The following article contains discussions of sexual content, fictional sexual assault, and sexual situations involving young-looking fictional characters. Reader discretion is advised. Please do not contact any persons or entities mentioned in this article.
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The early days of Japan’s Original Video Anime industry were nothing less than a wild west. It was a brief era before video censorship guidelines and copyright crackdowns, and this led to all sorts of rule-bending video oddities, especially for adults-only features. One look through video catalogues of the mid-1980s will show you just how many strange pieces of media were coming out every week, and just as quickly being swept under the rug. With that in mind, what happens when you find a piece of media that no one seems to know the origin of, not even the resource sites or reference books that should otherwise know what it is?
I hate to say it, but today’s subject, an “ero-anime” – an erotica-centred anime – was one of many discoveries I made during the Saki Sanobashi search back in 2019. Saki’s existence has long since been debunked, but this anime series has largely gone undocumented and unknown. Even now, three years later, half of this series remains so obscure that two of its OVAs still don’t have pages on Anime News Network. If it’s not because they’re obscure, then it’s definitely because they have no proper attribution. How would any film database be expected to take an entry submission seriously when its credited screenwriter is named “Cockroach”?
It’s time for another “After Hours” deep dive on The Gonzo Brigadoon. I’m thrilled to finally bring you all the wild, winding story of All Products’s Little Mermaid Series: a four-part anime that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and then just as quickly, vanish from the sales market entirely…over and over again.
Part I: The Anime
As I have written about previously on this blog, Japan’s entertainment industry went through a series of trends that have since been named “Booms”. For example, the early 1980s saw the rise of animated features released exclusively direct-to-video, which has since been known as the OVA (Original Video Animation) boom. The ero-anime boom was a very brief window of time, approximately from 1984-1986, wherein pornographic anime was highly lucrative due in part to the sheer novelty that it now existed. The first two series of ero-anime OVAs, Lolita Anime by Wonder Kids and Cream Lemon by Soeishinsha-Fairy Dust, were produced on the side by industry animators and manga magazine contributors. Meanwhile, the distribution and home video production were often handled by corporate investors or distributors. This is not to say that every ero-anime studio outsourced its video production; Soeishinsha managed the advertising for Cream Lemon and produced its home video media with in-house equipment.
However, for many early ero-anime, the decision to make an anime was driven by a home video company, rather than a team of animators or mangaka. Some examples of these “corporate” ero-anime include Original Video Romance Anime by pornography studio Let’s, which spanned 2 episodes of middling quality. Film distributor Sai Enterprise launched a sub-division called Orange Video House with the intent to build footing in the home video market. Nikkatsu Corporation financed its own Lolita Anime series inspired by the work of mangaka Uchiyama Aki, and an ero-guro sci-fi called Battle Can-Can, respectively cashing in on the Lolicon Boom and Bishoujo Boom. Regardless of who was financing an OVA, if that OVA sold, then more would get made.
An OVA’s sales are the primary factor in whether or not its intellectual property becomes a series. However, there is usually no guarantee that an OVA can become a full series unless the first instalment sells well (and, of course, if its creators intend to make a series). It was Spring 1985 when a pair of newcomer companies, video distributor Image Box and anime studio All Products, confidently entered the sales market with their original miniseries, Little Mermaid Series., which was advertising four episodes – called “Stages” – as early as its second release.
Very little has ever been said about All Products or its staff. They had little presence on their own tapes, as staff credits were usually limited to four names on a single credits card, and all names were untraceable pseudonyms. For example, the screenwriter for Stages 2 and 4 was named “五木不理”, which could be read as “Itsuki Furi” or, when reading the kanji individually, “go-ki-bu-ri”, literally the Japanese word for “cockroach”.
All’s logo was a silent text screen. It was certainly subdued in comparison to other companies of the time; Fairy Dust opened every tape with a musical jingle, and even the low budget Sukeban Shokai Cutie Lemon had distributor Five Star’s dynamic logo. All Products seemed like a very shy studio, and Little Mermaid Series Stage 1: Barefoot After School was their first anime, but they were clearly confident that they could sell a series. That, or they had entered the market financially stable enough to launch production on four OVAs. Keep this in mind for later.
On the back of the Little Mermaid Stage 2 VHS sleeve were teasers for the rest of the series, months before episodes 3 and 4 were made available for sale, complete with prices, concept art, and Viderin catalogue numbers. This implied that all four episodes were already in-production at that time and that the Viderin had approved their censorship, which was impressive for a newcomer studio.
At this point in time, Little Mermaid Series was the second-ever shoujo manga-style ero-anime series, following directly on the heels of Cream Lemon. Stylistically, much of the series took inspiration from the lolicon art style that had been founded years prior; the series’s main characters were all girls, most of them drawn with the archetypal rounded, cutesy character designs. The titular main character of Shining May is very obviously an adult woman, but in a possible bid to get lolicons to buy a copy, a promotional postcard declared May’s birthdate was February 14, 1970, making her 15 years old during the events of the OVA. However, this postcard is the only source of this information, so for this reason I would not consider Shining May a lolicon anime by intention.
