scroll, featuring school gags, unwelcome guests, historical references, mawkish romance, transformations, and fighting. In other words, reheated Ranma 1⁄2, further damaged by a succession of befuddling ethnocentric in-jokes for the benefit of Japanese parents who remember the 1950s samurai swashbucklers, which also inspired the same scenarist’s Lordless Retainer Tsukikage.

Without the presence of other Jubei stories in English (the aforementioned Ninja Scroll, its illegitimate sibling Ninja Resurrection, and the live-action movie Samurai Armageddon), there is little chance that this would have even been considered for translation. Its historical roots are too deeply buried; some, like the prissy Sachi Toyama’s relationship to Toyama no Kinsan (also parodied in Samurai Gold), would be difficult even for a Japanese audience. Others, like the simian Ozaru and Kozaru getting their names from Big Monkey and Little Monkey, could really do with explanatory sleeve notes, sadly lacking in the Bandai English-language release. The result is a nonsensical dub in which a mystified cast and crew hope that the audience will laugh at jokes that they plainly do not find funny themselves. Amid a cynical challenger-of-the-week formula, creator Akitaro Daichi has the temerity to write himself into the story as Jubei-chan’s narcoleptic father—somehow appropriate since he could well have written this in his sleep.

The sequel series, Revenge of the Siberian Yagyu (Siberia Yagyu no Gyakushu, 2004) finds Jiyu and her friends Maro and Satchin now in the ninth grade. A transfer student named Freesia Yagyu joins their class, and around the same time the Siberian Yagyu clan launch an all out attack to kill Jiyu, as a descendant of Jubei, the man who killed their ancestor Kitaretsusai Yagyu 300 years ago. But then Freesia claims to be the legitimate heir to the Yagyu line and demands that Jiyu hand over the Lovely Eyepatch. The true heir of the Lovely Eyepatch, the Siberian clan’s quest for revenge, the fraught relationship between Jiyu and her father Sai, and the role of Mikage, a former enemy turned Dad’s editor, are all resolved in a final battle between the two girls.

Judge *

1991. jpn: Yami no Shihosha Judge. aka: Magistrate of Darkness: Judge. Video. dir: Hiroshi Negishi. scr: Ka­tsuhiko Chiba. des: Shin Matsuo. ani: Shin Matsuo. mus: Toshiro Imaizumi. prd: Animate Film. 45 mins.

Hoichiro Oma is an everyday salaryman who is really Enma, the Judge of Hell (see Dororon Enma), meting out nightly justice for those who are wronged back in our world. His first case involves a ruthless executive who has committed murder on his route to the top—with ironic cruelty, Oma makes his punishment fit his crime. The second involves a conflict with Oma’s own boss back in the real world, who has hired a supernatural lawyer to get him off a murder charge. Faced with weasly tactics at the bench, Oma appeals to the Court of Ten Kings, presided over by the rulers of Hell. Short tales of the unexpected in a similar style to Pet Shop of Horrors, based on a manga by sometime Crusher Joe–artist Fujihiko Hosono.

Judo Story

1991. jpn: Judo Monogatari. Video. dir: Junichi Tokaibayashi. scr: Oki Ike. des: Junichi Tokaibayashi. ani: Junichi Tokaibayashi. mus: Goro Omi. prd: Nippon Animation. 50 mins. x 2 eps.

Mochi, a novice, decides to join the judo club when he begins high school. He must endure many trials before he is accepted—shaving his head, cleaning up after his elders, and enduring their bullying. Eventually, after much blood, sweat, and tears, his fellows select him as a team member for the local championships. Based on the 1985 Young Magazine manga by Makoto Kobayashi, creator of What’s Michael?

Julie the Wild Rose

1979. jpn: Nobara no Julie. TV series. dir: Keiji Hayakawa, Masami Kigurashi. scr: Akira Suga, Shina Matsuoka, Tomomi Mochizuki. des: Masami Abe. ani: Masami Abe. mus: Mitsuo Chahata (arranger). prd: Dax, Tokyo 12 Channel. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

Eleven-year-old Julie Braun lives in the lush green mountain pastures of Austria’s Southern Tyrol. Her parents are killed by Italian soldiers, and she is sent to Vienna to live with her relatives, the Clementes. She befriends cousins Johan and Tanya but has trouble adjusting to life with Uncle Karl and Aunt Klara. As Austria is plunged into World War I, Karl is fired from his job at a glass factory, and Julie’s new family is forced into a life of hardship.

A short-lived Heidi clone made with the assistance of the Austrian Tourist Board, though sources are unclear as to whether this was a full-fledged cooperation or merely the provision of a few holiday brochures. The music keeps the Austrian motif, selected from the works of Franz Schubert and Johann Strauss, who had their own anime appearance in Great Composers.

