Licca-chan (リカちゃん) was born on May 3, 1967 to Orie Kayama, a Japanese fashion designer, and Pierre Miramonde, a French musician. Her papa Pierre apparently liked his wife's family name (Kayama) so much that he adopted it as his own surname.
Licca’s favorite books are Anne of Green Gables and A Little Princess – both extremely popular girls’ titles in Japan and themselves made into anime series. As it turns out, Licca-chan not also loves dogs, eating Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and reading the manga series of Doraemon, but also likes cross-dressing and role-playing.
For instance there's Choro Q Licca, aka Race Queen Licca (who has her own racing car) and quite a few Hinamatsuri (Doll's Festival) Licca-chans worth up to ¥289,000 (US $3,750).
Then there’s bridal Licca, Chukyo Women's University High School Licca-chan, fast-food chain Mosburger Licca, the über-tanned Loco Neo Licca, Super Doll Knight Licca, and rollerskating Licca-chan; back in the ‘90s there was even Street Licca – who was a DJ in pink Converse runners carrying a très cool Rough Trade record bag – as well as a special ice-skating Licca for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. And in 2001 a pregnant adult version of Licca-chan was introduced to coincide with the birth of Aiko, the daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife Masako.
Licca Kayama, better known as Licca-chan (リカちゃん), is the Japanese equivalent of Barbie – though these days far more popular here than her American predecessor.
She was introduced to Japan in 1967 (the same year that the only James Bond film set in Japan, You Only Live Twice, hit cinema screens) by a toy company over here called Takara. Founded in 1955, they've since merged with fellow Japanese toy company Tomy Co., Ltd. to make... well... Takaratomy Co.
You know Leiji Matsumoto, right? The creator of essential anime and manga titles like Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, Space Battleship Yamato, Galaxy Railways, and several videos for Daft Punk?
Well, Licca-chan was created by Leiji Matsumoto's wife Miyako Maki – a former shojo manga artist herself before she got married and became a housewife. Since then the Licca-chan dolls, like Barbie, have had their figure and features as much as their wardrobe refined to suit the faddish preferences of youth cultures along the way, though in this case our vinyl chloride resin heroine tends to be oriented towards the Japanese sensibilities of height, looks, and definitely fashion trends. In some ways, she makes her American girls' doppelgänger look downright butch and fashion insensible.
You can check out some of the subtle changes here.
The Takara/Tomy conglomerate had sold over 53 million in 40 years as of 2007. She's insanely popular not only with young girls but their mothers and grandmas; it shouldn't be any surprise then that my wife Y digs Licca-chan almost as much as my 4-year-old daughter C, who has five or so members of the Kayama clan and their mates, plus the family house.
Takara has even provided an extensive bio including her age (11), blood type (O), which school she attends (Shirakaba Elementary School) and the names of her best friends (Isamu and Izumi), her ex-boyfriend Takeru and current flame Len-kun, her twin siblings (Miki and Maki), as well as several other relatives – including an older sister Rie (below), a flight attendant who was mysteriously removed from the toy family line-up in 1974.
Licca-chan herself was born on May 3, 1967, to Orie Kayama, a Japanese fashion designer, and Pierre Miramonde, a French musician. Her papa Pierre apparently liked his wife's family name (Kayama) so much that he adopted it as his own surname.
Licca's favourite books are Anne of Green Gables and A Little Princess – both extremely popular girls' titles in Japan and themselves made into anime series. As it turns out, Licca-chan not also loves dogs, eating Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and reading the Doraemon manga series, but also likes cross-dressing and role-playing.
For instance there's Choro Q Licca, aka Race Queen Licca (who has her own racing car), a few Hinamatsuri (Doll's Festival) Licca-chans worth up to ¥289,000 ($3,100), bridal Licca, Chukyo Women's University High School Licca-chan, Mosburger Licca, the über-tanned Loco Neo Licca, Super Doll Knight Licca, and rollerskating Licca-chan; back in the '90s there was even Street Licca – who was a DJ in pink Converse runners carrying a très cool Rough Trade record bag – as well as a special ice-skating Licca for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics. And in 2001 a pregnant adult version of Licca-chan was introduced to coincide with the birth of Aiko, the daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako.
