Moroha 諸刃

Have you ever had trouble rememering all the station names on the Yamanote line in Tokyo? Well, here is a song that will help you remember them. Fast-forward to the 4:00 minute mark. Quite a catchy tune, if I do say so.

Those of you who have children 2 years old or older have dealt with or are dealing with the joy of potty-training them. The main problem with potty-training can be summed up as follows:

Forcing children to use toilets will make them dislike toilets. Children begin using toilets when they tire of that not-so-fresh feeling. Of course, this is long, way long, after you tire of it.

Of course to help bridge this gap between the parents desire for thier children to potty-train as quickly as possible and the child’s desire to do only what he/she wants to do there are an endless supply of children’s educational media. Despite having dubious effectiveness, the simple fact that there are enough parents that will buy anything and everything that is construed as ‘educational’ for children ensures that this market is alive and well. This is true even in Japan, where despite the low birth rate and shrinking population there is just as much of this glut as there is in the west.

The two main companies that produce education media for children in Japan are NHK and Benesse (pronounced beh-neh-seh). NHK is of course known as the huge PBS equivalent in Japan. In reality there are so many differences between NHK and PBS, most importantly NHK’s substantial budget that allows it to compete with other major networks, that only the most general comparison is valid. You can think of it as a full-blown major network that happens to be owned by the government. In the mornings they have several children’s educational shows, with the two most popular being おかあさんといっしょ (Together With Mother, a strange name for the show since it really has nothing to do with the children’s mothers) and いないいないば！(Peekaboo!) Karisa loves both of these shows, and Ryoko’s sister in Yokohama is kind enough to regularly tape them and send us copies. Since the TV channel itself operates in the red (Instead of pledge week like PBS does, they have employees that go door to door demanding/asking for donations. Kind of a wierd system, but I guess it works.) they unabashedly merchandize every single character from every show.

Since Benesse doesn’t own thier own major network, they can’t compete directly in the TV market. All they have is one TV show on TV Tokyo starring thier flagship character, Shimajiro, a cartoon tiger of Mickey-Mouse-like roundness and proportions. The business model for thier children’s education works as a subscription service. You buy an over-priced subscription, and every month they send you books, videos, a few toys (educational, of course), etc. There is no way I would fork over as much every month as Benesse asks for, but Ryoko’s parents are different. Being absolutely willing to spoil thier grand-daughter in any way possible, they have a subscription to Benesse, and every few months ship us all the stuff that came.

Like all ‘educational’ children’s literature it is thinly disguised brain washing, but being a parent for a couple years has really let me see the the value of brain-washing. They actually learn useful things from it. Of course as they get older and start thinking for themselves it won’t work, but I figure we might as well teach them good things while they are teachable.

So anyway, the latest Shimajiro video has this section on potty-training, and the first time I saw it I laughed so loudly that Ryoko actually got mad. “This is educational! It’s trying to present potty-training as something fun for kids!” But the video was just so over-the-top, I couldn’t help myself. Especially where he gets his underwear and becomes a super underwear pervert.

Update: It seems that same video has been featured on Dave Barry’s Blog. Who would think a little video could go so far? Now all it needs is to be farked to go prime time!

As truly awesome as Fist of the North Star may be though, it’s sheer awesomeness is not the point of these two posts. There is an interesting addition to the Hokuto no Ken family, something else that a Japanese friend mentioned to me, and then was later confirmed by a search on YouTube. Hokuto no Ken is a manga and anime that pretty much every Japanese knows and has seen at least a bit of, it being pretty much the most popular show on TV in Japan through a large chuck of the 80’s. Anyone that knows even a little bit about anime will have at least heard of it, if not seen it. So everything in the last post has been pretty redundant. (although translating that song was pretty fun…) What a lot of people don’t know though, is that Hokuto no Ken was imported into Korea, where it became a live-action drama. A really bad live-action drama. So now I give you the wonders and horrors of: Fist of the North Korean Star! (Actually it was made in South Korea, but blending Korea into Fist of the North Star was just irresistable.)
Intro Episode
The first link is the opening to the TV show, and the second is about 4 minutes from what appears to be the first (and hopefully only) episode. Also please note the character of Shin, Kenshiro’s arch-rival, doing his kung-fu with a bad blond wig and a pot-belly during the intro. Truly amazing.

My search also turned up this, which is equally hilarious, but not quite so easy to quantify. The explanation says it is the opening for the Taiwanese movie Fist of the North Star, but that doesn’t explain the Korean script here:

I can’t read Hangul, but it seems to me the third character is different from the Korean version of the show:

My guess is that since the chinese characters read 北斗新拳, that the Hangul reads the same. As for the genuinely Korean one, I’m guessing the third character is smaller because it’s the equivalent of の (of) in 北斗の拳. If anyone that can read Korean ever reads this blog (I guess that’s you Mitch, since this blog has a readership of about 3 people…), then please clear this up for me by leaving a comment. My only guess is that it could genuinely be a Taiwanese movie based on Hokuto no Ken, but that this recording I found was taken from a Korean dub or sub.

Unfortunately imdb is no help either, only listing the Japanese show and movie, and what the heck! There is an American version of this! It stars Gary Daniels, a regular in many low-budget martial arts flicks, including Knights, a true classic, an epic tale about a woman killing cyborg vampires in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. (Really!) It seems that this version of Fist of the North Star is readily available on DVD or VHS, but I couldn’t find any clips of it anywhere. Oh well. Maybe I’ll catch it on AMC, SpikeTV, or Turner Classic Movies? one of these days.