#Photon: The Idiot Adventures

[soulspark]

[megamifantasia]

[ljaesch]

Discotek Media Announces Anime Releases for February 2025

Discotek Media has announced that it will release Cutie Honey and Chie The Brat Season 2 on Standard Blu-ray and Star Musketeer Bismark, Photon The Idiot Adventures, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, and Digimon Adventure 02 on Blu-ray on February 25, 2025. Cutie Honey, Chie The Brat Season 2, Star Musketeer Bismark, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, and Digimon Adventure 02 will include…

[tsukinoki]

[funny-anime-face-world]

Photon The Idiot Adventures (1997) S01 E03 · Lashara Leaves Home

[talenlee]

OP OPs

Sometimes an anime has an opening that’s so good the anime in question can’t live up to it. Sometimes an anime that’s absolute turds gets an OP that’s an absolute banger because the people making the opener still want a career in the industry and nobody maligns their work because of the anime association. After all, Bleach made a bunch of number 1 hits.

And bear in mind, I’m pre-emptively cutting things where the opening of the anime is so good that even a good anime can’t match up to it. Otherwise we’d have things like Gunsmith Cats and Paranoia Agent in this list because even though those are great shows their openings are preposterous. I might even put season 1 of Oshi No Ko in that list, where a good show I enjoyed had to grapple with an opening so good that the rest of the series can go sit on a shelf. Asterisk is the opening to an anime that went absolutely down the toilet but I don’t think it’s a fair example of what this is.

Nope, this is about real duds of an anime that had an inexplicably good opening. These are anime that are going to crest the high water mark of ‘mid.’ I’m also avoiding anime that I just don’t like that I think still appeal to their core audience. This is stuff that I feel like it wants me to like it, specifically, and it did a bad job at delivering on that because of plotting, pacing, storytelling, getting distracted and trailing off mid sandwiches or wanting to be about something that maybe was racist or creepy. Also, just assume all the good openings for My Hero Academia are here in honorary slots, because that show is pants.

Ready go go go go

Photon

Photon: The Idiot Adventures (Intro) [HD]

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This opening has nipples in it, so you’ll have to click through to see it.

Photon: The Idiot Adventures is a particular type of anime that wants to use a stupid character as its excuse for its stupid story. It’s a fanservice adventure anime tied in with the Tenchi Muyoverse which means it has every bit of depth and meaningful relationship to long term storytelling that that Star Wars EU wanted to be. It’s built around a main character, named Photon, who is superhumanly strong and incredibly stupid, and gets caught up in the adventure of other characters who are you know, doing stuff and accidentally lays claim to a gorgeous supermodel who shows off her boobs a lot because he drew an insult on her forehead, which, you know, that’s a normal and not-contrived reason for a character who can’t talk to suddenly get foisted with a harem. He’s also the stupidest person in the world, so stupidity-powered magic doesn’t work on him.

Photon is six episodes long and I have told you everything interesting in it in that one paragraph.

The opening however? Beautiful! I’ve had it on the playlists for twenty years, with its lovely mix of restful pipes and then sudden, soaring guitar. Great theme! Love it to bits! The show sucks!

Outlaw Star

Outlaw Star opening HD

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This may infringe on the memories of Americans who were teenagers during the Toonami days, but Outlaw Star kind of gets to sneak along in the shadow of Cowboy Bebop, a show that is also about cowboys in space but crucially avoids a lot of nasty, sexist stuff around Space Catgirls that unfortunately, serves as the foundation of Outlaw Star. Also, they broadcast it dubbed, which, y’know, everyone involved was trying their best, I am sure. I might just be a bit bitter because of the entire idea of ‘cool fighty catgirl who is actually just the same archetype as all the other protagonist-seeking wastes of space’ and she looks like a stick most of the time.

Outlaw Star’s opening oozes style. It’s slick and it’s got a bright, aggressive feeling to it that it compliments by bringing down each phrase in the opening in this sequential sort of verbal stomp. And they don’t just do it once, they use that to punctuate the start and wrap of the song.

Orphen Op 1

Majutsushi Orphen Opening 1 - Ai Just on my Love

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You will never encounter such an enduring truth that anime is not a meritocracy that Sorcerous Stabber Orphen is still being made.

