is a Japanese manga and anime comedy series that follows the adventures of two brothers (and their cousin) Hideki, Ichiro, and Mako who form the band, "Nerima Daikon Brothers."
The show uses a musical comedy format, with the characters often breaking out in song to show their emotions or go through a montage scene. The melodies of the songs are sometimes recycled episode after episode with different lyrics substituted for the particular situation. The musical comedy format is rare in Japanese animation and the show's style is heavily influenced by musicals such as The Blues Brothers and Kollywood musicals such as Muthu.
The show was originally licensed by ADV for $124,800 and the first volume was released on DVD in December 2006. In 2008, the show became one of the ADV titles transferred to Funimation Entertainment.
Plot
The trio lives on a stage constructed in Hideki's daikon patch in the Nerima ward of Tokyo. They dream of building a concert dome on the site and performing their musical act to sold-out crowds. They must avoid both an overzealous policewoman who has caught on to their money-making schemes and the desires of powerful people who want to take over the daikon field. The characters are aided in their adventures by the show's director, Shinichi Watanabe, who injects himself (in the form of his Nabeshin character from Excel Saga) into the story as a rental shop owner.
The show parodies many famous people and institutions in Japan including Junichiro Koizumi and his political followers; Michael Jackson; the fortune teller Kazuko Hosoki, Star Wars, Host club entertainers among many others. Until recently, anime television series did not make overt jokes about the current news topics like homosexual love, consumer credit, or the success of Korean artists in Japan such as Bae Yong-joon. Nerima Daikon Brothers features overt sexual gags such as in the first episode where a male casting director fondles Ichiro's crotch as he sits there and moans.
Characters
Main cast
The protagonist, Hideki, is a 25-year-old owner of a daikon field in the Nerima ward of Tokyo, a region famous for growing Daikon. As children Hideki, Ichiro, and Mako made a pact to one day perform in a concert in a dome where the Daikon field now sits. One of the running gags in the series is Hideki's crush on Mako, his cousin. He would like to marry her, but he believes that he cannot because of the Japanese constitution. He is even tricked by a lawyer who tells him that he can change the constitution, even though such marriage is indeed permitted.
The straight man of the group, Ichiro is the soft-spoken head host at "Club Echo da Ekoda", a host club where good looking young men wine and dine older ladies. He saves his tips and salary from his job at the host club in order to fulfill the goal of building the dome and had amassed at least 23,000 yen by episode 10 when it was stolen (by Mako!). Ichiro has some strange habits, such as his love for Pandaikon and his pet aegagropila (that he raises in a glass jar), and, more generally, a fondness for furry animals that borders on zoophilia. His strangest ability is his power to make any person fall in love with him when he slaps them. Mako is usually the one at the receiving end of this, but he also took on a group of Oizumi's riot police before being finally taken down by a water cannon.
The self-styled "former idol," Mako is Ichiro and Hideki's (self-proclaimed) 19-year-old cousin who is originally from Okayama prefecture and still has the distinct Okayama dialect of Japanese (portrayed as a Southern American English in the English dub). She is skillfully able to spend her older cousin's money on her lavish "Dom Perignon" tastes, but often deflects his marriage proposals by saying "the Japanese constitution does not allow it!," despite the fact that it does. She's attracted to Ichiro even though he does not return her affections and fights over him with Yukika.
A panda who showed up at Hideki's daikon field one day and began eating the crop. Ichiro saved him from the others. He has daikon leaves spouting from his head. A new "member" of the band, he often appears when the group need help getting out of a pinch.
a.k.a. Inspector Widgett (in series)
