ORUCHUBAN EBICHU

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ComedyOruchuban Ebichu
TV SHORT ComedyAi no Wakakusa Yama Monogatari
TV SHORT ComedyKoume-chan ga Iku!!

REVIEWS

• 

  AAAAAH

  65/100
  Well um.... it's definitely one of the anime I have watched.

  I'm currently in the process of trying to watch every anime that was ever produced by Studio Gainax, a studio that are credited for fantastic anime like Gurren Lagann, Gunbuster, Royal Space Force, and of course the massively successful Neon Genesis Evangelion (I would consider all 4 of those to be some of my favourite anime of all time). In a way they're considered to be a bit of a strange studio who have made some weird and crazy anime, along with their successor (?) Studio Trigger.

  Oruchuban Ebichu was produced by Gainax and aired in 1999. It's based on a manga by an author called Risa Itou, who doesn't seem to have written any really notable manga (I'd assume that this is probably her most well known work) and directed by Makoto Moriwaki, who seems to have mostly directed kids idol and magical girl shows. It was one of the three anime that was part of "Anime no Ai Awa Awa Hour (アニメ愛のあわあわアワー)" which from my understanding were all romantic comedy anime with short episodes. I couldn't find other two, Ai no Wakakusa Yama Monogatari and Koume-chan ga Iku!! (which were both produced by Gainax too) anywhere online with English subtitles, so I didn't include them in my Gainax watch.

  Orubachan Ebichu is an episodic gag comedy, so don't go in expecting much of an overarching plot. It's about Ebichu, a talking, housekeeping hamster (hence the translated title being "Ebichu Minds the House") and her "master", a 25 year old office lady who wants to get married (in Japanese culture 25 is considered to be the age a woman should get married, I learned that from watching this anime.) The other significant character is her boyfriend, who Ebichu doesn't like and often makes fun of by calling him names like "useless bum".

  Most of the jokes in the series are sexual and involve Ebichu saying sexual things relating to her master, many of which end with Ebichu being punished by her master (or "Useless Bum") by being thrown against a wall, being stood on, etc. At some points in the show I was just thinking "How is that hamster not dead by now?"

  The art in Ebichu is simplistic/not very detailed and more cartoony than a lot of anime are. I didn't have a problem with that.

  A lot of the time when I was watching this show I was just thinking to myself "What the hell is this" but weirdly I did find myself enjoying it and the short episodes make it easily consumable. I also realised part of the way through watching it that Ebichu's voice actress also played Misato Katsuragi from Evangelion and Usagi from Sailor Moon!

  Overall, Ebichu isn't a bad anime, I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, but it's worth watching if you decided to become a Gainax completionist and/or find a hamster saying "Pussy" to be funny.

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• 

  TheRealKyuubey

  30/100
  Stop stepping on Hamtaro!

  There once was a single 25-year-old woman who moved to Tokyo and worked at an office to pay her rent. She doesn’t have a name, so I’m going to call her Midori, because she looks like a Midori, and because I refuse to spend this entire review calling her Master. She has a busybody mother who occasionally visits when she’s not home to rifle through her things... A cheating boyfriend who treats her like garbage... And most curiously of all, a talking hamster who does her chores for her. While Midori is navigating her turbulent personal life and depressing work life, it’s up to Ebichu to do her master’s laundry, clean the apartment, and accidentally divulge her dirty secrets to anybody who asks, or even just says Hello at the wrong time. The only reason people remember this show is because it was made by Gainax.

  Yeah, it’s been a long time since I reviewed a Gainax anime, hasn’t it? Back in my old blogging days, I posted at least three Gainax reviews every April, which I appropriately called Studio Gainax month, but I haven’t returned to this studio once since my comeback in 2021. This is partially because Gainax hasn’t made anything particularly interesting in over a decade, as Studio Trigger has basically become their successor, and partially because, I don’t know, nothing they’ve done has really been calling to me these last two years.

  That was, until last night, where I was just mindlessly knocking short anime off of my Planning list inbetween reviews, and I decided on a whim to check out that old Hamster anime they made. I previously knew this anime only from Gainax anime lists and a couple of pretty memorable AMV Hell clips, and now that I’ve seen it in its entirety, well, there are some pretty interesting aspects to it, at least enough to churn out a short review.

  First off, there’s a pretty charming story behind its inception. From what I’ve read, Kotono Mitsuishi, the original Japanese voice actor for Misato Katsuragi, and who has played an insane amount of awesome and memorable characters throughout her career, would read this manga inbetween her line reads for Evangelion, and her constant laughter would invite inquiries into what she was reading. This was apparently enough to convince Gainax that the series was worth adapting, so they bought the rights and cast Kotono in the lead role of her own favorite manga.

