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Yatterman Night
Episodes 1-2

by Rose Bridges,

Leopard is a young girl growing up on the outskirts of the Yatter Kingdom, ruled over by the benevolent Lord and Lady Yatterman. Her mother Dorothy tells her stories about how the Kingdom's founders defeated the evil Doronbow gang to establish their paradise, and that, if she's very good, she'll get to live there one day. You see, Dorothy and Leopard, and their neighbors, are all descendants of Doronbow, who were shut out from the kingdom when it was established. So when Dorothy falls ill, Leopard believes that if she and her friends journey to the Yatter Kingdom, they'll get the medicine they need for her to get better. Instead, Yatter's guards shoot at them, refusing them entrance, and when they return home, Dorothy dies. Leopard decides that Lord and Lady Yatterman must be evil, the Doronbow gang must be good, and vows to create a new Doronbow with the other members' descendants, in order to take revenge against the Yatter Kingdom. That's just the first episode of this curious "reboot" of the 1970s kids' action cartoon Yatterman.

Yatterman Night has all the right ingredients to be the latest "revisionist" series of a Tatsunoko children's classic. This is hardly a "trend" yet, but it does seem to be picking up steam. From the premise, I expected it to show how the villains were "really" sympathetic and the heroes less so, but if you dig into the first two episodes, that's not really what you'll find. In fact, there's nothing to contradict the idea that the old Doronbow gang were thieves who did Bad Stuff, other than Leopard's childlike reaction to the Yatter Kingdom shutting them out. There's also nothing to suggest the original Yatterman team were not true heroes. The original Yatterman just doesn't leave any room for that reinterpretation.

Doronbow are like the original Team Rocket. Their uniforms even resemble those of the "Rocket Grunts" in the Pokémon video games, although their personalities fit much more with the Jessie-James-Meowth trio from the TV anime. They're bumbling and campy, and certainly more fun to watch than Yatterman's team of heroes. They're still clearly up to Bad Things, though, always stealing mystical objects out of a desire for power. Still, Yatterman Night is a different breed of re-imagining. It posits that the original series did end the right way, for its own time. Yet several generations later, with the original heroes and villains nothing more than origin myths, perhaps the lines between good and bad aren't what they used to be. The Yatter Kingdom shows all the signs of being an oppressive dictatorship, fiercely guarded by a steel wall and robot warriors, and with citizens (whose houses all bear the country's logo) who seem to live in fear of their rulers. Based on these first two episodes, Yatterman Night is taking apart its origin's black-and-white children's morality at its roots. It criticizes not just where the lines are being drawn, but that they're drawn at all in the first place.

On that note: exposure to the old Yatterman series is not a requirement, but definitely a bonus. You'll understand the series perfectly fine without it, especially if you've watched similar breeds of kids' cartoons before in your life (and you probably have). That said, there are references and in-jokes you won't get without watching at least a few episodes of the 1970s cartoon. The lullaby that various characters hum throughout the series is the tune to Doronbow's theme, and there's a Yatterwan (the Yatterman team's dog-shaped robot) plushie in Leopard's bedroom. I wouldn't be surprised if the series builds on the meta-commentary as it goes further.

That canon knowledge also makes the way that Leopard engages with her world so much more interesting. She's a great child protagonist in her determination, but also her steadfast black-and-white sense of the world. Her experience with the wall doesn't just shatter her view of the Yatterman team and their kingdom. It also makes it true, she thinks, that Doronbow were good guys, and so she should emulate them to the tee. Not only must she, Elephantus, and Voltkatze take up the old team's uniforms, but also their names and their personalities. It's really cute to watch the other characters go along with this, and Leopard's leadership does seem genuinely inspiring to them. The audience knows that she's wrong about her ancestors and her larger world, and that she's bound to learn this eventually. There are hints of this even for the Yatterman-uninitiated. Citizens close their doors to her team out of fear of reprisal, but Leopard takes it as a sign that the Yatter Kingdom's subjects are as bad as their rulers. Yatterman Night is therefore also a spunky girl's coming-of-age story, where she learns that the world is more complicated than the fairytales and myths she grew up with would suggest.

The show also creates a lush, beautiful world for its characters to explore on their journey. The second episode particularly excels in this as it fleshes out the Yatter Kingdom itself, showing all the different colorful and creepy bugs in its forests as Leopard and her friends dodge the Yatter robots. Yatterman Night uses single or limited color palettes to great dramatic effect, as with the white, washed-out color scheme in Leopard's vision of her mother before Dorothy's death, or the red explosions at the very beginning. Even the drab blues and grays of the Doronbow descendants' world manage to convey an odd combination of dreariness and coziness. It's a desolate place, but one with a strong sense of family and togetherness. On the other hand, what we've seen of the Yatter Kingdom may be vibrant at first, but it feels lonely and untrustworthy. This show knows how to say a lot with just a few well-placed and well-colored images.

Yatterman Night is one of the best surprises of this incredibly strong winter season, building to a compelling, fresh story that you'd never expect from its formulaic source material. I can't wait to see more of what's in store for the new Doronbow, and what the show has to teach its ersatz Doronjo about the complexities of the world.

Rating: A

Yatterman Night is currently streaming on Funimation.

Rose is a musicologist who studies film music. She writes about anime and many other topics on Autostraddle.com, her blog and her Twitter.
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