Yabuki, Kimio
1934– . Born in Fukushima Prefecture, Yabuki graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1958 and found work with Toei’s Kyoto studios as an assistant director in live-action. Transferring to Toei Animation in 1962, his anime directorial debut was on Ken the Wolf Boy, and his breakthrough work was on Puss in Boots. He moved to Toei’s advertising division in 1970, officially leaving anime behind, although he subsequently went freelance in 1973, returning to the anime world to work on such titles as Calimero.
Yabushita, Taiji
1903–1986. Born in Osaka, Yabushita graduated from the photography department of Tokyo School of Arts (now Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) in 1925. He worked briefly for Shochiku before leaving to make films for Monbusho, the Ministry of Education. Joining Nippon Doga, he made A Baby Rabbit’s Tale (1952, Ko-usagi Monogatari) and Kappa Kawataro (1955). With Nippon Doga’s sale to Toei, Yabushita became the director of production for Toei Animation. After the 13-minute Lost Kitten (1957, Koneko no Rakugaki), he oversaw the flowering of Toei’s animated features, including Panda and the Magic Serpent (1958), Magic Boy (1959), and Journey to the West (1960).
Yadamon
1992. TV series. dir: Kiyoshi Harada, Masaya Mizutani, Yoshiko Sasaki, Koichi Takada. scr: Minami Okii. des: SUEZEN. ani: Masahiko Murata, Hideaki Sakamoto, Kenichi Shimizu. mus: Koji Makaino. prd: Group Tac, NHK. 8 mins. x 170 eps.
Yadamon is a little witch who lives with Jan and his parents in the near future. Maria, Jan’s mother, is a biologist and spends her time performing experiments. Yadamon is an inquisitive girl, and, like most magical friends (see Doraemon), she frequently gets Jan into trouble. Like all good magical girls, she has a cute little magical pet, Taimon, who can not only talk but also stop time for a short while.
The series aired every weekday; the 21-week first run accounted for 110 episodes. Starting out on NHK, the second series aired on NHK’s Educational Channel in 1993. For the linguistically curious, iya-damon is a cute way for little girls to say “no,” which might be useful for the heroine of Yoiko.
Yadate, Hajime
Also sometimes Hajime Yatate. A house pseudonym employed by Sunrise in order to assign some or all of the intellectual property in a new concept to the studio itself. Yadate’s name appears on most of the company’s giant robot shows.
Yagami’s Family Troubles
1990. jpn: Yagami-kun no Katei no Jijo. aka: Yagami’s Family Circumstances; Affairs at the House of Yagami. Video. dir: Shinya Sadamitsu. scr: N/C. des: Kei Kusunoki, Kazuya Yokose. ani: Kazuya Yokose. mus: Ichiro Nitta. prd: IG Tatsunoko, Kitty Film. 30 mins. x 3 eps., 55 mins.
Yagami’s mother looks as if she’s just 16 and is as cute as anything; despite finding this embarrassing, he can’t help lusting after her in a combination of Oedipus and Lolita complexes! All his classmates, and his teacher, and the local delinquent, are in love with his mother; as well as fighting each other over who loves her most, they get together to plot ways of getting rid of their common enemy, Yagami’s father. Dad has problems of his own as the love object of a secretary in his office, but once his coworker discovers he has such a pretty “young” wife, she turns her affections instead to Yagami. No wonder the poor boy’s confused. Things could hardly get worse when a new student who looks almost exactly like Yagami’s mother joins his class—and it’s a boy. The 1986 Shonen Sunday manga by Ogre Slayer–creator Kei Kusunoki pushed the envelope of family values, but the spin-off video is a low-budget effort aimed at exploiting the manga fan base. The series was repackaged into an edited one-shot Decisions (Yorinuki) the same year.
Yaiba
1993. jpn: Kenyu Densetsu Yaiba. aka: Legend of Brave Swordsman Yaiba. TV series. dir: Kunihiko Yuyama, Norihiko Sudo, Sadao Suzuki, Hiroshi Yoshida, Osamu Sekita, Akitaro Daichi, Kazuya Murata, Yasuhiro Matsumura, Eiichi Sato. scr: Kenji Terada, Shikichi Ohashi, Isao Shizuoka. des: Tokuhiro Matsubara, Katsuyoshi Kanemura. ani: Tokuhiro Matsubara, Tadashi Hirota, Kazuto Nakazawa. mus: Kohei Tanaka. prd: Pastel, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 52 eps.
Leaving the distant isle where he and his father studied samurai skills, Yaiba Kurogane comes home with his animal friends—a tiger and a vulture. He stays with his father’s old adversary, Raizo, and Raizo’s cute daughter, Sayaka, enrolling in her high school. Here he has to face school kendo champion Takeshi Onimaru, possessor of a demonic sword. Yaiba goes into the mountains to learn from ancient sword master Musashi (see Young Miyamoto Musashi) and gets not just new skills but also a magic sword of his own, the legendary Sword of the Thunder God. All he has to do is stay true to the samurai spirit within him and collect seven magic spheres to enhance his sword’s power, and then he can vanquish all evil. But he and Takeshi aren’t the only people with conquest in mind. Princess Moon, the Thunder God’s old adversary, is out to conquer Earth, and Yaiba and Takeshi must forget their quarrel and unite to save the world. Adapted from the first successful manga by Conan the Boy Detective–creator Gosho Aoyama, Yaiba has many similarities with its smarter younger brother, mixing action, drama, and humor.
Yamaga, Hiroyuki
1962– . Born in Niigata Prefecture, Yamaga was an obsessive fan whose love of film found new directions at Osaka University of Arts. After making a live-action wine commercial, he made the inaugural movie for the 1981 Daicon III SF convention with fellow students Hideaki Anno and Takami Akai. Yamaga was only 24 years old when work began on Wings of Honneamise (1987), which he was to direct, before becoming the president of the Gainax animation company formed in expectation of profits. Despite acclaimed directorial work on Gunbuster (1988), Yamaga soon disappeared behind the scenes as Gainax involved itself in computer games. He was technically “president-at-large” for 14 years, only returning actively to direction with Mahoromatic (2001).
Yamamoto, Eiichi
1939– . Born in Kyoto Prefecture, he attended several schools in different parts of Japan before leaving high school to work at a pharmaceutical company. He quit in 1958 to pursue an animation career, joining Mushi Production in 1961, and soon gaining directorial credits on Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. He also directed Tragedy of Belladonna (1973) before leaving the troubled Mushi to work on Star Blazers. Yamamoto left anime entirely in the late 1970s to work on the NTV series Wonderful World Travel, in the course of which he spent much time filming abroad. He returned to anime with Oshin (1984) and a number of video works, including The Sensualist, which he scripted. He also worked in an advisory capacity on Urotsukidoji, and published an account of his days at Mushi.
