The Magical Post of Unico
The ridiculously adorable thing above is Unico. Don't get too attached. He'll break your heart. That's your only warning.
Unico is one of the myriad creations of Osamu Tezuka, the greatest creative genius of all time. If you disagree with this you have not read Phoenix. Go validate your worthless existence by reading some Phoenix. But you can do that after reading this. If you've read any 'potted history of anime/manga' feature over the last few years you'll have seen him mentioned, however briefly, as the influential creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Phoenix (almost always just those three) and saddled with some misleading title like "the Disney of Japan", which fails to do justice to the staggering volume and variety of his work. Then the features usually decide the next twenty years of anime history are below their notice and jump straight to Gundam or Akira, but that's a tangent for a different rant.
Unico started as a comic in a girls magazine in the late seventies. Girly things were not outside the scope of Mr Tezuka's abilities since he practically invented shojo too. But the comic is untranslated and forgotten and the two movies that followed it are what popularised the character in the west. But this wasn't my first exposure to Unico. That was the Astro Boy: Omega Factor GBA game. Made as part of a number of events to commemorate April 7th 2003 (the 'birthday' of the Astro Boy character) the game extended beyond the Astro Boy series with dozens of cameos by characters from other Tezuka works. Unico was among these. His presence didn't really linger in my mind, unlike the memorable craziness of the duck rabbit and horse who rode around in a big tire. With his nauseatingly cute appearance I assumed he was a creation for the youngest demographic and went on my way with the game, forgetting him for a few years.
More recently (but not as recently as I'd like, since I've been slacking on this post for quite a while) a post by
zarla brought to my attention I could watch the Unico movies through the magic of Youtube. Now, although Osamu Tezuka was almost inhumanly prolific (150,000 pages over a 40-year career is the estimate in the afterword of Phoenix) very few of his works are actually available in English. Ironically, anime and manga have stylistically evolved quite a bit from the groundwork laid by him in the 50s and 60s, and as a result his art no longer resembles the popular perception of the 'anime style'. Publishers Viz and Vertical have done an admirable job in localising some of his comics as an alternative to the shonen dross that fills up the bookshelves but with the publishing of his 'epics' Phoenix and Buddha now completed I don't know where they will go from here. I watched the Unico films to experience more Tezuka but I initially didn't expect much from them, just a sugar-cute kids series. What I actually watched was something a lot more memorable and I was glad to be proven wrong.
The sordid story of Unico is told at the start of the first film. Unico is a baby unicorn with the power to grand the wishes of anyone who loves him. No, trust me, it gets better. Because of his unconditional wish-granting he undermines the power of the 'gods' (old men who live in clouds) who hold their favours in exchange for human servitude and worship. So the gods summon Zephyrus, spirit of the West Wind, to dispose of Unico, but she cannot go through with the deed because he's just too damn adorable, so she abandons Unico on a deserted island where he can live in secret from the gods. This doesn't go as planned when the island turns out to be not-so-uninhabited as she thought and Unico using his powers to make someone happy attracts attention. When the gods realise Zephyrus betrayed them they dispatch the sinister Night Wind to chase and dispose of both Zephyrus and Unico. Zephyrus takes Unico and flees to escape the punishment she now shares with him, but wherever they go in time and space the Night Wind pursues them endlessly.
The first film sees Unico befriend Beezle, an excitable devil boy, and Katie, a cat who wants to become a human (she gets her wish granted, naturally) and later gets kidnapped by the enigmatic Baron de Ghost who wants to do something unspecified but presumably unpleasant to her, necessitating a rescue by Unico and Beezle. After killing the evil baron the West Wind spirits Unico away again before the gods can trace his handiwork.
