So…today I learned that this exists thanks to this tweet by Japan Society Film that randomly appeared in my feed out of nowhere. I was already intrigued by the movie it talked about, Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story, both because its premise sounds like a mashup of both ET and Jurassic Park (Both movies even came out that same year!) and because the movie got pulled from theaters because Haruki Kadokawa, the then president of Kadokawa and the creator of the media mix concept, was arrested due to a drug scandal. If that doesn’t tell you how super strict Japan is about drugs, I don’t know what will. But I became even more morbidly fascinated when I found out apparently the movie was a VERY loose adaptation of a manga that CLAMP did the art for! CLAMP didn’t write the story, as that was written by some zoologist named Masanori Hata. Now, I’m not entirely sure if the manga is considered the original source or the movie is, or if the manga is just supposed to be a promotional tie-in for the movie. I couldn’t find anything concrete on that. But I was able to find that someone fan translated the manga for Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story into English. I found it, read it, and here I am! My verdict: It’s a cute little manga about a girl being friends with a baby dinosaur, but don’t expect anything more out of it than that, as it’s silly, cliche, and cheesy as all hell.
Chie Tateno is a 10-year-old girl living in Tokachi, Hokkaido, with her paleontologist father Akira. She’s feeling lonely because hasn’t seen her mother in years and doesn’t know what she looks like. Her mother divorced her father to pursue a career at MIT, but they’re still cordial with one another even after the split. One day, while exploring a cave deep in the forest, Chie, her father, and father’s assistant come across dinosaur eggs that haven’t fossilized. They take the eggs back to the facility, and after some close calls, one of the eggs hatches into a baby tyrannosaurus rex…that immediately latches onto Chie and views it as her mother. Chie is delighted by the thought of raising a baby dinosaur, naming him Rex, and resolves to be the best mother she can be for him. Unfortunately for her, a researcher named Tsuchiya intends on taking Rex to a university where the baby would be studied…and starts discussing dissecting him. Chie, overhearing the conversation, takes Rex and runs away, hoping to save the dinosaur.
If that summary sounds like every single “kid makes friends with alien/animal and is pursued by an evil guy who wants to do bad things to it” plot out there, complete with all its well known tropes and cliches, you’d be right on the money. Lonely kid with divorced parents who wants friends? Check. Kid is having trouble in school? Check. Kid makes friends with a mysterious/magical creature and becomes its sort of parent? Check. Antagonist who wants to take the animal away from the kid? Check. Kid tries to run from the antagonist and protect the animal, complete with a long, elaborate chase scene? Check. Kid eventually has to be separated from animal in the end and move on with their life? Checkity check check! I swear, you might as well slap a John Williams soundtrack on this to make the whole picture complete! Oh wait, the movie already did that (The movie’s music was done by a guy named Tomoyuki Asakawa, but it’s so John Williams-esque you might as well think the real thing made it!). This manga is pretty much just ET but with a female lead character, dinosaurs, and drawn by CLAMP, complete with all the overwrought sentimentality and cheesiness that you’ll find in pretty much every story that plays this premise completely straight. Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story does absolutely nothing to change or reinvent this formula for better or worse. You’ll either love it for its commitment to its premise and lack of interest in being anything except what it is, flaws and all, or you’ll hate it for those same reasons.
Though in fairness, from the research I’ve done, other than the base premise and the characters, the manga and movie approach them very differently, making them almost separate entities. In the manga, Akira’s ex-wife Naomi went to MIT, whereas in the movie she moved to New York. In the manga, Akira doesn’t hold the fact that Naomi chose her career over her daughter against her, whereas the movie makes him much more critical of her. In the movie, Rex’s existence turns him into a national media sensation, but his existence is still mostly kept secret in the manga. In the manga, Rex hatches because of Chie holding his egg, and Chie only knows he’s alive because she can…magically hear his heartbeat for some reason. In the movie, Chie plays an ocarina next to Rex’s egg, which makes him hatch, and there’s absolutely no sign of an ocarina anywhere in the manga. The movie shows Rex getting bigger and has the story take place over a long period of time, whereas the manga doesn’t depict Rex growing and has everything happen within a matter of days, what with it only being 6 chapters long, which is why its pacing is rather brisk. Even the big, elaborate chase scene is depicted differently in both versions. I’m gonna stop there because if I explained every single difference between both the movie and manga, we’d be here all day. Again, I don’t know if this manga version is meant to be the original source material or just a tie-in product to promote the movie, but it is interesting to see just how different they are in how they approach this silly premise.
I do think the characters are rather one-note though, and now that I’ve actually watched the movie, I learned that the movie gave them more characterization than the manga did. In the movie, Chie is a nice yet lonely and snarky kid who isn’t afraid to remind her mother of the fact that she abandoned her. In the manga she’s more of a stereotypically prim and proper lady who comes off as a bit too idealistic and patient. Daisuke, one of Akira’s assistants, is depicted as a bumbling yet friendly guy in the manga, but in the movie is apparently the main antagonist. Naomi’s characterization remains the same. Because of the manga’s short length and brisk pacing, a lot happens in a short amount of time, but the characters don’t really evolve beyond their base archetype. This also results in Chie’s supposed bond with Rex not feeling as genuine as it is in the movie, because the movie actually shows Chie spending time with Rex, teaching him things, and making an effort to raise him, so there, you actually get a sense that they’ve developed some sort of bond. There is one character that I feel is rather superfluous in both the movie and the manga: Kenta, a boy from Chie’s school. He’s mostly just there to be a convenient plot device to help Chie escape from the people trying to kidnap Rex, though both adaptations’ versions of how they show him doing this are really silly: In the movie, he recruits a church choir to throw snowballs at the government agents, but in the manga, he…whistles for a stampede of cows and has them trample everyone. I admit, I couldn’t help but laugh at this whole bit.
But what does the manga offer that’s actually good? Well, CLAMP’s art is still as gorgeous as ever. What else is there to say about CLAMP that hasn’t been said already? Their interpretation of this story was done using what I like to call their RG Veda style, with their characters having thick eyelashes, billowy hair, thick outlines around the bodies, and faded linework for most of the backgrounds. This was before they evolved into their more streamlined style a la Wish and Cardcaptor Sakura, and before their exaggeratedly long-legged Tsubasa Chronicles and XXXHolic period. Though I think the quality of the scans I found wasn’t very good, which is why a lot of the lines look faded and the backgrounds look smeared. Still, their flair for distinctive character designs still shines through even in this early period in their career. Plus, they did a great job at making Rex look absolutely adorable, even if he does look like a Charmander prototype. I will say, if you want to read this in English, there is a fan translation out there, but its mediocre quality at best. Some Japanese words are completely untranslated, there’s poor grammar and poorly constructed sentences abound, and some characters’ names randomly change between chapters. I doubt this will ever get officially licensed, even with the CLAMP prestige behind it.
Whether you’re watching the movie or reading the manga, Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story is a silly, cheesy, wild romp of a ride, and could make for a good introductory manga for any kids wanting to get into anime or manga for the first time. It’s basically just ET but with dinosaurs, what more could you want? Like I said, you’ll probably enjoy it more if you don’t expect it to be anything but a cute, wholesome, family-friendly story about a kid and her pet dinosaur.
