The Fuccons
The Fuccons, known in Japan as Oh! Mikey (オー! マイキー Ō! Maikī), is a series of Japanese comedy sketches created by Yoshimasa Ishibashi featuring a family of Americans ("The Fuccons") living in metropolitan Japan. The series is notable in that all of the characters are played by mannequins with perpetually frozen facial expressions, like the mannequins in the French photographer Bernard Faucon's pictures.
The sketches first aired on the Japanese late night variety show Vermilion Pleasure Night, later moving to their own late Saturday night time slot. The collected sketches are also available on DVD, with the American ADV Films release being retitled The Fuccons and including English dubbed versions of the episodes in addition to the Japanese-language originals. As of December 2008, ADV has released a complete collection of the series, called "The Fuccons: The Whole Fuccon Show", (previously available as three volumes of The Fuccons plus a "Volume 0" sampler), as well as three volumes of the original Vermillion Pleasure Night (which includes additional Oh! Mikey segments), one of which includes the feature-length "best of" film, The Color of Life in which the Fuccons appear.
The Fuccons currently airs in the US on the G4 network as part of G4's Late Night Peepshow which is broadcast every Monday night at 12:30am.
While the American DVD release claims that Oh! Mikey is so popular in Japan that Fuccons-themed restaurants have been opened across the country, this was later revealed to be untrue.
Overview
Oh! Mikey revolves around the titular Mikey, a young American boy who lives in Japan with his parents James and Barbara Fuccon, James having been recently transferred to Japan. He attends the American School. Episodes run the gamut from the silly to the surreal, sometimes ending with a joke and sometimes not. Episodes invariably end with the characters laughing hysterically, even if the episode ends on a serious note. Occasionally the series diverts from following the Fuccons and instead focuses on a destitute Japanese family, the Kawakitas; these episodes, unlike most of the others in the series, are generally serious in tone.
Each sketch runs for around 2 and a half minutes long for a total of 78 episodes. Later installments aired on Vermillion Pleasure Night under the title New Fuccon Family.
Major characters
- Mikey Fuccon - Kind-hearted, impressionable, and somewhat dim-witted, Mikey is the focus of the series. Often put upon by others, he usually seems to address his problems with a smile.
- James and Barbara Fuccon - Mikey's parents. Both American, they met in Japan while James was working as a caretaker and Barbara had an office job -- apparently for the same company. One episode reveals they married after she became pregnant with Mikey, after which they returned to the United States, only to return later when James was transferred to an unspecified job with a Japanese firm; Barbara no longer appears to have a career but has become a stereotypical housewife. The two appear to have a strained relationship at times, and the Anniversary episode reveals that Barbara once caught James in bed with another woman. Several episodes, however, show James hurrying home (almost instantly) in order to help his wife with some dilemma. As the series progresses, James becomes more of a self-centered womanizer (with eyes for everyone from Mikey's tutor to Emily's mom) while Barbara becomes quicker to anger and more paranoid about potentially being replaced. The couple often give contradictory life lessons to their son, and in "Rags to Riches" actually kick Mikey out of the house and consider allowing the Blueberry King, a visiting dignitary, to adopt him.
- Laura - Mikey's cousin, who acts like an adult trapped in a child's body. Perpetually bored and frustrated with being a kid, she is madly in love with Mikey (despite being a close relative), but alternates between being protective of him and being manipulative, continually threatening to leave Japan and return to America. In other episodes she is seen trying to mould Emily into her own image.
- Emily - Mikey's girlfriend, who is learning the ways of manipulation from Laura. Her mother was James' first girlfriend.
- Brown - Emily's older brother, a fledgling filmmaker who has a crush on Barbara Fuccon. He is shown aiding Laura in her schemes to win Mikey's heart (or toy with him, as the case may be).
- Teacher Bob and Bob-Mama - Rarely seen away from his mother, Bob is Mikey's schoolteacher at the American school, who is so shy that he usually only communicates by whispering to his domineering mother (known as Bob-Mama) who interprets. They often get into arguments and Bob-Mama occasionally tries to play match-maker for her son.
- Tony and Charles, The Twins - a pair of British students who continually contradict each other and who often come across as rude to the point where Mikey eventually wants nothing to do with them. Their mother occasionally appears alongside her twin sister, with whom she has a similarly contradictory relationship.
- Princess Isabella of the Blueberry Kingdom - a rich girl from a faraway land who is featured in a story arc in which Mikey becomes engaged to marry her after the Blueberry King tries to adopt him by paying James and Barbara a large sum of money.
- The Kawakitas - the antithesis of the Fuccons, the Kawakitas are a Japanese family (husband, wife, and one son) who used to be successful in the restaurant business, but now the father is unemployed and both parents are alcoholic and perpetually lazy, prone to forget things like their son's birthday. The Kawakita episodes are more serious in tone than most Oh! Mikey episodes and the regular cast of characters do not appear.
- Time Boy - a classmate of Mikey's who is obsessed with keeping to a schedule.
- Tracy - Mikey's sexy 20-something private tutor, who is more interested in teaching Mikey "the lesson of love" than his ABCs.
Partial list of Oh! Mikey sketches
1st:
- The Start of Our Life in Japan
- The Teacher's Visit
- The Teacher's Visit Continued...
- Mikey's Cousin
- Mikey Goes Shopping
- Mikey and the Twins
- The Twins' Visit
- Mikey's Date
- A Heated Exchange
- Mikey and Milk
- Mikey Gets Dumped
- A Peep Hole
- Laura's Love
2nd:
- Let's Go on A Picnic
- Mikey and The Ghost
- Christina My Love
- The Twins and an Alien
- Here Comes 'Time Boy'
- Emily's Blues
- The Wrong Number
- Mikey in the Mirror
- The Invitation
- The Chill Wind of Structural Reform
- The Lady Tutor
- Rags to Riches
- Super Princess Isabella
External links