Power Ewes: Gigamon Action Go! was an action-comedy series produced by Yakonoko Animation, with two seasons released from 1993 through 1995. Read Dr. Lee's first dispatch for details.
Despite the official account of the show’s two-season production, Dr. Lee found a credible source, Middleton Police Chief Harry Thompson, who claims that a third season was privately screened for personnel at the Yokota Air Base in 1996 at the latest. Read Dr. Lee's second dispatch for details.
Upon viewing the last known copy of Power Ewes at the home of an anime archivist in Japan, Dr. Lee comes away more convinced than ever that paranormal forces are involved. Read Dr. Lee's third dispatch for details.
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Dr. Elara Lee, noted expert on the Sleeping Android, writes:
I remembered something. Not right away, in my waking hours, but later that night in my Kyoto hotel room.
Gentle reader, I didn’t just have a dream, I was visited by a dream.
I dreamed I was back in the cramped, manga-cluttered apartment of Ataru69, watching Power Ewes: Gigamon Action Go! on LaserDisc—no surprise there, as my marathon binge session had burned that show into my retinas.
On the surface level, a team of friends transformed into superpowered sheep-girls to battle giant robots, over and over, across two seasons of animation. On a deeper level, I was becoming aware of something strange about the transformation sequences, and that was where I focused my attention.
In Season One’s fifth episode, “Night of the Badger,” one of the girls, Sakura Saito, underwent the sparkly metamorphosis that transformed her from an ordinary high school student into a sheep-themed superheroine, code-named Supaku.
The background music swelled into an orchestral theme as the blue-haired girl rose into the air and spun, taking on a gravitational pull that sent the camera into an elliptical orbit around her. Since Sakura’s powers were electrical, she was struck by bolts of lightning and crackled with arcs or discharge throughout the sequence.
Her school uniform burned like flash paper into a cloud of flaming ash. Her body glowed like molten steel, ears stretching and reshaping like liquid, horns and a tail sprouting like chutes in a time-lapse garden. A woolen sailor suit crocheted itself from ethereal strands of air, with embedded armor plates and golden accessories that rose from the surface of her skin.
The music faded, Sakura opened her eyes, and—
I hit the pause button on the LaserDisc remote.
Ataru69 referred to these animated sequences as works of genius, comparing them with the Mona Lisa. For me, they were even more impressive than the Mona Lisa, having been delivered in an unexpected medium, from an unexpected source, and despite an indifferent reception from the world of media critics.
This was a Mona Lisa that other people walked past with indifference while they hustled on their way to art museums filled with dung. This Mona Lisa was a beacon with the power to elevate lives, being ignored, abandoned, and left to fade. This was a Mona Lisa that would someday be carelessly thrown into a dumpster with no one understanding what had been lost.
The tragedy of Ichika Miura wasn’t just the story of a talented artist run down by a truck, but of her talent being removed from the world, piece by piece, disc by disc, and memory by memory.
I don’t know what made me pause the transformation sequence where I did. I don’t know how I managed to get the timing just right, but the LaserDisc pause hadn’t caught just a single frame of animation. The screen vacillated back and forth, back and forth, between two frames in the transformation of Sakura Saito, and between the frames a second figure flickered, a humanoid sheep in cyberpunk goggles with sewing needles sticking from its mouth and a measuring tape between its hands.
I gasped.
In Captain Thompson’s initial description of the unaired third season of Power Ewes, a team of Cyberlams were introduced, explaining to the Ewes that they had always been present. The lams were the ones who had given the girls their powers and outfits, remaining unseen and uncredited while granting the dreams of those who had most strongly wished to protect their city.
I had kept that in mind while watching the first two seasons, looking for any hint, clue, or foreshadowing of these lams in the official footage. And now, here was an actual Cyberlam, living between the frames of animation.
At the sound of my gasp, the Cyberlam tailor on the screen turned its head toward me…
…and winked.
I tore a sheet from my notebook and wrote, “They are real. They are embedded in the disc. They manifest in scenes of transformation.” I tossed the paper into my bag and took up the remote again.
Back one frame, the Cyberlam disappeared. Forward one frame, the Cyberlam did not reappear. Forward, forward, forward. Back, back, back, back, back. Sakura Saito transformed forward and backward in her Mona Lisa loop, from girl to Ewe, from Ewe to girl, but I couldn’t find what I’d seen before. Then I couldn’t remember what I’d seen before. Then I could do nothing else but resume watching the show.
After ten hours of binging, I’d come away with empty hands, a vague sense that I'd forgotten something important, and a dream.
I sat upright in the bed, in the hotel room, heart pounding. I rummaged through my bag and found the note I had forgotten writing. “They are real. They are embedded in the disc. They manifest in scenes of transition.”
I couldn’t go back to sleep, couldn’t do anything but pace the tiny room and wonder how early in the morning I could go back to Ataru69’s apartment. How much money would it take to pry these lam-laden treasured from the hands of their guardian? What grant could I obtain, what benefactor could I find, to afford these living works of art?
I returned to the apartment building as the sun was rising. I ran past the elevator and bounded up the stairs, down the main hall, turning to the hallway where his apartment was located.
I found a small gathering in the hallway. Somber, silent, heads bowed, they placed flowers, handmade cards, and offerings of thick manga books and cat-girl figurines in front of the otaku’s apartment door.
“What is this?” I asked.
“So tragic,” said a woman. “So sudden. Last night, out of nowhere, he was struck down by a truck.”
“It’s how he would have wanted to go,” said a man.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s the classic isekai scenario, ne? A person gets hit by a truck and finds themselves resurrected into a new life in another world.”
I blinked. “This is a thing? A common belief?”
“It’s a genre. Of course, no one believes this happens in real life, but it’s nice to imagine our friend getting the cosmic reset he deserves. Some people believe in heaven, or in reincarnation. Isekai is like that, but with souls transported to other worlds.”
“Transported…by a truck?”
“Often enough. It’s a convention of the genre.”
My head was spinning. Genre conventions are the modern equivalent of motifs in folklore, mythology, and oral tradition. If you look hard enough, you can often find a kernel of truth behind the magic. In the areas where I study, that kernel tends to be a Cyberlam.
“They’re protecting themselves from discovery,” I muttered.
“Who?”
“The Cyberlams. First, they came for Ichika Miura. She must have found them when she was animating the Power Ewes. Now they’ve come for Ataru69, holder of the last LaserDisc—and how many other people did they have to crush under the wheels of a truck to make their secrets vanish from the community of anime fandom?”
The mourners gave me that same look of pity and concern I’ve seen on the faces of colleagues when I present my findings about the Sleeping Android and its Cyberlam progeny.
I’ve thickened my skin over the course of my career. I’ve taken hit after hit to my reputation until nothing much remains. But now, the danger wasn’t just to my standing in the academic world. The roughly scribbled note in my bag, the memory of a dream of a memory, these things were putting my life in actual danger!
I felt an urgency to get away, to remove myself from the vicinity of Ataru69’s apartment, in case they were watching. I had to protect my note and collect more evidence to expose the lams and their murder rampage to the world.
I oriented myself to the walking route from the apartment back to my hotel. I sprinted, lost a shoe, lost my breath, and nearly lost my mind.
I heard a rumble to my left. Turning, I saw a pair of headlights bearing down on me with only a flimsy sidewalk barrier for protection.
I turned down a side street into a neighborhood packed with tiny homes, close together. Here, there was no sidewalk. Again, I heard the rumble of a powerful engine on a fast approach. The same truck, and in the driver’s seat, a woolly head with a glowing set of goggles.
Gentle reader, I could not dodge aside in time to save my life.
To be continued in Part 5...
