Gimme More Octopus (videos)

(7 videos below the fold.)

Yeah, WFMU made its goal of raising $850k in the marathon, thanks to everybody who pledged! As promised, here are more episodes of Kure Kure Takora, aka Gimme Gimme Octopus, a Japanese children's TV series about an octopus and a peanut who are in love with a walrus. A few days ago I received the 4 DVDs with all episodes, and the video quality is much better than on the "Best of" DVD. I haven't had time yet to view all of it, but I might post some more episodes in the future.

The following videos are encoded in MP4 format, and each is approximately 10.3 MB large.

Girls Dig Guns and Uniforms - A tale of love, jealousy, and violence against law enforcement badgers.

The Music Video - Japanese mariachis play the theme song and the octopus plays air guitar.

Baby Octopus - Did the octopus have sex with the walrus, or where does the baby come from? Why does everybody abuse it? Are the two octopuses really one and the same person? What did the writers of this episode smoke?

The Bomb - Don't let an octopus handle a bomb!

Voodoo - The remarkable powers of octopus effigies.

Political Education - Hilarious and violent political education for the kids. The octopus and the peanut in an authoritarian and hierarchical society. Is this anti-communist propaganda? Since I don't know Japanese, I can't tell you. Please leave a comment if you know what this is about. China? Vietnam?

Dictator Octopus - Finally the octopus gets to rule the country, but the walrus spoils the fun. Way over the top, you have to see it to believe it.

You can get the complete series on four DVDs at brutallo.com, or the (poor quality) "Best Of" compilation on one DVD at 5 Minutes To Live. And thanks to reader Strange Findings for posting the Shooting the Sun episode on YouTube.

Comments

[zac]

Thank you! You know what the people like!

[Robotkid]

Woo! More octopi!

I have the bonus "Making Of..." episode of Gimmie Gimmie Octopus...drop me a line, and I'll hook you up.

Also, check out this shweet Kure Kure costume I picked up in Tokyo this year:

http://myspace-702.vo.llnwd.net/00434/20/78/434428702_l.jpg

Booyah!

-Robotkid

[craig]

my austin record store had badly-duped videos of this show back in the 90s... the motards toured japan in the late 90s, and brought along 2 friends who had purchased the videos; they started singing the theme song one night in a bar. pandemonium ensued.

showed these clips to my 3 1/2 and 1 1/2 year olds tonight. pandemonium ensued.

i'm also fairly sure a detroit tv station used to show these when i was a kid in the 70s, along with ultraman, etc. i could be wrong, but it would sure explain a lot.....

[mindfall903]

this series has been aired in japan from 1996 to 2003, there are about 260 episodes. although it's a series made for kids there's plenty of violence in there (blowing up stuff with dynamite, cruelty etc).

in the baby octopus episode, the kurekuretakora sees the octopus baby, realizes it looks like himself and goes "gimme gimme". after the initial mistreatments by the cucumber? they take the baby and treat "because it has fallen ill". the mistreaters show up again and the octopus and the peanut try to run away but accidentally drop the baby from the bridge where it dies.
apart from what the narrator tells and what you can see in the pictures you don't more hints... it's too short and only watching this episode you can't figure why the peanut is teaming up with the octopus and why initially the walrus shows up with the baby.... pretty weird stuff, even for japanese ppl actually.

[Lukas]

The baby does not appear in any of the episodes before, so this remains mysterious. It is quite clear why the peanut and the octopus try to rescue the baby, but why do the cucumbers mistreat it in the first place? And the ending is just mindblowingly weird.

[Scot]

The baby episode actually is not a baby but rather a "doll." The octapus is trying to rescue the pink thing's dolly from the bullies.

Interestingly enough this show was ended due to a lot of parents "getting it" and realizing that many of the storylines were thick social satire lampooning the totalitarian nature of the Liberal Democratic Party and social manners.

[J.R.]

I'm going to post the "Bomb" video on vSocial, then embed on my website. You guys find the coolest shit.

[mew]

Hi,
I'm Japanese so I'm not good at English,but I'd like to
give some explanation on "political education" episode.

In the past,octopus was a buck private and peanuts was a superior officer.
The sign on the tree says"Nation of woods Army".
They're doing military training exercise.
It's obviously caricature of Japanese wartime militarism
under the World War II.
In the next sequence peanuts yells
"That's too extravagant for a buck private!"
and he won't let octopus to give an apple to one of buck privates.

but after that period,their relationship has completely reversed...

[geva]

Mew,

Thanks for the explanation/translation. Don't worry about your English - it's fine, certainly a lot better than any of our Japanese! If you felt like explaining some of the other episodes to us, I'm sure we'd all appreciate it.

[China sourcing]

The Cassette Mythos Compilation, which (in the words of Robin James) "started off as a comprehensive, democratic, and historical survey of the international cassette swapping underground scene, but wound up being what it is, twenty-one innovative sonic-arts geniuses that could be your neighbors".