The next four headings will serve as a Series episode guide. If you would like to skip this recap section, you can head down to Part II.
Stage 1: Barefoot After School (裸足の放課後) – 10 March 1985 / 25 min.
Barefoot After School holds the prestige of being the second yuri anime ever made. “Yuri” means “lily” in Japanese, and it was adopted by the Japanese LGBT+ community as a term for media focusing on lesbian romance and intimacy. In spite of this accolade, Barefoot After School is a half-baked OVA that blasts through 13 episodes’ worth of plot in the span of a single episode.
Miiko is a 14-year-old schoolgirl in love with her classmate, Nami. Miiko wishes on a falling star that Nami will win her tennis game, and the next day, Nami does. Later that day (or the next day?) Miiko tries to paint a portrait of Nami, but Nami gets bored, and decides to strip nude for Miiko to paint her, but the two girls trip and fall on each other. They start cuddling in the art classroom until Nami halts the moment, saying they can’t be together. The entire time, they’re spied on by a predatory teacher named Ms. Shizuka. Miiko tries to walk home with Nami, but Nami wants to go somewhere alone. Miiko senses something is up, so she follows Nami from afar and catches Nami and her tennis partner, Yamaguchi, heading off to have sex together in a public park. All of this happens within the first six minutes of the OVA.
Things don’t get any less complicated from there. The heartbroken Miiko runs home, and as the day turns to evening, a car begins to tail Miiko…but the driver turns out to be Ms. Shizuka. She brings Miiko to her house, where she convinces Miiko to drink a glass of wine, which is already a lot for a 14 year old, but it’s also implied to be drugged? Either way, drinking it immediately makes Miiko pass out, and Ms. Shizuka carries Miiko off to her bedroom. In the meantime, Miiko has a nightmare about almost being sexually assaulted by a phallic crab monster. Miiko wakes up and confronts Ms. Shizuka, and yet, Miiko becomes okay with the situation after Ms. Shizuka explains how lonely she is. This somehow turns into the OVA’s feature sex scene, while a fully-produced insert song known only as “Magic Lady” plays enthusiastically in spite of the silent horror of the situation.
The next day, Miiko tells Nami she “slept with an older woman” in an attempt to make her jealous. Nami is unimpressed, and leaves with Yamaguchi. Miiko disappointedly walks home, but on the way, she notices several fire trucks are racing to Ms. Shizuka’s house. The teacher has set her house on fire and is maniacally spinning around in her living room. (It is never explicitly said whether or not she perishes in this fire.)
Possibly a few nights later, Yamaguchi comes home to his apartment to find Miiko waiting in his bed. Miiko orders him to “do to [her] what [he] did to Nami”, and he gleefully obliges – until Miiko pushes him off, as she can no longer stand being touched by a boy. The next day at school, Miiko is pulled aside by Nami, who tells Miiko that Yamaguchi told her about the night prior. Miiko expects Nami to be mad, but instead, Nami reveals she shares Miiko’s feelings, and the camera sweeps around the girls as they kiss. “Magic Lady” begins to play once more as Miiko and Nami go on a beach date, and then the OVA ends.
Barefoot is animated and written haphazardly. It is not at all a good anime; in spite of being made by industry animators, it looks and feels like an animated doujinshi. Miiko bears a significant resemblance to Nonomura Ami from Cream Lemon, and she is also voiced by the same voice actor, Oikawa Hitomi. It is also worth noting how the plot is extremely similar to Nikkatsu’s Sailor Suit Yuri Lovers (Sera-Fuku Yuri Zoku), from 1983: a sporty, short-haired girl and a demure, long-haired girl are lovers, until the sporty girl begins to date a boy, so the demure girl seeks a relationship with a different girl. Its main characters are even named Naomi and Miwako, one syllable away from Barefoot‘s Nami and Miiko.
Stage 2: Telepathist Ai-Q 315 (テレパシスト愛Q315) – 25 April 1985 / 24 min.
Telepathist Ai-Q 315‘s title is a complex pun. “Ai-Q” is pronounced the same as “IQ”, but with the kanji “ai” (“love”) in the I’s place. The numbers “315” can be read in Japanese as “sa-i-ko”, and “saiko” can be read as “psycho”, or as a Japanese word meaning “the best” or “amazing”. Whether or not the OVA itself is “the best” hinges on an individual viewer’s tolerance for tentacle rape.
On a distant planet that’s also possibly in another dimension, armies of monsters, mutants, and beasts are preparing for an evil ritual called the Midara (a play on the word “midara” (淫ら), meaning “indecent”). They are led by an enormous, absurd-looking monster named Guru Damia. The group needs the life energy and “nectar” of 100 psychic virgins, and they’ve already captured 99. Back on Earth, a young woman named Kaori (Andou Arisa) is practising gymnastics with her boyfriend, Charlie (Hashimoto Koichi). They’re attacked by one of Damia’s henchmen, Thard, but Charlie suddenly appears dressed like Arion while Kaori transforms into a blue tunic, and Kaori destroys Thard with her newfound psychic powers. That evening, Charlie explains to Kaori that he is a psychic soldier from another world. Damia killed Charlie’s comrades when they all tried to stop Damia’s ritual, and now he wants revenge. Charlie begs Kaori to go with him to Damia’s lair and act as a decoy for the 100th captive – but she must trust him at all times. Surprisingly, she agrees.
