CHASE: First off — THIS WEEKEND! We’re screening Metropolis, the Unstreamable anime film, at Northwest Film Forum! Three days of screenings, in both the dubbed and subbed versions! Save your spot and come say hey!
Second off — We’re wrapping up our Unstreamable anime month this week. I’m leading with Fair, Then Partly Piggy, a cute and artful kids’ movie from the ‘80s that deserves another look.
JAS: I’m looking outward toward the stars and contemplating the effects of space junk with 2000s anime series, Planetes.
Got a recommendation? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
Japan, 1988, 74 minutes, Dir. Toshio Harata
(This is one of those picks I wouldn’t have found without browsing Scarecrow by hand. Someone left it facing out on the shelf, and its fun cover made me grab.)
From 1980 until the 2010s, Japanese children's book author Shiro Yadama wrote the Hare Tokidoki Buta series. Translated into Fair, Then Partly Piggy, the story focuses on a kid who realizes that whatever he writes in his journal actually happens the next day—even if he writes that pigs fall from the sky. Big in Japan, the franchise (which I think includes 10 books, a series, and a film) didn’t hit the same in the US, though its central message (about the importance of honesty and the evils of fake news) would serve today.
Millennials might recognize Fair, Then Partly Piggy as Tokyo Pig. That's what its TV series was called when it aired on ABC Family in the early 2000s. But Tokyo Pig's animation sorta sucks compared to its source books’ illustrations, which were bold, textured, and funny. The franchise’s feature-length film from the '80s captured that original style better. Discotek released it in 2018 and it’s so cute. CHASE BURNS
Find it in the Animation Room in the Anime/Manga section.
Japan, 2003-2004, 25-minute episodes, Dir. Gorō Taniguchi
Space junk is a real problem. While it’s invisible to the naked, untrained eye, there are at least 27,000 pieces of significant debris floating in low orbit around the Earth. And it’s not harmless—the International Space Station and other satellites must constantly navigate around this junk hurtling at thousands of miles per hour to avoid collision. Although those collisions are very rare, that hasn’t stopped TV series like 2002 anime Planetes from taking that concept and running with it.
Based on a manga of the same name, this TV series is set in 2075, when human space travel is a more regular thing, leaving abandoned satellites, tanks from shuttles, and refuse from space station construction floating in Earth’s orbit. Because the space junk is so dangerous to space colonization and travel, a team of weirdo astronauts is tasked with cleaning it up by tossing it back into the atmosphere to burn up or salvaging it. Centered around young upstart and new recruit Ai Tanabe and more experienced astronaut Hachimaki, the series explores the ins and outs of the DS-12 “Toy Box” crew’s days as they struggle with their jobs, personal lives, and the effects of living in space. Sign me up! JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the Animation Room in the Anime/Manga section.
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. Yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
