always angry
MEOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!
Long, long ago — I’m talking about the story in The Green Cat, not talking about how this may have been the first OVA ever produced in 1983, as part of Osamu Tezuka’s Lion Books series (composed of a bunch of different stories) — some really stupid robbers (headed by Susan the Gangster) decided to try and hold a laundry place hostage in order to get the cops off their backs. They ended up running into a guy named Ban Shusaku and a baby named Sanbo Juno. Instead of them being able to hide and take everyone hostage, they end up killing a man but they end up getting the crap kicked out of them by Ban. Then just when it looks like Susan would escape from mortal death, the Green Cat that just so happened to be with her all this time, up and walks away. You can guess what happened after that. A year later, Ban decides to try and take care of Sanbo, when all of a sudden, the Green Cat returns, and Sanbo doesn’t want to let it go.
Cue what turns out to be the start of one strange piece of anime probably lost by time, even despite having Osamu Tezuka’s name on the back of this, somewhere on here. Ok, it’s not like Penguindrum/Serial Experiments Lain kind of strange, but it involves 80′s animation with a mix of Sci-Fi and cat screaming. You won’t be able to avoid the cat screaming.
I think the only thing I can say I liked about The Green Cat is the message it was trying to say. A nameless character tells the story about how the Green Cat (who considers itself the god of Welfare) phenomenon has gone on for a while, usually getting children to like it so much that eventually they depend on it, and slowly through time they grow up to be bad people and eventually things don’t quite turn out well for them (RIP Susan). Why does this happen? Because they don’t know what to do, and don’t have the support around them to tell them right from wrong. Well, in this case, bad support can lead one into what you see here, and that is with kids turning into adults and wanting to swindle, steal, and kill people. Or something.
Ningen Shikkaku.
Anyways, aside from that, man was this one weird OVA. It basically tried to tell the story using Ban’s backstory, which resulted in seeing some dude take out a gun while a gun was pointed at baby Sanbo (um, hostage much?), numerous time-skips, lots of whining from Sanbo, some pretty ugly deaths, and one really pissed off cat. No seriously, in watching all 22 or so minutes I’m not sure it ever actually managed to be happy. You can probably guess it didn’t end happy for it either.
Well, at least it tried to smile.