Yamamoto, Sanae
1898–1981. Pseudonym of Zenjiro Yamamoto. Born in Chiba Prefecture, he began working part-time for Seitaro Kitayama’s animation company Kitayama Eiga, while still a student of Japanese art. After the Great Kanto Earthquake and Kitayama’s subsequent relocation to Osaka, Yamamoto stayed in Tokyo to found Yamamoto Manga Productions. His Mountain Where Old Women Are Abandoned (1923, Obasuteyama) was the earliest anime extant until the discovery of Seitaro Kitayama’s Taro the Guardsman (1918)—the Naoki Matsumoto discovery of 2005 has yet to be satisfactorily dated. He labored for some time on Jar (not dated, Tsubo), an instructional film for Monbusho, the Ministry of Education, and moved into political advertisements and propaganda in the 1930s. His most notable propaganda work was Defeat of the Spies (1942, Spy Gekimetsu). Post–World War II, he assembled surviving animators in the Tokyo area to form Nippon Doga, a company eventually merged into Toei to form Toei Animation. Yamamoto consequently played an executive role in Japan’s early features Panda and the Magic Serpent, Magic Boy, and Alakazam the Great (see Journey to the West).
yamamoto yohko *
1995. jpn: Sore Yuke! Uchu Senkan Yamamoto Yoko. aka: Go! Space Cruiser Yoko Yamamoto, Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko. Video. dir: Akiyuki Shinbo. scr: Yuji Kawahara, Mayori Sekijima, Masashi Kubota. des: Kashiro Akaishi, Kazuto Nakazawa (v) Akio Watanabe (TV). ani: Hiroyuki Morinobu. mus: N/C. prd: JC Staff, Tee-Up, TV Osaka. 30 mins. x 7 eps. (v), 25 mins. x 26 eps. (TV).
In a.d. 2990, the human race has been split into two spacefaring empires, Terra and Ness. With Terra on a losing streak in the ritualized “war games,” scientist Rosen creates a time machine, sending emissaries back to 20th-century Earth to recruit new warriors by testing them with familiar-looking arcade games. He finds schoolgirl Yoko and convinces her to time-travel after school to the battlefront, where she and several other girls from her school must adapt their arcade game skills to real combat. This is yet another spin on The Last Starfighter (see also Battle Athletes), with video-game style duels in advanced machines that look like a cross between a Formula One racing car and a goldfish. The alleged “girl power” is presented, in the tradition of Gunbuster, for the titillation of a male audience, but there are a few fun visual tricks, like cockpits that disappear in battle, leaving the pilot apparently floating in space. Based on a novel by Taku Atsushi, also adapted as an audio drama. Episode four is renumbered “episode zero,” and reintroduces the characters for the second “season.” This episode “zero” was never released in the U.S. YY returned as a TV series in 1999.
Yamamura, Koji
1964– . Born in Aichi Prefecture, he began a career making corporate videos after graduating from university in 1987. He had already made several short cartoons in his student days and moonlighted on several anime productions, including a stint as a character designer on the NHK educational program Playing in English (Eigo de Asobo). He also worked as an illustrator on a very simple show designed to teach Japan’s kana syllabary to very young viewers. He made his name, however, with several 8mm short films, one of which, Mount Head, was nominated for a Best Short Animation Oscar. Yamamura’s accolade would have made him one of the most famous figures in the anime world, were it not for Spirited Away’s Oscar win for Best Feature Animation the same year, news of which largely swamped his own quiet achievement.
Yamato Takeru
1994. jpn: Yamato Takeru. TV series. dir: Hideharu Iuchi, Shinichi Masaki, Nobuhiro Kondo, Jiro Saito, Takeshi Yoshimoto. scr: Masaharu Amiya, Kenichi Araki. des: Koichi Ohata. ani: Takahiro Kishida, Moriyasu Taniguchi, Akira Kasahara. mus: Takahiro Kishida. prd: Nippon Animation, TBS. 25 mins. x 39 eps.
On planet Yamato, a twin birth is a bad omen for the throne, so when two brothers are born to the queen, one of them must be killed. But Takeru is saved through the intervention of the gods and survives to return and claim the throne (and the beautiful princess) as fate has decreed. For this sci-fi clash of robotic armor indistinguishable from “magic,” creator Masami Yuki took his inspiration from one of Japan’s oldest stories. The original Yamato Takeru’s epic expedition was recorded in two of Japan’s oldest historical texts, the Kojiki (a.d. 712) and Nihon Shoki (a.d. 720), and he and Princess Ototachibana are jointly credited as founders of many real shrines. Ancient sources sometimes embroider the bare cloth of supposed history—Takeru is alleged to have defeated Kumaso warriors by disguising himself as a woman and getting them drunk, and he was to have saved the plains from Ainu arsonists by cutting away the burning brush with his sword. The weapon, known thenceforth as Kusanagi (“Grass-Cutter”), became one of the Imperial Treasures of Japan, lending its name to several anime protagonists, most notably Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell.
The final two episodes were not broadcast but released on video in 1997. The beginning of a fourth season that never materialized, they are set three years after the original, with Takeru now 16 years old, having to defend his homeworld from samurai-style robot invaders from planet Izumo in a “flying magic fortress.” See also Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon and the live-action version of the legend released in the West as Orochi the Eight-Headed Dragon.
Yamazaki, Kazuo
1949– . Born in Tokyo, Yamazaki dropped out of high school to work in anime, gaining credits on shows for Madhouse, Sunrise, and Studio Deen, among others. His directorial debut came with an episode of the live/animation hybrid show Born Free in 1976. Later works have included the remake of Tiger Mask, Urusei Yatsura, and Maison Ikkoku. More recent years have seen him move away from directing into storyboarding on shows such as Argento Soma.
Yamazaki King of School
1997. jpn: Gakko O Yamazaki. aka: School King Yamazaki. TV series. dir: Tsuneo Tominaga. scr: Kazumi Koide, Taku Ichikawa. des: Hiroshi Ikeda. ani: Shinichi Suzuki. mus: N/C. prd: Bandai, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 33 eps.
A bratty six-year-old declares himself the “King of School.” In a rip-off of the earlier Crayon Shin-chan, this adaptation of Manabu Kashimoto’s manga from Corocoro Comic features kleptomania, disobedience, and fighting.
Yamazaki, Osamu
1962– . Born in Kumamoto Prefecture, Yamazaki began his animation career at Kaname Productions in 1981, before going freelance in 1985, just in time to cash in on the boom in production caused by the arrival of video. After a directorial debut on Yotoden (1987), he also worked as director on Takegami (1990) and Tokyo Revelation (1995).
Yanbo, Ninbo and Tonbo
1995. jpn: Yanbo Ninbo Tonbo. TV series. dir: Seitaro Hara, Tatsuo Okazaki, Shigeo Koshi, Mamoru Kobe. scr: Satoshi Nakamura. des: Takumi Izawa. ani: Katsumi Hashimoto, Hiroshi Kagawa, Kazuhiko Udagawa. mus: N/C. prd: Image K, NHK2. 25 mins. x 39 eps.
An old 1950s NHK radio drama featuring the three titular monkey brothers, this anime updates the story for the ’90s audience of the original broadcasters’ new satellite channel. The brothers try some crow soup, start a fire on the mountain, and race the king of the Pig People—like kids do.
Yanki: Ride Like the Wind
1989. jpn: Yanki Reppu Tai. aka: Yanki Wind Gang. Video. dir: Tetsuro Imazawa. scr: Ryunosuke Ono, Yasushi Ishikura. des: Masahide Hashimoto. ani: Hideki Kakinuma. mus: Tetsuro Kashibuchi. prd: Toei. 50 mins. x 6 eps.