Orphen is a very rudimentary anime series based on what I think is a playstation era JRPG or whatever, which tells the story of a very good magic boy who is good at magic but he is sad about his magic because his mentor was better at magic and then she messed up and turned into a dragon so now he’s on a quest to follow that dragon and turn her back into a pretty lady who he wants to kiss. This is not a hollow concept in and of itself, it’s not a bad place to start, and quite frankly ‘here is an adventure idiot, good at magic’ was the heart of Slayers, one of the routine winners of Best In Category anime that exist.

What set Orphen apart is the way that the first series back in the 90s was agonisingly slow in the way it wanted to cover every detail of every mid-quest on every step, but the way it padded that slowness with multiple iterations on conversations with the characters bouncing back and forth to the two reaction characters, a Girl who is there to be a problem and a boy who is there to talk about how great Orphen is in every scene.

See all that cool action in the opening?

Yeah, that’s not in the show.

Shame, I love this jazzy opening.

The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today

デキる猫は今日も憂鬱 [The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today] - Title Song

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See! I’m not just making fun of 90s anime we had to suffer through because someone bought all the VHS to club and there was only so much anime we could even watch! We were going to get our money’s worth out of it, after all, right? No, I’m also going to make fun of new anime, like the recent show The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again!

I didn’t like this show for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which being that it’s boring, but also the character of the cat is ruined by letting him speak. When he’s just a big cool cat that does something weird, it’s interesting and confusing and asks questions. When we get his inner dialogue he’s a fat-shaming asshole who makes fun of his owner for being overburdened under capitalism and not caring about appearances the way he, a cat does.

The opening paints a fun story about a slice of life story that’s about a sort of lifting, hopeful tone, something that speaks to the story of a commuter, a liver of life in the city, a main character who spends her time moving from project to project, making friends at the office, and then coming home to her ‘roommate’ who is a full time carer. It’s a really good, breezy opening for what it’s doing, and a lovely song with some acrobatics to match with the way the animation wants to follow the movement of a cat running around excitedly!

Metallic Rouge

Metallic Rouge - Opening | Rouge

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Make whatever excuses you want, complain about a truncated schedule, whatever you want, this is ultimately a science fiction story about ‘well, what if slavery isn’t so bad?’ Which is a shame because the music is stylish and bouncy, plays with the feeling of transformation and has a wonderful break into the feeling of impact in the later part of the song. I really like the way Metallic Rouge sounds and it stands out how the anime is as a show absolutely not going to live up to this standard.

They even do it twice: Crimson Lightning is a great ‘time for an ass kicking’ song that this anime absolutely does not deserve.

Peacemaker Kurogane’s ED

PeaceMaker Kurogane END (Hey! Jimmy)

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This is something of a cheat because it’s an ending, not an opening. On the other hand, this song is just such a legitimately fun, crunchy rock track that sings the song of a cool guy named Jimmy who needs to be encouraged to stand up for himself, even to the point the chorus chants it out —

YOU GOT TO FIGHT FOR YO MONEY

— that it stuck in my memory for decades.

Know what I can’t tell you? I can’t tell you anything else about Peacemaker Kurogane except the main character really wants to be one of the secret police who stalk people in Tokyo during the lockdowns on poor people.

DNA^2

opening dna 2

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The 90s were a different time, which is a shame, because if it was right now, we’d have the opportunity to prevent 9/11 and kill Shinzo Abe earlier. But particularly of note is this little spur of a song by industry titans L’arc En Ciel. You probably recognise their sound from Ready Steady Go, an opening for Fullmetal Alchemist, or the ending of Rurouni Kenshin, where, hilariously, the single was dropped from the show because the drummer of the band was caught with drugs.

boy how that feels different now.

Anyway, Blurry Eyes is a great pop song, I love it a lot. I wish it wasn’t attached to this awful anime that follows in the footprints if not blueprints of the author’s previous work, Video Girl Ai. But where Ai was about the idea of ‘what if a computer could love you back,’ DNA^2 is about ‘what if an incel was secretly so sigma he would breed humanity into extinction if he ever decided to have sex.’ It has time travel, it has Super Saiyan modes, it has ridiculous powers, and it has just way too much unsettling and unpleasant relationships to sex and sexuality that treats men as incapable of being responsible with things like ‘who they fuck’ because birth control doesn’t exist in the world.

