This Week in Anime

What is KochiKame?!

Chris
I know the announcement turned my head! It feels like if you were picking up an anime magazine (yes, these used to be a thing) as part of the Western fandom anytime through the '90s and 2000s, you would inevitably trip over a blurb about This Is a Police Box in Front of Kameari Park in Katsushika Ward (or, understandably, "KochiKame" to its friends). It was the longest-running manga still going at the time, starting in 1976 and racking up over 1,900 chapters in Shonen Jump before finally finishing in 2016. It was a cultural institution!

It's to the point that it's remarkable that KochiKame didn't even get a televised anime adaptation until 1996 after it was already 20 years into its run! Still, that naturally means there's not as much of it as the manga, so REMOW's work won't be too cut out for them on that weekly release model. KochiKame the anime "only" has a little over 370 episodes, total.

Just jumping into the show is the best way to do it, given how Ryotsu hits the ground rolling at the start. We can dissect distribution models and make plans for far-future review follow-ups later.

It's funny because going 30 to 50 years without any official English release of KochiKame means that this was a series I'd always heard about and built up some preconceived notions of without actually seeing. Despite that, my reaction to these first couple of episodes was, "Yup, that's pretty much exactly what I expected."

This is a sitcom of a sitcom, which makes sense when you consider that its storied, reliable length was the claim to fame for this series for so long. There's a reason that The Andy Griffith Show ran for hundreds of episodes and The Simpsons will probably outlive us all. These kinds of antics aren't amazing, but they're dependable.

It's a basic setup you can drape effectively infinite plots over week in and week out: Kankichi Ryotsu is handily the worst cop in the ward, and he and his co-workers have to deal with the effects of his own incompetence in a way that somehow never results in him getting fired. Maybe, occasionally, he'll entertain a get-rich-quick scheme to make The Honeymooners proud.

God, we're talking about dated-ness, and here I keep comparing this anime to shows that were on Nick at Nite when I was a kid. Do the youth still care about Brooklyn Nine-Nine? It's a work-com about cops; it's kinda like Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

To be sure, Ryo doesn't seem to get rewarded for his antics beyond getting to keep the job he cares nothing about. Watching him get owned by his hubris is the ostensible part of the appeal. It's very much in that older sitcom mold of a "relatable" guy getting by with the minimum.

It works with his contrast with golden boy Keiichi in the second episode, especially given the latter's seeming propensity to respect some of Ryo's suggestions and go along with them as his senior. There's a solid enough setup if chemistry properly congeals between these characters. I have to presume it does because of the sheer length of this series.

Knowing the era(s) it hails from softens the blow on me. As you said, how typical was this setup on all sides of the Pacific? I do think it's important to be able to differentiate between pretend cops in stories and actual cops in real-world tragedies. In that case, it's almost quaintly nice to see a police officer screw up in ways that don't result in suspects getting extrajudicially murdered. Though given Ryo's lionization of Dirty Harry, perhaps I should append that with a "yet." And not for nothing, but it does prompt some dissonant reactions at the twee little tally of all of Ryo's property damage at the end of each episode.

To be fair, Reiko's 'fit is hardly the most unwieldy police uniform in the KochiKame anime. Now, this is all admittedly where KochiKame's place in history, and its extremely recent release rollout makes it odd for sociopolitical analysis. As we've touched on, much of what's been shown in these two episodes was pretty fair, even aspirational in some areas, for its day. But they're just two out of 370+ of a show that could go who knows where in the rest of that time.

Getting classic anime on streaming is, appropriately, nothing new. RetroCrush has been dutifully serving the niche for a while now; you can watch a ton of classics like Gunbuster and Lupin the Third on Crunchyroll, and HIDIVE even hosted fellow famed long-runner Legend of the Galactic Heroes for a while before seemingly retiring it earlier this year. Hopefully, that one comes back sooner rather than later.

The thing is, older series like this have been released on those services and dropped all at once like something reflecting that binge model you and Steve bemoaned last week. Sometimes, you get an in-between arrangement, like when Crunchyroll released Minky Momo in 15-episode batches. But drip-feeding an established series of this length is pretty atypical, and I'd argue the binge-batch model makes more sense for older anime with a lot of episodes on them. To me, REMOW's decision to release KochiKame on a weekly schedule like this is something of a marketing gimmick. Which is pretty wild when you consider that "We've got KochiKame streaming! For free!" would've been enough of an anime fan attention-getter on its own.

It's easily the most I've heard about REMOW and their "It's Anime" You Tube channel since they started it a few years ago. These guys have collaborated on productions and hosted episodes of series old and new from My Deer Friend Nokotan to Yakitake!! Japan. Yet somehow, I only really came across them at the beginning of this season when they got Umamusume: Cinderella Gray a few hours ahead of Amazon's simulcast. As always, I am primarily swayed by Horse Girls.

It says something the way the past week, my timeline suddenly saw a surge of mentions of this You Tube channel releasing KochiKame on a schedule that would take them over seven years to complete. That's commitment to the bit I can appreciate, anyway. It is, I can concede, extremely funny.

Between KochiKame and Reborn! REMOW's already got examples of Shonen Jump standbys to set them up. Plus, Cygames had previously experimented with sending UmaMusume to You Tube for free with their streaming of Road to the Top, so this is a vector other companies are interested in.

Other channels have played with it, such as the Gundam.info You Tube channel occasionally, temporarily uploading episodes of old Gundam anime for viewing. And, of course, my tokusatsu-loving ass would be remiss if I didn't mention Toei Tokusatsu World's dedication to uploading at least the first couple of episodes of every rubber-suited series the company has ever produced. So, as an archival effort, the possibility of more classic anime getting the KochiKame treatment is promising!

To say nothing about how untenable You Tube could become as a platform in seven whole years. That's why, as much as I admire that commitment to the bit, I'll be curious to see if REMOW sticks to their stated plan or cuts to the chase and eventually dumps all of KochiKame out there. The series is perfect as a breezy one-episode-a-week watch, but I'm more interested in keeping up with the release side of this story than I am in the adventures of Ryo himself. However, I might keep checking in from time to time.

Lord knows we're at least feeling a little luckier than Ryo. Plus, it helps us at TWIA to plan our future a little bit. Meet you back here in June of 2032 for a proper rundown of all of KochiKame?