Impossibly tough and hairsprayed biker boys and girls fight turf wars in the streets, with much revving of motors and “you killed my buddy, prepare to die” dialogue. This lackluster latecomer to the genre typified by Bomber Bikers of Shonan was based on the Shonen Magazine manga by Masahide Hashimoto, whose hero was so tough that he transferred schools 20 times. Only a Japanese tough guy would continue to go at all! LV
Yasuhiko, Yoshikazu
1947– . Born in Hokkaido, he dropped out of Hirosaki University midway through a degree in Western history in order to go to Tokyo and become an animator at Mushi Production. His early anime work included stints on Wandering Sun and the second series of Moomins. With the demise of Mushi Pro, he was one of the early defectors to what would become Sunrise, ideally placing him to work as a director and character designer on that studio’s output, most notably as a defining character designer in the Gundam and Dirty Pair series. His other works in anime include Crusher Joe and Giant Gorg, and he has also contributed to anime adaptations of his manga work, including Arion and Venus Wars. Also known as “YAS,” the name with which he signs his artwork.
Yasuji’s Pornorama
1971. jpn: Yasuji no Pornorama Yachimae! aka: Yasuji’s Pornorama: How About That! Movie. dir: Takamitsu Mitsunori. scr: Yoshiaki Yoshida. des: Yasuji Tanioka. ani: Michiru Suzuki. mus: Kiyoshi Hashijo. prd: TV Tokyo. 101 mins.
Three incidents in the life of Busuo (“Fatso”), the lecherous hero of Yasuji Tanioka’s anarchic 1970 manga Yasuji’s Course on Being an Utter Brat (Yasuji no Metameta Gaki Michi Koza). Though produced by TV Tokyo, these cartoon erotica were “too hot for television” and screened instead in theaters. With the failure of Cleopatra: Queen of Sex the previous year, anime pornography would disappear for a generation after this, until straight-to-video releases made Lolita Anime possible.
YAT Budget! Space Tours
1996. jpn: YAT Anshin! Uchu Ryoko. TV series. dir: Hitoshi Nanba, Takuya Sato, Tsuneo Kobayashi, Kazuhiro Sasaki. scr: Keiko Hagiwara, Ryo Motohira, Mineo Hayashi, Yutaka Hirata. des: Hiroka Kudo. ani: Hiroka Kudo. mus: Kenji Kawai. prd: Tac, NHKEP. 25 mins. x 75 eps.
The Yamamoto Anshin Travel Company’s latest luxury space tour hits an unexpected setback when the ship warps into an unknown part of space, ruled by a race of fishlike humanoids called the Gannon, who don’t like their visitors. “Luxury” is a misnomer; the ship is a pile of junk, the captain is fat and grumpy, and, with the exception of the stewardess—his daughter Katsura—and the boy who’s crazy about her, most of the crew are robots or aliens, and all of them are weird. Beset by pretty shark-boys out for their blood, with restless passengers, and the normally quiet Katsura ready to bash someone with her monkey wrench, how will our gang of misfits get their passengers home? To make matters worse, they’ve got a stowaway—squirrel-girl Marron, who can turn herself into a little pink ball but doesn’t seem to have many other useful survival skills. This cute, colorful slapstick SF show, created by Shinji Nishikawa, was a departure for NHK’s educational division. Something the anime industry itself should have learned from was a stroboscopic sequence in the final episode, which produced fainting and convulsions in some viewers in March 1997. Nine months later, a similar sequence in Pokémon would make international headlines.
Yawara! *
1989. jpn: Yawara! The Gentle Judo Girl. aka: A Fashionable Judo Girl. TV series, movie, TV special. dir: Hiroko Tokita, Katsuhisa Yamada, Akio Sakai, Junichi Sakata. scr: Toshiki Inoue, Yoshiyuki Suga. des: Yoshinori Kanemori. ani: Kunihiko Sakurai, Hirotsugu Yamazaki. mus: Eiji Mori. prd: Kitty Film, Yomiuri TV. 25 mins. x 124 eps. (TV), 60 mins. (m), 90 mins. (TVm).
Teenage judo genius Yawara Inokuma (who shares the surname of the gold medalist from the 1960 Tokyo Olympics) wants to get to the Barcelona Olympics and fulfill her grandfather Jigoro’s dream of making her a judo champion under his coaching. But she also wants a life of her own outside of training schedules and competitions—her best friend, the plain Fujiko, also strives hard to be a top-class sportswoman. Yawara attracts two suitors, playboy Kasamatsuri and young sports reporter Matsuda. With them come rivals to create anime love polygons—Matsuda is also desired by the buxom photographer Kuniko, while rich-bitch judoist Sayaka sees herself as the perfect companion to Kazamatsuri. To make matters even more complicated, Sayaka’s trainer is Yawara’s own estranged father, Kojiro—determined that his daughter is toughened by a truly worthy opponent.
Based on the 1986 manga in Big Comics Spirits by Master Keaton–creator Naoki Urasawa, Yawara is one of the better successors to Aim for the Ace, always ready to lay sports aside for more human-interest drama. Her love for her crusty old grandfather is equal to her determination to go to school, have fun with her friends, and maybe even fall in love; this is the main cause of conflict in both manga and anime. The first season ends, in true sports-anime style, with Yawara’s defeat of her Soviet rival, Tereshkova, as glasnost takes hold. The series was a hit with more than just the female audience. Life imitated art as it drew to a close with Tokita’s movie Wiggle Your Hips (1992, Soreyuke Koshinuke Kids), shown on a double bill with the Ranma 1⁄2 feature Nihao My Concubine. As the anime Yawara went off to the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, 16-year-old real-life judoist Ryoko Tamura won a silver medal at the actual Barcelona games and was immediately christened “Yawara-chan” by the Japanese media. Four years later, the series was revived for a feature-length TV special, Morio Asaka’s Yawara: Only You (Y: Zutto Kimi no Koto ga . . . ), in which Yawara defeats Sayaka in Atlanta and faces another of her father’s protégés in the finals, the French Marceau. The real-life Tamura dutifully obliged by winning another silver at the real-life Atlanta Olympics. Four more years later, Tamura finally won gold in Sydney, wearing the fictional Yawara’s trademark yellow ribbon in her hair. For other judo-related struggles, see Sanshiro Sugata.
Yearling, The
1983. jpn: Koshika Monogatari. aka: Little Deer Story. TV series. dir: Masaaki Osumi. scr: Shunichi Yukimuro, Eiichi Tachi, Michiru Umadori, Soji Yoshikawa. des: Shuichi Seki. ani: Shuichi Seki. mus: Koichi Sugiyama. prd: MK Production, NHK. 25 mins. x 52 eps.
Based on the book by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings about an orphaned fawn and the 12-year-old boy who finds it and rears it. Jody lives in grinding poverty on an isolated homestead in the Florida swamps in 1807. As he grows toward manhood and the fawn grows into an adult deer, Jody struggles with the difficulties of keeping a relationship going with a wild thing while still respecting its own nature. The Yearling was Osumi’s last anime directing job—he left to work in the theater. Released in several European languages during the 1990s, we believe that a drastic edit of this show may have surfaced in America on a single VHS under the title Country Hearts.
