The psychiatrist Irabu series is a series of short stories by Japanese writer Hideo Okuda which feature the fictional psychiatrist Dr. Ichirō Irabu. The stories were originally published primarily in the literary magazineAll Yomimono from August 2000 to January 2006 and later collected in three tankōbon: In the Pool, and. Of these, Kūchū Buranko is particularly acclaimed, having won Okuda the 131st Naoki Prize. However, as of January 2011, only In the Pool has been published in English, though the other collections have been published in other languages, including German and French. Works in other media based on the stories include a [|feature film], [|television drama], [|stage play] and [|animated television series].
Premise
Ichiro Irabu is a psychiatrist of the Irabu General Hospital. He is fat and pale skinned, with a fetish for administering injections to patients. An unreasonable and rather immature person, in the story "Kūchū Buranko" he normally ignores Yamashita's plights while challenging him to mid-air trapeze flying due to his self-proclaimed "light-weightedness." During his student days, he frequently misunderstood his lectures. Treated as a general nuisance at the School of Medicine, he entered pediatrics soon after graduation. However, due to claims of his tantrums and quarrels with child patients, he switched to psychiatry instead. Doubts remain about his actual grades.
Stories and characters
''Kūchū Buranko''
; ; ; Gifu no Zura ;
Adaptations
Film
In the Pool is a 2005 feature film directed by Satoshi Miki, based on three of the stories by Hideo Okuda collected in the book of the same name, which stars Suzuki Matsuo as Irabu, Joe Odagiri as Tetsuya Taguchi and Seiichi Tanabe as Kazuo Ōmori. It was released in cinemas in Japan on May 14, 2005.
Television drama
Kūchū Buranko is a 2005 one-off television drama based primarily on the story of the same name by Hideo Okuda, which stars Hiroshi Abe as Irabu. It was produced by Fuji Television and broadcast by them on May 27, 2005. ; Cast
Kūchū Buranko is a 2008 play by Yutaka Kuramochi based on the story of the same name by Hideo Okuda. The original production by theatre company Atelier Duncan was directed by Masahiko Kawahara and ran for 21 performances from April 20 to May 5, 2008 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, then toured for the remainder of the month starting in Kōchi, Kōchi on the 8th and ending in Kamisu, Ibaraki on the 29th. The original cast included Hiroyuki Miyasako as Dr. Irabu, Eriko Satō as Mayumi, Kenji Sakamoto as Kōhei Yamashita, Yumiko Takahashi and Takashika Kobayashi, with supporting roles performed by, among others, the male idolsTakashi Nagayama as Haruki, Ryūji Kamiyama and Ire Shiozaki and members of the G-Rockets acrotroupe. It was produced with Dentsu and sponsored by Dentsu and TV Asahi. A video recording was made, which premiered on July 11, 2008 on the television station WOWOW and has since been rebroadcast several times and released on DVD-Video on October 24, 2008.
Anime
Welcome to Irabu's Office is a 2009 Japanese animatedtelevision series of 11 episodes based on the psychiatrist Irabu stories by Hideo Okuda, produced at Toei Animation under the series direction of Kenji Nakamura for Fuji Television's noitaminaprogramming block. Though ostensibly an animated series, its visuals are more specifically a mélange of traditional animation with rotoscoped or otherwise processed live-action video and other imagery. Manabu Ishikawa's series composition adapts the stories to be set in Tokyo during about one week from December 17 to Christmas and for the chief characters of each story to appear also as supporting players in each other's. The plot of each episode follows a common thread. Irabu is consulted by a patient suffering from a psychological problem or a problem where other medical approaches have been exhausted. Each of the patients' heads are morphed into an animal head in some scenes after Mayumi administers the vitamin shot to them. Each patient somehow ties into one another, for example the first patient meets with the second patient and the seventh patient, all in the first episode. The series won the Pulcinella award for Best Television Series in the "Young Adults" division at the 2010 Cartoons on the Bay international animation festival in the province of Genoa, Italy, the Gary Goldman-presided jury of that year commending it as a "unique representation of the complex inner world of adolescents.". Noted animation blogger Benjamin Ettinger found it to be lacking in interest in the animation itself and the extreme eclecticism of the visual design no substitute for the finely crafted world of Nakamura and character designer and chief animation director Takashi Hashimoto's earlier Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales and Mononoke but still highly enjoyable thanks to the excellence on the part of Nakamura and the episode directors with which the material has been handled and highlighted the incorporation of real-life gravure idolYumi Sugimoto as Mayumi as a welcome subversion of moe. ; Staff
