Jungre De Ikou

Oh boy. Look what the Corona virus lockdown made me do. Yeah, it made me go search the internet for more animes to watch! And this was one of them that I decided to go watch on a whim, Jungre De Ikou! Or rather, Jungle De Ikou. This should have been more appropriate title (that has been used widely even as of now) but I guess back then, Japanese were really being Engrish about English and they made it official with Jungre anyway. Proof you can see that hilariously misspelled title embedded in the opening credits. Anyway, the story goes about some high school girl dreaming a weird dream, gets some magic powers from some dancing old man that she needs to save the world from some god of destruction. Oh, fanservice. Did I mention it also says fanservice filled magical girl adventures! Oh yeah. Sign me up on this crazy adventure!

Episode 1
Takuma Kusanagi ditches cleaning class. Natsumi Rokudou goes to stop him but she’s just using this excuse to also skip class cleaning. Not sure if there’s some weird competition going on because Natsumi rushes ahead Takuma and crashes into a post box. Natsumi returns home and is glad to see her dad back. Apparently he was on an expedition at New Guinea but in order to preserve the historic site, the project was cancelled and his trip cut short. Japanese businessman logic dictates he snuck back some mini statue as souvenir. Basically, he stole it. He decides to give it to her. Reluctant, she eventually accepts. Wished for something cuter? Before she goes to bed, she experiences something strange. And then in her dreams, she encounters this weird scrawny African guy. He is Ahem and is the god of earth who created the land. He claims that Ongo, the god of destruction will soon be released from his weakened seal. So to prevent Earth’s destruction, he gives her a creepy necklace. Also, she must do this erotic dance that will summon some of his powers to help stop Ongo. Wow. How embarrassing. Natsumi wakes up thinking this is all just a dream. Then this petite kid before her. Must still be dreaming. Apparently not. Turns out this kid is actually Ongo! There goes that fearsome imagination of hers. Ongo was sealed in that mini statue. Now that he is out, he is shocked the land is no longer a jungle. Well, at least a concrete jungle. So what’s this Japan thingy he is now at, huh? Welcome to Japan, kiddo. Culture shock. So Natsumi takes him around. They stumble into Takuma’s place. Father and son arguing over some peas. Don’t ask. Ongo then tastes the whale meat they are having and likes it. Upon learning where whales come from, Ongo then summons one! Apparently he is also the god of trees and can use magic as long as there is wood.

Damn, the entire city is flooded! I don’t know how many people drowned that day because the city is really submerged! Natsumi and Ongo are riding the whale! Having a whale of a time? Natsumi wants Ongo to return the whale to the sea. Considering Ongo’s reaction, how the f*ck did he know how to summon a whale if he has never seen one?! Since he can’t communicate with it, the whale sulks. Really? Worse, the army picks up on this and they don’t believe it is a whale. It must be the enemy! Fire and destroy it! WTF?! Did they just unleash all their firepower in a civilian area?! Oh yeah. All the people must’ve drowned. Can’t kill people or arise any casualties when the people are already dead in the first place! Ongo suggests Natsumi use the power of the necklace. Reluctant at first, she then starts the dance. Wow. For a girl who initially didn’t like how it is, she sure remembered the sexy dance perfectly! This turns her into a busty figure whom Ongo recognizes as Mii, the flower spirit. She makes the whale fly! So the battleships won’t attack now? Yeah, now they have to deal with jet fighters. Mii hears the voice of Ahem to do another dance. She does so. Not sure what effect this has but I guess we all just want to see her boobs jiggle. This allows the whale to be thrown back to the ocean at the speed of light? I guess no whale = crisis over. So everything reverts to normal. Like as though it was all a dream? Fortunately unfortunately it’s real. Because when Natsumi comes home, mom has cooked some delicious whale meat as chunk of its meat fell from the sky during the army’s attack. Oh well. Thank goodness Japanese love eating whales, right?

