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.
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