Chika Gentou Gekiga: Shoujo Tsubaki (Midori)

Add to My List

Add to Favorites

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Maiden Camellia, Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show

Japanese: 地下幻燈劇画少女椿

More titles

Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: May 2, 1992

Producers: Imagica

Licensors: None found, add some

Studios: Mippei Eigeki Kiryuukan

Source: Manga

Genres: Drama, Horror

Themes: Gore, Historical

Duration: 47 min.

Rating: R+ - Mild Nudity

Statistics

Score: 4.73¹ (scored by 35,695 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #13318²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #2729

Members: 69,354

Favorites: 417

Resources

AniDB

ANN

Synopsis

In the 1920s, a poverty-stricken 12-year-old girl named Midori resorts to selling camellias in the slums of Tokyo. Midori finds little success until, one day, she is approached by a gentleman who offers his sympathy and aid. When her bedridden mother succumbs to an illness, and with no one else to turn to, Midori visits the man's address. To her horror, she discovers that she has been conned into joining his circus troupe, Aka Neko Za—a traveling freak show consisting of vulgar and deformed performers.

Midori compares her new fairground lifestyle to hell. Not only is she responsible for caring for her colleagues and cleaning up after them, but she also is frequently belittled and cruelly abused. Suffering and uncertain of what will become of her, she finally begins to feel at ease when Wonder Masamitsu, a master illusionist, joins the lineup. Smitten by Midori's beauty and innocence, Masamitsu takes her under his wing; but even as their love grows, dark times loom ahead for Midori and her fellow freaks.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Edit

Background

The "Shoujo Tsubaki" or "Camellia Girl" character was a common stock protagonist regularly featured in Japanese street theater throughout the 1920s. The character typically manifested as a young and impoverished female adolescent who sold camellia flowers on the streets. One incarnation of the character features in a short story, also titled "Shouji Tsubaki," within an anthology—eventually repurposed as a full-length graphic novel by Suehiro Maruo, known as Mr. Arashi’s Amazing Freak Show in English. This, in turn, was adapted into the animated film Chika Gentou Gekiga: Shoujo Tsubaki, which roughly translates to "Underground Projected Dramatic Pictures: The Camellia Girl." The film is known simply as Midori in releases outside of Japan.

Aside from the music, sound effects, and an uncredited voice cast, the entirety of the film was created almost exclusively by Hiroshi Harada under the pseudonym "Hisaaki Etsu," who handled directing, scripting, drawing, and animating. Composer J. A. Seazer assisted with the soundtrack. Production began in 1987, the film took five years to produce, and it consists of over five thousand hand-drawn sheets of animation. Due to the film’s graphic imagery, the production received no sponsors and was instead funded using Harada’s life savings and retirement fund.

The early marketing for the film was deliberately cryptic, and Harada intended for it to only be viewed at specially held screenings. The film premiered in May 1992 under a large red tent at the Mitake Jinja Shinto Shrine in Tokyo. It was accompanied by realtime special effects, including confetti and smoke bombs. Underground theater group Aka Neko Za performed stunts from the film and interacted with the audience throughout its duration. These performances would complement the film in succeeding years, before its ban.

Chika Gentou Gekiga: Shoujo Tsubaki was screened unedited until 1994, when Japanese film censor board Eirin made 26 cuts and alterations. From 1994 to 2006, the film could only be viewed in its heavily censored state at film festival screenings and theaters. During this time, there were no home releases.

In 1999, the film was screened at the San Sebastián Horror and Fantasy Film Festival in Spain. When the tapes were returned to Japan, they were seized and destroyed by Japanese Customs at Narita Airport; it was thereafter banned from domestic imports and screenings in Japan. Nonetheless, it was specially screened at the Tokyo International Fantastic Film Festival in 2004, where it won first place in a fan vote. Directly after, a ban was placed on the film at the request of the police, which lasted eight more years in Japan.