Episode 2
Natsumi and Ongo talk about Mii who was supposed to be Ahem’s wife but left him. Ongo can’t remember much since it happened so long ago. Natsumi is shocked to see Takuma with a newspaper. Wow. A front page busty pic of Mii!!! How the f*ck did they get this picture?! And can Japan actually publish this?! Because Takuma loves big boobs and praising it, this makes Natsumi mad so she beats him up. Accidentally Takuma gets thrown in the direction of Nami Kuki. She passes out and is taken to the infirmary. Anyway, it’s all Takuma’s fault, right? Once she wakes up, Nami is an occult fan who is interested in learning magic from New Guinea. She views that place to have the best magic because she wants to rule the world via magic! Oh damn. She can say it with such a straight face and innocent eyes! Later Nami wants to be Natsumi’s friend because she likes her. Ah, friendship so simple in those days. With that, Natsumi invites her to her dad’s exhibition where he’ll be setting up exhibits from New Guinea. I hope he didn’t steal them all. Takuma of course invites himself. At the exhibition, Nami stumbles upon a strange statue, Rongo who is believed to represent the water spirit. As expected, something eerie happens to her as she gets possessed. When she reunites with her friends, it is very obvious that she is acting strange. Although Natsumi notes this, Ongo also realizes this but brushes it off as weird because Natsumi and her friends are all weird!

In school, Nami gets yuri with Natsumi in the middle of class! That day, lots of boys died of nose bleed… Nami then threatens her to return Ongo or else. When she tries to steal her necklace, the entire class gets zapped!!! It seems this is the result of trying to do so. Otherwise, why would Natsumi be walking around wearing it, right? And then Natsumi proceeds to start some weird erotic dance. Macarena???!!! She starts sweating and the drops of water soon turns into a stream load, flushing out everybody. Nami is now truly possessed and transforms into a busty beautiful babe, Rongo. She claims Ongo is her fiancé and accuses Natsumi of using her cheap sexual appeal to steal him. This is even more so when Ongo doesn’t remember and doesn’t want to go back to the jungle with her. So he likes it here in Japan? Despite Natsumi wanting very much to get rid of him, she agrees to Rongo’s challenge just to get Nami back (a condition if Natsumi wins in addition to Rongo giving up Ongo forever). Hence Natsumi does that erotic embarrassing dance to transform into Mii. She sure got the hang of it now, huh? So what is the battle of the jungle going to be? Uhm, bring down this American plane that is conveniently hovering over? How the f*ck could it fly into Japanese airspace?! Anyway, Rongo being the water spirit uses any water she can find to shoot it down. Mii goes to stop her and at the same time I don’t understand why Takuma is having a fight with Ongo. So Ongo does some magic dance that blows up part of the school?! Anyway, this reverts Rongo back to her true loli form. So Ongo remembers her in this form now? She admits defeat but pleads to stay here as she has lost her power to return home. I guess another troublesome brat for company. And don’t worry about Nami. Rongo is split from her although it might take a while for Nami to regain consciousness after being bombarded from that blast.

Episode 3
We see the god of destruction rampaging. Ahem and Mii went all out to stop him. Turns out this is a dream Natsumi has. Did this happen in the past? Natsumi’s dad hands her and her friends tickets to the exhibition. This is so boring. Ongo doesn’t want to be left home alone so he goes with her. Also, he doesn’t want to f*ck a horny loli AKA Rongo. You bet Rongo is going to get mad and jealous thinking Natsumi seduced her man. But she notices that all the plants including vegetables have withered. At the exhibition, we see Natsumi’s dad trying to sing and brag how he discovered New Guinea’s artefacts. No wonder the crowd lost interest. Safe to say that he and the producers of this show clearly did not put enough effort in their research! Then something resonates with Ongo. A dark voice telling him to awaken. First omen when sh*t is about to hit the fan is when the electricity blacks out. This worsens for Ongo as he is soon engulfed in some dark power and turns into his gigantic true form. Running rampage over the city, it seems as the god of destruction, he can wilt and wither plants in the vicinity. So this giant threat over the city and the army NOWHERE IN SIGHT???!!! ARE THEY ON HOLIDAY NOW?! Ongo has also devoured Takuma so Natsumi and Nami need to stop this and rescue their friend. Hence that embarrassing erotic dance by Natsumi to transform into Mii. Also, Nami does her pseudo Macarena to fuse with Rongo.

