Photon

Original Title: フォトン
Romanized: Photon
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

On the backwater desert world creatively known as Sandy Planet, Aun has stolen her village's holy item and run off to marry a rock star. This isn't the first time, so, as usual, the elders send her adoptive brother Photon out after her--a kind hearted, young-looking fellow with superhuman strength and not too much going on between the ears. But, not as usual, this time Photon runs into Keyne, an intergalactic rebel who crash-landed on her way to find a powerful project of her grandfather's. And accidentally engages himself to her. Then a megalomaniac named Papacha shows up to capture Keyne and take over the galaxy. Oh, and the galactic princess Lashara, Papacha's love, is wondering where he's off to as well.

Anyway, it's not long before Keyne and Aun are competing for Photon's interest, Papacha's started a one-sided rivalry with Photon, and the fate of the galaxy lies in the hands of a bunch of idiots.

Quick Review

Rating: 4 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-06-15

Roughly speaking, Photon is an old-school AIC/Pioneer harem show that features an odd emotional infant as the male lead, forsakes most of the romance, almost all of the drama, ratchets the humor up four or five notches, and fills the rest out with of totally tasteless situation comedy. The series has two huge plusses: a characteristically imaginative world, and the villain Papacha: The perfect, lecherous combination of posturing vanity, self-centered megalomania, and outlandish habits backed by a spectacular performance in Japanese by Kouichi Yamadera. Add in spot-on comedic timing, and you've got the potential for an outright hilarious series. Just two problems: It's relentlessly stupid, and there's zero plot until the first half of the last episode, which is so dark, wrenching, and random it seems to have come from another series entirely. Oh, and the dub doesn't have as much going for it--an even weirder take on Photon, weaker performances, and Aun is even more savagely annoying.

How much you enjoy the series as a whole will depend a lot on how much the random serious turn near the end bothers you, whether it's too silly and base to appeal to your sense of humor, and how willing you are to ignore (or enjoy) the mass stupidity and complete and total lack of plot. Personally, I think Photon is more fun than it has any right to be.

US DVD Review

The DVD (since re-released at a budget price) is a solid but more or less standard USM production of the era--it features English and Japanese soundtracks (stereo in Japanese, Dolby 5.1 in English, which sounds better) and reasonably sharp video. Being that it's based on the same masters as the dubbed tapes, the even episodes roll the dub cast, while the odd ones leave the Japanese credits intact, although the basic Japanese cast is translated on the reverse of the box cover (it's visible through the clear case, as with most of USM's DVDs). Extras include a meet-the-cast special feature (thankfully available in both languages) and a whole bunch of stuff viewable through a cheesy little (Windows only) application on a computer: The basic cast of both languages (same as the box), the complete production staff, complete scripts of all six episodes (wow), and a fairly large gallery of stills (which look oddly dark and grainy) and a few cels (these are also all available in a folder on the disc, if you're so inclined).

Content Guide

Photon looks silly, but is not for children. A lot of mature themes, generally crude jokes, raunchy situations, and a whole lot of nudity (particularly early on--Keyne spends the entire first episode naked, although the villain thankfully benefits from a dot or two). Plus, there is more serious violence and disturbing situations at the end than the silly situations would belie. I would say it easily qualifies as 16-up on balance. Even USM couldn't seem to make up its mind--the back of the box laughably claims "brief nudity" (brief if you're a nudist, maybe), but the video itself has their standard "adult" warnings on it).

Violence: 3 - Mostly very silly (and bloody), but some serious stuff toward the end

Nudity: 4 - A whole lot of female nudity and some exposed men as well.

Sex/Mature Themes: 3 - Raunch abounds.

Language: 3 - Not too much outright swearing, but fairly crude.

Notes and Trivia

There are two ongoing puns in the series, both of which were probably intentional, but only one of which most non-Japanese people would notice. The fact that the "holy item" used to draw magical spells happens to be a "magic marker" is not a coincidence--they're called "majikku inki" in Japanese.

The other one is the Aho power the story revolves around. "Aho" is a common insult that comes from the Kansai dialect, meaning "idiot" (actually, most Japanese insults mean either that or just an insulting form of "you"). Even the bastardized version of Papacha's name (translated as "Papachump") is, in Japanese, a mangled version of "Aho" (with a similar meaning). It also gives the English subtitle of the DVD, Idiot Adventures, a lot more meaning (I'm not so sure that was intentional, though).

Although there is no comic version, in early 1996 (almost two years before the release of the first OAV) KBS (the Kyoto Broadcasting System) aired a Photon radio drama on the show "Orikasa Ai's Moonlight Cafe." The plot differed, as did the cast--Orikasa Ai voiced Keyne, for example (this probably explains her small part as Aun's sister in the OAV version). There were also two radio drama CDs released at about the same time as the first volumes of the OAVs (LaserDisc only, as was often the case in Japan during the '90s), but these are not related to the original KBS broadcast. Somewhat ironically, there was no Japanese DVD available until late 2003.

Finally, a note on USM's rather confused DVD age notes: Although the box itself lists no age restrictions (except for the drastically understated "contains violence and brief nudity"--what do they consider not brief?), the disc has USM's standard "Adult" warning on it. It also has their boilerplate notice that all characters shown naked or involved in hanky-panky are 18 or over. This may be a response to the vast amounts of nudity, and it fits with the voicing of the dub's take on Photon, but I get the feeling it was mainly because Photon is shown naked in relative detail and they didn't want to get any pedophilia complaints, even though everything that happens to him could just as easily be interpreted as mothering.

Ironically, although his age is ambiguous, the fact that Photon is drawn naked and with detail implies that he's young enough that it couldn't be considered sexual, due to the way Japanese laws worked at the time it was made. Specifically, Japanese law allowed you to show little naked kids running around in anime, and female breasts are acceptable (even on TV in small amounts) but detailed full frontal nudity of either sex as an adult is largely a no-no. Thus, Papacha gets a censor spot (thankfully), while Photon is exposed.

Availability

Available in the US on one Hybrid DVD from US Manga Corps, since re-released in a budget version. Was originally available on three subtitled or dubbed VHS volumes, long out of print.

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