mercurial/fond @mercurialblonde - Tumblr Blog

Tachiguishi Retsuden (2006)

Something interesting I’ve noticed, and always wanted to talk about…

Episode 99 of Urusei Yatsura introduces the idea of the tachiguishi, literally meaning “master of fast food”. These people are so dedicated to eating out that they’ve refined the concept to an art form, to the point that they are able to eat without paying. However, the episode is almost wholly original, and not based on anything from the manga.

As a result, when UY’s series director Mamoru Oshii left the show during the fallout from Beautiful Dreamer, he apparently took the tachiguishi idea with him. The tachiguishi would later appear in several of Oshii’s works, especially those that are a part of his Kerberos Saga, including 1987′s The Red Spectacles.

Eventually, Oshii made a movie in 2006 with Production IG, which used a take on animated paper-doll puppets, using CGI made from photographs of various actors and locations. Tachiguishi-Retsuden, or The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters, provided a satirical look at Japanese history and culture through documenting the actions of these gourmet rebels.

The ladies pictured here then, are one and the same person, in different iterations: she is Kitsune Croquette Ogin, so named because her food of choice is kitsune soba (buckwheat noodles topped with deep-fried tofu). These pictures are taken from her appearance in UY episode 99, as a young delinquent with a chip on her shoulder relating to another tachiguishi; and from Oshii’s Tachiguishi-Retsuden movie, where she is an older, more alluring figure.