THE FANTASTIC ADVENTURES OF UNICO (1981)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

I had seen the two 1980s UNICO films back in that decade but was then unacquainted with the Osamu Tezuka source material. Online sources finally gave me the chance to peruse this short-lived manga series, as well as getting a sense of how the animators switched a few things up.

The screenwriter for ADVENTURES essentially took just two stories from the Tezuka canon and merged them into a longer, if somewhat jumbled, narrative. As I commented in my review, the Tezuka tales are essentially stand-alones. On the command of the goddess Venus, the West Wind transports the innocent unicorn to other realms to get the little creature out of Venus' way. Unico then interacts with some unhappy people, fixes or tried to fix, their problems, and then gets whisked off to some other realm for another adventure. Not surprisingly, the screenwriter wanted something a bit more unified.

The writer made an odd choice, though, The very last Unico story deals with the unicorn befriending a demon, only to get yanked away, leaving the demon, Beezle by name, disconsolate for the loss of his only buddy. I don't know why Tezuka ended his manga-series on such a sad note, but the writer of ADVENTURES chose to give Beezle more closure. The very first place the West Wind deposits Unico-- on the orders of all the gods, not just Venus-- is at the end of time, thinking that he will be utterly isolated. But after the formation of the friendship between the unicorn and the demon, the West Wind takes it on herself to transport Unico to a different realm.

This new realm involves a forest full of animals, one of whom is a vain cat named Chao. Unico, who's forgot the existence of Beezle, makes friends with Chao. However, Chao wants to become a witch's cat in order to become powerful, while Unico tries to talk her out of it. The drama builds to a situation where Chao is transformed into a pretty human female, and she thinks that the Baron of the forest may be interested in marrying her. However, she soon finds that the Baron is an evil slayer of animals, and Unico has to use his powers to defend Chao and slay the Baron. The West Wind conveniently decides to return to the end of time for no particular reason and thus makes it possible for Beezle to participate in the rest of the story.

These adaptations are decent, but like most of the original stories, aren't much more than simple melodrama. Unico had one more exploit in which the little fellow got propelled into other realms, but in that sequel, the writers did not return to the idea that the Greek gods had some grudge against the single-horned savior.