Yesterday Once More
1997. jpn: Dosokai Y.O.M. aka: Same Window Club: Y.O.M. Video. dir: Kan Fukumoto. scr: Miyuki Takahashi. des: Shinichi Takagi. ani: Shinichi Takagi. mus: N/C. prd: Pink Pineapple, KSS. 30 mins. x 4 eps.
Meeting for a reunion after a long time apart, the former members of a school tennis club discover new, forbidden pleasures in each other’s company and agree to meet again, to catch up on old times, of course. Based on the erotic computer game from Fairy Tale, in the style of End of Summer.
Yin-Yang Master
2003. jpn: Onmyoji: Yoen Emaki.
aka: Yin-Yang Master: Scroll of Passionate Phantoms; Yin-Yang Mistress. Video. dir: Kazuhiko Yagami. scr:
Rokurota Makabe. des: N/C. ani:
N/C. mus: Salad. prd: Milky, T-Rex, Museum Pictures. 30 mins. x 2 eps.
In the Taisho period of the early 20th century (see Arisa), Japan is drifting inexorably toward war, and dark evils stalk the streets of Tokyo. Baffled detective Hiromasa Miyamoto decides to seek supernatural help by visiting the Master of Yin and Yang (or should that be Mistress?), Abe no Seimei, a voluptuous sorceress who has the power to command and control the nymphlike goddesses who rule the four directions of the compass. Then everybody’s clothes come off and they have sex. Not to be confused with the medieval supernatural TV series The Yin-Yang Master (*DE), the movie adaptations of which would have been in Japanese video stores at the same time as this erotic anime was released. Based on a computer game. LNV
Yin-Yang War
2004. jpn: Onmyo Taisenki. TV series. dir: Masakazu Hishida. scr: Junko Okazaki. des: Michio Fukuda. ani: Ayako Kurata. mus: Yoko Fukushima. prd: NAS, Sunrise, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 52 eps.
Riku Tachibana is raised by his grandfather, a strange old man who teaches him innumerable hand positions and signals in an impenetrable code. It gets so that this form of sign language comes as second nature to Riku, much to his classmates’ amusement, until the day that he discovers they have a purpose. Grandfather is a sorcerer, who has secretly taught Riku the movements necessary to summon magical powers. Now all Riku needs to do is work out which sign creates which sorcery—and of course, save the world, while combating a number of other kids who use devices and signals to summon their own monsters, in the manner of Digimon.
Yoiko
1998. aka: Pretty Girl, Pretty Child. TV series. dir: Takahiro Omori, Jun Matsumoto, Kiyotaka Matsumoto, Kenichi Takeshita. scr: Sukehiro Tomita, Shikichi Ohashi, Shigeru Yanagawa. des: Yugo Ishikawa. ani: N/C. mus: Shigeru Chiba. prd: Studio Pierrot, TBS. 25 mins. x 20 eps.
The agenda of this late-night series is hinted at by the title’s wordplay. Kazahana Ezumi is just a little girl at elementary school, but her body is almost that of a grown woman. This gets her into all kinds of problematic situations that a little girl her age isn’t equipped to handle. Same old same-old (see Cream Lemon) gets new names, faces, and clothes. Based on Yugo Ishikawa’s Big Spirits manga, this anime incongruously mixes childish schoolroom gags with prurient nudity. N
Yokohama Shopping LOG
1998. jpn: Yokohama Kaidashi Kiko. aka: Going Shopping in Yokohama. Video. dir: Takashi Anno. scr: Takashi Anno. des: Atsushi Yamagata. ani: Atsushi Yamagata. mus: Gontiti. prd: Asia-do. 29 mins. x 2 eps.
This is either a sweet tale of a young girl’s everyday life in a quiet suburb or a mold-breaking SF adventure in which an android searches for meaning in a world plagued by global warming. Alpha Hasseno is a humanoid robot girl who lives in the countryside of a future Japan, near what used to be Yokohama. Though Yokohama today is a big coastal city partly built on reclaimed marshland, in this future much of Japan’s urban infrastructure has been destroyed as global warming has put much of the world underwater. Her area is safe for the moment, but storms and floods are a constant threat. She runs a coffee shop, Café Alpha, in the absence of her owner, but she doesn’t know where he is or when he will return. She’s happy to wait, meanwhile serving coffee to the local characters. But in the course of her daily life and her shopping trip into Yokohama city—a trip that shows us how her world differs from ours—she meets other people, even another robot, and starts to wonder about her own life and purpose. The arrival of a parcel containing her creator’s diary adds to the mystery. Based on the manga by Hitoshi Ashinano in Comic Afternoon magazine from 1994 onward.
Yokohama Thugs
1993. jpn: Yokohama Bakurettai. Video. dir: Mineo Goto, Masamune Ochiai. scr: Shunsuke Amemura. des: Satoshi Kuzumoto. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Toei. 50 mins. x 4 eps.
It’s all gags and fighting as gangster Tsunematsu Narita (the “biggest idiot in Yokohama”) causes havoc in the neighborhood with his two henchmen. Based on the Shonen Champion manga by Satoshi Kuzumoto. V
Yokohama’s Famous Katayama
1992. jpn: Yokohama Meibutsu Otoko Katayamagumi. aka: Yokohama’s Famous Male Katayama Gang. Video. dir: Yoshinori Nakamura, Osamu Sekita. scr: Hideo Nanba. des: Masafumi Yamamoto. ani: Masafumi Yamamoto. mus: Quarter Moon. prd: JC Staff, Nippon Eizo. 50 mins. x 2 eps.
Motorcycle gangsters with “a comical touch,” as Hiromi Katayama, leader of the Yokohama biker gang Crazy Babies, tries to proclaim a one-month moratorium on violence while he trains new recruits, though his Tokyo rival, the Mad Emperor, has other ideas. Based on the manga in Shonen Magazine by Akira Yazawa. Compare to Bomber Bikers of Shonan.
Yokoyama, Mitsuteru
1934–2004. Born in Kobe, he left high school and worked for four months in a bank before quitting to become a manga artist. He is one of the most influential manga artists of the post-war era, fully deserving of consideration alongside Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori, although his role specifically in anime is largely limited to that of the creator of a couple of important titles. With Gigantor, he defined many of the tropes and traditions that would lead to Japan’s giant robot anime; with Little Witch Sally, he established much of what is now taken for granted in the “magical girl” tradition. His other works include Babel II, and a manga adaptation of The Water Margin, which was used as the basis for the TV series of the same name (*DE).
Yoma: Curse of the Undead *
1988. jpn: Yoma. aka: Blood Reign; Curse of the Undead. Video. dir: Takashi Anno. scr: Sho Aikawa. des: Matsuri Okuda. ani: Matsuri Okuda. mus: Hiroya Watanabe. prd: Animate Film, JC Staff. 40 mins. x 2 eps.
