A mind-meltingly bizarre yet awesome cartoon explains the nuclear threat currently hanging over Japan to children in uniquely effective terms they’re certain to grasp: farts, poo and room-clearing stinkola.
Meet Nuclear Boy. Nuclear Boy has an upset tummy. It’s giving him huge farts and that’s pretty bad, but things won’t get really stinky unless Nuclear Boy poops his pants. Nuclear Boy’s poo smells really bad! So now the doctors are giving him plenty of medicine to help cool him down and make his tummy feel better, because if he poops in his pants it’ll be a real mess. After all, everyone still remembers when Chernobyl Boy pooped in his pants right in the classroom, and it was diarrhea, and it went all over the place!
So it goes in the Nuclear Boy animated short, an effort to explain the looming threat posed by Japan’s battered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. According to Boston.com it came about in three steps: the Nuclear Boy character was created by Japanese artist Hachiya Kazuhiko, who posted it on Twitter where it was picked up by a follower and turned into a cartoon strip. An anonymous animator then took it a step further, turning the strip into this animated short film.
Despite the poopified narrative, the film is surprisingly informative, touching on how the “doctors” are using sea water and boron to make Nuclear Boy feel better and explaining that they have to take turns taking care of him to make sure they don’t get sick themselves. It even talks about what could happen if Nuclear Boy does poop, albeit in a very vague, “people will have to move” way.
The situation in Japan is awful and has the potential to become unimaginably worse, so it’s with a certain degree of hesitation that I admit that I laughed my ass off at the sight of Chernobyl Boy running around clutching at his ass, desperately trying to avoid crapping his pants. Hey, don’t judge until you’ve seen it, it’s funny stuff.
Oh Japan. I will never understand you. But I pray for you.
