Welcome to the Fantasy Zone
This Zone is dedicated to the lesser known elements of anime hosted by the cast of Victory Script.
What weapon is the best?
Who will win in this Death Battle?
Is this costume practical?
You name it, it's all covered here in the Fantasy Zone!
It's not often I get to talk about something that completely changed the way Shojo is presented.
Who is Licca-Chan?
The bio for the doll says that she's an 11 year old fifth grader named Rika Kayama, a cheerful, slightly impulsive girl with dreams of being a designer like her mother.
Licca's Creation
She was created in 1967 by shojo manga artist Miyako Maki who is actually the widow of the great Leiji Matsumoto.
The main difference between Licca and Barbie is the size of the doll, with Licca being a mere 21 centimetres in size compared to the larger slender Barbie doll.
As of today, Licca is in her fourth generation with the only real changes are the fashions, jobs and cultures of the time along with slight hair colour alterations, Licca and Barbie are the only two remaining fashion doll brands to be over 50 years old.
How Does it Relate to Anime
Over the years, the doll has collaborated with different anime properties.
The one above is Card Captor Sakura, she's also dressed as Asuka from Evangelion and Lum from Urusei Yatsura, she's even dressed as Hatsune Miku.
The Weird 90s
Ironically sales declined during the run of Sailor Moon and didn't really come back in until the anime finished, the following couple of years saw the anime Super Doll Licca Chan air with some what mixed reception, it's best I save that for an actual review.
Impact on Shojo
One look at the history of Licca's many dresses and outfits can immediately see the influence it had on dressing the shojo heroines that followed making Miyako Maki one of the trailblazers, every elaborate costume ever worn can be traced back to Licca-Chan and while less obvious now with the advent of idol dress up video game card games and the rise of the mobile dress up darling Love Nikki Dress Up Queen, Licca still has a place in the ever evolving world of Japanese childhood.
So a quick fun one for you and probably the strangest line up of fighting game characters since Sega tried to enter the Daytona USA car and Pepsiman.
DreamMix TV World Fighters is a Smash Bros style arena fighting game featuring characters from Hudson Soft, Konami and Takara Toys franchises, the line up of characters consists of names that would make a future in Smash Bros including Simon Belmont from Castlevania and Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid.
Other known Konami characters include, Moai from Gradius, Power Pro Kun from Power Pro Baseball and Twinbee from Twinbee, all well known.
Hudson Soft offers Bomberman obviously but starts getting weird with Master Higgins from Adventure Island, Yugo Ogami from Bloody Roar, Momotaro and Binbogami from Momotaro Densetsu and Manjimaru from Tengai Makyo, little rarer than Konami but not bad.
Takara goes even weirder than that, Optimus Prime and Megatron from Transformers is a no brainer but as the list goes down, it gets weirder, M121 Mason and Aska are from Microman and Cy Girls respectively but at least they are from action toy lines, the former being a science fiction action figure while the latter is a crime fighter action figure and then you get Tyson from Beyblade and Licca-Chan, a fashion doll line called the Barbie doll of Japan.
Licca-Chan did feature as a fighting doll in her own anime in 1998 but the model they use in the PS2 and Gamecube game is more Barbie than the yo-yo wielding mall dweller she looks like in the anime.
Konami are the only ones who got the memo to bring actual well known characters, Hudson Soft other than Bomberman features painfully Japanese only characters and two characters only known by near 40 year old gamers.
Takara tried their best but other than Transformers and maybe the action figure lines, Tyson and Licca are so out of place here.
Such a bizarre era of gaming to bring this game to life; this isn't the only bizarre crossover fighting game to include such left field properties, find out next time.
Also coming soon is a review and story behind Licca-Chan.
Dot Hack is a franchise from the early 2000s that tells the story of an online game that over it's many iterations features it's players falling into a coma and the mysterious circumstances behind it. However the franchise is a mixed bag of mediocrity but it could've been so much more if a better writer was allowed to create it.
