This is how you reboot a series. From the get-go Mr. Osomatsu has a good hearty laugh at itself for being old and outdated, bringing back the classic Matsuno sextuplets as they go about referencing dozens of gags that haven’t seen play since the Shouwa era with a black-and-white filter and a rudimentary art style straight from the 1960s. And yet it knows its jokes are still funny, given the right context. Soon things explode into a dazzlingly modern idol show of the most ridiculous caliber, but as the Showa gags reemerge and they desperately attempt to prove their own modernity through blatant references left and right, the brothers realize that being popular in the 21st century is harder than they imagined. And as they sit and think of ways to appeal to the masses, the greyscale palate and original art style yield to bright pastels and wacky polygonal design, and all six of them suddenly find themselves in their 20s, unemployed and deadbeat. Mr. Osomatsu has begun.
The personalities in Osomatsu-kun have been revved into the highest gear, with the bossy leader Osomatsu, the posturing tough guy Karamatsu, the nerdy straight man Choromatsu, the antisocial cat lover Ichimatsu, the off-the-walls Jyushimatsu, and the pretty boy Todomatsu. What’s especially great about these ridiculous personas is that normally they would be fitted to character models that clearly delineate their unique personalities, but here we have sextuplets that are initially indistinguishable save for the color of their otherwise matching hoodies. Yet as they get into more and more ridiculous situations, ranging from brotherly squabbles over how to split the pasteries to failing to fight off multiple alien invasions, we grow an affinity towards one or two, then towards them all. The gag manga style has been adapted perfectly for each of them showing off their own particular insanity in turn, or even better, in harmony.
Similar to other gag manga adaptations, episodes are sorted into half-episode-or-shorter bits with absolutely zero continuity. If a couple of the brothers die before the opening credits begin, we are guaranteed that they will be back fishing when the credits end. Save for a few brilliant callbacks peppered in throughout the show, we can enjoy our six NEETs sink deeper and deeper into their roles as human trash, only to see them come out the other side with no lessons learned. As the absurdity of each successive bit grows, all we learn is what we already knew: they are useless as people, but they are also damn hilarious as characters.
Not to imply that the rest of the cast has any slouches. The star to me and many others was Iyami, with his huge buck teeth and squinting eyes belying his attempts to sounds sophisticated while talking about his previous life in France, a country he has never in fact been to. His comedic verbal ticks aside, the real killer is his classic Shouwa-era gag where his hands go at right angles to frame his face while his back leg sticks up, socks far too long for his feet, and with his mouth spread wide with a satisfying call of “sheeh!” Why this continued to have me on the floor in stitches is beyond me, but part of it has to do with how blatantly it becomes a part of the world rather than just a reaction, with him practicing in the mirror, leveraging it to get a job, and even using it as a martial arts stance to help save a dying Chinese clan. After one episode, my friends and I all pulled our socks down and practiced the motion for hours, just in case we could pull it off in real life one day.
There is a baby selling oden in a mobile cart who speaks like a crotchety old man on speed. There is an old professor who keeps everything in his briefs. There is a vain self-obsessed idol girl who wears a fish suit during her concerts. There are the Matsuno parents, wondering where they went wrong and ended up with a suite of NEETs. There are a whole host of others I haven’t even gotten around to, some because they are too ridiculous to try and describe in just a few words. A cat gets ESP, a flower gains sentience, and the killer from SAW ends up on the loose and out for revenge. The world ends at least twice.
What seems to make Mr. Osomatsu work is its cleverness, which can make even the crudest or most low-brow jokes seem perfectly placed and the absurd surrealism work. All six of them are constantly trying to outsmart one another to get a leg up on their brothers, hoping to keep their pachinko winnings from being stolen, beating out their brothers to stay a dependent of their parents without having to get a job, or getting to stay under the kotatsu instead of going out in the freezing cold to pick up kerosene for the lamp. They know each other well enough to read their thoughts, and so for every scene of their comfort with one another, being unfazed by each other’s’ nudity or stupidity, there are countless others of them playing a six-way mental chess game to profit from each other’s failures.
One of the classic quotes of film analysis was Gene Siskel’s brilliant question: “is the film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?” All six voice actors for the Matsuno sextuplets are very well-established and respected in the anime community, with dozens of titles under each of their belts. After the halfway point of the show there's a special episode where all six of them dub over one of the episodes and talk about their opinions of their characters and the project. It was basically the same as listening to the six of them going out to lunch. And all six of them could not stop talking about the show, and how ridiculous and fun it has been to work on this project. These immortal voice actors are constantly being pulled aside by fans who excitedly tell them “I'm watching Mr. Osomatsu!” before anything else. The in-jokes in the studio became jokes on screen, and it became difficult at times for them to continue voicing their characters with everyone laughing so hard. Mr. Osomatsu boils down to a surrealist high-tension version of six brothers going out to lunch and saying whatever crazy things come to mind. It is the kind of hilarious life we all wish we could lead, without a single dull moment.
The original work by Akatsuka Fujio, Osomatsu-kun, was hailed as a standard for gag manga, winning him the Shogakukan prize and securing once again his place as the “Gag Manga King”. Now, eight years after his death on his 80th birthday, the Mr. Osomatsu team have created a gag show so good, so nostalgic for the 1900’s and yet so perfect for the 2000’s, the likes of which we rarely get to see anymore. They also made the conscious decision to sneak Akatsuka’s name into the show wherever possible, naming at least half of the buildings and organizations that show up after him. It seems obvious to me having watched the show that if he is watching over us he would be smiling, but if he's watching Mr. Osomatsu from wherever he is, I'd imagine he's laughing hysterically as well.