Mr. Yodoba, Outsmarted by Impure Adults!? "Shikaikyo" / Mr. Yodoba Camera Series ⑧

When a child gets their hands on a mysterious tool, they will likely use it as a fun toy. They might even use it to pull a few pranks. However, they would never think to use it for criminal or illicit activities.

Now, what kind of uses would an adult think of if they obtained a similar tool? Making money, taking revenge on someone, committing crimes they've always wanted to try... they probably wouldn't think of anything good.

In the "Mr. Yodoba Camera Series," where Mr. Yodoba, who peddled strange cameras in the future, ends up in the modern era (the 1980s) and sells his future cameras, his sales targets are adults.

Since Mr. Yodoba is destined to earn his daily bread by selling cameras, he inevitably ends up peddling them to adults who will pay a high price.

In the work featured in this article, "adults" and "children" react completely differently when faced with the same high-performance camera. It is a story that could be called the true essence of the Mr. Yodoba series.

By the way, I wrote about the Episode 0 that explains why Mr. Yodoba, a man from the future, had to live in the modern era in my previous article, so reading that might help you empathize even more.

Mr. Yodoba, a salesman of future cameras, has no ties to the modern world and must sell his cameras for a high price, or he will immediately be unable to make a living. Therefore, he has been trying various schemes to drive up the price. (Though he has had his failures.)

The targets of this work are middle-aged men who have money and a potential desire to buy a camera.

A room in an apartment. A man and a woman have just finished an affair. The man is balding and has the appearance of an elderly person, but his physique and attire are neat. It is evident that he has financial leeway and confidence in himself.

The man is repeatedly questioning the young woman about something, and the woman is at a loss for words, replying, "There's nothing. How should I answer to satisfy you?" Then, the woman gets out of bed naked and picks up a knife.

She is trying her best to convey her innocence, but it also seems somewhat theatrical.

"Well, that's fine."
"Don't say things like that anymore."
The two reconcile easily. When the woman kisses him, the man instructs his driver to take him to the head office in his company car. It is late at night, but he makes it a rule to look through the ledgers within the same day.

When he enters the president's office alone, another middle-aged man is waiting. He has long hair, a beard, and buck teeth, and does not look very respectable. He appears to be some kind of investigator, and has appeared to report his findings to the president.

This investigator was in charge of a background check on the woman mentioned earlier. The woman is the president's mistress, and her name is Beniko. After a thorough investigation, it seems that the suspicion of an affair is clear.

However, upon receiving the report, the president instructs him to continue the investigation even more thoroughly for another month. When the bewildered investigator asks, "What is the basis for such suspicion?", the president replies.

He then begins to explain how he has climbed the ladder of success using the power of his hunches. A hunch for sniffing out a good deal, a hunch for quickly sensing danger... He claims that he has risen to his current position armed only with such animalistic hunches.

And then, he adds a stinging remark.

The investigator panicked, saying, "You must be joking!!", but the president's eyes were serious.

He gets into the company car and heads to his main residence next. After having already gone to sleep, his wife and the housekeeper greet him with sleepy faces, saying, "Oh, how unusual." This was not a stinging sarcasm at all; it seems they no longer have any feelings about the husband's affairs.

As proof of this, when asked, "Did you have a bath?", the president unashamedly brings up the topic of his second home, saying, "I did. At Beniko's apartment."

While drinking wine in the bedroom, the president mutters to himself.

It gives the impression of the arrogance typical of a self-made, one-man leader.

Then, he notices a photograph on the futon. It is the photo from the beginning of the story, taken when he was in bed with Beniko. A letter is also attached to it.

It also says to wait at the Central Park fountain plaza at 11:30 tomorrow morning. The president considers if it is a new type of extortion, but decides it is nothing to fear and tears the photo to pieces.

The next morning, he gets into the company car to head to the office, but changes his mind on the way and gives instructions to "go to Central Park." He walks to the front of the park's fountain, but the person who wrote the letter is nowhere to be seen.

A man was watching the president's behavior from the shade of a tree. Yes, it was our very own Mr. Yodoba. It seems Mr. Yodoba had sent similar direct mail to five people, and he was disappointed that only one person had shown up.

Mr. Yodoba's goal was to gather only wealthy people who might want the "Shikaikyo" for an auction, drive up the price, and seize the dream of making a fortune.