  In the very late nineties, circa 1999 specifically, Oruchuban Ebichu was added to a programming block called Anime Lovers Bubble Bubble Hour alongside two other Gainax produced titles that also featured rough, chibi-ish aesthetics. One of them was called Ai no Wakakusayama Monogatari, which is a really hard anime to find... I was only able to find a non-subtitled version online, so I have no idea what anybody was saying, but it looks kinda boring. It’s also apparently really easy to confuse with an anime called Ai no Wakakusa Monogatari, which is a Little House on the Prairie looking anime, and also looks really boring. The second one is Koume-chan ga Iku, which I’ve only seen one episode of so far, but it’s actually pretty damn funny, so I’d recommend tracking that one down. It looks like an actual hidden gem.

  As far as I can tell, the unifying theme for all three of these anime is that they star adult women in their twenties, who either have jobs or need to get jobs, and again, they all have a four-panel-gag-manga aesthetic. Oruchuban Ebichu looks a good deal uglier than the other two, as the artwork is really rough and sketchy, but the animation itself is still clearly high quality. The style is cheap, but the production values were definitely not, and I’m always here for that. The series uses a lot of obvious animation short cuts, but they’re being used specifically to advance the comedy, and not to save money or anything.

  That rough style also does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to the content of the series, because holy shit is this an inappropriate show. Now obviously using childish artwork and animation in a mature and inappropriate series is nothing new, it’s been done plenty of times in both the anime AND western animation markets, but I can’t honestly say I’ve seen any cartoon with that kind of aesthetic push the envelope as hard as Ebichu. Yeah, there was hardcore bloody violence and mindless sex in Cat Soup Grass, but that was one episode. There was uncensored genital nudity in Shin-chan, but that was a little kid, and they’re usually exempt from Japan’s decency laws. Gahan Wilson’s The Kid had objectionable content, but out of three episodes, one had gore, one had nudity, and the final one had some mild swearing. Oruchuban Ebichu is vulgar as fuck.

  First off, not only are Midori and her shitty boyfriend constantly shown naked, they’re constantly shown fucking in cartoonishly simple animation loops, sometimes doing anal, and it’s usually to set up a repetitive joke where Ebichu calls out what they’re doing and how it doesn’t make any sense. Pretty much every sex scene in the series(and there’s a lot of them) are done for the purpose of Ebichu herself over-reacting to them, which only really becomes funny when she calls the cops on them for roleplaying a home invasion/rape scenario. You also see full frontal nudity from both of them, despite the fact you legally can not show that in Japan, and there’s even one or two shots of the boyfriend being fully erect, which is probably why Anilist has this series marked as Adult. I guess it’s a hentai because of that?

  I don’t know how anybody could find the art style sexy, but then again, a lot of people would probably say the same thing about my fascination with MMD strip dances, so I’m not gonna judge. Honestly, the animation isn’t even trying to be sexy or stimulating, I’m pretty sure Gainax was trying to reach some level of sexual honesty, and while I can’t say I personally enjoyed any of it, I respect the intentions behind it. I’m guessing all three of the anime that were presented in the programming block were meant to explore different aspects of adult life from an adult perspective, and there’s definitely something to be said for that.

  As for the slapstick... Well, you know what, I don’t think you can really call it that, it’s just straight up violence. Look, I don’t want to go all PETA on you and tell you that it’s morally reprehensible to animate a pet being brutally beaten by its owner, but I personally don’t find that sort of thing funny. Well, most of the time, I do get a kick out of seeing Brian get brutalized on Family Guy, but Brian’s a douchebag, and Ebichu is fairly well meaning. Still, as far as animated animal abuse goes, it could be worse. Like, remember in my review of Dog X Scissors, I pointed out how Kirihime was always threatening to cut off Kazuhito’s ears or tail with a pair of scissors, but she only ever shaved off some of his fur, which grew back immediately? But for some reason Kazuhito always took her threats seriously? Yeah, Ebichu doesn’t have that logic issue. When Ebichu is hurt, she shows actual damage, IE blood and slapstick bumps, even though she does survive every time.

  Also there’s a dude who’s sexually attracted to Ebichu. The dude is human. I don’t know what to think about that, but it’s there, so I figured I’d mention it. He fantasizes about her, and thinks about her while having sex with his wife. Spoilers, I guess, but it’s something you should probably know BEFORE watching the show.

  And with the sex and violence aside, there really isn’t a whole lot left to talk about. There are individual jokes throughout the series, and while your mileage may differ, I personally only laughed like ten to twenty percent of the time. I spent most of the series just staring at my screen in a stunned silence, often not being completely sure how to process what I was watching. I’m not saying it doesn’t have any value, it does. Oruchuban Ebichu is a very unique anime that, to its credit, has one monster pair of balls considering how far it was willing to go and what it was able to get away with. I just don’t think it’s very funny. The best thing about it, aside from the fact that it introduced me to Koume-chan, is the fact that each episode is only 8 minutes long, so it’s not that big of a time investment.

  I give Oruchuban Ebichu a 3/10.

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