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HYPERDOLLS

                                               December 12, 2004
                                               August   31, 2013

Recent adventures with anime:              From material posted to alt.gothic
I got a stack of dubious
anime tapes for a $1 each,
(remaindered at "Le Video"),      The gem found in the pile of trash
which are not *good* exactly,     always appeal to the collector's
but I find that I enjoy them      spirit, after all...
a lot --
                                                    SMALL_COINS
   BAD_AND_TRUE

My favorite of the bunch is a
couple of "Hyper-Dolls" tapes,     (I would guess that's a joke that's
subtitled "The Easy Fighters".     hard to translate: they're "the
                                   fighters who achieve easy victories",
These are pretty silly satires     but they're also "the lazy fighters",
of the genre, with dorky giant     the fighters that don't work hard.)
monsters and super-babes
disguised as high school girls
who have been planted on earth
to deal with the monsters.

The really killer find here is the
"live action" piece, an extra tacked
on to the end of the first Hyper
Dolls tape.

This is essentially a music video, with
scenes of female acrobats in superhero
costumes beating up a rubber suit "giant"
monster, intercut with two young japanese
women singing and dancing (more-of-less).

The singers hold their mics with one hand,
and make an odd gesture with their other:

They lean forward, left hand out stretched,
and slowly bring it up, and then they either
leave it outstreched in front, or reach up
and drop it down behind their heads.

And then I got it: they were singing the word
"Monster" ("*maaahhnstaaahhrr*"), and when
held in front, the hand was a monster's claw,
when droped behind their heads, their fingers
were supposed to be monster's horns.

That human beings can achieve this degree of cuteness
without making me want to vomit is truly astonishing.


        Hyper-Dolls "Scary Monster!!!"
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoqVPq3XLHU

        (includes the show's closing
        credits at the beginning:
        video starts at 1:30)

                                                       (July 28, 2011)
                                                      
                                                                      
                                  And so, a rather odd little music video     
                                  feature at the end of an anime VHS tape     
                                  that I bought for $2 is now of course       
                                  easily available over the web.              
                                                                              
                                  Your lives are thus enriched, and yet,     
                                  the world seems a poorer place.           
                                                                            
                                                                           







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