The two fly through space on a Pegasus before Charlie dumps Kaori off on some alien terrain. She defeats Damia’s two other henchmen, but is “captured” by Charlie and splayed out before Damia. The Midara ritual begins; it mostly involves a lot of oral and vaginal tentacle penetration. Suddenly, Charlie calls for Kaori to harness her psychic powers, and she is immediately able to command the rest of the captive women into focusing their powers on Damia. After a fiery battle, he melts down, and explodes. The captive women are all freed, but this ending is bittersweet – Charlie can no longer appear on Earth, and he fades away, leaving Kaori back on Earth. “Magic Lady” plays once more while Kaori roams the streets in an indefinite search for Charlie.
Stage 3: Punky Funky Baby (パンキー ファンキー ベイビー) – 1 May 1985 / 22 min.
Unlike the previous two episodes, Punky Funky Baby is an oddball gag comedy set centuries into the future. The story unfolds on a small planet that has been colonized by Earth and several other alien civilizations, aside from one patch of abandoned land nicknamed “The Promised Land”.
One day, two human women named Fami and Cyan (who look remarkably like Kei and Yuri from Dirty Pair) are out shopping when they run afoul of two punks (one of whom also looks remarkably like Tetsuo from the Akira manga). The punks corner them in an alley and begin to assault them, but the girls escape on one of the punks’ jetbikes. Just as Fami and Cyan think they’ve outrun the boys, they realize they’re stranded without fuel, weapons, or clothes in the Promised Land.
Fami and Cyan are caught by an army of wolfmen and an enormous blobby creature implied to be some sort of leader within the Promised Land. The girls are led down into a high-tech underground lair where they are stripped, put in remote-controlled spreader cuffs, and splayed-out mid-air in front of a giant demonic idol. This leads into what some could consider an accolade for the Little Mermaid Series; two wolfmen enter the room, and Punky Funky Baby becomes the first ero-anime to portray human-furry intercourse.
Fami and Cyan manage to escape their restraints. They run through the lair in search of a way out, and encounter the blob creature again. He seems to hand the girls a gun, almost as if to help them, but when Fami attempts to shoot one of the wolfmen, the gun only shoots green goo. The girls scream, run, and then…the anime just ends. The credits roll over some static illustrations and repeated clips from the assault scenes.
All Products would take over 6 months to release the final Little Mermaid Stage, but in the meantime, they animated one other production: the opening and closing sequences of Maru Maru Ippongi Bang (まるまる一本木蛮), an idol video starring female mangaka Ippongi Bang. Much of the video’s half-hour runtime focused on real life footage of Ippongi modelling, drawing, and cosplaying, but this was bookended with short animated sequences, featuring character designs Ippongi personally designed.
This video was released on VHS and Beta on July 1, 1985. Within certain otaku spaces, the idol video was advertised as an All Products work, but in general markets, it was attributed to a different company – which we will talk more about later in this article.
Stage 4: Shining May (シャイニング･ＭＡＹ) – 28 November 1985 / 25 min.
One of the alternate titles for this Stage is “Shy-Ning May” (シャイＮｉｎｇ･めい), putting emphasis on its lead character’s shy demeanour. Shining May was the final episode of the Series and the most ambitious one, featuring a full soundtrack, improved art direction and animation, two release formats (VHS and Beta), and even a mini manga booklet bundled with the home video release. The first six minutes of the OVA are a mock idol video starring Kanou Meiko, also known as “May” (voiced by Miura Masako), who performs a song called “Tokimeki Shine” and tries on different outfits. Afterwards, May is picked up outside the studio by her boyfriend, Sawaki Yuu (Tobita Naruo), and the couple goes to stay the night at a riverside cabin. May has long been worried about potentially having to use her body to progress through the music industry, but for now, she wants to spend time with the one man she genuinely loves.
May reflects on her traumatic childhood. As a kid, she walked in on her mother having sex with a younger man on the day of May’s father’s funeral. The man also chased May down, but whether or not he assaulted the young May is left for the viewer to decide. As an adult, May narrowly avoids being accosted by her singing coach; this forces her to remember how her mother auditioned to be a singer in her youth, but was instead raped by record executives. Still though, May pushes all of this out of her mind as she and Yuu consensually have sex throughout the night. A day or two later, May is on stage and performing a second song, “Lost In Love”. She finishes singing, and much to her delight, the crowd goes wild with applause.
