OH! Mikey

OH! Mikey is a series of short segments (about 2 minutes each) detailing the wacky hijinks of the Fuccons, an American family living in Japan. But despite living in the real world, all the characters on the show are well, mannequins, and not even of the variety that come to life in 80s movies and their even lamer 1991 sequels. Which makes it GREAT for nightmare fuel.

This is Mikey.


OH! Mikey 

Here's Mikey's mom, whose mouth is always agape no matter what because well, she's a mannequin.


OH! Mikey 

And here's Mikey's dad.


OH! Mikey 

There's a whole slew of supporting characters, such as Mikey's cousin Laura, Mikey's shy teacher Bob and his mother Bob-Mama who follows Bob everywhere and speaks on his behalf, as well as this guy:


OH! Mikey 

I posted that picture on a message board, and someone thought it was David Bowie.

Nightmare fuel content aside (you mostly get over the "they're all mannequins" gag within a few minutes), the dialogue and situations in the show are actually really damn funny. Fortunately for us, the DVDs of the series contain English language subtitles so we can all follow along. Unfortunately, the DVDs are Region 2 only and are thus only available at places like J-list (whose owner, Peter Payne, is an absolute loony despite being the guy who provided Seishun Shitemasu with the To-Y LD so many years ago). Mikeymania runs wild over six discs, and at $40 a disc from J-List with running times of about 35-40 minutes each, they're not a bargain by any stretch of the imagination. I've managed to get copies of the first two volumes, and should have a copy of the third volume within the next few days. However, volumes 4 through 6 elude me.

Here's the official Japanese site, but since that's not much help to most of us, there's also an English language fan site. I plan to introduce one clip worth of this into the Panel OF DOOM tomorrow night, and since the convention sprang me with the news that "hey, you have to do another panel Saturday night even though the con's in three days because somehow we got the impression that you were doing two panels even though you never once said that yourself," I'll do a special one hour showing of OH! Mikey the following night. I'll include how well that went over in my con report, which might be delayed a day or two since they picked this weekend to play Steamboy in exactly one theater in the state, which means I'll have to drive to Daytona tomorrow, do the con, then on Sunday drive to Orlando for the movie, then drive home.