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We're kicking off our extended pause of Albert Barillé's Once Upon a Time with some fanime. I had originally planned on showing all the episodes of this show AND all the episodes of the much more infamous Nyan~ Neko Sugar Girls tonight, but then I found out there was actually a lot of secondary content for both shows that wasn't included in the episode playlists. And so I figured it was best to save NNSG for next week.
For now, you may be asking what "fanime" even is. And so I will explain: A fanime (etym. blend of fan + anime) is basically when someone makes an anime-style cartoon show by drawing frames in MS Paint; compositing them in Windows Movie Maker with pirated music, stock sound effects, and dialog recorded in one take on potato microphones; and posting the result to YouTube. This isn't necessarily accurate of all fanime, but the throughline is in any case that fanime is a form of democratized amateur animation combining anime aesthetics with "Internet Ugly". The style is most associated with the Western anime fandom of the mid-2000s through mid-2010s, where it was often difficult to distinguish sincere fanime shows from parodies of the genre.
What's the chef cookin' tonight?
Tokyo Crystal Mew is a magical girl fanime series created by mojocrystaltokyo, released between 2006 and 2012, according to the descriptions of the reuploads (the original YouTube uploads were taken down for copyright, alas!). According to Fanime Realm, Tokyo Crystal Mew is believed by many to be the first ever fanime series, which certainly seems likely when it started so shortly after YouTube's founding in 2005.
Tokyo Crystal Mew is an unofficial "next generation" sequel to the popular early-2000s magical girl animanga series Tokyo Mew Mew, so we can expect Tokyo Crystal Mew to be a lot less parodic than the two fanime we watched back in August. Fanime Realm describes Tokyo Crystal Mew's plot like so:
The plot is centered around Toya Aoyama, the daughter of Masaya and Ichigo, and her best friend Mina Shirogane, the daughter of Ryou and Minto. Shortly after being attacked by a monster, they learn from Ryou's cousin, Yuko Shirogane, that they have the right DNA to be Mew Mews and recruits them into participating in "Mew Project 2.0", which has been created to fight off an alien force known as the Seekon Anima, as Mew Cherry and Mew Blueberry, respectively. Eventually, they meet 8 other Mew Mews, some of whom are also daughters of the original team members.
Fanime Realm further claims, interestingly, that mojocrystaltokyo was planning in the mid-2010s on making a reimagining of Tokyo Crystal Mew without the copyrighted elements, but that this idea evidently never came to fruition. This certainly leaves me wondering to what extent Tokyo Crystal Mew can be enjoyed without having seen Tokyo Mew Mew — I myself have only seen 17/52 episodes of the anime this fanime was based on.
We will be watching all available Tokyo Crystal Mew content tonight:
- Episode 1 (10 minutes)
- Episode 2 (9 minutes)
- Episode 3.1 (7 minutes)
- Episode 3.2 (5 minutes)
- Episode 4.1 (7 minutes)
- Episode 4.2 (9 minutes)
- Remake Episode 1.1 (8 minutes)
- Remake Episode 1.2 (7 minutes)
- Remake Episode 2 (22 minutes)
- BONUS: Toya the Mew Mew 1 (2 minutes)
- BONUS: Toya the Mew Mew 2 (2 minutes)
- BONUS: Toya the Mew Mew 3 (3 minutes)
- BONUS: Toya the Mew Mew 4 (3 minutes)
- BONUS: Overdrive IOSYS TCM ver (1 minute)
- BONUS: Triple Baka TCM ver (0 minutes)
≈ 95 minutes of scheduled content.
Notice how some of the episodes are split in two due to 2000s YouTube disallowing videos longer than 10 minutes.
Content warnings and accessibility
Audio description: Not available.
Sign language: Not available.
Captions: Not available.
Language of audio: English.
Content warnings:
- Sound quality may be grating to some viewers.
♫ Uniting nations at the speeeed of liiiiight ♫
[epic sax solo]
♫ Station of the '20s — TV☆3SIS! ♫
