On more than one occasion, I’ve found myself drawn to the mosquito-zapper-like flame of a fast-food hamburger. While I can probably make a much better one at home, sometimes you just can’t say no to the bright glow of a neon sign. Speaking of fast food, I’d like to revisit the very first article I penned for Discotek Media’s email newsletter—a look at the creative sauce that binds together the original Urusei Yatsura TV series and Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters.

Originally Published on December 8th, 2023

We have a whole full-course meal of fantastic titles coming out this month, but we wanted to take a moment to highlight one of our most intriguing releases—Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters (2006). When we unveiled Mamoru Oshii’s (Ghost In The Shell, Patlabor) quirky and visually dazzling film at Otakon 2023, the crowd had one of two reactions: “Oshii’s really cooking here” and “That was cool, but I’m not sure what was going on?”

To answer that question, Tachigui is a Mockumentary set in the brutal alternate history of Oshii’s Kerberos Saga. However, the most striking thing viewers notice right away is the use of SuperLiveMation—a 3D CG animation technique that takes images (in this case, photos of the anime industry’s heaviest hitters) and converts them into digital puppets that can be manipulated just like the paper puppets you might have made as a kid. From there, Oshii and the crew at Production I.G (Psycho-Pass, Kill Bill Vol. 1) used these puppets to tell the tale of the Tachigui Masters—a group of eccentric dine-and-dashers who’ve all developed their own signature cons in order to score free fast food.

A concept brazen as this didn’t come to Oshii overnight. In fact, it had been running around in his head since his days working at Tatsunoko (Speed Racer, Gatchaman) in the late 70s—the beginning of his career. In a Production I.G interview for the film, Oshii said, “I probably first thought of the idea after I finished the Time Bokan TV series. I remember I had one character saying the line, ‘I will become a professional fast food grifter!’”

A few years later in 1984, Oshii would write out the initial recipe for Tachigui with an episode of a little show called Urusei Yatsura. Included in Urusei Yatsura TV Series Collection 2, Episode 99: “Sure Death! The Fast Food Wars!” could easily be described as a test run for the idea, introducing concepts and characters that would reappear in the 2006 film. At the start of the episode, Megane and Chibi are working part-time at a fast food noodle shop. While Megane is going on about the purity of noodles and broth alone, Ataru, Lum, and Cherry stop in for a bite.

After Megane gets into an argument with Ataru over the lech’s request for a “free raw egg,” a tough customer insults the shop’s noodle and calls his meal an insult to the concept of noodles. Riled up by the man’s words, the store’s owner offers to make whatever he wants in order to prove him wrong. As the man makes his order, Cherry suddenly realizes that he is a “professional fast food fighter” or “Tachigui Pro” in Japanese. The monk continues on to share what he knows about these sketchy characters, before the word comes out that more Tachigui Pros like Hamburger Tetsu and Medium-Hot Sabu are on their way to Tomobiki Town. As the gang leaves the shop, they encounter Foxy Croquette Ogin—a minor character in a few past episodes of Urusei Yatsura, but a key player in the history of Tachigui.

Now while Ogin and the Tachigui Pros would return a few years later as the “Tachigui Masters” in 1987’s The Red Spectacles, the spirit of Oshii’s run on Urusei Yatsura was along for the ride alongside much of its cast. This included the film’s lead and the voice of Megane, Shigeru Chiba. The Red Spectacles refers to the ocular appendages of the Kerberos’ Protect Gear Armor, but it could easily be read as a bit of sly wordplay when presented as its original Japanese title, Akai Megane. It’s a factoid that brings a bit of levity to the film’s title. Megane appears to be a bit of through-line presence for Oshii throughout his works, as the director has mused on the similarities between the Urusei Yatsura character and the overworked patty flipper portrayed by Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) in Tachigui.

That insight and more can be found in the feature-length documentary “All About SuperLiveMation” included in our release of the film. However, another observation made by Oshii in this documentary speaks to these connections. Shortly before the mention of Megane, the director notes how the atmosphere of the film reminded him so much of his days working on Urusei Yatsura. As a viewer, that can be seen on two fronts.

1. The manic and expressive animation on display in both works.
2. Oshii’s role as a mentor to the young staff of both projects.

For a quick primer on the history of the incredibly expressive SuperLiveMation, Oshii and his collaborators initially explored the idea of 2D images presented on 3D modeled objects in the film Avalon, where explosions and unfolding characters were presented similarly to the layers presented in image editing software. SuperLiveMation then took full shape in MiniPato (2002), a series of lighthearted and silly shorts based on the Patlabor series. In these shorts, the world is presented as a paper puppet show manipulated with popsicle sticks—just like Tachigui.

The puppet show techniques specifically were referred to as “Oshiimation” by Tachigui’s production planner Mitsuhisa Ishikawa during press tours for the film. The name harkens back to the paper puppets Oshii had played with as a young child. That image went so far that they even had a baby basset hound (a signature and great love of Oshii’s) drawn up as mascot for the techniques.

Now while Oshii’s “students” of the 1980s were knee deep in pencil shavings and celluloid, the class of 40 college students working on Tachigui had gone all-digital. No matter the medium, this digital endeavor was no simple task. Unlike MiniPato, which primarily manipulated 2D drawings, Tachigui manipulated nearly 30,000 photographs to achieve its visuals. After Oshii and his film crew finished photographing their cast of anime luminaries, the students were responsible for editing every image to allow for the manipulation of every individual part of a subject’s body.

These students gave up their summer vacations to do this painstaking work. Every so often, Oshii and his collaborators would pop in to give notes and help tighten things up. As portrayed in the documentary, the creative process behind the film was very reminiscent of those “Urusei Yatsura days” the director spoke of. The idea of students passionately working away on a tight deadline brings back thoughts on Beautiful Dreamer. As Oshii said of that film’s production in its commentary, “It’s really like a festival, a school festival. You can do what you normally can’t. Think big and do the things you were normally holding back on.” Through those experiences, Oshii shepherded the creators of anime classics like Project A-ko. Here’s hoping a dance with the Fast Food Grifters did the same for this new class of creatives.

Coop Bicknell is a writer, MediaOCD contributor, and editorial contributor at Anime News Network.

Available at MediaOCD:
Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters – Blu-ray
Urusei Yatsura TV Series Collection 2 – Blu-ray