I've been looking for something to help me through the hot 'n' humid summer months and what better way to beat the heat than to stay indoors watching questionable anime and playing questionable games based on said anime? For a rundown of this little project, check out the first episode.

The Property

Magical Hat is an anime that aired at the end of the 1980s about a boy named Hat, possibly magical, who is the descendant of a great hero that once sealed the devilish kingdom of Devildom (oh, I get it) with its evil king inside. However, Hat finds himself trapped in that very same country of monsters and must use his newly awakened magical powers to stay one step ahead of his enemies and protect his friends.

I'll get more into the specifics with the "Anime" section below, but suffice it to say this is a pretty kid-oriented show and something of a departure for this feature and its emphasis on the type of violent, prurient anime that would find itself localized by something like Manga Entertainment or AD Vision. I felt like something cute and uncomplicated after the macho tokusatsu shenanigans of last episode's Armored Police Metal Jack and I'm still not ready for more R-rated highschoolers like Devil Hunter Yohko quite yet. Best to keep things somewhat varied here on Game OVA, I figure. Anyway, I have a particular reason as to why I'm curious about this anodyne magical kid show that'll become clearer once we hit the "Game" segment of this entry.

The Cast

• Hat: The protagonist. A regular human kid granted the powers of the ancient hero Magical Hat through a familial connection. Ostensibly a hero himself, though as The Twilight Zone has taught us there's an inherent danger to giving godlike powers to a pre-pubescent boy ruled by his own arbitrary and cruel whims.
• Hotdog: The canine Prince of the Underworld. Despite the title, and the fact his dad King Aleph is a badass, he's a meek and cowardly sort though still quick to anger whenever he gets abused or mistaken for a dog. Usually the victim of bullying, especially by Kowaru.
• Jaku: The antagonist. A noble in the Underworld, he's the one most eager to take the fight back to the human race that sealed the monster kingdom so many years ago. His powers of deception make him a shrewd and dangerous foe.
• Kowaru: Jaku's son, a kitsune-like monster with a bratty personality but a similar amount of cunning as his father. Harasses Hat and his party every chance he gets.
• Doguu: Jaku and Kowaru's faithful servant, based on those Japanese doguu statues with the sleepy eyes. Can float and wield his paper-thin arms like whips. Ends most sentences with "doguu". Kinda reminds me of Zeruel from Evangelion.
• Grampa Tau: An elderly human that becomes acquainted with Hat and Hotdog after the Underworld launches its attack on the surface. Very knowledgeable and occasionally helpful, but also has an uncomfortable weird old man vibe.
• Spin: The show's heroine, introduced in the third episode. She's an independent, resourceful gal fond of sweets and unlicensed firearms that's taken it upon herself to rid her home, Rocky Island, of its sudden and deleterious fascination with gold.
• Robog: A tiny robot egg thing built by Grampa Tau, also introduced in the third episode. Is capable of transforming into any mechanical object. Ends most sentences with "nya", an affectation usually reserved for anime catgirls. Deeply troubling.

The Anime

The Magical Hat anime ran for thirty-three episodes between October 1989 and July 1990, which is roughly analogous to the timeframe for the first season of The Simpsons in case, I guess, you were curious what Japan was watching around the same time. It was created by Studio Pierrot, directed by Akira Shigino, and written by one Kenji Terada.

This is the second Studio Pierrot anime we've covered on Game OVA so far, the first being Episode 5's Eien no Filena/Eternal Filena and its six OVAs. They're another major force in the anime world, being the studio behind Naruto, Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul, YuYu Hakusho, and Great Teacher Onizuka (a show I love and will shamelessly reference at any opportunity). Founded in 1979, they were behind a lot of anime for younger audiences in the 1980s but eventually branched out to the more teen-focused fare above. For those outside the anime bubble, they might be best known for their work on The Legend of Korra, the successor to Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the '80s French co-production The Mysterious Cities of Gold (though honestly, both are pretty anime-adjacent). As far as their video game credentials are concerned, they made the Blue Dragon, Puzzle & Dragons, and Power Stone anime adaptations (real curious about the last of those) as well as directing the cutscenes for Keio Flying Squadron for Sega CD (coming to a Mega Archive CD real soon) and its Saturn sequel.