So even in this form, they have no confidence to defeat Ongo? Well, not sure what Rongo’s plan is but I’m sure this whatever-the-heck-this-embarrassing-dance-is sure didn’t do the trick. Ongo then attacks the babes. Meanwhile ‘brave’ reporters record this live action so that viewers can anxiously watch over what is happening in the safety of their shelters. The fate of the world rests on the boobs of the busty babes! As the duo hide, Ahem pops up and wants Mii to summon her true powers. Not sure how this guy get here so fast. Sure, he sensed Ongo’s awakening all the way back in Africa but considering he took the wrong flight to Australia, how the f*ck did he come here so fast???!!! Even Sonic can’t beat this record! Anyway, Mii could hear the support of the people and this gives her some power. Remembering the dream she had this morning, along with Rongo they do yet another weird dance. This time spirit babies and spirit old men come to her aid?! WTF is going on?! This turns Mii into a giant to fight on par with Ongo. But stupid voyeurs start taking pics of her ass and this causes embarrassed Mii to be clumsy. Oops, destroyed another building. Boobs crashing onto them! Yeah, it was f*cking worth it!!! Ongo being the god of destruction seems pretty tame. So he shoots off Mii’s bra. Boobs galore! Takuma inside Ongo is fighting back not for him to destroy those tits! Don’t you dare! Tits are not to be destroyed! They are to be touched!!! It’s a win-win for everybody! Oh Rongo, don’t get jealous now. Because it might be the key to save Ongo. So Mii just lets Ongo sleep on her boobs. Hah. You think this would wor- Oh sh*t! IT DID?! Yeah, something about the power of motherly love. When it looks like Ongo is being purified, suddenly he sheds his skin and turns into his true darker form! Oh no! But this is where Ahem intervenes and lands the killing blow to seal Ongo’s power once and for all. Things go back to normal in the aftermath. Well, not everything. Takuma and Ongo are fused together! They think more of Mii’s boobs and hugging will separate them. Not a chance!

Jungle Wa Itsumo Ongo Nochi Nippon
Oh well. It was stupid. It was dumb. It was hilarious. It was weird. It was fun while it lasted. As first impressions count, I’m not really enthusiastic about seeing more of this and I guess my sentiments could be right along with many of the others who watched this who also felt the same. You see, apparently I read there were plans to later adapt this in a TV series but due to the poor sales of the OVAs, the scrapped future plans for it. Good call? Heh. In a time where crowd funding was non-existent and the internet weren’t as essential and ubiquitous as today. Who knows? Perhaps it would have been slightly different if it was adapted in current times and there might be a possibility of a sequel, more OVAs or even a full-fledge TV series of its own. But alas, it was the year 1997 when this 3 episode OVAs came out and it would forever be likely buried in the garbage section of the anime world. Only a ‘true gem’ to certain twisted fans or those into rare stuffs.

As you can see, with only 3 episodes, there is hardly anything to tell and they’re mostly all just weird and dumb in its own sense. There are lots of things that don’t make sense and that it would not certainly fly in today’s standards but I guess the 90’s was a pretty weird era to live in, thinking about it retrospectively. Watching the first episode of Ongo summoning a giant whale and even bringing the ocean in the middle of a crowded city in Japan already felt so silly and even more so when they bought the blood thirsty JSDF into the fray. And then they’re sorely missing in the third episode when Ongo actually became a real possible threat. Like, WTF???!!! The characters are so shallow that you feel that everything that has happened is all for the plot convenience. Like Natsumi’s dad conveniently giving her that mini statue that started the chain of unfortunate events. I mean, what kind of father gives his own daughter this kind of weird thing as a gift???!!! And Natsumi living like normal because she knows she can’t do anything about it to change her circumstances so might as well live with it. Come to think about it, they considered her as a magical girl. Not that it ever crossed my mind when she turned into Mii. Tits too distracting for me to think straight. Hahaha!!! And Ongo is like your typical foreigner who is in love with Japan, although I don’t see him obsessing over Japanese things. Yeah, modern life so convenient and better than the jungle life. And where the heck does Takuma live now ever since their house got destroyed by the summon whale?!

