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"Bobobo" redirects here. For the locomotive type, see Bo-Bo-Bo.
This article is about the manga and anime. For the title character, see Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (character).
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (ボボボーボ・ボーボボ Bobobōbo Bōbobo) (sometimes known as Bo x 7 or Bo-bobo) is a manga by Yoshio Sawai, published by Shueisha in Japan and serialized in the Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine. Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is a comedy influenced by Japanese manzai humor that uses puns, double-talk, breaking of the fourth wall, non-sexualized cross-dressing, visual gags, and satirical and pop-culture references, which makes its non sequitur humor very specific to Japanese audiences. The manga series lasted from 2001 through 2007, divided into two separate sections with a distinct difference in humor and plotting. It was voted the best anime of 2002.
[edit] PlotIn the year 300X, the entire world is under the tyrannical rule of the Maruhage Empire, and their ruler, Tsuru Tsurulina IV (Baldy Bald the 4th). His Hair Hunt troop captures innocent bystanders' hair, leaving the people bald and their villages in ruins. Standing against this evil regime is the heroic, but bizarre, rebel, Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo, who fights the Hair Hunt Troop with his powerful Hanage Shinken (Fist of the Nose Hair). His team consists of the normal teen girl Beauty, the smelly teen warrior Heppokomaru (Gasser) and the Hajike leader Don Patch (Poppa Rocks). Bo-Bobo is on an exciting, gag-filled quest to deliver his own hairy brand of justice to evildoers everywhere. The show's comedy is driven by its insanity and bizarre nature. Although fighting a rebellion against evil forces, none of the heroic characters take their job too seriously (nor do they seem to care for each other), drawing their power from their spontaneity with a special "Hajike" (dub: Wiggin) style to create attacks that either parody what they are up against or have nothing to do with anything going on. The more serious characters break the fourth wall to comment on this to the readers. [edit] List of main charactersFor other characters see List of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo characters The story focuses on the nine heroes who gather to fight against Czar Baldy Bald IV and the evil forces of the Maruhage Empire. At the center of this team is Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, master of "Hanage Shinken" (Divine Fist of the Nosehair) and Hajikelist who will do anything and everything for victory. Through his journey to defeat the forces of baldness, he gathers a team of allies and former enemies who become attached to his cause in one way or another:
While these eight are the main warriors of the series, others assist in fighting against the evil in this world, including:
[edit] Fusions and transformationsDue to Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo being both a part and parody of the shōnen manga genre, it takes advantage of various classic traits in the genre and places its own bizarre spin on them. One of these traits is the usage of character transformation, a well-known cliché where a character gets an amazing power-up by unleashing either a dormant power within or a new power taken from elsewhere. The unpredictability of many characters causes them to go through all sorts of weird transformations, either as part of the parody/homage process (like turning into a demonic being or "turning golden") or merely as part of a huge joke (such as turning into a vegetable, a yen or an immense fortress). However, even with the many nonsense or one-shot changes, certain power-ups and transformations are consistently used by the main characters. Some of these more common transformations include:
Similar to the transformations, Bo-bobo and his allies also use various fusion abilities, combining together to form more powerful beings. But once again, these beings are slightly different: no fusions are like the original bases and no two are the same. These beings range in personality from the heroic BoboPatch, the manipulative BoboPatchnosuke (BoboPatchiggler), and the cheerful female Denbo to the impatient PatchBobo, the violently peaceful TenBobo (Mr. Bojiggler), the reckless Kintenbo and the mature Yokohama Junko. With each being comes new surprises in attacks and in what they unleash, adding to the weirdness of these already weird characters. [edit] ParodiesThe series mocks existing manga and anime conventions, making fun of more than a few fairly specifically. While the series' main concept is a warped version of Weekly Shōnen Jump series Fist of the North Star, series as varied as Doraemon, Sailor Moon (and the whole magical girl genre in general), Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, Gundam, the Dragon Ball series, Air Gear, Serial Experiments Lain, Initial D, Inuyasha, Wolf's Rain and many others are used as humor fodder. The result is usually nothing short of sheer nonsense. The series also operates as a mockery of stereotypes in Japanese literature (for instance, the ideal of noble self-sacrifice) and Western popular culture (such as action films). While Bo-bobo is ostensibly the hero, his behavior is frequently self-important, childish, arbitrary, and incomprehensible. However, this is also often how he deals with his enemies — by confusing them into submission. At various points the top of Bo-bobo's head pops open, revealing a scene that is either an allegory for the state of Bo-bobo's own mind (e.g., when his powers fail him, the viewer sees a pair of boy-and-girl cartoon squirrels going through a painful separation), or to unleash weapons. Bo-bobo even turns into a giant robot (or at least emulates its functions) a number of times. Bo-bobo's afro also opens up to reveal something meant to drive the opponent mad, such as Game Boy Pig or the cat throwing chikuwa (a Japanese dish, churros in the English dub). The manga version of Bo-bobo has an easier time getting away with parodying and paying homage to various other manga, past and present, from Weekly Shōnen Jump, the manga anthology book it is published in. Other manga authors have assisted in the parodies and paying homage as well. The most famous being a cameo by Yugi Mutou from Kazuki Takahashi's Yu-Gi-Oh! in chapter 104, where Bo-bobo summons him from his afro and he summons the Egyptian god Saint Dragon - God of Osiris (Slifer the Sky Dragon in the English version) to take