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Higepiyo 4-Panel Manga from Ebichu Creator Gets Anime (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
The official website of Shueisha's Chorus magazine has announced that Risa Itou's Higepiyo four-panel "next-generation animal" gag manga will get an anime. The manga ran in Chorus magazine from 2004 to 2006, and one volume has been compiled. Higepiyo (literally "Mustache-Peep") revolves around Hiyoko, a "surreal" bird that happens to have a mustache. Hiyoko can talk with "Piroshi" — Hiroshi, the human boy who won her in a fair — and the two are tight friends. In fact, Hiyoko teaches Hiroshi how to win brawls in elementary school, and she sometimes fights a bullying girl on Hiroshi's behalf. (Hiyoko is actually an experimental test subject that escaped from a laboratory.)
More information about the anime will be provided in the April issue (on sale on February 28) and later issues of Chorus. Director Makoto Moriwaki, project planner Hideaki Anno, and the Gainax anime studio animated Itou's risque Oruchuban Ebichu manga for television in 1999, with Kotono Mitsuishi playing the lead hamster role. Itou won both a Kodansha Manga Award in the Shōjo Manga category for her Hey Pitan! manga and a Osamu Tezuka Cultural Award for her One Woman, Two Cats, Hey Pitan!, and A Woman's Window manga.
Source: Saishin Anime Jōhō
Update: A preview of the manga's compiled volume is available from Shueisha's website.
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