With no other choice, Yodoba called out to the president, his only customer. The president immediately asked what kind of item the "Shikaikyo" was, so Yodoba took him deep into the park's grove and showed him the actual camera.

"Shikaikyo" is a camera that reflects the four seas = the entire world. It can photograph any place from any angle. He then briefly explained the camera's structure. This is Fujiko F's style of rhetoric, making outrageous future tools seem real by adding scientific phenomena.

After presenting these "scientific facts," he explained the "outrageous" ability of the Shikaikyo to select, correct, amplify, and enlarge light from any arbitrary location to take a picture.

As a test demonstration, he showed a photo of the Egyptian pyramids. The president didn't show much interest, saying things like, "It's just a postcard, it's blurry." This lack of interest serves as foreshadowing for the ending.

Saying, "It captures domestic scenes perfectly," Yodoba captured a current photo of Beniko, whom the president was keeping. The president showed strong interest in this. By adding that it might be useful for business, he drew the president in even further.

However, the moment Mr. Yodoba presented the astronomical price of "one hundred million yen, flat", the president started to leave. Yodoba, turning from confident to desperate, pulled on the president's suit jacket, saying, "I'm willing to offer a bit of a discount."

Now, back at the second residence where the photo was taken earlier. Beniko was putting on makeup, but it was for a rendezvous with another man. And that partner was the man who had submitted the investigation report last night. The man's first words were,

he said, whining.

The president had used his wild intuition to see right through the fact that the woman had another man and that the investigator's report was sloppy. The man, having been seen through, was terrified and came to break things off with Beniko.

It was fortunate that the president had lost interest in the camera at the moment he heard the price was 100 million, but the relationship between Beniko and the investigator was nearly exposed. Unaware of this, Beniko took the man into the bath and said,

In times like these, women are often the ones who are more resolved. And, just as she intended, the president would soon learn that things in this world do not always go as planned...

The amount offered at the president's counter was 500,000. Mr. Yodoba felt it was clearly out of the question. Just then, another president, to whom Yodoba had sent an email, appeared.

He was the president of a construction company, and Yodoba pitched the Shikaikyo to him with the logic, "The world has become strict about bid-rigging, so you must need a camera to find out your rivals' estimates."

When Yodoba suggested 100 million, he tried to haggle it down to 10 million. After a few rounds of negotiation, they settled on 15 million... and at that moment, the first president offered 20 million. Just as Mr. Yodoba had originally planned, an auction seemed to have begun.

It turned into a bidding war, eventually reaching the initial asking price of 100 million. Mr. Yodoba thought to himself,

He chuckled to himself. It seems Mr. Yodoba's current life is quite impoverished...

And the result of the two men's bidding war was... surprisingly, they decided to collude here as well, offering a total of 100,000 for a joint purchase. A terrible answer that blew away his dreams of a condo.

"Let me think for just 10 minutes," Mr. Yodoba said, walking away unsteadily. As he shed tears of frustration, muttering, "This is too much," he bumped into a boy in a wheelchair. It was his second collision of the day.

Picking up a book the boy seemed to have been reading called "Travels of the World", Yodoba handed it to him, asking, "Do you like traveling?" The boy replied,

A pure dream, completely different from the dirty adults from earlier, pierced Mr. Yodoba's heart.

As the boy and his mother were about to leave, Yodoba called out, "Won't you buy a nice camera? It's only 10 yen." He decided that the person who should possess the Shikaikyo was this pure boy with bad legs.

As expected, the boy was overjoyed to see images of the Statue of Liberty, a herd of elephants on the savanna, and the peak of Mount Everest. A mysterious tool of the future only shines when it falls into the hands of a child.

Mr. Yodoba walked away with a satisfied expression.

Meanwhile, the president duo waited for Yodoba's return in front of the fountain. The sun had already begun to set.

Because they held the wicked thought of bid-rigging, they were unable to reap the rewards. Men who think they understand the world learn that because of their impurity, not everything in the world goes their way.

Although it is depicted in a rather extreme way, the reactions of children and adults to a single secret gadget are completely opposite.

While the child is moved by seeing elephants on the savanna, the adult is not moved at all even when looking at images of the pyramids. He only becomes momentarily smitten when told they are going on a relaxing tour of women's baths.

Well, the Mr. Yodoba series will reach its final installment next time. It will be a summary article featuring all the cameras from the series so far, so please look forward to it.