The erotica portrayed in Shining May is starkly different from the rest of the Little Mermaid Series. The OVA dips away from opportunities to exploit Kanou May. Instead of involving the singing coach, the mother’s boyfriend, or the record executives, the viewer only sees May engaged in sexual activity with Yuu. Their sex scenes at all times feel consensual, and illustrations shown during “Lost In Love” imply the two stay together as a couple. This is a far cry from the depictions of sex and romance in the previous Stages: Barefoot‘s keystone sex scene is glamorized statutory rape, Telepathist has long scenes of plot-relevant tentacle rape, and Fami and Cyan are implied to be a couple in Punky but repeatedly get assaulted by male characters. Shining May, meanwhile, was the most mainstream and most “normal” OVA in the series. Whether they intended to or not, Little Mermaid‘s showrunners had concluded the Series with a heel-turn, focusing on consensual sex between a vulnerable woman and a considerate, non-violent male partner.
Part II: Metamorphosis
In 1988, Stages 1, 2, and 4 were reordered – switching places between Barefoot and Shining – and released together as an “omnibus” called Symphony Dream Story (シンフォニー夢・物語). Punky Funky Baby would permanently be left behind for numerous reasons: it was a copyright hazard, and from a marketing perspective, it clashed tonally with the rest of the series and had the weakest animation. The rest of the Little Mermaid Series was re-packaged as a trilogy, with a new cover illustration showing Miiko, Nami, May, and Kaori posing together, like a cast photo. A Laserdisc version was also released, but for unknown reasons, it came out in 1991, three years after the VHS edition.
Much like Stages 1 and 3, Telepathist Ai-Q 315 also earned some cultural significance, but this time on an international scale: it was one of the first two ero-anime ever dubbed into English. Technically, the first mature-rated anime to be dubbed into English was Osamu Tezuka’s A Thousand and One Nights in 1969, but its dub was part of a limited theatrical release and was not given wide distribution, until the audio was recovered decades later. In the mid-1980s, American adult video studio Excalibur Entertainment noted Japan’s burgeoning adult anime market, and would go on to license seven separate OVAs for an English localization. These were released from 1986-1988 as the “Brothers Grime X-Rated Cartoons” three-part series. The majority of the licensed episodes were from Cream Lemon while the first tape contained Telepathist Ai-Q 315 (with its elaborate pun title replaced with Search for Uranus) and a separate, unrelated anime, SF Lolita Fantasy OME-1 (or Gonad the Barbarian).
It is unknown when exactly Search for Uranus was identified as Telepathist Ai-Q 315. None of the Brothers Grime advertising material ever referenced how these animations were from Japan, let alone made by three different studios. The only credits on any of the tapes heavily credited Arthur King, Excalibur’s founder. SF Super-Dimension Legend Rall (dubbed as Offenders of the Universe) retained some of its original credits sequence, but Arthur King’s name was heavily intercut with the Japanese names and pseudonyms. The Brothers Grime edits were also dubbed by third party distributors throughout Europe, bringing it into French, Danish, and Spanish, among other languages, each time working from the Arthur King version of these anime. King’s presence in the credits was so prominent that many who watched the series assumed King commissioned the animation; an article in Czech fanzine Zbraně Avalonu #19 even referred to the Brothers Grime series as “Arthur King’s excellent works”, and did not organize it with several other anime titles mentioned in the article.
Elsewhere in the world, Little Mermaid Series took on an impromptu cameo in a Korean PSA. A public service campaign called the Wholesome Video Viewing Campaign (건전비디오 시청 캠페인) ran in South Korea from 1991 to 1994, and its lead PSA claimed that letting children “recklessly” watch “bad and/or illegal” video tapes would lead to them growing up to become juvenile delinquents. One of the clips used as an example of objectionable content was from Shining May, specifically from the scene where May catches her mother cheating. It is unclear when exactly the clip was identified, but accounts say it was likely in the 2010s, possibly when a South Korean video collector acquired a copy of Shining May.
For the longest time, the only semi-reliable English information about Little Mermaid was in the first and second editions of The Anime Encyclopedia by Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements. The plot descriptions left a lot to be desired, and the Laserdisc manufacturer was credited as a producer, but the entry was still a faint sign that the Little Mermaid Series existed. This information was updated slightly for the book’s third edition in 2015. In the section about Dirty Pair, Punky Funky Baby is mentioned as “an erotic pastiche”, although McCarthy also says Punky was part of Symphony Dream Story, the same edition that first omitted it.
It was now the early 1990s, and the Little Mermaid Series was over. No further episodes were ever planned for production. It’s entirely possible that they were considering doing a second round of episodes if the first quartet sold well, much like how Cream Lemon had a second wave of episodes called Shin Cream Lemon, but there have been no traces of any Little Mermaid Stages planned beyond Stage 4. But what Little Mermaid Series lacked in individual episodes, it would make up for in reincarnations.
Part III: Rebirth
Little Mermaid unexpectedly popped up under new distribution in the 1990s, twice. A book publisher called Continental Shobo began producing economy-priced VHS releases in the late 1980s under numerous brand labels. Continental’s tapes were often bare-bones, or of average-to-middling quality, but they provided an alternative to how many commercially-available VHS tapes at that time could retail for over ¥10,000 (roughly $102 CAD), or were only available for rental, similar to today’s practice of some films only being available on streaming services. Years earlier, Continental Shobo launched a successful series of Cream Lemon re-releases, and likely hoping to keep that momentum going, Continental licensed three-quarters of Little Mermaid.