Akira Shigino is a long-time director at Pierrot and was working on the sextuplet slice-of-life comedy Osomatsu-kun (which is another property eligible for this feature, incidentally) around the same time as Magical Hat. His most recent work is the adorable kids' show Dino Girl Gauko, about a girl that turns into a dinosaur when she gets angry, which streamed on Netflix in 2019 and 2020. Kenji Terada, meanwhile, has become somewhat of a persona non grata on Giant Bomb of late. The scenario writer for the first three Final Fantasy games and the Sega CD RPG Dark Wizard (also coming to a Mega Archive CD real soon), he's additionally responsible for writing the story for—dun, dun, duuuun!—Kemco's Batman: Dark Tomorrow for GameCube and Xbox. If half of Magical Hat's runtime is just the hero cuffing bad guys, we'll know why. Unsurprisingly, he was also a busy anime writer before and after his video game dalliances, with projects including Genesis Climber MOSPEADA (one of the mecha shows that, along with Episode 4's Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, became the basis of the Americanized anime Robotech), surreal wrestling superhero parody Kinnikuman (a.k.a. Ultimate Muscle), and influential supernatural rom-com Kimagure Orange Road. (His involvement might've been another factor behind this choice of subject, given we're just days removed from the conclusion of The Dark Blight Club.)

Anyway, as with last episode's Armored Police Metal Jack, we're just going to take the first three episodes of the show as a case study. I gotta stop turning these things into gargantuan 5,000+ word affairs or no-one's gonna read them. (No-one's going to read this either, but at least I can kid myself that it's some SEO issue.)

Episode 1

So let's establish the story here, as revealed by the first episode. Hat is a regular human kid, dissatisfied with the boring status quo of his life. Due to a mishap, he falls down a giant hole connected to the "Underworld": a land filled with monsters. This land and its animal-people were sealed many centuries ago by a human hero, and yet despite their predicament not all the population living down there are hostile towards mankind and are simply looking to live in peace. In fact, Hat quickly befriends the floppy-eared, canine-like crybaby prince of the monster kingdom's royal family, though he's also targeted by malign elements looking to galvanize the kingdom into declaring war on the world of humans as revenge for their imprisonment. Now, it's been a hot minute since I played any Undertale, but I was watching most of this first episode with the weirdest feeling of déja vu. Toby Fox has always been transparent that he drew the ideas for Undertale from a great many sources, from EarthBound to Moon: Remix RPG Adventure to Live a Live to Falcom's Brandish, so this being a deliberate pull is entirely possible. I kinda want someone to ask him about it, but how do you fit that into a conversation without it sounding like an accusation?

The first episode has plenty of action in addition to all its exposition dropping. Hat falls into the Underworld and immediately makes an enemy of the show's antagonist, Jaku. Jaku's in a rivalry with the established monarch, King Aleph, and has kidnapped Aleph's son Prince Hotdog to coerce the king into opening the barrier between the Underworld and the human world during an eclipse, an opportunity that comes along once every 63,000 years. Hat and Hotdog end up sharing the same cell and a burgeoning friendship is born between the two, even if Hotdog is something of a wiener (so to speak). We're also introduced to Kowaru, Jaku's fox-like "Bowser Junior"-ass son and main henchperson, and Jaku's floating servant Doguu. Towards the end of the episode, Jaku's plan to break the barrier goes off without a hitch despite Aleph's interference and the overworld island with the Underworld gateway is transformed by the dissolution of the barrier magic. Hat, Hotdog, and the elderly human "Grampa" Tau (his original Japanese name is "Tau jii-san", which can also just mean "Old Man Tau") escape Kowaru and Doguu, who are riding around on giant biomechanical Petamo Beasts (these names all come from the fan translation by the way, so I've no idea how accurate they are), until they find themselves at a temple dedicated to the human hero that originally sealed the monsters, Magical Hat. The spirit of Magical Hat grants Regular Hat his powers due to the latter being the former's distant descendant, and Hat's able to fight off the two villains and rescue Hotdog in his powerful new body. The episode ends with many questions left for the series to answer: Who is this shady Grampa Tau figure and where did he come from? What will Jaku do in response to learning about Magical Hat's revival? What happened to Hat's parents, last seen when their helicopter was disintegrated when the barrier collapsed? Where did Aleph vanish off to? And will Hotdog ever grow a pair?

For a show that I figured was a side-project of Studio Pierrot, the sequence where the island is transforming due to the collapsed barrier had a lot going on visually between the moving earth and random magical lasers firing off everywhere, making for quite a spectacle. I'm slowly acclimating to the character designs in this show—there's a lot of kooky cast members already, and Jaku in particular has some monstrous Jabba the Hutt vibes with his enormous tongue and weird teeth—so it doesn't much resemble the cartoons we had over in the west during the 1980s, which (in case you weren't around to witness it firsthand) were mostly half-assed trash. Or, to put it more kindly, the level of animation you'd expect from studios with tiny budgets and too short deadlines that was hoping to recoup most of its expenses through toy sales.

