Anime Column] 100 Anime to Watch by Keyword! 100 Anime to Watch vol.2 "Osomatsu-san" and others

Drinking parties among anime fans tend to be a game of association. Whenever someone says, "XXX has XXX scene," someone else replies, "Speaking of XXX scene, don't forget XXX. Anime and animation are connected by invisible threads like this. Let's follow the "anime to watch" using keywords as clues.

Osomatsu-san" is surprisingly popular. It is also surprising that the center of popularity is the Matsuno family's six children.

Let's review the basic setting of "Osomatsu-san. The original story is "Osomatsu-kun" by Fujio Akatsuka. The setting of "Osomatsu-san" is that the six children, who were elementary school students at that time, have grown up and are living a lazy life as NEETs without working.

In "Osomatsu-kun," the sextuplets were given only the characteristic of being sextuplets (i.e., having a bunch of the same faces), and in the original story, unique sub-characters such as Iyami and Chibita took the center stage. In the past two anime adaptations, the six children were the main characters, but Iyami and Chibita remained in the center of the story.

This time, however, "Osomatsu-san" gave each of the six a distinct personality. Each character is designed in the direction of "having the same components, but with different facial expressions reflecting their personalities. This was a Copernican turn.

Thus, "Osomatsu-san" was revitalized as a comedy program featuring the six children, who were given flat characters.

Because the characters are drawn differently, there are few "the six children look alike and are very confused" stories. There are scenes in episodes 2 "Let's Find a Job" and 18 "Iyami Strikes Back" in which Iyami confuses the brothers, and a short gag called "OSO" in episode 3 "Spillover Story Collection" that is a parody of the horror movie "SAW". In particular, "OSO" is a story in which the viewer can tell the six children apart, but the culprit who detains them cannot, so the assumption here is clearly that the six children can tell them apart.

Incidentally, in the episode 18 avant-garde title "Shidou Seizawa Shonosuke-san," the sub-character Seizawa Shonosuke is actually 17 children (all with the same face). In "Osomatsu-san," the very fact that they have the same face is a parody.

So, this time, I would like to trace anime in which sextuplets or so-called multiple births appear. However, even though there are many twins, it is difficult to find more than that.

Speaking of twins, "Touch" (1985), an anime adaptation of Mitsuru Adachi's manga of the same title, is probably at the top of the list. The production style, which used slow-moving camera work to translate Mitsuru Adachi's characteristic "pauses" into images, was one of the influences on later anime productions. This work tells the story of Tatsuya Uesugi and Kazuya Uesugi, who look (roughly) alike but have various different specifications. By structuring a love triangle with the heroine, Asakura Minami, at the center, the story is designed to highlight the "similarities" and "differences" between the twin brothers. The first film version, "Ace Without a Number," is an adaptation of the original story, in which Tatsuya, pretending to be his younger brother, takes the mound as a pitcher in place of his younger brother Kazuya, who suddenly dies in an accident.

Incidentally, director Hiroko Tokita, who worked under the direction of Gisaburo Sugii on "Touch," later worked on another twin animation. She took over from Takashi Anno, who directed the first half of the series, and has been directing the series since episode 30. The main characters in this one are identical twin girls, Tomomi Matsunaga and Mikage Matsunaga, who can use supernatural powers when they are together.

In addition to this, there are many other anime featuring twins, such as "The Story of theFunny Twins ClaireAcademy" (1991) and "Blue Exorcist " (2011). If we extend the number of twins to sub-characters, the number will increase even more.

However, the number of twins decreases dramatically when it comes to triplets or more.

One of the few examples is the quintuplets in " Cyborg009" in the "Underground Empire Yomi Arc. The underground empire Yomi is ruled by the giant dragon Zattan and his men. The human Puwa-Workers of the Underground Empire are kept alive as their food. Since they are their food, they have multiple births in order to increase their production, and the sisters Helen and Bina, the heroines of this episode, are all quintuplets. Naturally, the Puwa Workers also have multiple births. This episode was animated in the series "Cyborg009 THE CYBORG SOLDIER" (2001), which reproduced the Ishinomori touch and carefully animated each episode of the original work.

The other is the alien Zoruto from "Choujikukidan Southern Cross" (1984), which was adapted into the anime series " Macross" and "Orguss. This work, the third in the "Super Dimension Series" following "Macross" and "Orguss," was also a pioneering work that placed a female protagonist in a male-oriented work. Although the series was censored and lacked a number of things, the setting of the enemy aliens, the Zorans, was quite elaborate.

The Zorans are all identical triplets, and while they normally have a certain amount of free will, when it comes to important decisions in social life, the three of them share information, judgment, and action. It is said that the reason why society is composed of triplets is born out of the necessity to manage a group efficiently due to the limited energy resources of the society. The setting of this area was a science fiction approach, and there were elements that approached the question of "what is humanity," so I do not think that ...... if this area had been explored in more depth. The actress who made her debut as a voice actress playing the role of Musica, a Zorin girl, was Noriko Hidaka, who later portrayed Minami Asakura in "Touch".

The idea of multiple births of twins or more may be better utilized in science fiction than in gags.


(Text by Ryota Fujitsu)