The film is quite schizophrenic, like a series of concepts and short episodes that were smushed together. There's a few musical numbers ('just like Disney films!' the translation proposal would have gone), a Hello Kitty cameo (Unico is owned primarily by Sanrio) and a surprising level of violence. For a disarmingly cute character Unico can pull his weight in a fight, dueling Baron de Ghost with his horn and then 'killing' him in one of the grisliest ways ever depicted in a cartoon film. You'll see none of that 'character falls to death out of view' method favored by Disney. Also, de Ghost quite distinctly gets Katie drunk while she's in his castle, which almost feels like a preface to raping her. They never specify exactly what he was going to do before Unico stopped him so the adult viewer's imagination is left free to fill in the blanks. I'm amazed they got away with this.
The sequel, The Island of Magic, followed two years later. Unico is dumped in a forest by Zephyrus, chased out by a gang of cats and adopted by a little girl called Sherry just in time to see her parents turned to stone and kidnapped by sinister shapeshifting wizard Kuruku and his bishie apprentice Toby. Unico and Sherry follow them to Kuruku's lair, a castle built from the petrified bodies of his victims(!) and guarded by a giant toy dragon that everyone who watched the films seem to adore, to rescue her parents.
Kuruku is a magnificent villain, restoring goodwill after the limp de Ghost. He perfects a balance of funny and sinister, making him the stuff children's nightmares are made of. The second film drops the musical numbers and violence in favour of a better story and some excellent art design, particularly the beautifully trippy 'dance of the toys' sequence. It's probably the better of the two films by a slight margin. I keep trying to compare it to whatever Disney was doing at the time but I can never remember what that was. The 80s weren't a particularly strong period for them, I hear.
The Unico dubs are notable for a few other things. There is a remarkable lack of pretension to them - dubbed anime in this era was usually heavily bowderlised or at least edited to remove reference to it's origins. The two Unico films, meanwhile, are almost straight ports of the Japanese originals, with 99% of the original music intact and even the credits listing the original Japanese staff names. This stood out to me because most modern anime dubbed for TV aren't respected enough to earn these concessions. The English voices are passible and have a tangible sense that the actors are enjoying this job (with the exception of Toby's, who sounds kind of bored).
Along with the two films there's a fansub of Black Cloud White Feather, a pilot for a Unico TV series that predates the films. Unico gets lost in a smoggy town, befriends a sickly girl, gives her a magical unicorn-ride and eventually fixes the town by demolishing the factory that's polluting it because one of the other characters finally said a phrase that began with 'I wish..." It doesn't match the two movies in art or writing but it seems the concept could have worked for television if the studio was willing to come up with new settings and casts for every episode, but for whatever reason they never picked it up for a series.
People might expect such a ridiculously saccharine character concept to be a spoof of Disney's output, but Unico is actually played straight and for the most part succeeds as an appealing, sympathetic character. In all three features Unico is single-minded in his pursuit of friends and companionship, and even if the first 'friend' he ever makes subjects him to physically abusive play Unico prefers this to solitude. How old could he be anyway? He hadn't even left the nest when Zephyrus abducted him. He had probably never been alone in his life before being stranded on that island. Black Cloud White Feather ends with Unico alone again in a new world calling out for anyone to come and keep him company. I'm man enough to admit I cried. The dialogue even implies that Zephyrus wipes Unico's memory after each journey so he won't be heartbroken by the memories of the friends he has to leave, so he really is a perpetual innocent, born anew in each episode.
Unico is a pardox. He can wish for anything he wants but he's completely dependent on others, and for bringing happiness to others he's doomed to never achieve happiness or security for himself. Zephyrus' exposition in Black Cloud White Feather really hammers it home: he wanders the universe alone, for eternity. Once you can see the themes you can't think of it as just a kids film.
The three features can all be watched in the Youtube account linked to above. The comments threads there are full of enthusiastic fans talking about how in watching these movies they rediscovered something precious from their childhoods. It's appropriate that these films bring some kind of transient happiness to people, much like the titular character does.
The Magic Island ends like all the other Unico features with Zephyrus and Unico leaving for a new world, leaving the series open for continuation. I don't know if the manga or the unreleased fourth Unico feature tied up the story but I suspect not. That means Unico is still wandering out there somewhere among the stars. My heart goes out to him.
