I caught this video this morning and, for some reason, realized that I had never seen this live action Japanese show.

In each short commercial you’ll see almost every coming-of-age manga story device invented. Which translates into three:

1. Catching morning wood
2. The indirect kiss through the sharing of a drink
3. peeping on girls dressing for gym

The sad thing is that if you go to the Inochi website it says that it is ‘Coming soon!’. But it has a copyright date of 2004. This doesn’t bode well.

Aside from being a little grotesque, there are interesting aspects to Inochi. The titular character was created by Takashi Marakami who was the designer who brought us the Superflat art movement. This style exploded onto the scene a number of years ago and has been copied by other artists like crazy.

To put another spin on it so that Angela can get her head wrapped around it: Takashi Murakami was the designer who made the multi-colored Louis Vuitton logo popular:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpGeXbWio7Y[/youtube]

I thought the panda was a real asshole.