out an enemy (a scene that is re-enacted in the video game Jump Superstars). About the same time as this, Takahashi returned the favor by sneaking in Tokoro Tennosuke's "Nu handkerchief" in a panel of his manga. The anime could not get away with many of these homages and tributes. There were two special chapters of Bo-bobo that parodied chapter 18 of Death Note (Takeshi Obata, the artist for Death Note, drew Bo-bobo chp. 153 in the style of that current series) as well as another special chapter based on the fight between Son Goku and Vegeta in Dragon Ball. Various Japanese fairy tales have been parodied. [edit] Running gagsThroughout the Bo-bobo series, there are several running gags that continue to pop up every now and then. Each character has certain traits that end up with the gag being used, with some of the gags showing up like clockwork (such as Beauty freaking out over many of Bo-bobo's actions or various "toilet jokes" connected with Softon) while others appear at the most random or unexpected times (such as Bo-bobo or Don Patch appearing in drag or Jelly Jiggler using some "Nu"[Lucky hanky in English version]-based artifact connected to his obsession) Generally each of the main characters, as well as several of the more minor characters, has one of these weird unique traits that is shown occasionally, adding to the humor and unexpected nature of this show. One of the strange gags is that Bo-bobo is always using Jelly jigler as a shield when he is attacked. There is also the show's "rock paper scissors fortune telling" featured in some episodes, in which you get different (and wacky) fortunes depending on whether you win, lose, or get a tie. Another running gag is the constant appearance of "Ya-Ya", which is Don patch's doll. [edit] Release and DistributionMain article: List of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo chapters Main article: List of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo episodes Shueisha published the manga of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo and serialized it in Weekly Shōnen Jump. The original manga story ended in 2005, and in January, 2006 a sequel manga replaced it in Weekly Shōnen Jump, now entitled Shinsetsu Bobobō-bo Bō-bobo (True Theory : Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo) which has ended in July, 2007. The anime was directed by Hiroki Shibata, produced by Toei Animation and ran for 76 episodes from November 8, 2003 to October 29, 2005 on TV Asahi. In North America, the manga is licensed by Viz Media and was published in a one shot graphic novel form in October 2005 and is now published monthly in Shōnen Jump. A recent report by Viz at the New York Anime festival reported that graphic novels would be released sometime in 2008, the first (covering volume 11[The one-shot covers volume 9.] yet stated as "Volume 1", having been released on August 5, 2008. When asked about why the previous volumes were not being published at Anime Expo 2008, Viz said it was due to the "content".[1] However, a fan in the panel interjected with hearsay that the author was not fond of the previous volumes. The anime, licensed by Toei Animation, first aired as a sneak peek on Cartoon Network's Fridays block on September 30, and then aired on Cartoon Network's Toonami programming block Saturdays at 10:00PM(EST). The show returned to the United States on February 17, 2007 at 8:30 PM. It has been shown on Jetix UK since April 14, 2007 at 7:00PM, and has been seen on Cartoon Network's broadband service Toonami Jetstream since November 5. The anime is dubbed by Phuuz Entertainment Inc., the studio that dubbed the second Lupin the 3rd series, the original 1994 Shin Chan dub, and the Viewtiful Joe anime. The dub was censored at some points in order to receive a lower TV-rating, allowing it to be broadcast to a younger audience demographic. Despite its limitations, the American dubs of the anime and manga manage to preserve the spirit of the show; the translators and adaptation writers were forced to rewrite several of the jokes due to the differences between the Japanese and English languages. At several points in the dub, the American version makes fun of the fact that it is a translation of a Japanese product (for example, when Bo-bobo is filling out an application card in one episode, he botches it because the application is in Japanese and he cannot read it, instead drawing "little doodles" for answers; in the original Japanese version he messes up the application for a completely different reason, and the "little doodles" are his honest answers written in hiragana). This style of self-referential humor can also be seen in the American version of Kyatto Ninden Teyande (Samurai Pizza Cats). Additionally, with the exception of the opening credits, all other on-screen Japanese text is intentionally kept in the English dub (most likely as a part of the retaining the show's surreal humor). The series only had 2 volumes on DVD, before Illumitoon fell out of the distribution from a fallout with Westlake, and all further volumes were canceled. It is currently unknown whether or not another company will release the series on DVD. [edit] Shinsetsu Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo After the end of the initial Bo-bobo series, the series rebooted into a second part known as Shinsetsu Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo in December, 2005. Picking up one year after the end of the first part, the Maruhage Empire is reformed by former emperor Tsuru Tsurulina III into the Neo-Maruhage Empire, where the Hair Hunts resume and a new generation of powerful Hair Hunt generals are created. Bo-bobo, powering the abilities of his "Fist of the Nosehair" into its Shinsetsu (True Theory) form, rejoins Beauty and the Hajike allies to take on the renewed Maruhage threat. Many of the rebels from the original series, including Don Patch, Jelly Jiggler, Hatenko, Softon and even General Lee Fishcake return to assist in the new rebellion. Yet in the midst of this, Heppokkomaru joins the Neo-Maruhage forces, forced to turn to the dark side for his own personal reasons.
Even the world of Shinsetsu is no longer the same as prior: while Bo-bobo's team continues to fight in strange landscapes and amusement parks, the bizarre barren wastelands of the former series is replaced by a bizarre rendition of Japan, from the castles of Nagoya to a school on Mount Fuji to fighting in and around the wards of Tokyo. [edit] Common Bo-bobo terms
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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