Episode 2

We start with Kowaru and Doguu reporting in to Jaku, who advises the two of them to steal Magical Hat's magical hat, as he'll be powerless without it. OK, so my two main issues with this is that I thought Magical Hat is so-called because his name is Hat and he happens to be magical, not because he has a magical hat. The second is that it's not a hat but a turban, which is an entirely different taxonomy of headwear. However, we're still early days with this anime so I'm prepared to admit any errors on my part. Hat, meanwhile, has humbly taken on the mantle (or hat) of the incredible powers of his forebear and uses it to... basically fuck around? First it's psychically making hats float around like he was staging a live re-enactment of Hatris (makers of that Taron Egerton Tetris biopic take note) and then it's almost squishing Hotdog under an enormous crown, which is some unexpected symbolism on the crushing responsibility of his role as a future monarch. He then fills Grampa Tau's house with popcorn after the old man is bewitched by the promise of a shady hair-growth tonic in the supplements of his newspaper. I realize that was a whole lot of sentences about basically nothing, but I'm concerned this show is beginning to settle into being a madcap cartoon made for the terminally attention-deficit rather than focusing too much on story arcs going forward.

Fortunately, the story picks up again. Grampa Tau is captured by Kowaru and Doguu and so are Hat and Hotdog after they come looking for him. Hat's forced to contend with another Petamo Beast, the crablike King Lob (I guess King Crab was taken), as well as the returning ape-like G-Konger. Using his magic, he switches G-Konger's allegiance and the two Beasts fight it out while Hat and Hotdog make a run for it. However, after meeting up with Tau, the villains' plan is revealed: they're using the vast underground wind tunnel network which has always been there to blow Magical Hat's magical hat (and it is magical, my mistake) off and render him powerless. The villain duo steal the hat and stick it in the most heavy metal kitchen appliance I've ever seen to destroy it completely, stopping the threat of Magical Hat forever. Except, actually, Grampa Tau had made a fake magical hat in his spare time and switched it while the group was being tossed around everywhere by the wind. Now, before anyone calls foul on this "deus ex milliner" development, Grampa Tau's house (which has a big hat on it) was absolutely full of hats—they were the ones being messed around with by Hat earlier—so I appreciate the groundwork in establishing the old man as someone with a keen interest in hats. Jaku, to his credit, recognizes the real magical hat wouldn't be that easily destroyed, even if the instrument of destruction was as cool as it was.

Pissed off, Kowaru sends an enormous Doguu mecha called Gigantor to stomp on Grampa Tau's stupid hat house and the episode's big final battle begins. While trying to stomp Hotdog, Hat casts a spell to make Hotdog similarly huge so he can fight Gigantor on even ground, but of course he immediately bails due to cowardice. Hat can't shrink Gigantor until he's removed the previous enchantment, a limitation I'm sure won't come up again, which means he's screwed when Gigantor picks him up and throws him away after Kowaru steals his hat. Hat lands near where Hotdog is cowering and the two come up with an incredible idea: Hat will use the water pump hidden inside Hotdog's backpack (what is this, Super Mario Sunshine?) to wash the Doguu statue—since it's made of dry earth, it'll quickly melt into mud after being splashed. (Wait, what was the bad guys' plan if it started raining?) The episode ends on a comical note with Hat leaving Hotdog's gigantism intact to stop him from being able to sleep inside the house as punishment for his desertion. Wait, did I say these two were friends?

Episode 3

The third episode starts with Grampa Tau getting a message in a bottle from his associate, the flatulent Ken-chan the Mystic (I wonder if he has any relation to this Ken-chan?). Someone's turning people into gold over on Rocky Island, to the west of the central Usom Island that our heroes occupy, so Hat and Hotdog decide to set sail and solve the problem. They crash the boat after turning it into a plane because Hat was too impatient with how long the sailing was taking and the duo find gold scattered across the beach; the island itself in the process of turning to gold, and given the kid logic governing this show I suspect that means it'll start to sink underwater before too long. Hat has completely stopped giving a shit about Ken-chan or Rocky Island's problem because he's too busy collecting all the gold, but soon runs afoul of a pitfall dug by a new character: Spin, a fiery heroine with pigtails and a big ol' shotty she points at Hat and Hotdog. She demands some answers, so Hat being the gentleman that he is first transforms her shotgun into a daikon radish and makes her cry by yelling in her face. She's not that much of a pushover though, and goes on to explain her sad background: her sister was a normal, loving sibling until she discovered the local Jizo statues had turned to gold, tempting her to sell them off to a businessman and then join an all-joshi wrestling federation to win the gold championship belt. Very relatable backstory. Anyway, she's eager to find the source of all this gold transformation nonsense affecting her island and agrees to help the duo.