Something had changed: Shining May and Telepathist were labelled as being part of “Little Mermaid” and released on the Pyramid Video label. However, Barefoot was put into a series called “Doujin Version Bishoujo Game Video“, released by “Victory” and made by “Doujinshi Club”. The only way we know it was released by Continental Shobo is because Continental put out the one other Doujin Version tape, Doujin Version Bishoujo Game Video Deluxe, a 40-minute compilation of bishoujo footage from independently-made computer games. This particular tape was also a counterpart to Pony Canyon’s Mahjong Gals Graffiti series. Barefoot got new case artwork by the same artist as Telepathist‘s and Shining‘s, but the entire OVA had been demoted, with someone at Continental possibly assuming Barefoot’s animation could only be excused if it were advertised as being a doujin product. Telepathist did at some point receive its own Doujinshi Club edition, but it had a smaller circulation than its Continental edition. It’s unknown how well all three tapes sold; Continental Shobo filed for bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing over a billion yen in debts.
Barefoot would rejoin its “sisters” one last time in 1997. An adult film distributor called Royal Art acquired the series for a set of cheap Video CDs on its M-King label. The label, and Royal Art at the time, mainly produced and distributed live action pornography and erotica, but it could be that Little Mermaid was licensed to build Royal Art’s footing in the ero-anime market. Just like with Continental’s tapes, these VCDs were also bare-bones releases, but in Royal’s defence, they most likely did not have access to any original promotional materials. All Products was so far-removed from this stage of re-releases that M-King’s releases had free reign over any changes they wanted to make: each OVA had its credits removed and was given a new title card. New pixelation was also applied to nudity that had previously gone uncensored. Barefoot even got an additional preventative censor, pixelating the name of Nami and Miiko’s school, due to there now being a real school in Japan with the same name.
Most notably, these three OVAs were given updated illustrations in a late 1990s shoujo style. The covers, along with a bonus comic in Telepathist‘s jewel case booklet, were done by an artist known only as “Shi-Ri Company” (四李カンパニー). (It is written here in different kanji, but “shiri” is the Japanese word for “buttocks”.) At the very least, the Shining May VCD included a miniature reproduction of the “Image Book” manga booklet that came with the 1985 tape release. Royal Art slowly released these VCDs thru the new millennium. Some of their stock began appearing in software shops and discount stores for clearance prices, but Royal Art did not give up the Little Mermaid license to anyone during this time.
This ultimately conflicted with the efforts of X City, another adult video production company, who picked up Little Mermaid under the likely assumption that it was in the public domain. X City “adopted” the three OVAs in 1999 and repackaged them as a product for their ero-anime division, Five Ways, and its new DVD label called Honnybit. Perplexingly, each OVA had different titles between formats:
- Barefoot After School became Classmate (VHS), Campusmate (DVD)
- Telepathist Ai-Q 315 became Incubus War (VHS), Incubus Legend (DVD)
- Shining May became The Star’s Birth (VHS), Stairway to Idol (DVD)
Much like with Symphony Dream Story and Media-Mix’s releases, Punky Funky Baby was omitted from the series, though an image of Fami and Cyan from the original VHS box was used on the back of Incubus War.
The original title screens and credits were once again removed from each OVA, and most notably, live action pornography had been added to these anime. This was Five Ways’s attempt to start a new “hybrid” series called AV Live, wherein clips from live action pornography were overlaid over one scene in each OVA. The DVD versions included a “password game” where the viewer could try inputting a numerical combination with their DVD player remote, and if they put in the correct number, the disc would play the full version of that OVA’s inserted sex scene. Five Ways likely added this footage in an attempt to make their own transformative version of the source material, and to perhaps also make these anime appeal to a wider audience. This largely failed: most people who saw this version didn’t know the live action footage was coming, and audiences were largely confused or outright disliked it. Five Ways also censored the moment in Barefoot when Miiko says she is 14 years old and, rather than patching it with the background music, overlaid the line with a jarring second-long censor beep.
In the meantime, M-King briefly reappeared in the 2000s as a company separate from Royal Art, called Media-Mix. They released a handful of DVDs, among these being 2003 re-releases of the Telepathist and Shining VCDs. These titles were each bundled with reprinted packaging, two “digikomi” (short films composed of voice acting, sound effects, and shots of doujinshi panels), and a disclaimer on the back of the case that stated it was a re-release of a product from 1997. It is unknown what truly prompted Media-Mix to make its re-release and why Five Ways was forced to liquidate its unsold AV Live DVDs in the mid-2000s. Five Ways did continue to distribute ero-anime DVDs for a few more years until X City officially shut the division down in 2007.
