Shelf Life

My Little Unico

Alien cat girl Eris makes first contact on Earth with humorous and disastrous results. She winds up living in the home of Kio, a bespectacled high school student living alone in the tropical climes of Okinawa. Like so many nearsighted solo high school kids, Kio has a nosy neighbor/childhood friend/love interest named Manami, who is instantly jealous of Eris.

So far, it sounds like every other magical girlfriend/alien harem series, right? But here's where it's different: Manami is an actual character. She has interests outside of Kio; she wants to work for the CIA. She's not just a nosy spy, she's a gun nut with spy equipment. Secondary love-interest-girl Aoi also has hobbies. I mean, she's not just into film, she's also some kind of government secret spy with a super suit. Refreshingly, even Kio has some personality. By mid-season, he's frustrated that girls keep having to save his life, and he tries to learn how to fight and shoot a gun.

Cat Planet Cuties must've had some brilliant writers behind it. The action and dialog move along at a snappy pace, with plenty of jokes when the characters aren't worrying about romance. The dialog, especially in the dub, uses the occasional cat pun, but the series certainly isn't as pun-centric as Squid Girl.

The show also boasts high production values. The budget is apparent from first half of the first episode, with its high concept adventure scenes of boats and space ships. The expensive-to-animate sequences continue in later episodes, as the series takes place across a variety of locations and the characters ride (and explode) a variety of vehicles and participate in chase scenes and numerous fire fights. There are so many action scenes and undercover government agents that I was reminded of Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu.

Like Fumoffu, Cat Planet Cuties has cute helper robot/mascot things called Assist-A-Roids. Most of them are identical, but several take on their own personalities, with two of them costumed as samurai, and the most hilarious one, Yun Fat, dressing as the eponymous Chinese action star. In an early episode, Yun Fat fires a gun in slow motion while holographic doves appear behind him (an obvious nod to John Woo). I laughed out loud.

Amazingly, Cat Planet Cuties succeeds despite the tight formulas and conventions that severely constrict it. For example, in episode seven, the characters finally attend Kio's school, perhaps because that is what the genre dictates, or it's what the viewers are expecting. This show is better than that! They didn't need any school episodes, especially since the alien catgirls have more or less established an embassy in Kio's house. CPC has enough going on that it doesn't need to lean on the crutch of otaku plot formulas!

More often than not B-level TV shows use cleavage to make up for weak plotlines and uninteresting characters (think Baywatch). Cat Planet Cuties is a good enough show that it probably didn't need E-cup chests, school bathing suits, and skin-tight powersuit armor to be entertaining. (It probably did need cat girls, or most of the jokes wouldn't work.) Adding giant boobs to an already good show may be value-add for some viewers, but for my purposes it dirties the pool. Because this is a boob show, I can't loan it to people in good conscience.

This would've remained Rental Shelf, but the show got me with its many clever sci-fi references (and film references). The ending in particular struck my sci-fi fan heart. I guess I'm willing to tolerate excessive cleavage in exchange for solid science fiction, well-written jokes, high quality animation, and a good dub. I guess.[TOP]

In this story, the West Wind drops Unico off in a forest ruled by some uppity cat with wooden headphones. No sooner has Unico encountered the cat's gang when a crazy looking dude named Toby shows up and starts zapping the forest creatures into “living puppets” with his wand. Turns out Toby is the apprentice to an evil wizard named Kuruku, who then starts asking Toby to turn humans into puppets (“That wasn't part of the deal!” Toby complains) …starting with his own parents! Toby manages to rescue his sister from the spell, who has since befriended Unico.

And so, Unico and Toby's sister Cherry start off on a grand adventure to save their parents, and, you know, other creatures from neighboring areas, like a bunch of orphaned baby demons from Demon Valley (who look vaguely like Pokemon). Meanwhile, Toby keeps working for the wizard, whose evil scheme turns out to be legitimately frightening. (If you watched this as a kid, did you get nightmares?)

The story has an epic myth or fairy tale feel to it, and several Greek myths are invoked as the movie goes on. The film uses a lot of blocks of solid color in a graphic way. The wizard's castle has a memorable and artistic design that's otherwordly. Toby's costume is evocative, making him look halfway between a court jester and a some kind of beetle.

The human town and Toby's costume have a medieval European look, but the 1980's shine through in a magical, abstract laser-light show inspired montage in the middle of the film. More than once, Toby casts spells that turn wooden logs (or other objects) into something like a speeder bike from Return of the Jedi (also from 1983).

I was particularly taken with the wizard, who morphs into different shapes (including the Metatron?) with bulging eyes throughout the film. The wizard's lack of shape reminds me a little of the Witch of the Waste in Howl's Moving Castle, and it looks like Kuruku could have directly inspired Adventure Time's Ice King.

Gerald Rathkolb of the Anime World Order podcast is doing a panel at Otakon this year called The “Art” of Fan Service. I'd like to submit that every time Unico turns from a baby unicorn into an adult combination unicorn/pegasus, it's fan service for my 10-year-old heart. Unico is so elegant as an adult, in contrast to his usual goofy midget self! Just when Unico has seemingly taken a back seat in the film, he transforms and saves the day. In point of fact, the entire film feels like a checklist of stuff little girls might like; a dragon, a girl protagonist, baby animals, fairy tales, Egyptology, (you get the idea).

This release only includes only the English dub of the feature, with no Japanese audio track or subtitles, which is disappointing. The sole extra is the Unico pilot film, which is only in Japanese, and suffers from a poor transfer from some ancient video source. The aspect ratio of the pilot film is weirdly not anamorphic (that is to say, the pilot film is inset in a black box). I guess I could've made my TV zoom in on it, but it looked pretty blurry already.

Unico in the Island of Magic isn't exactly high priority viewing, but I won't mind it hanging around on my shelves for years to come.[TOP]