The pinnacle of gag manga as well as one of Akatsuka Fujio’s most renowned works, “Tensai Bakabon” returns after 18 years since its last anime with Director Hosokawa Toru’s new original story! Bakabon and his family, who made the phrase “This is how it should be” famous, are back along with the eccentric cast of Mr. Policeman, Rerere no Ojisan and Eel-Dog letting loose in a much more modern setting! The new frontier of “Bakabon” that’ll take place in a late-night slot is about to begin, 10 years after Akatsuka Fujio’s death. – Crunchyroll
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Manga
Episode 1 Summary: It’s been eighteen years since the previous animated incarnation of Akatsuka Fujio’s (Osomatsu-kun) manga Tensai Bakabon, and the characters are back and ready to take on the modern era. Papa, however, has the idea in his head that his family and their anime’s setting hasn’t changed nearly enough in the interim, so he starts making arbitrary alterations left and right. He hires a new voice actor to perform his role, and then hires a famous surgeon to give him a dramatic new look. He also has Bakabon, his son and the show’s namesake, cloned into sextuplets to capitalize on the fame of that other classic remake. Papa’s tunnel-vision towards dramatic change continues to escalate until the family’s youngest child, Hajime, is about to be falsely arrested for dealing drugs. It’s Mama’s anger that brings the family back down to Earth. Sometimes change for the sake of itself isn’t really such a great idea, but with an familiar-but-updated look and feel, the family can start their new show on the right foot.
Impressions: As a member of the geek community I often witness firsthand how a lot of fans are exhausted with remakes and sequels of properties that they consider to be a part of their personal canon. Ghostbusters and Star Wars are the two major examples that immediately come to mind, especially since both have recently attracted the ire of groups who are quite angry about some of their favorite properties being updated and/or expanded-upon. I’m the camp that’s pretty neutral about remakes; it’s easy enough for me to identify problems in the cartoons I used to watch as a kid, and if someone wants to take those shows and movies and try to fix those issues while retaining the aspects that attracted me to the properties in the first place, that’s great. I also think that remakes can serve a greater purpose in that, in the right hands, they can open up a fandom to a group of fans who were excluded in the past. Both examples above have taken an established universe and included more gender, sexual, and racial diversity, to the delight of many and the ire of some. Both of those properties in particular can also be interpreted as commenting on toxic masculinity in fandom and beyond, which I gather is part of the reason why they didn’t appeal to some (it’s difficult to look into your reliable magic mirror and suddenly be presented with the truth of your own internal ugliness laid bare, I suspect).
Anime, too, is no stranger to remade classics. Some of my favorite anime series and movies are those which are remade from older, established titles. Devilman: Crybaby is a recent example, which I love not only because my favorite director was involved, but also for the fact that it took what it needed to from previous versions while also telling a very new story about marginalized groups in our modern society. Casshern: Sins is another anime remake that I think is misunderstood and underrated; what I love is that it takes a pretty standard tokusatsu-style premise (a cyborg hero fights bad robots) and re-imagines it into a story about humanity extricating itself from the unnatural desire for eternal life and a reliance on religion. More standard remakes, such as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood which takes a more manga-centric path than its predecessor, gives the fandom something interesting to discuss; which version is “better,” and for what reasons? Even Osomatsu-san, which was purely a comedy, had the added effect of appealing to a different fandom, one interested in attractive male characters and voice actors. I think remaking our stories and bringing them up to speed with our current social beliefs (or even using them to push the envelope of those beliefs) is a necessary part of creating media.
That said, not all sequels and remakes are so high-minded, nor are they successful at taking older properties and providing them the ability to stand on their own two feet within modern fandom. The first episode of Late Night! The Genius Bakabon attempts to profess (and demonstrate) that change for the sake of change is meaningless and extreme, but its message becomes muddled with each of Papa’s escalations. Continuing further and further down that path, a lot of the potential humor is lost. I was actually hopeful that the humor might be snarky and more appealing based on the first (and probably funniest) gag in the episode – Papa calls up Yoshiki from the famous heavy-metal band X Japan (which got back together in between the previous series and this one) and lampshades the fact that, though it’s not Yoshiki’s voice behind the animation, Yoshiki provided his full permission for the gag. Considering that Osomatsu-san got in some hot water for a couple of parodies that ended up being too close to their source material, I found the repeated reference to Yoshiki’s blessing to be very funny. Unfortunately, the episode kind of deteriorates from that point onward. There are a lot of gags that reference what I assume are very specific Japanese pop-culture and political icons (it’s not the show’s fault that I didn’t understand them, but I can’t lie and say I found those references entertaining), and then there’s an extended gag which stems from Papa’s gender reassignment surgery and falls incredibly flat.
I don’t know why, but I continue to be shocked by the ways in which media creators continue to foul-up representation of marginalized groups. In my mind it’s completely out-of-the-question to make jokes that ignore or belittle the existence of people who are already discriminated against. Having Papa, simply for the sake of change, walk in and get surgery to change gender is in extremely poor taste; it reads not as an actively malicious choice (though it’s hard to say for sure), but at the very least an extremely ignorant one, and it truly soured the rest of the episode for me. There’s also a policeman character whose shtick appears to be his propensity towards stripping down to nothing but a necktie (I’m not sure if this is something from the original anime series, but it’s implied that it is). The big revelation is that, nowadays, you actually get arrested and carted away for exposing yourself to other people. As if this is a bad thing? Like I mentioned, the theme of this episode is focused on the pros and cons of change, and how change might not necessarily be a good thing, but its messaging isn’t clear. Sometimes things that were considered funny twenty years ago are eventually understood to be in incredibly poor taste, and that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes (always) you should be arrested for whipping it out in public.
I’m a bit at a loss over this episode, to be honest; by the time it meanders to the end, it’s not entirely clear whether what’s occurred during the previous twenty minutes will actually have any bearing on the series as a whole, so I’m almost a little curious to watch the next one and see if it suffers from the same problems. On the other hand, I found this episode to be mostly unfunny and plagued by issues that make me not really want to come back for more. I’m all for remakes, but some things are better left in the past.
Pros: The opening gag about Yoshiki and X Japan was funny. The modernized style the show arrives at by the end of the episode is bright and stylish.
Cons: Gender reassignment surgery is used for the sake of an extended gag. The episode gives a very poor sense of what the original anime series or manga was about. A lot of the humor requires an extensive knowledge of Japanese pop culture outside of anime.
Grade: D