Bonsoir! It's been a while since Fujio Akatsuka's famous family has been on the air. So how have they changed during the gap? Well, unlike Akatsuka's other famous family... not by much. The schemes are as zany as ever, the gags are more rapid-fire, and the fourth wall is a little more broken than usual— It's just that they're on late night television now, which means they need to change up their age limit on jokes.
But that comes with its own slew of problems— a late night show means their adventures are going to actually be late night after all, and Bakabon's folks just don't want to stay up into the wee hours. Their usual gags probably aren't going to fly with broadcast standards, and there's way too many things that hinge on controversy and copyright infringement; but nothing, from meddling executives to cheap production values, is going to stop something from airing in their slot.
Produced by Studio Pierrot+, Shinya! Tensai Bakabon is the 2018 installment of Fujio Akatsuka's Tensai Bakabon series. It began airing in the Summer 2018 anime season.
Konbannya! Shinya! Tensai Bakabon contains examples of:
- Artifact Title: As ever, the series puts its main spotlight on Bakabon's Papa.
- Biting-the-Hand Humor: Episode 4 is one long joke at TV Tokyo's expense. Director Bahakata is depicted as an exhibitionist blowhard, and everyone is willing to put up with him only because he keeps them on television.
- Crossover: A live action short had Unagi-inu join the Matsuno brothers and Iyami in celebrating Akatsuka's 83rd birthday.
- Easy Sex Change: Papa gets one in episode 1 to change up the series premise.
- #EngineeredHashtag: Invoked in episode 5 to stop a literal storm of bad animation from destroying the town.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The episodes start off during late night hours, showing the family actually having to wake up to participate in plots.
- Moe Anthropomorphism: Parodied when a game developer needs a quick idea to base a game around before the deadline hits up. Papa ends up coming up with two Romance Game concepts: one where the cast is personified spam email (Jidaigeki spam email boys for good measure), and another where the boys are personified poop. Hajime's idea revolved around cute girls representing physics concepts.
- One Degree of Separation: It's amazing how many people knocking on the Bakabon family door went to Dumbasarock/Bakada University with Papa.
- Stylistic Suck: The second half of episode 5 is dedicated to a "bad animation tornado" that causes the animation to get worse until the cast is nothing but literal scribbles.
- Reboot Snark: The show parodies Osomatsu-san's revival by only having Papa try to change things for the reboot, with the rest of the family saying the show's fine the way it is. To drive the point home, the only thing that Papa keeps changing throughout the episode is himself.
- Retraux: The first episode is animated like it was an episode of Heisei.
