Pāman and Booby's Great Adventure: Night at the Zoo Edition / Pāman Analysis Part 3 (Middle)
Today's text:
"Full of Wild Beasts"
"Shogaku Yonnensei" February 1967 issue / Fujiko F. Fujio Complete Works Vol. 4
Key points of this article:
★Booby's family environment is revealed!
★What will be the outcome of the battle between Pā-Elephant and Pā-Gorilla?
★The story structure where vertical and horizontal axes intertwine, a specialty of F-sensei
In this article, continuing from the last time, we will look at the adventures of just Pāman and Booby. Following the previous story about a rescue in the snowy mountains, we will take up "Full of Wild Beasts," which depicts a wild animal escape incident at the zoo.
"Full of Wild Beasts"
The setting of this work is the zoo. Mitsuo, who recently always looks like he is studying thanks to his copy robot, starts being told by his mom that he is studying too much. Hearing that, his dad says,
"You are hard to please. You get scolded for only playing, and then she worries again when you are always at home."
Parental love is complicated. Well, with that flow, Dad, Ganko, and Mitsuo end up going to the zoo. The reason is that the zoo is the least expensive place to go...
When they enter the zoo, they find a chimpanzee winking at them. It turns out to be Booby. Booby was a zoo monkey. Well, now that I think about it, the only place you could have a monkey in the city is at a zoo. (Though that setting changes later...)
Booby was also using a copy robot to carry out Pāman activities. And seeing Booby's mom being strict with discipline, Mitsuo thinks, "It's the same in every household."
That night. Booby comes to invite Mitsuo to go on patrol. Thinking that a late-night patrol sounds fun, the two fly off.
Around that time, at the zoo, Booby's copy robot had its nose pressed by a mouse and turned back into a robot. The zookeeper notices Booby is missing, throws the copy robot aside, and goes to search for him.
A cunning gorilla presses the nose of that copy, and a copy gorilla is born. Then, after making it open the cage lock, it opens the cages of other animals one after another. The wild beasts end up scattering into the town at night.
Pāman, who was bored with his patrol, discovers the commotion and appears. He captures the animals one after another, from a giant snake to a lion, and returns them to the zoo. However, his mask is stolen by the gorilla, and a Pā-Gorilla with 6600 times the strength is born wearing that mask. It starts to go on a rampage that cannot be stopped.
Seeing this, Booby turns a hippo upside down and shows it to Mitsuo. "Baka (Stupid)." Booby's pantomime is a classic gag in early Pāman.
Since it has the same 6600 times the strength, Booby is naturally no match for Pā-Gorilla. So, he puts a mask on his friend the elephant to make it Pā-Elephant and decides to make it fight Pā-Gorilla.
Pā-Gorilla vs. Pā-Elephant. After a brawl, the elephant knocks down the gorilla and wins. With this, they succeed in recovering all the animals safely.
After the commotion settles down, Booby secretly returns to his cage, but he is found by his mom and gets a big scolding. He gets his bottom spanked and cries out, "Akyā akyā!
"That's strict. I've become afraid of going home," said Mitsuo.
This work is a story about solving a great beast escape incident, with the battle between Par-Gorilla and Par-Elephant as the climax. At the same time, it depicts the Suwa family's stance that neither studying too little nor too much is good, alongside Booby's home environment, where he is disciplined as strictly as a human, thereby expressing the theme of parental love and children."
In other words, it is constructed with a story centered on the beast escape incident as the vertical axis, and the theme of parental love and children as the horizontal axis, creating a story woven with the dual structure that Master F is so good at, where the vertical and horizontal elements intertwine. Absolutely brilliant!
★ Paman and Booby's adventures continue!