I didn’t mean to bring up Shinzo Abe without a good reason, but uh…

Love Hina

"Sakura Saku" - Love Hina Opening 1080p

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This show was an international success for so many reasons, many of which were ‘nobody thought the two children in the harem were a problem, and that’s a pretty weird thing to be okay with,’ but also the opening was great. For a manic, high-speed anime that wanted to present a feeling of being out of control, Sakura Saku had a great vibe to fit with the animation, but it even transcended the indescribable midness of being (Love Hina).

I don’t have a lot to say here, though because this was one of many anime with a Megumi Hayashibara single as the opening, in the period of her life when she was probably at the height of her sheer star-making power. This anime literally lowered everyone’s standards, but I watched the opening every episode.

(Weirdly? The manga’s markedly better.)

Bakuretsu Tenshi

Burst Angel - opening - loosey

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Sometimes there are people who will ruminate on how the lost of the OVA as a format meant we as a community lost something important, something deep in our culture as a way for animation studios to get started or to explore new and novel ideas that didn’t necessarily have a whole series to go for them. To that I would point out that online streaming media still has those spaces, and also, that system gave us Burst Angel, an anime that promises so much with its interesting ideas and runs out of steam in five episodes without much idea of what it’s doing after that point. It is an anime that has every chance to be good, and then they gave it to the guy who made MD Geist.

Heck, this was a studio Gonzo anime back when that wasn’t a punchline. Something to do with them pumping out huge amounts of anime very early in the studio’s life, almost like there was some kind of pervasive and abusive culture of overproduction.

Anyway.

Loosey is a real fun track! It’s got flute! It’s got chanting! It’s got a jazzy vibe in a time when anime could use more of those!

Wish the anime lived up to it, or even had, y’know, a second thing to remember it for.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[polyamanga]

I recommend Tenchi Muyo (the OVA, at least,) Tenchi Muyo GXP, Tenchi Muyo War on Geminar, Photon The Idiot Adventures, Kanokon (which MIGHT be one of the earliest examples), and I'm pretty sure both Monster Musume and Invaders of the Rokujouma are gonna end up being poly, but I could be wrong.

[WHEW this is a long one! I'm gonna put it under a readmore just to save some people's dashes! As always, thank you for the recommendations!!]

I've been meaning to try out Tenchi Muyo for so long! There was a time where there was a TV Tropes page called "Tenchi Ending" that was made for series that have poly endings. I think it's called something else now, cus I never found it again any time I looked. I've wanted to check it out ever since, it's just a little intimidating! There's so much Tenchi content! lol

I'll just include the synopsis for the OG Tenchi Muyo! Ryououki here:

Seventeen-year-old Tenchi Masaki grew up hearing stories about how his ancestor used a sword to seal a demon inside a cave seven hundred years ago. When curiosity gets the better of him, Tenchi goes to the cave and stumbles across the sword from the legend. Thinking that the story is nothing more than a fairy tale, he removes the blade and inadvertently releases the demon, who turns out to be a space pirate named Ryouko Hakubi. Furious about being trapped for so long, she attacks Tenchi, but he is able to repel her with the sword, awakening his inner power. After seeing this, Ryouko takes an interest in her unlikely savior and decides to crash at his place. As if it were a chain reaction, more alien women—Aeka Jurai Masaki, an uptight princess from the planet Jurai; Sasami, Aeka's sweet younger sister; Mihoshi Kuramitsu, a ditzy Galactic Police Officer; and Washuu Hakubi, a wisecracking genius—gradually come in contact with Tenchi and begin living with him. Through his encounters with these five women, Tenchi begins to learn more about his ancestry, newfound power, and the looming threat lurking beyond the skies.

