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| DO YOU KNOW ME |
A president left, another came, and the one before came back. The genocide in Palestine was brought to the mainstream. I graduated junior high, high school, and community college. I moved out to university housing.
Everything is just so quiet now.
The States are going to be an awful place to live for the next four years. A lot of good people will leave or die, sometimes not by their own hand. I dread my next year of school due to what could possibly happen to my financial aid if the government cuts down on funding. I can't really imagine a realistic future right now.
I can, however, imagine holding a blu-ray release of Osomatsu-kun in my sweaty hands and grinning rather violently.
Act I: Who Likes This Shit?
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| I dunno, someone here, probably... |
If you go to any "retro anime" account or page on your socials, you'll see a distinct vibe from their content. Sleek characters with neon colors and an overall looming appreciation for OVA-style sci-fi anime. It's rare that you ever see anything outside of that particular box, but when you do, it's only going to be for a moment. Perhaps the obsession with this very particular aesthetic is a zoomer variant of boomers being obsessed with Rockwell paintings or Gen X'ers being obsessed with lackluster syndicated cartoons. A universal emotion of "it was so much better back then".
What this emotion tends to ignore is the fact that most boomers would hate Rockwell for his progressive beliefs and politics, and Gen X'ers have the rose-tinted glasses that don't let them see the faults in what they grew up with simply because it's what they grew up with. The "80s Anime Account" phenomenon derives itself from the most obvious of cherry-picking, influenced in part from the vaporwave and future funk subcultures, with their glowing grids and OutRun playthrough footage. I can't speak for anyone who lived during the 80s because I was not alive then, and neither can a good chunk of these accounts. It's a vainglorious era that never existed in a 21st-century contemporary world and is instead seen through distortions of distortions. The 80s is an over-loved decade because of what is misrepresented and exaggerated. Maybe you could say that the decade itself is just as flanderized as the 50s or 60s, with music dictating such feelings.
Granted, for every post about OEDO or Akira that tends to crop up, you'll never find anything about Ranpou or Lupin III Part 3 because it doesn't fit the hard-boiled narrative they want to convey. And both of these shows are super fun and take advantage of the medium very well! They might not be hits in their home country or much else for that matter (Italy has its particular obsession in regards to Lupin, though that's besides the point lmao), but it gives a much bigger vision of what 80s anime had to offer than a bike slide. Osomatsu-kun is one of those such shows, with heavy reliance on comedy and character humor as opposed to telling an overarching story. Every episode is different in scope and tone, almost akin to the Tezuka Star System idea of typecasting, as if all the characters here are playing roles in a movie.
The non-reliance on a structure or formula is perhaps both one of its biggest strengths and weaknesses, as a lot of anime fans tend to misunderstand what the show wants to do with its time. You could argue that it was a take on how Fujio Akatsuka wrote the original manga, by simply just drawing funny stuff and not really caring about where it takes us next time. The reliance on a straightforward plot running through however many episodes is the typical way to do a show nowadays; limiting your time to the straight and narrow path of serialization provides an incentive for audiences to come back next week, compared to the bombastic and unpredictable world of episodic storytelling. But for me, by doing all this stuff with no regard whatsoever to any established mythology or pre-existing lore to understand, I can see a show that does so many different things and not get boring or confused on where to go next, likely because of delays on the main form of the adapted media's side.
The characters are well-established with their foibles and attributes by the second episode, and even if you aren't familiar with Akatsuka's other works like Tensai Bakabon or Moretsu Atarou (where a few other characters come from), just seeing these goofy things on screen is enough to make a smile, I think. Akatsuka, as a cartoonist, relies on a sometimes uncommon philosophy to just show up and have something for his audience to take a peek at. Doesn't matter what's going on, if it's funny, it doesn't really matter what happens. Make 'em cowboys or samurai. I don't care, as long as I have a good time. Justifying it as these characters' ancestors is lame shit, I don't want to do too much thinking and instead wanna see what can be done with these guys in this place. Simple as, really.
So, maybe I'd say the answer is that I like this shit.