In medieval Japan, the constant battles between rival warlords have left the land ravaged and prey to evil; the spirit world is ever-present. When the great warlord Shingen Takeda dies, one of his ninja, Maro, tries to escape from the clan, and his best friend, Hikage, is sent to hunt him down. He comes to a village where people seem to have no memory of their earlier lives, and he falls in love with Aya, a woman he meets there; but he learns that it’s really just a fattening ground for people who don’t want to live because of past sadness. They are kept in a state of happy forgetfulness while being held as sacrificial food for a demonic giant spider that has drawn Maro into its coils. When he destroys the god and breaks the spell, his beloved Aya remembers her past sorrows and kills herself. The second part of the story, Maro’s Evil Fang, released in 1989, reveals that the spider god was only part of a huge conspiracy to allow the Demon Kings of the Land and Sea to unite as one and unleash all the devils in the world on mankind. Through a ninja girl named Aya, who looks exactly like his dead love, and the ghost of Maro’s beloved Kotone, Hikage learns that only by killing his friend can he prevent this evil, but Maro offers him the chance to become a Lord of Hell. After a final bloody battle, it seems that evil has been defeated; but on the road, Aya and Hikage take a baby from the arms of a dead woman and see that it looks exactly like Maro. Is evil simply reborn again and again? Based on an original story by Kei Kusunoki, creator of Ogre Slayer and Yagami’s Family Troubles, this is an elegant and chilling story, much subtler than the blockbuster Urotsukidoji, with which it shares the rebirth-of-evil theory. V
Yoshi
A pseudonym credited with almost all of the musical accompaniments to the erotic Vanilla Series, thereby inadvertently becoming one of the most prolific composers in anime.
Yoshida, Tatsuo
1932–1977. Born in Kyoto, Yoshida grew up in the war years, and found work in 1945 as an illustrator for newspapers including the Kyoto Shinbun. He subsequently moved into manga creation, and was one of the early innovators who realized the cross-promotional possibilities of television, founding the Tatsunoko studio in 1962 with his brothers Kenji and Toyohiro (aka Ippei Kuri). His output included Space Ace, Hutch the Honeybee, and the Time Bokan series, although Tatsunoko is probably best known in the west for Battle of the Planets and Speed Racer.
Yoshimoto, Kinji
?– . Animator and illustrator whose work has included character design on La Blue Girl, mechanical design on Riding Bean, and several collaborations with Satoshi Urushihara, most notably Legend of Lemnear and Plastic Little.
Yotoden *
1987. jpn: Sengoku Kitan Yotoden. aka: Civil War Chronicle of the Magic Blades; Wrath of the Ninja. Video. dir: Osamu Yamazaki. scr: Sho Aikawa. des: Kenichi Onuki, Junichi Watanabe. ani: Kenichi Onuki. mus: Seiji Hano. prd: MTV, JC Staff. 40 mins. x 3 eps.
In 1582, demons possess the warlord Nobunaga Oda, acting through his adviser Ranmaru Mori. The only weapons that can fight the demons are three magical weapons—a sword, a pike, and a dagger—each in the possession of a different ninja clan. The Kasami clan holds the dagger, and when the demons wipe out the rest of her family, teenage Ayame assumes the masculine name Ayanosuke and sets out to avenge her clan. Sakon of the Hyuga clan has the sword, and Ryoma of the Hakagure clan the pike. As the demons try to prevent them from using the magic weapons, their loved ones are killed and their homes destroyed. They think they have foiled the plot by killing Nobunaga and Ranmaru, but the dead were only impersonators. Ranmaru has a master plan, centuries in the making, to build a bridge between hell and Earth and give the world over to the rule of the Demon God. The three blades reunite in a titanic battle at Azuchi Castle, where victory is won at a terrible cost (compare to Time Stranger, which approaches the same events from a science-fictional viewpoint).
As with most ninja stories, Sword for Truth–creator Jo Toriumi’s original Yotoden novel owes more to 20th-century fiction than 16th-century fact. Treading the same ground as Ninja Scroll, it assumes that the real-life events of Japan’s civil war went hand-in-hand with black magic, and that Nobunaga united Japan, not with the foreign guns of the history books, but with demon armies. Ninja with ’80s haircuts duck and dive their way in and out of real historical events like superpowered Forrest Gumps with throwing-stars, led by an ice-cool heroine whose gorgeous voice is from the refreshingly unsqueaky Keiko Toda. The story ends with a demonic battle that carries visceral, ultraviolent overtones of the contemporary Urotsukidoji series, also written by scenarist Aikawa. NV
Youmex
Anime company established in 1985 by Junji Fujita, a former employee of the music company King Records. Youmex was a coproducer in several of the video anime of the 1980s and early 1990s, including Slow Step, AD Police, and Hummingbirds, although Youmex’s achievements were marred by the financial difficulties it inherited from its collapsed Bubblegum Crisis–partner Artmic. The company was subsequently bought out by Toshiba EMI (aka TOEMI), for whom Fujita went to work in 1998.
Young Ashibe
1991. jpn: Shonen Ashibe. TV series, video. dir: Noboru Ishiguro. scr: Oki Ike, Toshiaki Sasae, Katsuhide Motoki. des: Hiromi Morishita. ani: Kiyotoshi Aoii. mus: Toshiyuki Arakawa. prd: Nippon Eizo, TBS. 8 mins. x 75 eps.
The story of a cute little boy and his pet white sea lion was a successful Young Jump 4-panel strip by Hiromi Morishita, selling five million copies of its six collected volumes by the end of 1992. The first TV series starring Chika Sakamoto in the leading role spun off 25 more episodes of YA2 in 1992, with Minami Takayama taking over the role. The fourth season (#64–75) was not broadcast on TV but released straight to video.
Young Hanada
2002. jpn: Hanada Shonen Shi. aka: History of Young Hanada. TV series. dir: Masayuki Ojima. des: Yoshinori Kanemori. ani: Satoshi Yoshimoto. mus: Yoshihisa Hirano. prd: Madhouse, NTV. 25 mins. x 25 eps.
Elementary schoolboy Ichiro Hanada is the kind of kid who gets into constant trouble. He receives nine stitches on his head after he is hit by a truck, only to discover that his accident has given him the new ability to see ghosts. What’s worse, they all want him to help them out with their unfinished business around his home village, in this lighthearted comedy from the manga in Uppers magazine by Makoto Isshiki. Although rather obscure in its home country, Young Hanada enjoyed a new lease on life in Asia, particularly in Taiwan, where it rode a trend born in equal parts of The Sixth Sense (1999) and a local Chinese cartoon, Wang Shaudi’s Grandma and Her Ghosts (1998). Its sunny, simple rural backgrounds are deceptive—it won the Best Animation prize at the 2003 Asian Television Technical and Creative Awards. The theme songs were provided by the Backstreet Boys.
Young Kindaichi Files
1996. jpn: Kindaichi Shonen no Jiken Bo. aka: Young Kindaichi’s Casebook. Movie, TV series. dir: Daisuke Nishio. scr: Takeya Nishioka, Michiru Shimada, Hiroshi Motohashi, Akinori Endo, Toshiki Inoue. des: Shingo Araki; Hidemi Kuma. ani: Shingo Araki. mus: Kaoru Wada. prd: Toei Animation, Nippon TV. 90 mins. (m), 25 mins. x 148 eps., 90 mins. (m).
Hajime Kindaichi, grandson of a famous detective, swears on the name of his grandfather to solve every murder case he finds. He’s 17, a bit of a delinquent with a bad record of attendance at his high school, but he’s got a mind like a steel trap, a gift for sleight-of-hand, and a lot of help from childhood friend Miyuki Nanase.