Juliet

1998. Video. dir: Tsukasa Tomii. scr: Masaru Yamamoto. des: Kazutoshi Kobayashi. ani: Akira Takeuchi. mus:
N/C. prd: Adobe Pictures. 30 mins.

In this adaptation of a minor work by Sakura Diaries–creator U-Jin, the pretty, young Reina enjoys the advances of her lusty stepbrother and a mysterious stranger. Sold to the Japanese as their one chance to hear Kae Araki, the baby-faced voice of Minnie-May in Gunsmith Cats and Rini (Chibi-Usa) in Sailor Moon, behaving in a more erotic manner than that to which her public was accustomed. N

Jumping *

1988. Video. dir: Osamu Tezuka, Eiichi Yamamoto, Taku Sugiyama, Shingo Matsuo, Takamitsu Mitsunori. scr: Osamu Tezuka. des: N/C. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Various. 100 mins.

A video compendium of several short films released in Japan to coincide with the Second Image Software Awards. The centerpiece is Tezuka’s Jumping, a five-minute 1984 short in which a character takes successively higher and higher leaps until he (or is it she?) eventually bounds across the ocean to the middle of a war zone, where an explosion blasts him/her down to Hell. From there, s/he is thrown back out to the beginning of the film, ready to start jumping again. This exercise in perspective is accompanied by another Tezuka short, Broken Down Film (1985, Onboro Film), a playfully postmodern joke showing a supposedly rare print of an old silent cartoon Western in which the condition of the film itself affects the action onscreen. The characters have trouble seeing because the film is so dirty, are confused by abrupt jumps in continuity due to missing footage, and even have to climb to the next frame when the projector jams—compare to Chuck Jones’s Duck Amuck (1951). These famous but rarely seen anime were accompanied by several other experimental shorts from other animators for an audience who lacked the resources to travel to the film festivals where they were usually only to be seen. Another experimental Tezuka film, the longer Legend of the Forests, was released on video the previous year. Conveniently lacking dialogue that requires translation, both Jumping and Broken Down Film have been screened at English-language film festivals and also on U.K. television.

Jungle Book, The *

1989. jpn: Jungle Book Shonen Mowgli. aka: Jungle Book Boy Mowgli. TV series. dir: Fumio Kurokawa, Shinji Takahashi, Akira Kiyomizu, Kazuya Miyazaki, Shigeru Yamazaki, Tatsuya Hirakawa. scr: Nobuyuki Fujimoto, Kenichi Yoshida, Saburo Sekiguchi, Asami Watanabe. des: Sadahiko Sakamaki. ani: Masashi Kojima, Sadahiko Sakamaki, Kazuya Hayashi. mus: Hideo Shimazu. prd: Nippon Animation, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 52 eps.

An explorer and his wife are killed in the jungle. Their baby son, Mowgli, is raised by wolves, and befriends Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther, who teach him the Laws of the Jungle. Rejected by local humans, who see him as a demon, Mowgli prefers to dwell in the forest, where he must outwit the evil tiger Shere Khan. Eventually, after conflict between the humans and the animals, Mowgli defeats Shere Khan and gets to meet the beautiful human girl he has worshipped from afar for so long, leaving behind his jungle friends as he returns to the world from which he came. An anime adaptation likely to remain dwarfed by the earlier Disney classic, this version updates Rudyard Kipling’s novel for the 20th century—including planes, for example, understandably absent from the original. Another old story of a human boy reared by animals was adapted as Ta-chan: King of the Jungle.

Jungle de IkoU *

1997. jpn: Jungle de Iko. aka: Let’s Go with Jungle; Let’s Get Jungly. Video. dir: Yuji Moriyama, Osamu Mikasa. scr: Jiro Takayama. des: Yuji Moriyama. ani: Yuji Moriyama. mus: N/C. prd: Studio Fantasia, Movic, King Records, J ProjectMus: Parome. 30 mins. x 3 eps.

Ten-year-old Natsumi’s father gives her a necklace from the ruins of the Myu­ginian jungle. Soon afterward, Natsumi dreams that a jungle god is teaching her a powerful ritual dance. Discovering that her father’s researchers have also awakened an ancient forest devil, Natsumi must deal with jungle spirits, gigantic whales, and armed fighter pilots. She performs the jungle dance and transforms into Mii, a large-breasted fertility goddess. A cynical combination of the jiggling bosoms of Plastic Little and the magical transformations of Creamy Mami, Jungle de Ikou comes complete with a childhood pal for Natsumi, who naturally develops a crush on Mii, as well as comic-relief devil-child Ongo and his fiancée, Rongo. Originally based on a segment of voice actress Megumi Hayashibara’s Boogie Woogie Night radio show, the series was memorably described by Manga Mania as a “Boogie Woogie Congo Ongo Bongo Jungle Bungle.”

