The Story So Far

Power Ewes: Gigamon Action Go! was an action-comedy series produced by Yakonoko Animation, with two seasons released from 1993 through 1995. 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. Upon viewing the last known copy of Power Ewes at the home of an anime archivist named Ataru69, Dr. Lee comes away more convinced than ever that paranormal forces are involved.

A dream suggests the involvement of Cyberlams, leading Dr. Lee back to Ataru69, but too late to save his life. After the archivist's associates speculate on the coincidence of truck-related accidents and Ataru69's affinity for stories in the isekai genre, Dr. Lee finds herself being pursued by an ominous truck, leading to a strange encounter with an entity of inhuman origins in a vehicle with metaphysical powers.

Dr. Lee backtracks to present some of her prior research into Power Ewes artist/animator Ichika Miura, who died under mysterious circumstances. Dr. Lee finds a surviving relative of the late animator and comes into possession of a private diary.

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Manga-chan Part 8

Dr. Elara Lee, noted expert on the Sleeping Android, writes:

Gentle Readers, for your review I am presenting two excerpts from The Secret Diary of Ichika Miura, Volume 8. Be warned that reading this material makes you a co-conspirator in my crimes of improper disclosure, not to mention the burglary and theft required to obtain these pages, but it’s no longer possible to obtain Miss Miura’s permission for this invasion of her privacy and the advancement of science sometimes requires data from illicit sources.

Miura’s handwritten notebook contains a bonanza of anime trivia, a budding romance, and the compelling account of one prodigious young artist’s personal struggles against the ravages of imposter syndrome. The brief excerpts I have selected present a taste of the larger work in an abridged form that supports the substance of my investigations at the intersection of dreams, alien technology, and paranormal phenomena.

To keep this dispatch to a reasonable length, I will reserve future excerpts for an upcoming release.

Ichika’s Diary, January 26, 1994:

Journal-san!

I have been granted an extension on producing the third season’s worth of outlines for the show. What a relief! As it turns out, an OVA for The Great Cheesecake War has been bumped upward on the priority list, so a production hiatus on Power Ewes won’t put any of my animators out of work.

Thank heaven! I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anyone’s kids went hungry just because I’m too scatter-brained and slow to meet my deadlines!

Sadly, I fear this may be, at best, a delay of the inevitable. Lately, as I attempt to peer deeper into the world of Power Ewes, I find myself struggling. The girls and giant robots I can see so clearly in my dreams are obscured by the rays of morning wakefulness, resulting in messy scripts and disastrous storyboards.

I’m not the only one who says so, so it must be true.

This has been a problem since the first rough drawings of manga, as you’ll remember from earlier diary volumes. From dream to drawing, from drawing to script, from script to storyboard, each step creates a copy of a copy of a copy, further removed from pristine reality. The show that gets broadcast to the public is so far removed from my original vision that I can no longer even recognize it.

Relaxing my work schedule, stepping back from hundred-hour workweeks, and being able to put other ideas into my mind for a change should refresh my creativity. The Power Ewes ratings have never been large, but people do watch the show, and I don’t ever want to let anyone down!

Much love, Ichika-chan

Editorial note: This entry undermines the claims of an unreleased third season of Power Ewes, or at least one that might have been produced by Miura. A standalone installment of The Great Cheesecake War turned out to be the final project released by Yakonoko Animation before the studio folded.

Ichika’s Diary, February 3, 1994:

Journal-san!

I attended an anime convention today, the first one since I became a so-called “industry insider.” Not that Yakonoko is a major player in the industry, or that their indulgence in employing me grants an insider status even within the company break room.

As some kind of bad joke, whether on me or on the otaku community, the convention organizers asked me to join a panel of real artists and directors. Toshiki Hirano was on the panel! Narumi Kakinouchi was on the panel! And next to them on the table, my name on a cardboard nametag was on the panel!

I was so nervous when I came into that room! I’d spent a bit longer than I’d planned in the bathroom, splashing water on my face and trying not to throw up my breakfast, so I was running late. People filled seats in the audience, the other panelists were waiting at our table, and the convention staff were adjusting the microphones and filling pitchers of water.

My stomach was fluttering so badly, I nearly turned around for another run to the bathroom. This was actually happening!

A helpful usher led me to a seat. I guess she didn’t know who I was, and assumed I was just a fan, so it was a seat in the audience at the back of the room. I didn’t want to embarrass her, so I sat where she put me and spent the next hour watching the empty chair with my nametag in front of it, next to Hirano-sama, where I should have been sitting.

It was a great panel. I learned a lot!

There was a question period afterward, and I intended to walk up and introduce myself, full of contrition for missing the panel, but other people rushed ahead of me and then the security men pushed everyone out into the hall so they could set up for the next event.

The organizers must have thought I hadn’t bothered to show up at all. They must have thought I hate my fans, and that I’m too stuck-up to sit at a table with freakin’ Toshiki Hirano. The stories will spread, I’ll get a reputation, I’ll be blacklisted from all future work, and I’ll never get to attend an event like this one again!