As for Photon, that's a new one to me. It's available on Crunchyroll in the US at least; everything I'm seeing about it suggests its pretty adult though! ANN lists "graphic depictions of sex, drug use and bloodshed" under its content warnings, so there's that. Admittedly, not what I expected based on the synopsis or cover lol. The protag looks so sad about it too!

Photon Earth is a young and gentle boy with superhuman strength and "Baka" (meaning "idiot" in Japanese) scribbled on his forehead (apparently by his troublemaking friend Aun Freya). One day, he finds himself engaged to the beautiful fugitive pilot Keyne Acqua after writing "baka" on her forehead. And that's the least of his worries as he must protect both Aun and Keyne from the evil Papacharino, who seeks to steal the secrets of "Aho" (another word for idiot) energy from Keyne's grandfather's ship.

Kanokon, I have heard of! That's one I saw all over the place (especially in amvs) for a couple of years. I believe it's a shota series? Seems like the protag is the same age as the love interests, but he certainly LOOKS like a little baby lmao

Having spent most of his life in the country, Kouta is understandably nervous when he moves in with his grandma to attend a high school in the big city. He hoped to make a good impression, but having Chizuru, a beautiful fox spirit, hanging off his arm didn't seem to be the sort of image he wanted to have. She's not alone in her love for Kouta, either. Nozomu, a wolf spirit, as well as other youkai have their sights set on the hapless country boy.

Monster Musume (Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou / Everyday Life with Monster Girls) is one I've seen a bit of, but a while back it got removed from like, every streaming service in the US for some reason! That's another one with a really reluctant protag as well lol (though it makes sense for him, poor guy!) I didn't get to far into it, but I know it's absolutely brimming with fanservice, for those who enjoy that. (Also...Miia is sooooo cute)

With his parents abroad, Kimihito Kurusu lived a quiet, unremarkable life alone until monster girls came crowding in! This alternate reality presents cutting-edge Japan, the first country to promote the integration of non-human species into society. After the incompetence of interspecies exchange coordinator Agent Smith leaves Kimihito as the homestay caretaker of a Lamia named Miia, the newly-minted "Darling" quickly attracts girls of various breeds, resulting in an ever-growing harem flush with eroticism and attraction. Unfortunately for him and the ladies, sexual interactions between species is forbidden by the Interspecies Exchange Act! The only loophole is through an experimental marriage provision. Kimihito's life becomes fraught with an abundance of creature-specific caveats and sensitive interspecies law as the passionate, affectionate, and lusty women hound his every move, seeking his romantic and sexual affections. With new species often appearing and events materializing out of thin air, where Kimihito and his harem go is anyone's guess!

Invaders of the Rokujouma is another new one to me! The plot sounds fun; I'd absolutely take an apartment full of ghost girls if it means I don't have to pay rent! lmao

Due to young Koutarou's financial circumstances, he is forced to live in a small rokujouma (6-tatami apartment) on a budget of 5000 yen a month. On the plus side, he lives rent-free, but on the minus side, that's because room 106 of Corona Apartments is cursed. The ghost is a cute young girl and hijinks ensue when she tries to drive him out. Between the haunting, Koutarou's nosy neighbors, and a self-styled magical girls flying to the unneeded rescue, there's way too much for the impoverished young man to handle.

[fandompost]

Discotek Media Solicits ‘Photon the Idiot Adventures’ Anime Blu-ray Release http://dlvr.it/TGjSly

[littleeyesofpallas]

PHOTON[フォトン]

aka Idiot Adventures Photon

[makaientjluvdaprince]

I just watched Photon: The Idiot Adventures 1x06 "Photon of the Green Planet"

[oh-yes-i-did-not]

This anime sucks. But also, it's the fucking best thing ever.

And I don't know if you younger people have anything like this, or You Touch My Trallalla (Photon Ding Song Song is an entire thing and I know the creator wants nothing to do with it anymore which is understandable but also, you let that thing out, so....)

Which is like, a huge big no-no-NO since the the title of the anime is Photon: The Idiot Adventures, where the main character Photon is just too kind for his own good, because he literally doesn't understand anything that is going on and he's an idiot.

I have no doubt that Japan has kept producing Photons and Gautamas but they mostly just don't make a dent in Western anime culture. And I just want them to!