Act II: CN Real's Dude, What Would Happen
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| IF I FUCKING TORTURED YOU |
I am not here to watch a cartoon where men scream about their cocks and explode. I am here to watch a cartoon where anything and everything can happen just because it's funny. The series is an exercise in character study, in that it reinvents these occasionally 20-something-year-old bits and does it in a manner that pays tribute to the past and present (present being that of the late 80s). You'll have an episode based off a chapter that you could read in a collected volume, or maybe it was done in the 1966 adaptation. 1988's take on the story doesn't try to play the SpongeBobian "Two Shorts" format, but extends the story to its logical depth for a half hour, sometimes at the sacrifice of some lost jokes or a completely different ending.
Take the 10th episode, "The Shinigami Salesman From Hell!" which was adapted from a chapter very late into the original first run of the manga, titled simply "The Shinigami Salesman". Both have the same sort of overall plot: con-artist and overall degenerate Iyami overhears that Osomatsu, one of the six identical Matsuno brothers, is gravely ill. He teams up with a goofy shinigami in an attempt to whack this kid, only really because he just doesn't like him. It's a recurring theme in most Osomatsu's to give a 30-something scumbag beef with 10-year-old kids. Doesn't always have to be Iyami, but most of the time it's him. A bunch of weird and dark stuff ensues, a reference to the Grimms' "Godfather Death" fable is enacted, but both of these takes end TOTALLY different.
In the manga, the shinigami ends up quitting his job as a harbinger of death and instead gets a career as a candlemaker, with the previously alluded-to Grimm reference, leading Osomatsu and his brothers to pick up candles for a birthday cake, and hurrying away once they know who's at the front. The anime is much more interesting: near the end of both adaptations, Iyami has fucking died and the shinigami himself is badly injured. He enlists the best character in the whole franchise, Chibita, to go to his awful mansion and switch out the candles that fuel one's life force. Chibita succeeds in the manga, and revives both Iyami and the shinigami, but in the anime, he ends up getting a little too hot inside a house full of candles and opens a window, letting a draft in that presumably caused an unexplainable series of deaths around the world. A cut back to the now-healthy rest of the cast, who are suddenly surrounded in darkness. Then a spotlight, and a fade to black.
The final shot of the episode is most except Chibita doing a song-and-dance routine surmising that they have all died and are livin' it the hell up in the Good Place. Personally, I would not put Iyami there on his several attempts to kill a child, but who gives a shit. It's funny.
Mostly, it's a matter of execution. Akatsuka's take on the ending is funny for what he wants to tell, it's a good ending that closes off the story in a "ob-la-di, ob-la-da" fashion, to keep everyone alive in the hopes of the audience subscribing to next week's antics. In Akatsuka's later post-modern works, such as Gag Guerrilla or Let's La Gon, he'd often play with the "character dies for no reason" ending because of how logically extreme it is, and I can understand why the team on the anime side would prefer that way to end it, seeing as how Akatsuka was a fan of doing things that way for several years at that point. He would have been pleasantly surprised with the change, in my opinion.
Even then, there's original stories that aren't based off any pre-existing chapters of the manga. Such tales include the sextuplets' parents de-aging into teenagers with Mrs. Matsuno taking up a career as an idol and her better half posing as a relative visiting in place of their dad. It's a pretty thoughtful story, with both of them understanding that even though they're older, they still want to feel the same way as when they met as youths. That's the sort of ethos of Osomatsu to me, to exist in a fast-paced and orderly world and desire the fun and nonsensical. It's why for the longest time I've always interpreted the show's opening to be a tribute to those who read the manga as kids and now that they're older, are sharing it with their kids. "My dad is my dad, my mom is my mom, they're the best in the country, but what you see is what you get." It's that sort of energy that is the entire philosophical statement Osomatsu-kun pushes.
