A Very O2 Christmas

Christmas in Japan has never been a huge deal, but it’s getting bigger every year. My very brief internet girlfriendo Ayaki-chan said that Christmas Day there is more of a thing for couples, where they give each other gifts and go out for romantic dinners. I think that may be a large part of the reason she cyber-dumped me on Christmas Eve for the number #6 ranked gamer in the whole region. That Christmas wasn’t very fun…

Anyway, now that Dinki-Dai-Animation exists, here in Melbourne no less, the Christmas specials are rolling in. Pretty Car Dealer Sailor Hoon just had a special episode where she had to choose between delivering presents or a major street race (she did both simultaneously), Cute Guardian Aluminium Knight! had an hour-long special with the kingdom under attack from the Steel Reindeer Brigade, and now Gasp, Oxygen King is about to air theirs. This one started off slow, but the tacit depiction of a future in which hyperbaric medicine in Melbourne is of utmost importance really drew me in with the characters and the world-building. You’ve obviously heard of it, but for the few uninitiated: that’s the one where a mysterious alien commandeered the moon to use as a spaceship in his intergalactic war, and in the process stole most of Earth’s oxygen to power his new spaceship’s weapons, so everyone on Earth now needs high-tech oxygen therapy daily. A great deal of the series is taken up with the day-to-day maintenance as the main engineer brigade fixes oxygen chambers, brings portable oxygen chambers to people in remote areas and generally researches ways to mine the remaining chunks of the moon for extra oxygen.

I sure have learned a lot about oxygen therapy, what goes into creating a sealed chamber for breathing purposes, and what to do if an angry alien race attacks your planet because your moon has been registered as a hostile vessel in an intergalactic conflict.

Though I’m really looking forward to the Christmas special of Yard Raptor Baklava, where the raptor has to make an entirely Christmas-themed baklava dinner for his judgemental relatives.

-Dylan