In 2006, the French company Ciné Malta obtained the rights to release the film on DVD in its original form. This was the first time the uncensored version of Midori was accessible since screenings before 1994. The DVD also included English, Spanish, Italian, and German subtitles, as well various features—including a recorded interview with Harada and a 16-page booklet. However, the tapes initially sent to France were confiscated as "obscene material" at De Gaulle Airport due to cautionary notices attached to the shipments by Narita Airport. As of the 2010s, the film was screened frequently throughout Asia and Europe—especially the latter—but never in the United States, due to import laws regarding certain types of pornography.

In 2013, the original 16 mm negatives of the film were discovered in a warehouse belonging to Japanese post-production company IMAGICA. The film was remastered and screened in digital format, including at the Kanazawa Film Festival that same year. Regardless, Chika Gentou Gekiga: Shoujo Tsubaki will forever be notorious for its taboo content and complex history. It is in some regards considered lost media and is also considered one of the most controversial anime due to being banned almost everywhere, including in Japan.

Edit

Related Entries

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Midori

Main

Naka, Minako
Japanese

Wonder Masamitsu

Main

Morishita, Norihiko
Japanese

Tokkuriji, Muchisute

Supporting

Kanabun

Supporting

Snake Woman

Supporting

Jirou

Supporting

Midori's Mother

Supporting

More staff

Staff

Harada, Hiroshi

Director, Episode Director, Script, Key Animation

Maruo, Suehiro

Original Creator

Seazer, J. A.

Music

Asanuma, Kouichi

Sound Effects

Edit

Opening Theme

No opening themes have been added to this title. Help improve our database by adding an opening theme here.

Edit

Ending Theme

No ending themes have been added to this title. Help improve our database by adding an ending theme here.

Reviews

Sep 23, 2023

amealworm

Recommended

Shoujo Tsubaki is wonderful! it is quite a surreal film with its visuals, but it may be quite disturbing for some as it contains lots of distressing topics. even if some don't like the film itself, they may still find themself appreciating the story behind it. which is equally, if not more interesting than the film itself.
I recommend this film to those who are artsy and interested in the strange and unsavory. And also, to those who can appreciate someone's hard, HARD work.
side note: this film does not glorify abuse or excuse it, like many have been saying. having bad things in a piece ...

Open

Gift

Sep 22, 2023

jeffersondkid

Mixed Feelings

I'm kind of disappointed by it; I expected more. Maybe the manga is better; I will check it out.
The characters, even though a little shallow, were okay.
The setting and plot are pretty average.
The problem is the animation, especially in the beginning, is straight up a slideshow.
The pacing, execution, and presentation of the plot are pretty bad. It feels too disjointed. It gets better halfway through, though, and the animation also gets way better.
Even the characters show a little more depth, but the first half is a slog, and the payoff is just not worth it. If you came for the ...

Open

Gift

Jul 8, 2024

MichaelMorbius

Not Recommended

This is one of the most controversial animes ever created and has even been banned in several countries. I've decided to watch it due to its fame of being disgusting and horrible due to the amount rape, violence and body horror present within the anime. And man, was I disappointed. Don't get me wrong I wasn't expecting much from a technical standpoint, I knew the movie kinda sucked in that sense but, at least, I was expecting to get horrified by looking at it and, instead, nothing. There were a couple of scenes which were a little hard to watch but even the parts who ... were considered most disturbing just didn't draw almost any reaction in me. Maybe it's me being desensitized as I've seen plenty of stuff or maybe it was because these weren't real people and it was just an animation, a rather bad one too.

The story follows Midori, a girl who sells flowers, who's an orphans. She encounters a man early on in the movie who gives her, his address. However when the girl gets there she realized she had been fooled into joining a circus full of freaks. And the perfomers of the circus started to abuse her on a daily basis and she literally get put through hell for quite some time. She seems to have find some hope when Wonder Misamatsu, a chinese magician, falls in love with her and the two seem to be ready to leave the cicrus to live a happy live together but things don't go as planned. There isn't much to say here, the plot is meh. You can tell the focus wasn't on telling a good story or creating a good plot but shock the viewers due to the most disturbing scenes. However, I'm not going to lie, in the end I felt a bit sorry for Midori. No spoilers but it was actually quite sad to see her at the end, knowing what she had been through and knowing she was so close from escaping this sad reality. It's obvious that the movie's philosofy finds its roots into a clear pessism and nichilism where life just sucks and nothing good will ever happen to you.