A New Freedom for the Disabled
Subaru from the Hack Sign anime is disabled in real life, the game acts as an immersive virtual reality that gives her the ability to walk, allowing the possibility for a storyline in which the technology could help her walk again, Angelic Layer did do this in their anime iteration.
Helping the Abused Find a New Life
Spoilers in play for Hack Sign and Belle.
Tsukasa is revealed to be a girl in real life with an abusive father, by the end, Bear becomes her legal guardian with Subaru and Mimiru becoming her best friends, elements of this plot were later reused for the film Belle.
Balmung's Rise to Admin
I'd be down for a spinoff of Balmung's rise to administrator, something like "My Senpai is Annoying" would really work.
Mistral and Mireille's Family Life
A spinoff of Mistral and her daughter's day to day life. I'll call it.
"My MMO crazy daughter took all my rare items"
Go Darker than Sword Art Online
With the reoccurring Coma plot already being quite dark, to go further may feel like copying Sword Art Online but on a grander scale could be closer to Summer Wars where the stakes threaten the real world itself.
Twilight Should've Been More About Shugo and Rena Dealing with Divorced Parents
Foreshadowing for what I think of the Legend of the Twilight Anime I'm finishing tomorrow but I really think they should've used the plot to look into how the siblings use the game to deal with the difficulties brought on by their parents divorce.
Haseo's Player Killing Becomes Darker
Haseo was a known Player Killer early on in Dot Hack, I smell a Death Note plot.
So Many Possible Human Moments
The possibilities that Dot Hack squandered are too many to name and many have been used to better effect by other anime.
Dot Hack has so many human moments because it's always treated it's premise exactly how it should be treated, it remembers that the players of the online game are humans grounded in the rules of real life.
Other stories that use the video game world plot often blur the lines between reality and game, mostly because we never see what that real world is.
Managed to find some more random trivia so here we go.
1. The real life Maid Cafe in Doujin Work
In Doujin Work, Najimi works in Cafe with Cat, a real life cafe in the Otaku capital in Akihabara.
2. Bible verses from Elfen Lied's opening
The text of the OP theme of Elfen Lied is the "Beatus vir", an excerpt from the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible. The passage is from James 1: "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him."
3. You're not the boss of me now
Ever wonder what the anime scene was in the opening of Malcolm in the Middle?
It's from Nazca.
4. Attack on Titan could've been sillier
In the Pilot manga of Attack on Titan, they didn't have the 3D maneuver gear and humans were just jumping 10ft into the air without explanation.
5. Get the rubber on Shinji
Spike Spencer and Tiffany Grant recorded an Aids PSA in their character voices of Shinji and Asuka, it was never broadcast but the recording is still around on the internet, considering some scenes in Eva, this is kind of ironic.
Since the mystery box can often give me anime, I don't have easy access to, a quick fact is more than enough to get it checked off, this will be along with a few novelty facts as well.
There will be five per episode.
1. Parasyte is older than you might think.
Having got an anime in mid 2010s you may think that the body horror franchise is fairly new but the first manga started as early as 1988.
2. Probably the only way you'll know Endro.
This meme of the adorable girl struggling to say no is from Endro.
3. Clannad means family.
Clannad is an Irish word meaning Family, an appropriate title for such a heartstrings tugging anime.
4. Bad ending for you.
The OVA of Dramatical Murder features all the bad endings from the video game, each one very explicit in detail.
5. Flying Foxes.
In the two part finale of Samurai Pizza Cats, The Great Comet Caper, Villain Seymour Big Cheese (a fox not a rat) is seen flying with his tail helicopter style. This episode aired in February 1991, four months before Sonic 1 was released and even earlier before Tails became the Flying Fox we all know today.
Although the concept of animals flying with tails has existed as early as Doraemon among other young children's anime, Big Cheese was the first fox to do it long before Miles Tails Prower did it.