On their way to Ken-chan's place, the group is accosted by more Petamo Beasts and—wouldn't you know it?—Kowaru shows up to steal Hat's hat again. His magical one, that is. Things get a little complicated (and a lot gross) when foxboy falls in love at first sight with Spin. After getting his hat back while Kowaru is distracted trying to bust a move to impress the first named female character on the show, Hat takes out the enemy Petamo Beasts and the villains are defeated once again. However, an earthquake strikes and Doguu lets slip the mastermind's identity: the island's Underworld boss, Gold Baboon. Kowaru and Doguu meet with Gold Baboon soon after, explaining their presence there is only to chase after Magical Hat, and Gold Baboon decides to help them out by lending them his (clean) underwear. Seeking reinforcements themselves, Hat, Hotdog, and Spin contact Grampa Tau and he agrees to send over his trump card: the Ultimate Deadly Assistant-Machine, Robog. Robog proves to be less than impressive when he arrives—the dude looks like my man Dizzy the Egg, except he's about a foot tall and says "nya" like a cat for some reason—but he's determined to prove his power by using his incredible ability of transforming into a teapot. Hat, ever the diplomat, decides he's immediately done with this tiny egg bullshit and tries to abandon it. This is the point where Kowaru and Doguu show up, wielding Gold Baboon's underpants that can turn anything contained within to solid gold—which raises a lot of questions that I'm pretty sure I don't want the answers to—to extort the magical hat. Hat's quick thinking has him ask Robog to turn into a fan to deflect the pants's golden wind and then uses his own magic to transform the cliff the bad guys are standing on into a SpaceX rocket, causing Kowaru and Doguu to be defeated by a rapid unplanned disassembly. The episode ends by promising more adventures on Rocky Island as it fades to credits, but I think we've seen enough.

I'm glad the third episode was able to finish introducing all the main characters we see during the intro—Hat, Hotdog, Spin, Robog, and Grampa Tau—so it feels like we've had enough of a vertical slice of this show's mayhem in action. It's very much a kids' show of the era, never really slowing down on the action or humor to prevent their younger audience from losing interest. For a protagonist, Hat is a magnificently peevish asshole more prone to abusing his powers than using them to help his friends, and the rest of the heroes seem just as petty. Honestly, there were some major Dragon Ball (the original, not Z) vibes from the ensemble: overpowered idiot kid hero, a mostly useless short comic relief guy, a helpful but frequently sus old man, and a feisty girl with a knack for gadgets (I dunno who Robog fills in for; maybe Chiaotzu since he's small, white, cute, and I could see him self-destructing eventually). Definitely not objectionable as Saturday morning cartoon fare goes, and I did find a few of the lines amusing—kudos to the localization I was using for getting the jokes across. Oh, and before I forget, here's the earwormy opening.

The Game(s)

Magical Hat no Buttobi Turbo! Daibouken ("The Great, Surprising, Turbo Adventure of Magical Hat" is how I'm going to take a swing at that) is a 1990 Sega Mega Drive game and the only video game adaptation for Magical Hat, at least as far as I'm aware. It's a platformer published by Sega and developed by Vic Tokai, a major telecommunications company in Japan that also dabbled in game development during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras and a little while beyond. Their other games include Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode, Clash at Demonhead, and The Krion Conquest for NES, the Shinseiki Odysselya RPGs for SNES, and... uh, the Playboy Karaoke Collection Volumes 1 and 2 for Saturn (what?).

We're technically only covering one game this time but, as you'll soon see, it's actually two. Kinda.

All right, we've danced around the spooky elephant in the room long enough. Magical Hat no Buttobi Turbo! Daibouken did eventually see a localization for the American Sega Genesis and European Sega Mega Drive but it's undergone a few cosmetic changes, to put it mildly...

Does it do right by the anime? Well, maybe more so in its original form, but there's still a lot missing from the show. For one, the Petamo Beasts were treated like Pokémon that Hat could capture and use against his enemies, but I got as far as the first boss and didn't see an option to use one. Magical Hat also doesn't use magic at all, nor is his hat a Mario style power-up, so I wonder if Vic Tokai did any research at all before producing some Alex Kidd/Bonk the Cavebaby knockoff that vaguely corresponded to the show's look. Not to say it was too half-assed either; they clearly had confidence in this game if they selected it for a global release and put this much work into altering its look. There are certainly worse platformers on Genesis, and even among the good ones few can match Decap Attack's personality and volume of quirky ideas.

That's going to do it for this episode of Game OVA. Hopefully this was an intriguing look into the secret origins of a Sega game that continues to see rereleases on modern platforms and the esoteric magical superhero kids' show that was its indirect progenitor. I'd like to do more of these on Game OVA in the future; specifically, games based on anime that were scrubbed of its unworkable licensed material and underwent massive visual changes for their international releases. For our next adventure, though, I'm planning to get back into anime for older kids with something martial arts-themed (no, it's not Ranma ½). Hope to see you there, ready to wax on and wax off as I wax poetic about another ancient anime everyone's consigned to the collective memory hole. Hat's all, folks!