Jungle Kurobe

1973. TV series. dir: Osamu Dezaki. scr: Yoshitake Suzuki, Toshiaki Matsushima, Yoshiaki Yoshida, Haruya Yamazaki, Chikara Matsumoto, Shinji Tahara, Noboru Shiroyama, Yu Yamamoto. des: Fujiko-Fujio. ani: Yasuo Kitahara, Sadayoshi Tominaga, Yoshiaki Kawajiri. mus: Goro Misawa. prd: Tokyo Movie Shinsha, NET (TV Asahi). 25 mins. x 61 eps.

Kurobe, the son of the chieftain of the Pilimy jungle tribe, rashly tries to catch what he believes to be an “iron bird,” and ends up dangling from what is actually an aeroplane until he drops into the garden of unsuspecting Japanese boy Shishio Sarari. Believing himself to be in debt to his “rescuer,” Kurobe insists on repaying him in the “jungle way,” which means hanging around in modern Tokyo and using his imperfect jungle magic to help his newfound friend. Further complications ensue with the arrival of Paopao the elephant, Kurobe’s brother Akabei, and Gakku the lion.

Clearly impressed with the enduring success of Doraemon, Tokyo Movie Shinsha decided to rip it off with this Tarzan–inspired pastiche, but rather nobly decided to commission Doraemon’s own creators, the Fujiko-Fujio team, to write the result. Compare to the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Dino Boy (1966), which reversed the positions by having a child of our own time fall out of a plane into a primitive lost valley.

Jungle Wars

1990. Video. dir: Yoshio Kuroda. scr: Mayumi Koyama, Akira Sakuma. des: Moriyasu Taniguchi, Takayuki Doi. ani: Moriyasu Taniguchi. mus: N/C. prd: Nippon Animation. 25 mins. x 2 eps.

An evil syndicate of hunters attacks a jungle village where animals and humans coexist peacefully. With his parents out of action and his way of life in jeopardy, the imaginatively named “Boy” swings through the creepers to save the day. Based on the game of the same name for the Nintendo Gameboy.

Junk Boy *

1987. aka: The Incredible Gyôkai [Industrial] Video. Video. dir: Katsuhisa Yamada. scr: Tatsuhiko Urahata, Hiroyuki Fukushima. des: Hiroshi Hamazaki. ani: Hiroshi Hamasaki. mus: Takashi Kudo. prd: Madhouse. 44 mins.

A charmless “comedy” in which sex-crazed Ryohei Yamazaki gets a job at the seedy Potato Boy magazine, chiefly because his uncontrollable erection allows the staff to evaluate nude photographs before going to press. He is sent to assist at a fading starlet’s photo shoot, where he talks her into baring all by confessing that he spent many happy hours masturbating over pictures of her younger self. Sinking to new depths, he volunteers to conduct an “investigative report” at a local brothel, to which his superiors agree somewhat illogically, since they already have an undercover reporter, the pretty Aki, working there as one of the girls. Ryohei is rebuffed by Aki, and he takes it as a personal challenge that she has never had an orgasm. The way to any woman’s heart, it would appear, is to throw on a tuxedo, take her on a bicycle ride through the red-light district, put her into a stolen ballgown, and then get her drunk on your office rooftop. Ryohei then leaves the sexually sated Aki behind so he can file a new story with the treacly moral message of “treating women right.” He almost impresses his tough female editor with this change of heart, until she finds him snuffling through her underwear drawer and realizes that he’s still a jerk. The authors wonder why she ever doubted it.

Based on a 1985 manga in Manga Action magazine by Yasuyuki Kunitomo, JB would like to think it is a media satire, and occasionally attempts to balance its priapic hero’s infantile nature by letting a female character slap him. But since this is hardly a redeeming feature, it also boasts a brief fake commercial interlude made by Ninja Scroll–director Yoshiaki Kawajiri, as well as a bizarre moment when Ryohei attempts to mate with a plastic effigy of fast-food mascot Colonel Sanders. LN

Junkers Come Here

1994. jpn: Junkers Come Here: Memories of You. Movie. dir: Junichi Sato. scr: Naoto Kine, Ai Morinaga. des: Kazuo Komatsu­bara, Shinya Ohira. ani: Keiichi Sato, Mahiro Maeda. mus: N/C. prd: Gaga, Triangle Staff. 103 mins. Sixth-grader Hiromi has a relatively carefree life; with her rich professional parents often out of the house, she is often left in the care of the housekeeper. She also has a friend in Keisuke, the college boy who rents a room at the house, and sometimes supplements his income by tutoring her in school subjects. Her best friend is her dog Junkers, a talking animal in the style of I Am a Cat, who has a comedic obsession with bad samurai dramas, and who attempts to offer Hiromi advice on life, although he is often as unsure about things as she is. Based on two books by former pop guitarist Naoto Kine (see Carol), JCH is a gentle slice-of-life story employing similar misdirectional techniques to the works of Hayao Miyazaki, presenting magical distractions from the actual plot, which is one of a marriage breakup and its potential effects on the heroine. Originally screened in segments as part of the TV Asahi show Kuni Sanchi Witches, the anime was given a theatrical showing the following year.