There's a specially-produced Licca doll clad in a tiara and a gown studded with 880-odd diamonds worth about ¥100 million; I've even seen over-the-top fan-made Goth-Lolita Licca-chan creations, but one of my personal faves is Spy Girl Neo Licca which passes our heroine off in clothing territory previously explored by Emma Peel in The Avengers.
For an exhibition at Seibu Department Store in Ikebukuro last year food artist Rika Fukuda created “Licca-chan’s candy house” while about 20 fashion brands that participated in the Kobe Collection 2008 autumn/winter show presented their latest works made in Licca-chan’s size; Issey Miyake even did a mad pleat design for our plastic fantastic femme two years back.
At one stage Licca-chan circulated in manga-form in Kodansha's monthly Nakayoshi, and she was granted her own 52-episode anime series Super Doll Licca-chan (produced by Geneon, animation production by Madhouse, and broadcast on TV Tokyo from 1998 to 1999) that was directed by Gisaburo Sugii – an animation director on Osamu Tezuka's original, iconic '60s TV series Astro Boy.
There was a weighty tome published in 1992 for Licca's 25th anniversary, a gorgeous book named simply Licca Book, another by a psychiatrist, and these days countless blogs, fansites and websites. For starters magazine Numéro ran with its hilarious Licca's Paris Collection Report last year, with happy snaps of our heroine at the fashion shows, and even better is the online photo-shoot that is Licca's World Tour.
Coincidentally, straight after I wrote up this piece, my mate Toshiyuki Yasuda - one of the coolest electronic musicians in Japan - e-mailed me with a link to a compilation he'd assembled to sound track precisely that and titled Various Artists - Licca World Tour.
Unbelievable.
On top of all this there's also even a theme park called Licca Castle. It's way too far from Tokyo for us to check out, though.
At the Yokohama Doll Museum in 2007, they sold out 1,000 specially made 40th anniversary Yokohama Motomachi Licca-chan dolls in three days.
She's even sometimes ventured overseas, though in disguise. A Licca-chan video game was released for the Nintendo DS platform in Japan in 2007, later released in the US and other English-speaking territories in 2008 as "Lovely Lisa".
If Fuji TV wanted to kick off their 50th year on air with a sizeable bang, they certainly picked the spot-on anime series to do so: Michiko to Hatchin (Michiko and Hatchin) sizzled when it first hit screens back in October 2008, and at the time it promised to be a solid ratings-puller and critical smash for the terrestrial station that also airs Japan’s longest-running anime series, Sazae-san.
The new series proved to be one of the unexpected anime viewing highlights for me personally at the time, as much for its faux exotic locale (the principle action is set in a sun-drenched yet often all-too-noir Brazil) as for the rather cool cast and crew at play behind the animated cels.
On top of these elements it was an insightful spotlight on people of Asian (in particular Japanese) decent who live in South America, like the nikkei burajiru-jin: descended from a wave of Japanese workers who emigrated to Brazil a century ago, making the country home to the largest Japanese population outside Japan. Really.
But don’t think this series is some kind of travelogue. It’s a stunning mixture of styles and sounds, influences and moments, and the energetic, action-packed, sexy, funny, and strangely touching story of the burgeoning relationship between central characters Michiko Malandro and Hana ‘Hatchin’ Morenos: the former a wild criminal on the lam after a prison escape, the latter a girl oppressed by abusive foster parents. When the two hook up following a (literal) motorcycle drive-through and the discovery of identical tattoos, they begin a search for the same elusive individual - Hatchin’s dad, who happens to be Michiko’s old flame.