Ironically, the AV Live DVDs soon became the most widely distributed physical releases of any Little Mermaid edition. This was because Five Ways’s deadstock was purchased by Daiso, a 100-yen retail chain that can best be compared to Canada’s Dollarama or America’s Dollar Tree. The AV Live DVDs were originally meant to retail at ¥1500 yen each, but most people who came across them at Daiso bought their copy for ¥100 yen (roughly $1 CAD). This was where the Little Mermaid Series stagnated for a few years; as far as anyone knew, they were just a set of strange, cheap anime with inexplicable moments of live action pornography that you could find in the back of the dollar store’s home video section.
But then, not long after this, economy video distributor New Cinema Japan decided to release their own bootlegs of the Symphony trio in 2003. The three OVAs were chosen as the start of New Cinema’s “Sei-Bishoujo”, or “Holy Pretty Girl”, public domain ero-anime DVD series. Stranger still was their economy DVD release of the trio. These were ¥300 (approx. $3 CAD) each, and once again labelled under their Five Ways names, rather than New Cinema’s “Sei-Bishoujo [fruit] Fantasy” title stylings. These DVDs were packaged in CD jewel cases rather than a typical DVD snapcase, and the cover was vague, only showing redrawn silhouettes of Charlie and Kaori from Telepathist. Upon playing the DVD, the user would be taken to a menu that auto-played an intro video starring veteran AV director Muranishi Toru. Muranishi is dressed in a priest Halloween costume and gives a brief speech:
“Thank you for waiting. [turns cross pendant to the camera] Forgive me for the wait! Now, I would like to offer you a fantastic time, a time to cleanse your life, a time to create some life memories. Please have a nice time. Now…start! [sticks out tongue]”
This clip was intended for the Sei-Bishoujo series, hence Muranishi’s costume, but the joke does not work because these DVDs were curtly named things like “Incubus Legend” and “Campusmate“. Many viewers also understandably did not recognize or even know of Muranishi, so they were instead even more confused by his appearance.
Part IV: Discovery
Little Mermaid Series remained largely unknown outside of Japan until the late 2000s. In 2009, members of the Akiba-Online.com forum began trying to amass a complete list of ero-anime releases, and noticed the four previously undocumented OVAs. All the basic details about Little Mermaid Series that we know today – release dates, re-release titles, etc. – largely came from the efforts of forum members Redrooster, Mugesz, and ElGringo14. They struggled to find uncut physical copies of each release, but by the early 2010s, each Little Mermaid OVA had been digitized, and the titles of all bootlegs and edits were documented, in an effort to save future collectors from unknowingly buying a tampered copy. They also saved a great deal of media that would have otherwise vanished; in the decade since Mugesz recovered a copy of Punky Funky Baby, the tape has only re-appeared for sale online once.
The Japanese side of the archiving community caught onto the series in late 2017. A video collector named Mizutaro found a full-page advertisement for Little Mermaid Series in OUT Magazine’s July 1985 issue. He was confused, not recognizing it at all, since it seemed to have been omitted from a convention panel years prior about 1980s ero-anime. As it would turn out, the series hadn’t been purposely omitted; it was just that obscure. Prior to this discovery, the most exposure the series had under its original title was in a blog post from 2009. Mizutaro posted a photo of the Little Mermaid Series advertisement and asked if anyone else recognized the anime. Others in the movie collector community shared their own accounts of encountering the series, so Mizutaro assembled this information into a Twitter Moment called “The Lost Ero-Anime Video Series: Little Mermaid Series“.
One user knew Telepathist by name because they had previously rented it on VHS from a local service. However, most users only recognized the anime from the cheap DVDs that had been on clear-out at Daiso stores years prior. Users corroborated their accounts of finding three different DVDs in the adult section of Daiso’s home entertainment department; most only bought a copy because these DVDs were so cheap, and up until the discovery of the magazine ad, the DVDs were so low-valued that they were being resold on Amazon for 1 yen each. (Their resale value would soon increase to around 100-1000 yen depending on condition.)
Many of these Japanese collectors utilized the title information assembled years prior by the Akiba-Online team, which had since been added to websites like AniDB and MyAnimeList. This data certainly had not gone to waste, as it was a breakthrough for Japanese collectors hoping to pare down what was a straightforward Little Mermaid release and what was a downgraded re-release. (I have since compiled a Japanese spreadsheet of every known release.)
Today, the rights to the true Little Mermaid Series are up in the air. There were at least three bootlegs of the Continental Shobo version of Shining May around the turn of the millennium, taking on new titles such as “Virtual Idol May” and “Forbidden Sweet Drops”. The third was an American bootleg, released with no subtitles as “May’s Hot Night!” by live action porn studio Filmco. Meanwhile, the AV Live versions of Stages 1, 2, and 4 are technically public domain, and have gone on to be repackaged by a handful of fledgling video labels seeking to make quick profit with All Products’s discarded creation.
The most recent known repackaging was in 2008, when an independent label called Strawberry Jam began selling the AV Live edits as part of triple feature DVDs. Each DVD had three orphaned ero-anime works, all titles and attribution removed, with an atrocious new group title. For example, Telepathist and Shining are bundled with Mogitate Marina-chan (1999) on a DVD called Carnal Game: Virgins Turned Into Toys. At some point, Strawberry Jam was reincarnated as Flat Cherry Jam and all its products moved to video-on-demand titles. Cream Lemon definitely had its share of bootlegs, but never did it have this many re-releases and re-imaginings.