Based on the 1992 manga in Shonen Magazine by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato, YKF features the descendant of a famous sleuth—the Kosuke Kindaichi created by crime novelist Seishi Yokomizo in 1946, whose most famous cases include The Man with Three Fingers and the live-action movie The House of Inugami (1976). As with Lupin III, there were legal wrangles with the indignant executors of the original, though these were resolved with an out-of-court settlement as the series’ popularity steadily increased. The manga spun off into a 1995 live-action TV series, and the first volume was adapted into Nishio’s anime movie YKF: Murder at the Hotel Opera (1996). YKF rode a post–
X-Files wave of interest in detective stories, making it and rival Conan the Boy Detective two of the greatest anime hits of the 1990s. Rather than limiting the mysteries to the 25-minute sessions of single episodes, writers favored two- and three-part dramas, increasing the suspense and readily lending themselves to feature-length video releases. Just some of Kindaichi’s TV cases include The Waxworks Murders, Death by the Devil’s Symphony, and The Killer on the Haunted Train. Araki’s designs for the 1997 TV series were revamped by Hidemi Kama for the 1999 movie Deep Blue Slaughter, in which Kindaichi hunts a murderer stalking a newly built Okinawa beach-resort.
Young Miyamoto Musashi
1982. jpn: Shonen Miyamoto Musashi: Wanpaku Nitoryu. aka: Young Miyamoto Musashi: Naughty Way of Two Swords. TV special. dir: Yugo Serikawa, Hideo Watanabe. scr: Shizuo Nonami. des: Kazumi Fukube, Hiroshi Wagatsuma. ani: Hiroshi Wagatsuma, Moriyasu Yamaguchi, Satoshi Hirayama. mus: N/C. prd: Toei, Fuji TV. 84 mins.
Four-year-old Bennosuke sees his father, a great swordmaster, killed by an even better man, Hirata. Since he knows he isn’t old enough or skilled enough to take revenge, he becomes Hirata’s disciple. When he’s mastered the secrets of the sword and invented the technique of fighting with two at once, he kills Hirata and assumes the name Musashi. Based on the life of Musashi Miyamoto (Miyamoto Musashi, 1584–1645), often said to be the greatest swordsman in Japanese history, author of The Book of Five Rings, and subject of Eiji Yoshikawa’s famous series of novels. In this incarnation, however, his life bears an uncanny similarity to the plot of Ringing Bell. This anime version of Musashi’s life was based on Renzaburo Shibata’s novel The Duellist, with character designs lifted from Kazumi Fukube’s later manga adaptation. See Sword of Musashi.
Young Princess Diana
1986. jpn: Niji no Kanata e: Shojo Diana-hi Monogatari. aka: End of the Rainbow: Young Princess Diana Story. TV special. dir: Hidemi Kama. scr: Seiji Matsuoka. des: Yutaka Arai. ani: Oji Suzuki, Animation 501. mus: N/C. prd: Tachyon, Aubec, NTV, TV Asahi. 114 mins.
Born in 1961, Diana Spencer is a child of the British aristocracy. Her parents divorce when she is six years old, and she goes to live with her father and grandmother. Sent away to boarding school, Diana is shy and withdrawn, but a sweet-natured girl who helps the maid with the washing-up and excels at pet care—winning the best-guinea-pig contest. Isolated when her father remarries, Diana throws herself into swimming and ballet, hoping that one day her prince will come. Then she meets Charles, the heir to the throne, never imagining that one day she will become his wife.
Screened a few days before the arrival of the real-life Charles and Diana on a royal visit to Japan, this could well be described as the highlight of scenarist Matsuoka’s career—his later Kama Sutra hardly compares! The early life of the late Princess Diana is plundered with, in anime terms, only minor alterations; voiced by Nausicaä-actress Sumi Shimamoto. The mind boggles at how this might have been “improved” with a few giant robots and invading aliens, but sadly it was not to be. The appeal is obvious to a Japanese audience reared on Cinderella and denied intrusive media access to their own royals—though the upbeat ending is particularly ironic considering the protagonist’s later fate.
Young Tokugawa Ieyasu
1975. jpn: Shonen Tokugawa Ieyasu. dir: Takeshi Tamiya, Kimio Yabuki. scr: Hisao Okawa. des: Shingo Araki, Takeshi Shirato. ani: Shingo Araki, Shoji Iga. mus: Takeo Watanabe. prd: Toei Animation, NET (TV Asahi). 25 mins. x 20 eps.
At the age of six, young Takechiyo Ma-tsudaira (the future Ieyasu Tokugawa) is involved in a hostage exchange between his beleaguered samurai family and the powerful Oda clan. At 14, he officially reaches manhood, and is given the name Motoyasu Matsudaira. He begins his military career by opposing the Oda clan before deciding to ally himself with its new leader, Nobunaga.
Historical series on TV are a safe bet—parents think they’re educational and advertisers like to be associated with worthy cultural products. Tokugawa was the third of the three great warlords who ended Japan’s Civil War period, Nobunaga Oda being the first. The series glamorizes his boyhood with demons and ninja, poking a finger at parents who thought it was all going to be high school curriculum stuff. Manga spin-offs ran in Terebiland magazine, among others.
You’re Under Arrest! *
1994. jpn: Taiho Shichauzo. Video, TV series, movie. dir: Hiroshi Watanabe, Kazuhiro Furuhashi, Junji Nishimura, Takeshi Mori. scr: Michiru Shimada, Michiko Yokote, Kazuhisa Sakaguchi (TV), Masashi Sogo (m). des: Atsuko Nakajima, Toshihiro Murata, Hiroshi Kato. ani: Yasuhiro Aoki. mus: Ko Otani (TV), Kenji Kawai (m). prd: Studio Deen, Toei, TBS. 30 mins. x 4 eps. (v), 25 mins. x 47 eps. (TV), 24 mins. x 1 ep. and 6 mins. x 20 eps. (special), 25 mins. x 26 eps. (TV2), 88 mins. (m), 26 mins. (v2).
Miyuki is a gentle, reserved young woman, but for all that she’s an ace driver in her working life as one of Tokyo’s police officers. Natsumi is hot-headed, impulsive, and disorganized. She too is a Tokyo police officer, in the motorcycle division, and, when the two are teamed up, she doesn’t think she and Miyuki will ever hit it off. But from their first important case, a pursuit of a reckless driver with a deadly agenda, they come to rely on each other and value each other’s good qualities.