Jura Tripper

1995. jpn: Kyoryu Boken Ki Jura Tripper. aka: Dinosaur Chronicle Jura Tripper. TV series. dir: Kunihiko Yuyama, Yoshitaka Fujimoto, Naohito Takahashi, Shigeru Omachi, Kunihisa Sugi­shima. scr: Isamu Shizutani, Yasushi Hirano, Sukehiro Tomita, Katsuyoshi Yutabe. des: Kenichi Chikanaga, Mari Tomonaga. ani: Seiji Kikuchi, Kenichi Chikanaga. mus: Toshiyuki Omori. prd: NAS, Ashi Pro, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 39 eps.

In a conflation of Adrift in the Pacific and Jurassic Park (1993), fifteen boys and girls are thrown into an alternate world where dinosaurs and humans live alongside each other. Later episodes developed a distant similarity to El Hazard, with the adventurers spending more time flirting than fighting, as they pick their way across a desert on the run from a newly awakened golem monster.

Just Another Family

1976. jpn: Hoka Hoka Kazoku. TV series. scr: Noboru Shiroyama, Satoshi Murayama. des: Katsutoshi Kobayashi. ani: Kazutaka Kadota, Isao Kaneko. mus: Kunio Miyauchi. prd: Eiken, Fuji TV. 5 mins. x 1428 eps.

The Yamano family, including wise granny Yone, know-it-all father Yutaka, caring mother Sachiko, and children Makoto and Midori, learn about life in modern Japan, in a live-action show that often switches to simple animation to illustrate key points or technical information. Conceived in the style of Kotowaza House or Outside the Law as a series of public information films sponsored by the office of the Japanese Prime Minister, the show utilized extensive input from former crewmembers of the long-running Sazae-san series. The show ran until March 1982—compare to Bottle Fairy, which tries something similar with a radically shorter running time.

Justice

1991. jpn: Jingi. aka: Humanity and Justice. Video. dir: Kiyoshi Murayama. scr: Hideo Nanba. des: Toshi Kawamura. ani: Katsushi Matsumoto. mus: N/C. prd: JC Staff. 50 mins. x 2 eps.

A kindhearted gangster tries to live by rules of kindness and justice even though he is on the wrong side of the law. When he meets a former college left-winger who has also become a street punk, the two form an unlikely team, bringing their own peculiar code of ethics to the underworld. Based on the 1988 manga in Young Champion magazine, this is widely regarded as the masterwork of Ayumi Tachihara, who also created For Real. NV

Justy

1985. jpn: Cosmopolice Justy. Video. dir: Osamu Uemura. scr: Hiroyuki Hoshiyama. des: Tsugo Okazaki. ani: Kazuya Iwata. mus: Hiroya Watanabe. prd: Studio Pierrot. 44 mins.

Justy Kaizard is a Cosmo Police Hunter—his job is to track down rogue psychics and exterminate them before they can harm others. He and his partner, Borba Len, track down the criminal psychic Magnamam Vega, and Justy kills him in front of his 6-year-old daughter, Asteris. The distraught child swears that she would kill Justy herself if she were bigger, and her own psychic powers, triggered by the tragedy, transform her into a 16-year-old, though the shock leaves her with amnesia. Growing up at Cosmo Police headquarters under the care of Justy’s friend Jilna Star, she treats him as an adored big brother. But then the Crimina Esper, a group of malicious psychics, decide to dispose of Justy by awakening her memory and her hatred of the man who killed her father. Based on the 1981 manga by Tsugo Okazaki serialized in Shonen Sunday magazine, Justy was one of the more popular of the 1980s videos in early anime fandom, chiefly because of the short running time and easy-to-follow plot that did not really require subtitles. However, it was not brought to the U.S. as one might have expected, reputedly because the rights were prohibitively expensive.

JVC

Japan Victor Company (i.e., Nippon Victor locally) was founded in 1927 as a subsidiary of the American company Victor Records. The company was a pioneer in radio and television development, but cut off from its parent company during World War II. By 1953, ownership had been transferred to Matsushita. The company is also credited with the invention of the VHS cassette, a major catalyst in the rise of adult-oriented anime in the 1980s and beyond. Subsidiaries include Victor Entertainment (Japan), a major distributor of anime-related soundtracks and itself the owner of the Victor Entertainment Animation Network.