#kiss me licia is also behind maneskin

[what-am-i-outside-my-google-tabs]

Twilight here, 50 shades of grey there, but noone that talk about the REAL fanfiction fenomena:

LOVE ME LICIA.

And all the other three serie that followed it, more the four season spin-off, and the followup concerts and tournée.

Everyone not Italian, i know you are confused. But keep up with me. This is fun and also if you are interested about fandom mixed with capitalism you probably want to know more.

But you will probably need an explanation. And a whole essay.

Long time ago, in the dreadful year of 1985, an anime started airing in Italy:

Kiss me Licia.

You all probably know it with the international title “Love me knight” (Ai shite Naito), or the title was adapted with in your country.

It aired on Italia 1, the channel Berlusconi (yes, THAT Berlusconi) had recently bought, only in the 1993, and that would become the main channel of his media company Mediaset, part of his holding Fininvest.

It was a success. Everyone watched it. Kiss me Licia mania. And, when the episodes finished, everyone craved more, cause an ending without a wedding and with the male love interest away in the USA while the girl wait for him at home?

Unacceptable.

So mediaset went to Japan to ask if please they could release, FAST, a second season of the anime, cause they needed it, people NEEDED it, the population CRAVED more. Just to discover there was no second season programmed. The story was finished, and the anime was not that big of a hit in Japan, so it made no sense.

Now. I would have loved to be in the room were all of this happened, to know who was the first to think of the idea and how they convinced whoever necessary to have the rights. Did they bought it? Did they promised political favour? No idea. But history tell, somehow, Mediaset obtained the right to do a LIVE ACTION, FOLLOW UP, SERIE.

So Love me Licia was born.

The serie have no plot. The writing was probably done in 10 minutes before shooting. Nothing happened, no drama, no problem between the characters, only honey and molassa. If you think fluff post canon fanfiction are boring, you have never watched this. The actors were mostly dubbers the studio worked with, people probably taken from the street, and Cristina d’Avena, the singer of every children cartoon italian version opening, who was given the role of the protagonist. The names of the characters of course stayed the same of the italian dub adaptation.

Here an image to parallel the anime characters and the live action characters:

Yes, i know. Better than some netflix remake. Still.

Also, i assure you in italy we actually have surname, the serie probably just thought it would have been too much work and never told us about them.

Actors usually didn’t even red the script, and used to speak whatever, since they would have been dubbed anyway after, by the same dubbers of the anime.

I have no idea why they hated the cat at the point to choose that specific cat as an actor, but still he was a better actor and character than lot of others one. Here you can find some gif about his best quotes. Apparently in the original anime he did not actually talk, it was something added in the dub that than stayed in the live action.

The Beehive, a rock group in the original manga, now were more like a neomelodic group, thanks to all the new original songs wrote just for the show.

This is the more rocky one. I just love how Mirko (the blonde and red one) dance, and i also have an unheatly love for the guitarist.

This one is just for their so fake playing and cause Satomi actor had no motivation to sway his ass that way but HE DID. And we love him for this.

The disc with all the songs from the serie become platinum disc with more than 400k copies sold, and the band actually reunited in 2011 for an all sold out tournée.

It was one of the first italian serie to heavely advertise products into the episode, without even searching to hide it. One whole episode is dedicated to the children having to do back to school shopping, and they show and describe all the things were in that moment possible to shop. Mostly mediaset connected goods of course, but also other big sponsor partecipated in it.

They even advertised other mediaset programs, even with the Bee-Hive (the rock group of the serie) going to TV Sorrisi e Canzoni.

Cause yes, as written before, the original anime was set in Tokio. But the live action was set in Italy, and no, they never explain how and why this come to be. As their excuse, the anime adaptations of the time tended to cancel every reference of the real place were the anime is set and adapt it to the country were is aired (ahahah, impossible to think of it happening now, right? RIGHT?!?).

And it didn’t stop there. Not only they had the gaining of the ad placement, but there were also all the serie merchandising. There were card albums, cd, tapes, vynils, everything.

As told before, Berlusconi had only recently bought the television channel, and was in the way to make it a profitable television channel, as it had already done with Canale Cinque. This was one of the way the team tried, and it functioned. It was the next step of using cartoon to advertise products, as was done with Carosello, and the system was then adapted to plenty of other programs. It was not of course only this, even if it is fun to think, but it was part of this, and surely the most evident one. The quantity of ads would later become a symbol of the channel, and a meme.

Since all of this was clearly functioning, Fininvest also opened channels in other countries (“La cinq” in French, “Tele 5″ in Germany and “telecinco” in Spain), were they aired the same anime, with the same type of adaptations. In case you were wondering why these countries have a similar old anime culture.

There are different rumors about how the making of all these channels were made thanks to the recicling of mafia money, but, also thanks to Switzerland banks status, no proof ever appeared.

But is well known the succes of this television created new laws about media in Italy, thanks also to the old friendship between Berlusconi and Craxi, at the time at the government.

And is also know Berlusconi was a well know man, but being the face of a television (and a football team the same year) helped with him influencing politic and officially entering in it.

(Do not take this too seriously, the meme is fun but the live action serie was only a small part of all of this XD).

So, just to make it clear, an ANIME made so much success in Italy that a private television channel, in the 80's, decided to buy the right to do a LIVE ACTION SEQUEL, possibly with not so clean money, and made a shittone of money from it. And also it kinda helped to create a government. Kinda.

And after all of this, what stayed culturally of this serie?

The memes, of course.

Here the most iconic scene, the one and only, the fettine panate, nightmare of Italians, there are edit songs about this:

HERE with Eng sub (i SEARCHED AND TRIED AND INSULTED to embed it, but apparently you cannot embed tumblr videos on tumblr. I love this site).

And after all of this, still a better live action than Netflix Death Note.