Act III: Mr. Osomatsu Isn't Home Right Now
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| Live "Got Show Stolen" Reaction |
It shouldn't be much of a surprise that over here, there's a distinct lack of knowledge in regards to how people process Osomatsu as a franchise. Most people who have at least a little experience with the series know about Osomatsu-san, which as fun and relatable as it is, I feel is a parallel to this show in particular. The self-loathing that Osomatsu-san has for what it once was is, in some ways, frustrating. In many episodes, it constantly wants to shrug off its 1960s origins and completely reinvent itself as something born of ashes, with its debut even criticizing how Osomatsu-kun can't stay relevant due to its sheer age and how its creator has been long dead. In terms of making art, I don't feel relevancy is a necessary thing...I'd much rather just make something out of time with little regards for the time it's made in.
Not to say that the previous interpretation didn't try for modernity; you'll have an off-hand reference to going to a Michael Jackson concert or popular manzai comedians of the day. The rereleased manga was also being updated for the times, with stories from 1964 having their topical jokes rewritten to be about things more understandable in 1987. It's a common thing to happen in reprints, Lupin III was going through a similar situation with its reprints at this time.
To erase things that make something of a certain era kills its historicity, to have to explain it in a way that makes sense is a lesser evil. I'd much rather be told about a hit single from 1967 than yap about how it doesn't make any sense for a reference to Thriller to be here. The sliding scale of modernity is going to come for us all, and it doesn't matter who gets struck in the crossfire. To pretend that it can actively hurt you is of a different struggle entirely.
In Osomatsu-san, everyone has been aged up to adults, with the advantage to tell more raunchy and crude jokes than they would be able to as kids. The honorific expresses this perfectly. The main problem stems from how it could date itself in comparison to -kun, with its tales of Starbucks and smartphones, porn DVDs and convenience stores. It's a 21st-century story that's being told to us by characters that didn't have to deal with such modern struggles as kids. These kids, though, are a far cry from how they are as adults, forgoing a long-running joke to do something completely unthinkable: the Matsunos can now be told apart.
Osomatsu-kun, in the simplest regards, wants to remind people of the best aspects of Osomatsu-kun. What Osomatsu-san want to do is completely overhaul the system, to start all over with these vaguely familiar characters from something so old, that it doesn't matter what went on then. It seems to be something so distinct from anything that happened before to the point of self-deprecation. To confront the idea of what came before as old and unfunny is to dismiss what got you here in the first place, though I would be lying if I said I didn't appreciate Osomatsu-san for what it does. It simultaneously is and isn't.
My main concern is for everyone who is much more familiar with the latest incarnation: I'm imagining that meme about Marvel movies where a series of strawmen are confused over what's transpiring when they watch a movie like that. I fear that those unfamiliar with Osomatsu's origins will project their own conclusions onto this series, when it's not even something to consider at this point in time. I've seen it happen for 10 or so years now, but I'm not sure how much will change, if at all.
Act IV: A Little Boogieing Back Never Hurt Nobody
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| Iyami, post-afterlife clerical error, alongside another attempted murderer, their target, and five others caught in the crossfire. |
But what's all to be gained from having a fuckass cartoon like this on disc? Quite a bit, actually. I could go to a convention and see it at a booth and smile. I could go to a small mom-and-pop anime shop and find it on a shelf and smile. I would know that there would be people on this godforsaken planet who have this in their lives and houses and I would smile. Understanding that people out there like this as much as I do brings me happiness, and I guess that's all we need in these trying times.
Finding things to be happy about while the world comes down on you is a quest for many. To go on a grand journey across the net for something that appeals to you in a hundred different ways is like finding the holy grail, but when you do find it, there's a less than 1% chance you let it go. I've been Osomatsu-pilled since -san started almost 10 years ago. People were making jokes in 2017 with Mr. Burns at the plaque, but in big 2025, I rarely see anyone talking about the series in any capacity anymore. It's a shame, there's so much to love and like about the characters and overall fun that it has with them that for all the time spent waiting on something to come off all this hype back when it was the old hotness, the ashes are starting to settle and are getting thin enough to blow away in the wind.
An Osomatsu for now would be very useful. -san's fourth season is set to begin in July, so maybe I'll think about that for a while. Otherwise, I'll be pre-ordering the set day one. It's the least I could do for myself right now.