This pretty, innocuous, and astoundingly sanitized cop show takes the mismatched-partners cliché, removes almost all jeopardy, and hopes to muddle through on infantile foolery, female flesh, and an anal attention to audio effects—particularly engine noises. Based on the manga by Oh My Goddess!–creator Kosuke Fujishima, YuA flips incessantly between car chases and mawkish flirting at the station house, creating a peculiar combination of CHiPs and a school disco. The 1996 TV series that followed the four videos—quite literally, with the first episode numbered as episode five—is pure soap opera, following day-to-day life at the station and expanding the roles of their colleagues, in particular Officer Ken Nakajima, whose romance with Miyuki forms an ongoing subplot. The episodes pack in much fan service and even a little violence, like Miyuki trying to electrocute a pervert, but there’s nothing to merit real concern on these counts. A new series, YuA: Special (1999), comprised much shorter episodes, screened as part of the Wonderful program. The 1999 movie, directed by Nishimura, did much the same thing with a bigger budget for its story of an abandoned car full of weaponry and the danger that arises from its discovery. The series also spun off into audio dramas, wittily written by former Patlabor-scenarist Michiko Yokote, including Police Stories and Only One. The latter CD features the girls getting jobs as the pop group “Tokyo Policewoman Duo,” in which guise they record the worst song ever made, the “We Are Policewomen” rap. In taking the genre that gave us “Cop Killer” and using it to extol the virtues of driving safely, the song is the perfect summary of the series as a whole. It returned for a 26-episode TV season in spring 2001. In 2002, the show was also adapted into a live-action TV series (*DE), and returned to anime form with YUA: No Mercy (aka YUA in America), in which the girls are transferred to the LAPD, and end up chasing a former Japanese detective who has stolen Miyuki’s car—not quite The Shield.
Ys *
1989. Video. dir: Jun Kamiya, Takashi Watanabe. scr: Tadashi Hayakawa, Katsuhiko Chiba. des: Tetsuya Ishikawa, Hideaki Matsuoka, Hiroyuki Nishimura. ani: Tetsuya Ishikawa, Hiroyuki Nishimura. mus: Michio Fujisawa. prd: Urban Project; Tokyo Kids. 30 mins. x 7 eps. (v), 30 mins. x 4 eps. (v2).
Adol, a young swordsman in the magical kingdom of Esteria, must save the world from demonic destruction by gathering six sacred books and bringing them to the Goddesses on Precious Mountain. Based on the NES game by Nippon Falcom that has also spun off a manga by Sho Hagoromo, a series of novels, and other merchandise. Ys: Palace of the Celestial Gods (1992, Tenku no Shinden) was a second video series based on the events of the second game. Set on the flying island of Ys, it featured Adol in another quest. There was also a 60-minute animated music video, Ys Special Collection: All About Falcom.
Yugi-Oh *
1998. aka: King of Games. TV series, movie. dir: Hiroyuki Kadono, Yoko Ikeda, Satoshi Nakamura, Keiji Hayakawa, Kunihisa Sugishima. scr: Junji Takegami, Toshiki Inoue, Yasuko Kobayashi, Kenichi Kanemaki, Katsuhiko Chiba. des: Shingo Araki, Michi Himeno. ani: Masayuki Takagi. mus: BMF. prd: Studio Gallop, Nippon Animation, TV Asahi. 25 mins. x 27 eps. (TV1), 25 mins. x 224 eps. (TV2), 25 mins. (m).
Game-mad Japanese boy Yugi is victimized by the school bullies and obsessed with an ancient Egyptian Millennium Puzzle. The successful player acquires a second thoroughly evil and nasty persona. Yugi can now transform into a vengeful, powerful figure; he can bring game monsters to life and deal out retribution to local evildoers, as well as to those who used to bully him, by forcing them to play a “dark game” on his terms. When he accidentally awakens the Guardian of Darkness, he and his friends are dragged into an adventure that features his own father reincarnated as a Pegasus and a showdown at a real-world gaming convention against his archenemy, who in our dimension is the president of the Industrial Illusion Company. Armed with another Egyptian artifact, the Millennium Eye, Yugi becomes the strongest duelist, in an anime/manga/collectible card game tie-in commissioned in the wake of Pokémon. Based on the manga by Kazuki Takahashi serialized in Shonen Jump, it was followed by a second season, YO: Duel Fighters. This is a kids-get-even fantasy so some sequences are quite violent—like the one where our hero pours petrol down the trousers of an armed robber and keeps him at bay with a cigarette lighter. A 30-minute movie formed part of 1999’s Toei Anime Fair bill. V
Yugo the Negotiator *
2004. dir: Seiji Kishi, Shinya Hanai. scr: Kazuharu Sato, Kenichi Kanemaki. des: Takahiko Matsumoto, Kenichi Imaizumi. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: G&G Direction, Artland, Kid’s Station. 25 mins. x 13 eps.
Based on the manga by Shinji Makari and Shu Akana, this is the story of Yugo Beppu, a negotiator who works to free hostages, resolve standoffs, and save lives in tense situations all around the world. Yugo is a young man of high intelligence who speaks many languages fluently; he is physically and mentally strong enough to withstand any form of torture; but the qualities that make him stand out above others in his field are his humanity, compassion, and his superb instinct for when and how far to trust others. His missions in this series take him first to Pakistan, where he agrees to negotiate for the lost-cause handover of a girl’s father, and then Siberia, where he is tasked with locating a rich man’s lost granddaughter, whose wing of the family was separated from her relatives by the upheavals of the Russian revolution.
Yugo has little of the menace-of-the-week setups so common to anime. Instead, it divides into two broad story arcs, more like two three-hour movies than a 13-episode TV series, and each animated by a different production team. It also flies in the face of many anime conventions, without recourse to the robots or science-fictional distractions of many other shows. Yugo may have a quiet assistant, but her origin story is nasty in the extreme—she isn’t mute because she is shy, she is mute because one of her parents cut out her tongue. In its reliance on tension and psychological profiling, its portrayal of a man of peace in a brutal world, Yugo is one of the more interesting anime of modern times, mixing up the intelligent protagonist of Master Keaton with real-world issues far removed from much of modern anime’s content.
Yuki
1981. Movie. dir: Tadashi Imai. scr: Akira Miyazaki. des: Tetsuya Chiba. ani: Shinichi Tsuji. mus: Chito Kawauchi. prd: Mushi, Nikkatsu. 89 mins.
Demons threaten the peaceful existence of a group of peasants who live in Japan’s far north during the Muromachi period (1338–1573). However, the villagers have the aid of Yuki, a snow fairy who dwells among them in human form, and her beloved horse, Fubuki (Snowstorm). Though based on the story by Takasuke Saito, itself drawing on Japanese Folk Tales, elements of this anime seem to coincidentally foreshadow the far more famous Princess Mononoke.
Yuki Terai—Secrets *
2000. jpn: Yuki Terai Secret Films. TV series. dir: Kenichi Kutsugi. scr: N/C. des: N/C. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Fuji TV, Frog Entertainment. 79 mins.
The virtual idol Yuki Terai is a lively 17-year-old who supposedly lives just outside Tokyo. She stars in this entirely computer-generated animation made up of six short segments, mostly SF and fantasy, but including a sequence where she is a singer in a French café-bar and another where she must shut down a critical machine at the other end of a space ship—yes, this involves running down a very long corridor while klaxons blare and lights flash. There is also a trailer for an unmade World War II epic seemingly inspired by Pearl Harbor (2001). These disparate shorts are little more than showreels for computer animators, made at that point in the early 21st century when developments in computer animation could still surprise on a monthly basis. The production credits imply that they were first seen as part of a larger show on Fuji TV, hence our classification of them as “television,” and neither the “video” nor “movie” that some foreign distributors have attempted to imply. In the wake of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), of course, computer animation has gone underground again, and prides itself on not being noticed, making Yuki Terai one of the creations of the brief flurry of CG-hype that also gave us Visitor, Aurora, Malice Doll, and Blue Remains. The rights for Yuki Terai were picked up by Escapi and released in the U.K. and northern Europe, alongside DVDs of similar showreels, Virtual Stars (1999) and Cybervenus Feifei (2001). The discs are sometimes sold under the umbrella label for the whole series: Virtually Real.