The characters are meh too. You feel sorry for Midori because she hasn't done anything to earn any of the things she gets put through in the movie but she doesn't really have a personality. She just wants to leave that place and you feel really sorry for her but that's it. The other characters didn't do much either. Each of them only had a few scenes so noone of them were able to be memorable altough they had some cool characters designs, especially the guy with no arms. However I liked how Misamatsu, a clearly evil person, was the only person who could've been able to bring Midori out of all that hell. Therefore the only way for Midori to find a way out was to fell in love with a monster which is really sad.

The animation is not good. I know that the creator of the movie, Hiroshi Harada, created this whole film by himself but it's not an excuse for how sloppy and bad the animation was. It's just bad, really bad at times. And I guess it's one of the main reason why the movie just didn't draw almost any reactions in me. I'd like to mention how bad was the voice acting too. The sound sucked (maybe has something to do with the bootleg version of the movie I've seen online but I don't know) and the voice actors probably didn't have any expierence too as they also weren't very good.

If this movie disturbed you and you hated it because of it, then I guess the movie did its job as I don't see no other real reason to bring this movie up other than because there's a lot of messed up shit. There's somewhat of a philosofy regarding nihilism but it's not much. So if it disturbed you, it did its job. However it didn't disturbe me. At all. I explained why in the precedent paragraphs so I won't explain it again however it failed its main job so to me this was just bad. Maybe there's a secret meaning that I don't understand but senseless violence can't draw any reaction in me if it's done simply to shock me. I need to be invested in the plot or in the characters for getting shocked even despite the bad animation but I wasn't. So this movie failed, for me.

Open

Gift

More stacks

Interest Stacks

Queer Horror Anime

by Keizakomu

29 Entries · 61 Restacks

Short Anime Movies

by Gino99

50 Entries · 180 Restacks

anime archive: unique animation style✮

by shinlvrr

50 Entries · 160 Restacks

More recommendations

Recommendations

View All

More news

Recent News

More discussions

Recent Forum Discussion

DO NOT WATCH THIS !!! ( 1 2 3 ) Crochax - Sep 13, 2013	111 replies	by OtakuPothead »» Nov 6, 3:46 PM
Poll: Midori: Shoujo Tsubaki Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 ) MaxCrazy7 - Apr 27, 2011	79 replies	by Blarey »» Sep 13, 3:38 AM
Why is this not classed as a hentai? yoooowazzzup - Nov 29, 2023	9 replies	by Amberleh »» Jul 27, 5:12 PM
I got my hands on the lost CDROM of Midori haydenluvsanime - Mar 16, 2021	16 replies	by haydenluvsanime »» Oct 14, 2023 12:22 AM
Tell me I’m not alone literally_boba - Jul 20, 2021	33 replies	by That1AnimeGirI »» Mar 10, 2023 9:21 PM

Recent Featured Articles

Top 25 Dark Anime to Creep You Out

What makes a 'dark' anime? It's more than just monsters and scares. Check out the 25 Best Dark Anime for a glimpse into some of the industry's most twisted stories.

by Jadielkun

1,046,005 views

Spoiler

Recommendation Collection Despair Supernatural

5 Creepy Anime From Children's Tales

As if you haven't been spooked enough yet, here's 5 terrifying and creepy anime but were either based off children's stories, or were intended to be watched by children.

by kami_nomi

33,718 views

Recommendation Collection Horror

Chika Gentou Gekiga: Shoujo Tsubaki

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Resources

Synopsis

Background

Related Entries

Visit MALxJapan
MALxJapan -More than just anime-