In 1997, children started reading the book series Captain Underpants, but 15 years later Japan decided to one up us in the children’s book department with Oshiri Tantei, also known as Butt Detective.
Butt Detective isn’t just a Japanese best selling book series at more than 1.7 million books sold, but also a series of web animations, music videos and now a short anime series, though currently exclusive to japan. Butt Detective had its Japanese premiere and completion happen over the weekend as it started on May 3rd through May 5th on Japanese television channel NHK.
Butt Detective is a series of books featuring the titular detective, a man with a literal butt for a face, as he solves mysteries in a world filled with anthropomorphic animal citizens and battles bathroom themed villains such as a thief with a poop mask and toilet paper whip with his own fart breath spray.
There are questions here I need answers to in one language or another like, is his actual butt replaced with a face, does everything he eat and drinks just taste like poo, and is his condition unique or is there a race of butt faced humans in this world?
While there is no word about bringing the series stateside in either a subtitled or dubbed format, we can only hope it will make it over at some point. Hopefully it’ll be as funny as this fan dubbing.