In between are an array of the good, the bad, and the downright ugly, including police officer Atsuko Jackson, and crime syndicate head Satoshi Batista, while the whole caboodle was ackaged together in mesmerizing fashion by Manglobe Inc. - the animation studio set up in 2002 by Sunrise producers, Takashi Kochiyama and Shinichiro Kobayashi, and the subsequent powerhouse behind Ergo Proxy and Samurai Champloo.
Shinichiro Kobayashi, the president of Manglobe, obviously wasn’t content to rest on the laurels of two previously revered anime titles. “I wanted to make a fusion of the road movie with diva action carnage, within the realm of a totally Latinized world,” he explains. Kobayashi also sees a clear delineation between this new outing and the two prior titles, which were both directed by men.
“This time it’s the female director’s view,” he says, referring to the head of an exceptional cast and crew.
Director Sayo Yamamoto has tweaked the storyboards on Eureka Seven, Death Note, Ergo Proxy and Samurai Champloo, and directed episodes of all of these classic series save for Death Note. So don’t think anything vaguely too girly here - some of the action and domestic violence encountered by our heroines is hair-raising, yet it tends to skip the voyeurism some of her male counterparts indulge in.
On script honors is Takashi Ujita, a writer who previously worked on an array of independent live-action movies, while character designer Hiroshi Shimizu moonlighted in key animation on FLCL, Fullmetal Alchemist, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Millennium Actress, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, and Hayao Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso. Mecha designer Shigeto Koyama was previously involved in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society as well as Gurren Lagann.
Then there’s the additional crew member’s name that jumps right out here, in the atypical role of music producer: Shinichiro Watanabe, the illustrious writer/director of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, co-director of Macross Plus, and responsible for two segments from The Animatrix.
This series also just so happens to be a Japanese acting train-spotter’s delight, since most of the voice actors are themselves established and respected live-action actors.
Kanji Tsuda, cast in the role of Hatchin’s father, Hiroshi, is a veteran from classic ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano movies like Sonatine, Hana-bi and Dolls, and featured in movies by famed directors Yojiro Takita, Katsuhito Ishii, and Takashi Shimizu.
Yoko Maki (Michiko), who was cast in the American version of The Grudge, started her career in the 2001 remake of Lady Snowblood (renamed Princess Blade), while Suzuka Ohgo (Hatchin) popped up in Memoirs of a Geisha - in which she played the childhood Zhang Ziyi - then also costarred with Ken Watanabe in Kita No Zeronen (Year One in the North).
Jun Murakami (Shinsuke Rodriguez) was one of the stars in the ninja live-action movie Red Shadow (2001), and Takeshi Wakamatsu (Father Pedro) appeared in the far better ninja romp, Fukuro no Shiro (Owl’s Castle, 1999), starring Kiichi Nakai.
The skill of these people, from art and image through to dulcet vocal tones and spot-on dialogue, works nicely.
Dark and cute all at once, there are recurring themes throughout the series. There’s the search for Hatchin’s father (and Michiko’s former lover), Hiroshi, who abandoned his child and may be dead, but perhaps isn’t; there are the eccentric cameo inclusions, some heavy emotional development for the key characters involved—most strikingly the love-hate/mum-daughter relationship between our two heroines. And there’s Michiko’s ongoing hot water escapades, and the joyful obsessions with food, music and fashion.
“About the fashion,” Kobayashi reports, “We had an up-and-coming designer here in Japan do the fashions. For the art we practically went to Brazil, and that experience is reflected in the animated vision we created here. And for the music I invited on board Kassin, a very popular musician from Brazil. It’s a plus.”
There’s also the inclusion of teen romance, drug-addled hitmen, a doctor lugging fish out of people’s tummies, motorcycles crashing through windows, and one character’s attempts at bullfighting with a soup ladle - all of which up the ante and made this perhaps the best animated series I was going to watch well into 2009 and beyond.
And yet - I haven't.
After a lukewarm response from Japanese audiences and just 22 episodes, the series concluded (with a few unsatisfactory character resolutions) in March last year.
