Those huge-pupilled eyes are emblematic of Japanese TV animation, where they have became so notorious that the Japanese themselves often parody them. In the Urusei Yatsura* original video episode “Terror of the Girly-Eyes Measles” (June 21, 1991; it’s on YouTube), the aliens’ dreaded “girly-eyed measles” spreads to humans, and all the students of Tomobiki High School develop those swimming-pool-sized eyes with dozens of highlights. The girls are delighted, while the macho teenage boys are dying of embarrassment. (This is one of my faves.)
*Untranslatable pun in Japanese ‘80s teenage slang. It means roughly “the space aliens have moved into our neighborhood and the property values have gone to Hell”. American anime fandom arguably would not have spread so fast during the 1980s and early ‘90s if it had not been for the bootleg videos of untranslated but hilarious anyway Urusei Yatsura episodes.
Those huge-pupilled eyes are emblematic of Japanese TV animation, where they have became so notorious that the Japanese themselves often parody them. In the Urusei Yatsura* original video episode “Terror of the Girly-Eyes Measles” (June 21, 1991; it’s on YouTube), the aliens’ dreaded “girly-eyed measles” spreads to humans, and all the students of Tomobiki High School develop those swimming-pool-sized eyes with dozens of highlights. The girls are delighted, while the macho teenage boys are dying of embarrassment. (This is one of my faves.)
*Untranslatable pun in Japanese ‘80s teenage slang. It means roughly “the space aliens have moved into our neighborhood and the property values have gone to Hell”. American anime fandom arguably would not have spread so fast during the 1980s and early ‘90s if it had not been for the bootleg videos of untranslated but hilarious anyway Urusei Yatsura episodes.
Fred Patten