Part V: Reveal
There is a general consensus online that the Little Mermaid Series just isn’t very good. When I first stumbled upon it, the series was only noteworthy for the fact that it had so many different titles. Still though, something didn’t sit right with me. For one thing, why did companies keep fighting over these anime, of all things, especially when their video releases weren’t very good? And who actually made these anime?
I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt unsettled by how professional-looking most of Little Mermaid was. Numerous Japanese collectors had spotted artistic similarities, and moreover, they’d been able to identify the voice actors by comparing them to previous roles. Punky Funky Baby became the most collectible tape in the series, both for its rarity and for its starring roles of two industry professionals, Yamada Eiko as Fami and Matsui Naoko as Cyan. There were many other industry voice actors in Little Mermaid, including Andou Arisa, Tsunoda Narumi, Tobita Naruo, and Nakahara Shigeru, all of whom also had starring roles in Cream Lemon. This wasn’t like College Girl Seiko-chan by Let’s, where the voice cast was made of entry-level voice artists and porn actors; whoever made Little Mermaid very clearly had a foot in the industry’s door and was able to hire industry professionals. These actors, meanwhile, had obviously taken these gigs on the fly, and were not officially credited anywhere.
Let us return to 1985. Aside from the VHS tape cases, Little Mermaid‘s main public presence was its few magazine advertisements and promotional flyers. Most of them listed a trio of companies: Image Box, All Products, and “MPS” – short for Movic Promote Service. This acronym was further spelled out on the back of Punky Funky Baby‘s VHS case.
Movic Promote Service is the advertising department of Movic Co., Ltd., which was founded in 1983 by Katou Nagateru. Movic was and is primarily a production company for manga and anime intellectual properties; these IPs’ merchandise is also managed by Movic and then sold though Animate retailing outlets. As a corporate partner of the Animate network, Movic can be hired to produce its own IPs or build a “planning” team for a client. When Animate Film Works wanted to make Maru Maru Ippongi Bang in 1985, they handled the live action segments, while Movic assembled a production team for the animated segments and the associated artbook…because Movic was All Products.
While this fact is largely buried today, Movic was directly attributed as All Products in several early ero-anime publications. The earliest known instance is in Gals Anime 1, a doujinshi magazine published in July 1985, in a section called the Gals Anime All Catalogue. The catalogue listed all ero-anime titles available for sale at the time, organized by studio or distributor, and Little Mermaid Stages 1-3 were organized plainly under “Movic Service”. Elsewhere in the magazine was a featurette for Maru Maru Ippongi Bang. It briefly described All Products’s contribution to the idol video, and one page contained All Products’s business address for readers to contact if they wanted more information about ordering the video or its artbook. Meanwhile, the Maru Maru promotional poster featured the exact same address on the bottom of the poster, now attributed to Movic Promote Service. MPS was a new company at this time and likely didn’t want to risk its reputation in the mainstream industry, so they adopted All Products as a vanity label to distribute Little Mermaid Series through. Their company name could have been added to Little Mermaid advertisements later on in order to give the tapes some credibility, as if All Products was a separate entity that just hired Movic for their advertisement services.
There was one more instance of Movic’s direct crediting on a Little Mermaid product. It was been hiding in plain sight on what I’d previously assumed was another redundant Little Mermaid re-release: Symphony Dream Story. On the back of its VHS case were two lines of copyright, “©MPS” and “Distributor: AE Planning Co. Ltd.” AE Planning was a successful OVA distributor, but readers may know the company better by its most recent name, Bandai Visual. The tape was released on Bandai’s Half Moon Video label, which they had created and shelved not long after releasing Mamoru Oshii’s Dallos in 1983. VHS copies of Symphony also came with a mail-in survey card that would go directly to AE Planning, also housed at a Bandai office. One can only assume that Image Box was AE/Bandai all along.
I don’t advise trying to comb through the Little Mermaid Series for visual leads. Too many years have passed for there to be much good in tracing every industry staff member, since many of these staff members are retired, deceased, or regretful of their involvement in the ero-anime industry. Moreover, these animators and production staff were likely just recruited by Movic for a side gig and assigned to the Little Mermaid project. The credits of each stage generally only credited 4 different people, which is obviously not the appropriate amount of people required to make a fully-produced 25-minute anime episode. None of the names were fully real, either. For example, Shining May credited two “studios”: Studio Michael for animation cleanup, and Studio Poppo for in-betweener animation…a reference to Michael and Poppo, two of the main characters in Kobayashi Makoto’s What’s Michael, which had an OVA adaptation that same year.