Yukikaze *
2002. jpn: Sento Yosei Yukikaze. Video. dir: Masahiko Okura. scr: Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Yumi Tada, Masahiko Okura, Masashi Sogo, Ikuto Yamashita, Seiji Kio. des: Yumi Tada, Masahiro Aizawa, Koichi Hashimoto, Ikuto Yamashita, Seiji Kio, Atsushi Takeuchi, Kanetake Ebikawa, Masahiko Sekino, Masaru Kato. ani: Koichi Hashimoto, Masahiro Sekino. mus: Satoshi Mishiba, Dogen Shiono (The KANI), Clara. prd: Bandai Visual, Victor Entertainment, Gonzo. 25 mins. x 4 eps. (v1) 30 mins. (v2).
Thirty years after secretly opening an interdimensional gate beneath Antarctica, the alien Jam commence their invasion plan. Beaten back by human defenders, the Jam retreat to their homeworld, which has been given the human codename “Fairy,” and to which the portal now serves as a possible conduit for counterattack. Mankind’s Special Air Force is its main line of defense, using fighters with AI so sophisticated that one, Yukikaze, is actually sentient. Rei Fukai is its designated pilot, and supported by a multinational force under General Lydia Cooley, he and his fellow pilots fight an enemy they can never see clearly and about which they know very little. In an ideological twist reminiscent of Gunbuster, the Jam are a machine-based race who regard humans as parasites, stealing the Earth from its rightful owners, the machines. This places Yukikaze in an interesting dilemma, as it actually has more in common with the enemy it has been created to defeat.
Just as Shoji Kawamori did for Macross Plus, the team based its fighter technology on study visits to the Komatsu air force base, so the mecha designs are state-of-the-art and the whole show is imbued with a passion for Top Gun antics. The Gonzo team pulls out all the visual stops, with the work of color coordinator Eriko Murata looking particularly strong and providing a wonderful sense of atmosphere—compare to Blue Submarine No. Six and Area 88.
The series began as a collection of linked short stories published in 1984 by Chohei Kanbayashi, in which the Jam have their portal at the north pole, and which revealed that Yukikaze (“Blizzard”) took its name from the most famous destroyer in the Japanese navy in World War II. Publicity at the time of Yukikaze’s American release mystifyingly boasted that it had recently won the “Japanese Nebula” Seiun award, but it first achieved that honor some 20 years earlier—its true publication date being a much surer indicator of its cutting-edge originality, since many foreign audiences may have otherwise assumed it to be a rip-off of the movie Stealth (2005). Anniversaries seem to have played an important part in the commissioning process, since Yukikaze’s anime incarnation went into production to mark the 20th anniversary of Bandai’s Emotion video label. Much was made at the time of its amazingly realistic animation of planes; the show does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time presenting fetishized views of aerial battles, which may have been entertaining then but may seem to the more jaded to look like so many modern-day combat flight simulators.
Yukikaze also generated an odd spin-off in the form of Yukikaze Mave-chan (2005), a one-shot video based on some doodles drawn by designer Ikuto Yamashita when his hard drive was temporarily down. Elfin Mave is one of a group of girls fighting the alien Jam in another world. When she runs into a strange boy, she naturally leaps into the attack with her knives. Her companion Super Sylph rescues the boy, who turns out to be a human called Rei; he has no idea how he was sucked into the girls’ world, because he was just minding his own business at an anime convention. It turns out that the world was created by the desires of anime fans, and the girls represent the archetypes fans like best—at least it’s honest!
Mave is a happy person, fun to be around, but her two big knives warn anyone not to mess with her. Super Sylph is a gentle, quiet girl, tall and curvy. Sly and slinky chatterbox Sylph bickers constantly, and childlike Fand is strange and silent. But the worst danger is not from aliens but from the fans’ minds shifting on to home and dinner—as the convention draws to an end, the world created from its collective dream starts to collapse. An intriguing adaptation of the guilt trip attitude of Key of the Metal Idol, itself an emotional approach to the brutal realities of the entertainment industry.
Yukimuro, Shunichi
1941– . Born in Kanagawa Prefecture, he enrolled in the Eighth Scenario Writing Workshop for television drama, “graduating” in 1961. His early work was for Nikkatsu, although subsequently his name has somehow found its way onto over 3000 scripts for television, including many anime such as Sazae-san, Kimba the White Lion, Moomins, and Spooky Kitaro.
Yumeria *
2004. TV series. dir: Keitaro Motonaga. scr: Makoto Uezu, Yosuke Kuroda. des: Shinobu Nishioka, Yasuhiro Moriki. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Studio Deen, BS-i. 24 mins. x 12 eps.
Tomokazu Mikuri discovers that in his dreams he can visit the alternate world of Yumeria, populated by pretty girls, where he is welcomed as a hero who can save the oppressed kingdom from destruction at the hands of the Faydoom invaders. Sub–Tenchi Muyo! “comedy” soon ensues, as Tomokazu and a number of real-world associates get to travel to the alternate world and, well, hang out. Not an erotic anime, although it is loaded with puerile excuses to ogle girls, many of who either appear underage, act like they might as well be, or are Tomokazu’s relatives. Based on a video game—yume is Japanese for dream.
Yu-No *
1998. Video. dir: Katsumasa Kanezawa. scr: Osamu Kudo. des: Tetsuro Aoki. ani: Takeo Takahashi, Yasushi Nagaoka. mus: N/C. prd: Pink Pineapple, KSS. 30 mins. x 4 eps.
Takuya falls for the woman his father marries after his mother’s death. Yes, it’s yet another almost-but-not-quite incest story; compare to Cream Lemon and Cool Devices. N
Yun-Yun Paradise
1995. jpn: YunYun Paradise. Video. dir: Hiroshi Yamakawa. scr: N/C. des: N/C. ani: Inatsugi Kiyomizu. mus: N/C. prd: Pink Pineapple, AIC. 30 mins.
This “love comedy” features Yun-Yun, a suspiciously young-looking Chinese girl, falling in love with a Japanese boy. Based on a novel from the same Napoleon imprint that gave us Erotic Torture Chamber. N
Yuyama, Kunihiko
1952– . Born in Tokyo and developing an interest in animation while still at high school, Yuyama worked as an inbetweener on episodes of Star Blazers and Brave Raideen. He was a sketch artist and storyboarder on the foreign coproduction Barbapapa (1973) and joined Aoi Productions in 1978. The same year, he had his directorial debut while working for Aoi on Galaxy Express 999, and soon struck up a successful working partnership with the screenwriter Takeshi Sudo on Goshogun. By 1982, he had been promoted to “chief director,” an overseeing role on Gigi and the Fountain of Youth. While remaining in TV during the 1980s, he also played a leading role in anime’s exodus into video. His work also showed a mastery of elements for a female audience, most obvious in his Three Musketeers spin-off, Aramis’ Adventure. After his underrated Ushio and Tora, he gained true fame through his involvement with two later works –Slayers and Pokémon.