Ebichu the Wonder Hamster: Notes

Video: Ebichu Minds the House
Audio: Harvey the Wonder Hamster ("Weird Al" Yankovic)
Awards: Anime Central 2001 - Best Concept
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The year 2000 saw the execution of The Harvey Project, where 8 creators were to make videos to Weird Al's "Harvey the Wonder Hamster", to see how different people would tackle the same (short) song. The results (five videos) were shown at the AMV panel at Otakon 2000.

I wasn't invited to participate (snub! heheh kidding...), but joked with Terry after Otakon that I'd do a Harvey video with a tentacle monster. I ended up doing almost the next best thing...

I had recently heard of a couple of hamster-related anime shows. Hamtaro (which was not out yet) and "Ebichu". Hamtaro is a kid's show, and I didn't expect to find it fansubbed. I saw that #AnimeMPEG on DALNet had subbed Ebichu 1-2, so I grabbed that. Some editing and some removed subtitles later, and another Harvey was born! It turns out, however, that Ebichu is an adults-only show (hence the "AO" tag I put on the title screen), but I only used PG-rated clips. I'd link to Gainax's Ebichu page, but there are naughty pictures on it. It's easy to find.

To my knowledge, this is the first Harvey video to use an actual hamster. Curse my literal mind!