Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. You all doing alright today? I’m personally feeling quite fine, as I’ve got the weekend right in front of me and a fresh episode of Ganso Tensai Bakabon on the plate. Charming in its comedy and absolutely jaw dropping in its art design, Bakabon is one of the strangest artifacts of ‘70s anime I’ve come across, overflowing with a level of main staff talent that basically any anime would kill for.

Thirty-odd episodes plus an opening directing by Osamu Dezaki. Art direction by the incomparable Shichiro Kobayashi. Countless other positions filled by key, lasting associates of Oshii, Dezaki, and Studio Ghibli. The more you dig into the show’s staff listing, the more you come across figures like, say, Kazuo Oga, an art designer who’s contributed background art to basically every Ghibli film. Bakabon’s credentials are preposterously impressive, boasting luminaries who’ve elevated decades of the medium’s best productions, and all of them here dedicated to the rambling adventures of a little goblin man and his accommodating family. It’s basically ‘70s Nichijou, making it almost impossible not to love. Let’s see what our gremlin father gets up to next!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am happy to announce that I have heard your fervent cries, and am at last prepared to answer your prayers. That’s right, it’s time for more Ganso Tensai Bakabon, where we’ll be enjoying more of the idiot adventures of Bakabon’s ridiculous father. Our dear Papa has endured missed fortunes, mischievous pigs, disappointing anniversaries, and all manner of other injustices, but he’s kept his head high throughout, and crucially maintained his sense of proud dignity.

Alright, yes, he has in fact done none of that, and is in truth more of a gremlin than almost any character I’ve met. It would not surprise me to see Papa literally swimming in a dumpster just to keep raccoons from stealing his trash, but I’m sure even that sort of adventure would be rendered beautiful by this generous production. As a commenter on my first Bakabon piece pointed out, this production’s art director Shichiro Kobayashi is one of the best the medium has seen, with art director credits ranging from Angel’s Egg to The Castle of Cagliostro to Beautiful Dreamer to Simoun. His artistic genius has enriched many of anime’s most beautiful works of all time, and with two Dezaki mainstays sharing directorial duties, I imagine the layouts will be impressive as well. Let’s dive back in to the dramatically irreverent and aesthetically entrancing Bakabon!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be checking out a feature that’s a little distant from our usual selections, as we explore the first episode of the ‘70s comedy Ganso Tensai Bakabon. This is actually the second adaptation of Fujio Akatsuka’s original Tensai Bakabon manga, focused on the original’s breakout character: Bakabon’s idiot father, famed for his nonsensical neighborhood schemes.

The manga is one of those Japanese cultural institutions like Sazae-san that never really got much traction abroad, presumably due its culturally embedded perspective and the general difficulty of adapting comedy between languages. Of course, all those challenges only make this viewing more interesting to me, as a snapshot of a particular moment in mid-century Japanese culture. And beyond its historical relevance, this particular adaptation happens to benefit from the presence of Osamu Dezaki, one of the greatest titans in anime history. Dezaki directed over thirty episodes of Bakabon under his Makura Saki pen name, including the one we’re about to get on with. I’ll admit this seems like a somewhat unusual place to begin my Dezaki investigations, but I’m sure you’d all agree that some Dezaki is better than no Dezaki, and I’m happy to provide. Let’s see what Ganso Tensai Bakabon has in store!

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