Way back when, it must have been at some point in the summer, Naoko Takeuchi mentioned at Sailor Moon Channel that she and her husband were working on a picture book for kids.

The book came out last October and I finally ordered it off Amazon JP, having failed to find it in bookstores.

The book is titled, "Ooboomee and Chiboomee," which translated to "Big Boomee and Little Boomee," with boomee being pronounced "bow meh." The book was illustrated by Takeuchi's husband, manga artist Yoshihiro Togashi, while the text and design were prepared by her.

I don't have a scanner here so you'll have to make do with shots from my digital camera:

Cover + Size indication

The book is clearly for children and while there are some children's books I'd call classic, like one this reminds me of "Big dog... Little dog," Takeuchi is unfortunately no Dr. Seuss. (Or P.D. Eastman, as the case may be.)

The brief story involves two creatures called Big Boomee and Little Boomee who are somewhat phallic shaped and seem to have little wings near their feet. These creatures are blob-like, and at one point stretch to go through a hole. The relationship between Big Boomee and Little Boomee is fairly ambiguous, you can't really tell if they're parent/child, siblings, or just friends. But they have a mischievous counterpart in "Black Boomee" who, when Big and Little are having fun, likes to rain on their parade.

Images reminiscent of Totoro color the inside cover

Big Boomee and Little Boomee decide to go out to the forest and play, and the bulk of the story is a few short scenes where they have miniature crises; for example, as soon as they get to the forest, Little has to go to the bathroom. I don't know whether Takeuchi was trying to be realistic or what but the story includes brilliant text along the lines of, "If you've got to pee, do it over there like you always do" and "No, I've gotta do the big one."

So they get to the bathroom and Black Boomee, who watches them creepily from under the shade of a tree, locks the bathroom door using his "weird dance." There's this lovely image of Little Boome, with what I can only assume is literally crap weighing him down, trying to get in.

Those ain't pockets full of coins

After a rainstorm, which Black Boome starts to mess up their fun, they see a rainbow, and Black Boomee ends up staring at it for a long time. In the end, Big and Little go back home and draw a massive picture of a rainbow, and Black Boomee does too, and I don't know if there was supposed to be a lesson but there you go.

The book is fairly short, the storyline's not really interesting, so I'd not recommend getting this unless you're a hardcore Takeuchi collector or your 4 year old kids can read Japanese.

If you're considering ordering the book to practice Japanese, I'd advise against it. While the book is in all hiragana, it actually makes it quite confusing, as you can have trouble figuring out where some words begin and end. In addition, there's considerable use of colloquialisms, particularly those of children, which isn't something you want to learn.

So there's the book in a nutshell. Those who are actually interested can get the book off Amazon JP.

In unrelated news, as I was walking yesterday I passed by TV Asahi's studios, and inside I saw a lot of people so I walked in and there was some ranger show or another doing a photo shoot:

Here's a quick video I took for those interested.