Even they hinted Takuma’s romance with Natsumi but it didn’t amount to nothing. I mean, when you have a couple of childhood friends together for so long, it’s the best ingredient to turn it into this sort of romance drama. After all, Natsumi has been beating him up ever since and Takuma has been tolerating her beatings ever since. But as I’ve said, there were plans to continue this series and hence they built up some developments here that would have most likely been expanded and fleshed out better had they go ahead with the TV series but unfortunately it did not work out. That’s why it’s the same case for Nami. I mean, do we really need this girl? Because it seems they can do without her character at all. But I really got to love her ambitions to take over the world. A big unfortunate chance that we never get to see her getting that. I would have been so interesting to see her do so. But as for these 3 episodes that we have seen, she is just nothing more than a vessel for Rongo to become her voluptuous self if the plot ever calls for it.

And of course the main draw factor here is the fanservice but I should have known better than to put my expectations high. This is the 90s we’re talking about. So the fanservice here is nothing very controversial by today’s standards. It is in fact very mild. Mii having big tits might have caused a lot of rage in those days but watching this at this period in time, they’re just pretty tame. In fact, no bare tits were even shown. Heck, the only bare tits you will actually see is when Takuma’s eyeballs turn into boobs as he gawks at Mii’s mountains! Aside from the boobs, lots of panty flashing by Natsumi and in order for this to happen, hence her exaggerated movements and flabbergasted moments so that we have the slightest excuse for her slip to be shown. The funniest parts are when the girls go into that silly dance. It’s filled with cringe, it’s totally embarrassing but it’s so funny that I can’t help laugh each time they go into that! A dance that sounds like they went into orgasm by the end of it!!! Oh yeah, shake those boobs too! I suppose if I were to remember this anime for the rest of my lives, the dance moments are what will be vividly stuck in my mind. It isn’t Gangnam Style or Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk worthy but it’s funny as heck. And that f*cking fake Macarena looks like making Nami go into labour or something… Just weird. And who could forget about Ahem’s long penis cover?! Literally the only thing that covers his modesty.

Being such a retro anime, I guess it is nice to hear the voice of Megumi Hayashibara as Ongo as well as Kappei Yamaguchi as Takuma. I figure back in the 90s there weren’t as many prominent seiyuus then so they have to use what they’ve got, especially these seiyuus who were voicing the main characters of the gender bender Ranma 1/2. The rest of the seiyuus, unfortunately never heard of them nor I would ever remember them. So sad but forgive me… Masami Okui also sings both the themes and I am now transported back to the past of nostalgia when I used to listen to her anime songs (though some are featured with Jam Project). J as the opener is your typical rock outfit while Spirit Of The Globe as the ending theme is more of a slow ballad.

Overall, this anime series is absolutely garbage and considered by many to be a bad one. Like, how is that different than so many other more contemporary garbage animes?! Hey, law of the jungle. Not popular enough, out you go. It could have been better had it been given another chance for fleshing out the development of the story and characters. Boobs fanservice and really dumb comedy that serves to make viewers ask more questions than make you laugh out loud could have sealed the fate of this series. And who could forget that cringe worthy but funny dance! It’s definitely not the totally worst anime of its era but it’s nothing really special. Unless you’re in for the tits. Even so, there is only so much that a motherly love can smother you with those tits before they start to sag… Then every dance will be a horror filled dance…