Ask John: What is “World of Golden Eggs”?

Question:
What is “The World of Golden Eggs”? It seems to be tearing up the Japanese DVD sales charts, but what is it? Why haven’t I seen or heard anything about it in the American fan community?

Answer:
Before moving into the primary body of my answer I need to first explain that despite having watched serveral episodes of World of Golden Eggs, it’s a series that lies outside of my primary field of interest, and it’s a program which I’m not especially familiar with. So while I believe that the explanation to follow is accurate, please consider it a cursory introduction rather than a thorough examination.

World of Golden Eggs is an odd anime program for a number of reasons. Not only is it not like conventional anime, it’s a program specifically tailored to appeal to Japan’s unique sense of humor, making it largely obtuse to American viewers. In other words, it’s a very popular program among Japanese viewers, but an anime that most Americans simply won’t find interesting at all. In fact, many typical American anime fans may instinctively think that World of Golden Eggs isn’t anime at all because it’s so different from the anime that Americans are familiar with.

World of Golden Eggs is a full CG animation sketch comedy series created by animation studio PLUS heads, inc. under producer/director Dai Yoshihiko and writer/animator Fumihara Satoshi. The first season of 13 fifteen minute long episodes premiered in 2004 on Japanese television networks including Kids Station, and online delivery through sites including BIGLOBE. A second 13 episode second season premiered in 2006.

The series features simplistic CG animation that may be called ‘stylistic,” or simply “bad” depending on personal inclination, but the visual component of the show is not its focus. World of Golden Eggs loosely revolves around the lives of the citizens of a small American style town called “Turkey’s Hill.” The primary appeal of the program, however, is not its characters or story, but rather its humor. World of Golden Eggs concentrates on the sort of dialogue based gag humor and nonsense conversation that’s often found in Japanese stand-up comedy and live action variety programs. In fact, the dialogue in World of Golden Eggs is often ad libbed by its actors during recording. As a result, Japanese viewers seem to tremendously enjoy World of Golden Eggs’ short skits about gay cooking show hosts, motor-mouthed high school girls, and hillbillies talking about nothing in particular while American viewers may find the shorts pointless and uninteresting. In fact, World of Golden Eggs has become so popular among Japanese viewers that not only are its DVDs consistent best sellers, World of Golden Eggs characters and animation have been used in television commercials for corporations including NEC electronics and Nissan automobiles. World of Golden Eggs is also widely associated with English language instruction.

Ironically, although World of Golden Eggs may not appeal to American anime fans, the program is especially “English friendly” because many of the series’ sketches are performed with English dialogue and Japanese subtitles, and “core” story sketches performed with Japanese dialogue always include English subtitles.

World of Golden Eggs has become a runaway success in Japan, yet it still remains almost entirely unheard of in America because the program doesn’t appeal to typical American anime fans, nor is the program targeted at conventional anime fans. World of Golden Eggs is rightfully classified as “anime” because it is Japanese animation, but it’s much more comparable in audience demographic and style to The Simpsons than conventional anime like Naruto and Pretty Cure. World of Golden Eggs is part of Japan’s tremendous realm of popular animation, along with series such as “The Frogman Show” and Japan’s very large realm of amateur and professional Flash animation, that exists outside of the conventional anime production and fan community. As a result, many American anime fans aren’t aware of titles like World of Golden Eggs or the massive popularity of “non-otaku” animation produced and distributed in Japan.