Two different Katous appear in the credits of Stages 1, 3, and 4 as a director and producer; the most likely suspect (note: just a suspect; nothing has been conclusive) for either of them is Movic founder Katou Nagateru. Katou would go on to found his own animation studio, but before then, Katou assisted in the planning and production of numerous OVAs with Movic. The character designer of Telepathist, “Hayakawa Ayumi”, has since been identified as Hattori Ayumi. She was an animator with Ashi Productions before launching a successful career as an independent manga artist, where she has illustrated numerous stories by Yamaura Hiroyasu. Hattori’s art and designs were pivotal in Shining May, and the Image Book that came bundled with the home video was, in fact, an original manga chapter Hattori created to pitch the OVA. The character designer for the other half of the series has not yet been identified, but the style in the concept art for Barefoot and Punky strongly resembles that of Kishi Yoshiyuki or Watanabe Hiroshi.
There are moments in Telepathist where Kaori is drawn in a style strongly resembling the humans from Super High-Speed Galvion. Other times, Kaori resembles humans from Guyver: Out of Control and Vampire Hunter D, two films produced by Movic with production credits by Ashida Toyoo. The Guyver OVA also features numerous changes to the original manga plotline, adding a female character who, like Kaori, is violated by tentacles and shown exercising in spandex; she is ultimately defeated by being melted and then blown up, like Damia. This Guyver OVA was directed by Watanabe Hiroshi, who is best known for his work on Magical Princess Minky Momo, and he is quite possibly the Aida Jun listed as a producer on Barefoot and Punky. The character designs and certain animation moments in both Stages do certainly resemble those of Minky Momo….but, thinking realistically, trying to track down every visual influence in Little Mermaid Series is impossible. It is maddening and full of red herrings.
The latest known official Little Mermaid attribution was in Bishoujo Anime Complete Works: Adult Anime Video Catalogue 1991. This was a doujinshi catalogue published in January 1991 by Asocon Books, containing mostly Cream Lemon and Urotsukidouji featurettes, and a retrospective about the ero-anime industry. In the catalogue section, Little Mermaid Series was listed as a single entity under Symphony Dream Story, and its description spoke very casually of Bandai Visual and Movic’s involvement with the release. A short side column also implies May was inspired by Nonomura Ami, specifically in the Cream Lemon: Ami Ever After sequel series where she becomes an idol singer. This makes me wonder how much trivia about Little Mermaid‘s production there truly is to know, and how much of it has been buried with time.
The last time All Products was active as a company was in 1994-1996. Bandai and Movic were briefly involved with the ero-anime industry once again during this time, and they are attributed with the 1990 OVA series, St. Michaela Academy Drifting Diary, while the 1994 sequel series was attributed to All Products. They managed the production of six titles during this time, but largely had nothing to do with Little Mermaid Series, nor its original staff. During this time, Movic and Bandai Visual were associated with the production of various ecchi anime (anime where softcore erotica is a selling point), but they could have been experimenting with establishing a division for fully-pornographic anime, but all production wrapped after 1996. It is merely a footnote in All Products’s history: it quietly resurrected, and then just as quietly retired.
Epilogue: Curtain Call
The many Little Mermaid Series re-releases make more sense when one knows they were a shelved Movic-Bandai product. This information became more obscure over the years, but some players in the industry knew there were three (sometimes four) shelved, fully-produced adult animated features made by professional artists and voice actors…even if they may have not been on their A-games here. Regardless, Little Mermaid was assumed to be an orphaned work, and it was put through a multi-party custody battle wherein almost everyone involved proved they had no idea what to do with it.
And yet, after searching for about three years, I still don’t know if I’ve found everything there is to know about Little Mermaid. Since Movic was so tight-lipped about their involvement with the series back in the day, very little was widely distributed about the series. It’s hard to even find original physical copies of the advertisements. However, some limited release magazines and doujinshi from 1985-1986 have published rarities like concept art and staff details, but until we find them, we have no idea how many magazines covered Little Mermaid back in the day. But then again, the thrill of the hunt is the sort of thing we archivists live for.
My big takeaway from this deep dive has been that you can find a fascinating mystery almost anywhere. I would’ve never expected a quartet of not-very-good pornographic anime to be hiding a long, winding series of mishaps and mysteries, but that’s the fun of researching obscure media…when it actually exists, of course. So many people waste their time and effort in the pursuit of lost media categorized only as “existence unconfirmed”, when some of the most fascinating mysteries and deep dives can be found in otherwise mundane-looking places. The next time you watch, read, or play something and have a question about it, try reading up about it. If you can’t find a straight answer, go digging. You might not find a mystery, but you might learn something new! It’s a lot more fun that way.
Did I miss something about Little Mermaid Series in this article? I invite anyone who knows more about Movic’s early anime endeavours, or anything I got wrong about Little Mermaid, to comment below or write to me directly. I say this not as an antagonistic challenge, but genuinely; I still have so many questions about its production.
In spite of my best efforts, the Little Mermaid Series is bound to keep rattling around in my head. But I’m always browsing through old doujinshi, magazines, and catalogues in search of new curios, so who knows? Maybe there’s a little more of the Little Mermaid yet to find, or perhaps, an even wilder story just waiting to be discovered. Like I’ve said, the early OVA industry was a wild west, and no matter where it leads you, it certainly it won’t be boring.
つづく
The Gonzo Brigadoon 
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