Talk:Shinichi Watanabe

Nabeshin Song
Does anyone happen to know where I can get the English version of the song "I am Nabeshin"? 80.2.37.199 15:47, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Manga Impact
Manga Impact: The World of Japanese Animation, 6 December 2010, ISBN 978-0714857411; pg 245:

Watanabe Shinichi (born in 1964 in Yokoyama) belongs to the generation who grew up during the anime boom years of the Seventies. The saga of Lupin III (1971) shaped his mischievous, inclusive and easygoing style of comedy and he used himself as the model for Nabeshin, an afro-haired alter ego with the power to change the plot of the anime he appear in, Shinichi's best-known and most absurd series Excel Saga (1999). Watanabe entered the anime industry at the end of the Eighties and began to make a name for himself as a storyboarder and episode director on the sports-themed series Gold Field Hunter (Goal FH, 1994). In 1997, he directed his first comedy series, Hare Tokidoki Buta (Tokyo Pig), starring a child and his magic piglet. He became famous with the series Excel Saga, which took television comedy to new and demented extremes: combining the manzai tradition of fast-talking stand-up with the distortion of cartoons, it opens the way to a new genre. Each episode sends up a specific genre - from the sentai 'task-force' style squadrons to kawaii (cute) culture with its ultra-sweet little animals. Visually, Watanabe takes all the characteristics of classic anime to extremes, with an overabundance of expressionistic graphic backgrounds and distorted inserts. The bizarre zaniness of the series extended to the spin-off Puni Puni Poemi (2001), which was followed by other comic series with uninhibited female protagonists such as Tenchi Muyo GXP (2002). With Nerima Daikon Brothers (2006) Watanabe turned his comedic talents towards musicals and made fun of the Japanese passion for karaoke through the bewildering adventures of a trio of blues-crazy Japanese turnip farmers. Excel Saga's Nabeshin intervenes in this series too, by providing the protagonists with gadgets that always have disastrous side-effects. L.D.C. [Lucca Della Casa]

--Gwern (contribs) 19:49 23 December 2011 (GMT)