They're stupid, they're sexy, they make no sense, and if interpreted through a lens of AMVs, they're fucking hilarious.

And like, as an autistic, I love it all. It might be ableist and sexist but also, it's just fucking funny. Papacharino Nanadan is fucking hilarious to me. And the fact that Photon has been included into Tenchi Muyo wiki these days is even more hilarious.

Like, I know why it might offend many people and hurt my fellow autistics and why we need to trigger warn for it. But I don't think that stupid horny art, depicting stupid things and just existing is cause for concern by itself. Or art depicting people being clueless idiots or even mentally disabled, and making that a central plot point with positive twist is a problem.

The problem that exists is that there is no other type of media of being fucking stupid, autistic, or otherwise mentally disabled person out there. That there is no normal media of us being us.

But it's not entirely the fault of media that does depict us as something different. And it's also not a point of fault in us, if we enjoy that stupid, ableist media. It's the fault of consumers, the people who consume, who watch, like, and share. Media merely follows that.

And it should not take anything away from those who don't like it, who hate it and who are triggered by it to block and ignore. All media does that. It just that we don't have any variety in our genre, so we need to settle to Will Ferrell mistaking flowers to flour and that's it.

And I think in that situation I should be allowed to laugh at some stupid semi-hentai anime, where the main character is and does as I would in a situational comedy, or sitcom. Meaning he's a fucking idiot.

[soulspark]

[megamifantasia]

[holy-cucumber01]

Photon

Genre : romance, adventure, comedy, ecchi, drama, mecha, fantasy

Category : OVA

Episodes : 6 duration 30 min

[usagi-chiba]

Photon: The Idiot Adventures

[tenchiforum]

Information on the origins of Tenchi Muyo! is revealed!

Original post

For the better part of three decades, co-creator of Tenchi Muyo!, Masaki Kajishima, has held fast to the claim that Tenchi Muyo! was “all in his head since high school.” However, for Comiket 100, interesting information has come out shedding light on what the origins of this juggernaut franchise actually are.

For the forthcoming Comiket, Kajishima will be releasing a redone version of his doujin The Night Before the Carnival: Heisei Edition 1, which released at Comiket 54 on August 16th, 1998. Released with brand new commentary, this new doujin is called The Night Before the Carnival: Original Edition 22.08.

Heisei Edition 1 – 1998 & Original Edition 22.08 – 2022

Across both doujins, we are introduced to characters “Masaki” (featured in red, said to be the daughter of the first emperor of Jurai), a blue haired character named “Lashara Moon” (A name reused in Photon: The Idiot Adventures), a character named “Lyon”, and probably the most recognizable character named “Koro-chan” (a Ryo-Ohki lookalike who is half cute cuddly character and half dragon, it’s name being used as cute creatures in Photon, as well as Tenchi Muyo! War on Geminar). The character can also transform much as Ryo-Ohki would, and can use an ability called “Ghost” which lets him permeate matter (aka phase through walls). Sound familiar?

Masaki

Also of note, is that there is a young beast female character who is referred to as “Humanoid Ryo-san”. It is also implied that a female beast character can quickly mature and mate, a concept that Kajishima has apparently been wanting to do for a long time…

Koro-chan concepts and Lyon

“The story centers on the common inheritance-related troubles of aristocratic daughters who are running away from pursuers aiming to assassinate them. The protagonists are caught in the middle of the action, and as they run for their lives, they become completely savage.”

As mentioned in the doujin, these images were being made 10 years prior to the doujin’s original 1998 release, with the Lashara piece showing a date of June 16th, 1989, true to the “Heisei” part of its name.

Lashara Moon and Humanoid Ryo-san

Despite Kajishima’s claims to the contrary, this new information of his actually corroborates what Hayashi said in an interview from 1994, that Tenchi Muyo! was nothing more than “idle discussion” between himself and Kajishima in ’90, and gives us an interesting view into some of the ideas Kajishima cannibalized from this to use later in Tenchi and beyond.

One year after these concepts were drawn, a job working on AIC’s Iczer-3, and merging his ideas with Hayashi’s and others’, and Tenchi Muyo! as we know it was born.