I should have spoken up to that usher after all.

I felt bad about myself, and even worse as I walked the halls. I was wearing a costume as Natsumi Nakahara, one of my characters from the show, the one with blue hair. You know her, Journal-san, because I write about her in your pages, but I got nothing but blank stares from the conference attendees. I was cosplaying as Nova, Natsumi’s Power Ewes form, complete with sheep-ears, nubby little horns, and the powered-up sailor suit, and nobody seemed to know who I was!

I mean, It’s not like I care that nobody knew I was Ichika Miura, manga artist, script writer, storyboard artist, and girl who fetches coffee for the rest of the team. I’m used to that. At Yakonono, I sometimes have to call someone down from the office to vouch for me when the guards don’t recognize me and don’t believe I’m old enough to work there. But also, at the convention, nobody seemed to know who Natsumi was, and that was completely unacceptable to me.

In my dreams and, to a lesser extent, in the Power Ewes show, Natsumi radiates charm and power. She’s strong like metal but graceful like water. She’s liquid mercury, and I was offended on her behalf that nobody recognized my costume at a convention full of anime nerds!

But then, somebody did.

“Hey, great Natsumi Nakahara costume!” he said, and he slapped my palm like they do in Hollywood sports movies.

“And you as well,” I said, which was really dumb because he wasn’t wearing a Natsumi Nakahara costume, and I wanted to die. But Natsumi-sama doesn’t get embarrassed like I do. She never says dumb things like I just had, so I just kept thinking to myself, “liquid mercury, liquid mercury, liquid mercury,” and smiling like I’d made a joke on purpose.

And he laughed! Not at me, not making fun of me, but like he thought I’d told a joke. A good one. I felt a warm rush of liquid mercury and had to keep myself from throwing up.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Natsumi Nakahara,” I said, as I flipped the blue hair out of my eyes.

“Staying in character, I like it. Maybe we could get some pastries sometime.”

Natsumi in the show has a weakness for French pastries, which proved that he really knew about her! He really was a fan!

I nodded and said, “Mmm” or “Hmm” or something like that. It’s all a bit of a blur because I was curious what he was writing on a slip of paper.

“That’s my number over at the airbase,” he said. “My name’s Rick. Rick Kotobuki.”

“The American airbase?” I asked. “Wait. Rick? You’re a gaijin? You don’t look like a gaijin.”

He laughed. “I have Japanese ancestry. It mostly manifests as a love for obscure anime. I was hoping the dealers’ room would have some Power Ewes merchandise, but no such luck. Then I went to see Ichika Miura on a panel, but she never showed up. She must have gotten sick and cancelled at the last minute.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“I thought the entire convention would be a washout, but then there you were, Natsumi Nakahara in real life! I had to say hello. You and I might be the only Power Ewes fans in this entire place.”

“I think you may be right,” I sighed.

“But hey, who cares? Two diehard fans are enough to get some pastries and form our own fan club.”

“A fan club? For pastries?”

His laughter sounded like rain in the desert. “I was thinking of a fan club for Ichika Miura, and the pastries could be part of our secret initiation ritual. Or it doesn’t have to be pastries. It could be coffee, or a lunch, or hey, the base has its own bowling alley. Do you bowl?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t.”

“No worries then. More appropriate for our fan club would be for us to watch some episodes of Power Ewes together. I have bootlegs, including the episode that never gets rebroadcast because it has that strobing effect that causes seizures.”

I winced at that. What a mistake that episode had been, and he was right. It probably would never be rebroadcast. “Only a small fraction of people get those seizures.”

“Like me,” he raised his hand, “but I keep watching it anyway. It’s the best episode of the first season, and I can endure a few seconds of brain-lockup to bask in the genius of Ichika Miura.”

“Genius?”

“What else would you call someone so young and so accomplished already? Can you imagine what she’ll be doing five years from now? Ten years from now? When the rest of the world catches up and realizes how talented she is, you and I will get to boast that we were the first two members of the Ichika Miura Fan Club, the only ones who knew right away how cool she was.”

“You think…Ichika Miura…is cool? How cool, exactly?”

“We’ll have to discuss that at the first meeting of our fan club. I’ll put it on the agenda: Item One, is Ichika Miura cool or is she the coolest? Anyway, it’s been nice to meet a fellow fan. I’ll be waiting for your call, Natsumi.”

“Who? Oh, yes, Natsumi. That’s me, because of the blue wig and liquid mercury in my veins.”

He laughed again like I’d made a cool, funny, and intentional joke, and he waved goodbye, and he walked away, and his name is Rick, and he thinks I’m cool, and he wants me to join his Ichika Miura fan club.

This was the best anime convention ever!

Much love, Ichika-chan

Editorial Note: I hope you got that, Gentle Readers. There will be more.

To be continued...