''Ape Escape'', known in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

as , is a series of computer-generated

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

shorts produced by Shogakukan Music & Digital Entertainment and

Sony Computer Entertainment Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), formerly known as Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), is a multinational video game and digital entertainment company wholly owned by multinational conglomerate Sony. The SIE Group is made up of two legal co ...

for

TV Tokyo JOTX-DTV (channel 7), branded as and known colloquially as , is a television station headquartered in the Sumitomo Fudosan Roppongi Grand Tower in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo, Japan, owned and operated by the subsidiary of listed certified b ...

in 2002. It is based on the ''

Ape Escape ''Ape Escape'' is a series of video games developed primarily by Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, starting with ''Ape Escape'' for PlayStation in 1999. The series incorporates ape-related humour, unique gameplay, and a w ...

'' video game series, with the characters and designs based on ''

Ape Escape 2 ''Ape Escape 2'' is a platform video game developed and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It is the second game in the ''Ape Escape'' series, and is also used as the basis for the animated series ...

'' in particular. The series consists of 76 45-second shorts that aired as part of the ''

Oha Suta ''Oha Suta'' () is a Japanese children's breakfast television show. Produced by Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions (ShoPro) for TV Tokyo, the show airs on TV Tokyo & TX Network. It premiered in 1997 as a relaunch of (. ''Sutajio'' is a loanword f ...

'' variety program in Japan. In 2004, three of these shorts were dubbed into English and aired in the inaugural

Nicktoons Film Festival The Nicktoons Film Festival (also known as the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival) was an annual event that was created by producer Fred Seibert and produced for its first three years by his Frederator Studios. The festival featured a select ...

. One of the festival's founders,

Frederator Studios Frederator Studios is an American animation television production studio which is a division of Frederator Networks, Inc. It was founded by Fred Seibert in 1997 with its first series launching in 1998. (Seibert resigned from Frederator in Augus ...

, would later produce their own series of ''

'' shorts in 2009. A 22-minute movie based on the series, entitled , was released on August 17, 2002, in Japan. The film was attached to '' Beyblade: Fierce Battle'' and produced with assistance by

Polygon Pictures is a Japanese 3DCG animation studio. Polygon has animated a wide variety of content, from commercials for Shiseido featuring the studio's original penguin characters , to the 3D CG anime television series ''Digital Tokoro-san'' and the 3DCG ani ...

. Sony Computer Entertainment released a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

featuring the entire series of shorts, as well as the movie on December 19, 2002, in Japan. The DVD came with a "Yappari Saru Get Chu" dance instruction video, and an exclusive Afrosaru trading card.

References

External links

Shogakukan Production Page (Japanese)

Movie Trailer (Youtube)
2002 anime television series debuts Ape Escape Japanese children's animated action television series Japanese children's animated adventure television series Japanese children's animated comedy television series Anime television series based on video games Japanese animated films Works based on Sony Interactive Entertainment video games {{anime-tv-series-stub