#174: Wonder Momo (2014)

 

Director: Yutaka Kagawa

Screenplay: Ayumi Inabe

Based on the arcade game by Namco

Voice Cast: Yuka Fujiwara as Momoko; Atsushi Imaruoka as Glooder; Atsushi Tamaru as Natsuhiko; Misaki Komatsu as Akiho/Amazona; Anju Inami as Yumi; Halko Momoi as Momo/Original Wonder Momo

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

But secretly eradicating aliens after school and not telling me?

This is an example of an extremely short anime, one whose back story is probably more significant than the anime itself. Wonder Momo is based on a Namco arcade from 1987 - a parody of the legendary Ultraman franchise, with a female lead, which involved playing an actress who played the heroine in a live stage show. It does predate the type of risqué stuff you would find in anime about female heroines, as it had a bit of fan service in pixel form; interestingly, whilst it suggests as much in the character designs and costumes, this anime adaptation is surprisingly restrained and not the title it suggests on the packaging. Instead, and more interesting, is that it was part of a project by ShiftyLook, a subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings that was focused on revitalizing older Namco franchises, starting with web comics for the likes of this, Klonoa, even a less obscurer title like Katamari Damacy among others. Wonder Mono's web comic began in 2012 with Wonder Momo: Battle Idol by Jim Zub, Erik Ko, and Omar Dogan, also one of the ones before the company's eventual closing to get a hardback published release.

From there, we got an online net animation for Wonder Momo¹, which does have the immediate issue to deal with that, over five episodes long, each episode is only seven minutes long including opening and end credits, making the entire thing less than thirty minutes long. The premise is pretty obvious - a high school girl Momoko wishes to become an idol singer, but is approached by a weird green man who shots a super powered orb into her body in a subway. Thankfully, this is not for any nefarious reason, as he is one of the two aliens concerned to protect the Earth from another alien race. This abrupt intervention on Momoko's life allows her to be able to turn into a super heroine when the Putty Patrol, genderless goons in skin-tight black body costumes with red masks, terrorise the high school basketball players soon afterwards.

There is the inevitable problem of trying to review this when this is as short as it is. Even in mind to some of the bizarre short works I have seen you can cover a lot within, around this length, Wonder Momo at this length includes all the same opening and end credits footage you excise, followed by a lot of conventional plot moments you would expect in a longer version of this premise of a high school super-heroine. Suffice to say, if a long form title over thirteen episodes had existed, this would have been a goofy parody, where the super weapon is an energised hula hoop ("Wonder Hoop") and the monsters, in mind to this premise's clear debt to tokusatsu storytelling, look like weird creature costumes or toys. There is a potential love interest Natsuhiko, a student news photographer at her school who catches her first transformation and becomes a close confidant, and Akiho, a popular idol figure who is also Amazona, a loner super heroine who thinks Momoko butts in and is inept, the rival figure who together would inevitably have to team up to fight the big evil of the narrative at the ending.

Then there is the one character where Wonder Momo, if it had been a longer work, could have been inspired. Suddenly, in the midst of watching this, I had a thought about the magical girl genre, which this is also effectively a part of, a genre in which teen girls are able to become heroines like Sailor Moon. Sometimes the mind wanders and likes to imagine plot lines that would intrigue me, like whether an show or manga even as a joke imagined when any magical girl reached their thirties or even older, only for this anime the suddenly tease me with something brilliant in that similar idea. Actually revealed to be a sequel to the video game, it clearly read my mind when Momoko's mother Momo appears. Representing the original Wonder Momo from the video game, she could have been a central character to a premise herself, and in another longer title would have immediately delighted many anime fans if they have executed the character perfectly. An entire series of a mother who was once, or still is, a magical (woman) girl with her daughter now following her footsteps is a funny or even memorable premise in itself, barely covered here beyond getting her daughter and Akiho to stop arguing, and getting Momoko to do sit-ups at night to improve her cardio.

But, this is a short little titbit. In terms of its reputation, Wonder Momo was not held in high regard, but low expectations for me coming into viewing this title. I was surprised that this was not as bad as its reputation suggests. I feel as well Wonder Momo is excessively short to ever be able to shoot its own feet off with terrible creative decisions unless it did something insane bad, and that whilst we are on this decision, Namco with ShiftyLook could have done worse with a project. My mind went to Arcade Gamer Fubuki (2002-3), an OVA adaptation to a Mine Yoshizaki manga where Sega were perfectly happy to have their licensed titles shown in the three episodes. Some of it was actually funny, usually involving the figure of Mr. Mystery, a masked hero whose bravado is countered by moments like actually feeling the pain of jumping through a plate glass window. But it was also a show fixated on very young teen girls' panties among content which would make you embarrassed to be an anime fan, which makes Wonder Momo positively Shakespeare in comparison.

Wonder Momo's shortness is confounded by the fact it does not even have an ending. Even the recorded press conference for the series, included on the Crunchyroll streaming site alongside the five episodes, was over forty plus minutes long, double the length of the project itself. Even in terms of animation, I will argue there has been worse. Premise wise, it may have likely spun its wheels if longer but could have worked. Some of the humour means it would have been funny (even the Putty Patrol, actually called the Waru Soldiers, need to use pay phones to get backup). It could have likely indulged in a lot more fan service then it did, though it likely may have been tamer than most even when one of the gags was one of the good aliens finding a bikini photo of Akiho. (Dodging around one villain being a creepy octopus headed monster, a dime-a-dozen in anime, shows the series would have not likely have gone in that direction too far least to defeat the point of this reboot). Mom being an older Wonder Momo, with even her own retro attacks, is a funny idea especially as she is never mocked as being older, just as good if not the strongest of the three female leads who just has a cheery demeanour, with the unexpected thing (as no one probably thought about it) being her also being a single mother to Momoko. Even the show, for its modest animation and fights taking place under very cheap CGI purple haze, having the touch of on-screen sound effect text for attacks, even ones for "Victory" after battles, would have been fun to see if this had embraced its goofball antics and videogame origins.

That there is no ending or length means it is more a test run, and ShiftyLook themselves would be closed down by Namco only two years after its founding in March 2014, only a month after this show premiered in February of the same year. That proves a much more tragic and perverse ending for the series, than if we actually got to see the heroes, after entering an impromptu space portal, into the villains' headquarters, but it is memorable. Thus, we end this review with looking at a weird anomaly which blipped into existence and left; certainly, reading up on all this detail, this show has become a lot more fascinating just reading up this detail from when I was expecting this to be comically short as a piece.

 

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1) A piece of a news announcement, which elaborates on the back story of this multi-media reboot, can be found HERE.

2) As disclosed HERE.