I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

OMG! COOLEST THING EVER!

I don't normally link to pop-culture in-joke Flash animations, since they're a dime a dozen at Newgrounds, but I found out about this one Flash animation, created by someone named Robert Montjoy ("CapnBob"), that's particularly clever, "Lost Rhapsody", the first season of Lost in a musical nutshell.

Let's briefly review it.

• Graphics: 4/10
  
  Well, it's mostly just still shots from the show, sometimes with "marionette"-type mouths added to the characters. There are also a few mosaic shots featuring Photoshopped elements poorly tacked together, but that's intentionally supposed to be cheesy.
  
  
• Music: 8/10
  
  You can't go wrong with "Weird Al" Yankovic. This Flash animation uses "Bohemian Rhapsody", the sped-up and polka-ized version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" from Al's 1993 album, Alapalooza (the one with the Jurassic Park spoof cover).
  
  
• Humour: 15/10
  
  Lots of clever gags synched to the lyrics, like pointing out the carry-on baggage when Al sings "Carry on, Carry on", and the plane breaking apart into three Photoshop chunks during "Look up to the sky". Also, there are a few WTF?-type gags, like a giant version of Locke playing the tuba. And, I take it that this guy is very suspicious of Walt too, just like I am. (I would not be surprised if Walt turns out to be in cahoots with the Others somehow... I think he wants whatever is hidden in that highly magnetic chamber to escape.)
  
  
• Grimlock: 16/10
  
  Keep an eye on the things chasing Charlie; it's not just the usual boar and polar bear, everyone's favourite Tarzan-talking, Autobot-affiliated tyrannosaurus Transformer makes a cameo appearance too.
  
  
• Spoilers: 23/10
  
  It spoils most major plot points from the first season, but, since the show is so "odd", they're the sort of spoilers that would go completely over your head if you aren't already familiar with what happened.
  
  
• Completely out-of-the-blue Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer reference: 42/10
  
  Yes! Yes! I was stunned to see an explicit reference to what I consider to be the best Japanese anime film ever animated, Mamoru Oshii's Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer.
  
  When Sayid is being launched into the air with the giant catapult (which never actually happened in the show, though I don't remember if they ever explained how Sayid got off the island the first time), as he flies farther and farther through the air into space, he can see that the island isn't really on Earth at all, but is on a giant platform supported on the back of a gigantic stone turtle swimming in space.
  
  
  
  The image is taken directly from the scene in Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer where Mendou launches his MiG from the Mach Noodle Shop, and he, Ataru, Lum, and the rest of the gang look down at the weird Groundhog Day-esque version of Tomobiki town they somehow found themselves in, also on a platform on the back of a giant turtle.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Turtle is a reference to the Japanese folk legend of Urashima Taro, the Japanese "Rip Van Winkle". Mason Proulx explains all this more fully in his liner notes for Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer (scroll down to "A Night at the Palace").
  
  I'm just astonished that Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer got referenced. I thought that only I and rocker Matthew Sweet and maybe twelve other people in all of North America even know about that movie. Okay, I exaggerate a tiny bit, but, certainly, the Urashima Taro turtle reference will go over the heads of at least 99% of people who viewed it.
  
  

Hmm... does this mean that the one behind this mysterious "Dharma" organization is none other than... Mujaki?

While, I don't think, on the real Lost show, they'll find out that the island is on a platform on a turtle, that joke theory might have a couple of elements of where I suspect the story may be going. I hope that the island will turn out to be a literal island and they don't pull any St. Elsewhere-like crap twist ending, where it's all happening in Walt's mind. I'm also kind of hoping that they don't go for any cop-out overly sci-fi twists, like the island is a real island but it's in another dimension or that the island is a real island, but it's on an alien planet. but, as long as it isn't all happening in their minds, I'll be somewhat satisfied. (Or, maybe, they'll have a twist on the "It's all in their minds" cliché, when they really are on a literal island, but some things or everything you see happening in the flashbacks up to and including the crash of Oceanic Airlines flight 815 are false memories implanted somehow by "the Dharma Initiative".)




With the possibility of a couple of dozen more Google Image Search hits a day in mind, here are a few bonus Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer screencaps:



Lum and company rollerskating through the streets of abandoned Tomobiki-cho. (Tomobiki is usually roughly based on Nerima ward in Tokyo, but, in the version in this movie, it seems to incorporate the skyscrapers of Shinjuku ward too.)



Ataru, Lum, Shinobu, Jariten (a.k.a. "Ten-chan"), and the others enjoy carefree days and evenings in a strange new world free from worries and material concerns.



Shinobu and Lum.



Sakura, the Shinto priestess-cum-Tomobiki high school nurse, looking out a window at a butterfly (which is symbolically important in the film if you pay close attention to the dialogue).



The Third Reich Café at the school festival. (Please note that this film does not, in any way, glorify Nazi-ism. The sheer political incorrectness of it all, like with Cartman on South Park or John Cleese inadvertently mimicing Hitler in Fawlty Towers, is the source of the comedy, and, while the character, Megane, is infatuated with Nazi uniforms and war machinery, it's strictly from a military otaku perspective, he has never indicated that he believes in Nazi ideology, though he does mix fascism and socialism on occasion.)

Also, a review which I wrote in 1998 or early 1999 about Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer, and the one I wrote for Anime On DVD (despite the date listed as the review date, it was actually submitted within a day or two of New Year's Eve 1999/New Year's Day 2000).

posted by Steve Brandon @ 7:42 PM