Pinocchio

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This article is about the fictional character. For other uses, see Pinocchio (disambiguation).

Original art by Enrico Mazzanti

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Pinocchio is a fictional character that first appeared in 1883, in The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, and has since appeared in many adaptations of that story and others. Carved from a piece of pine by a woodcarver named Geppetto in a small Italian village, he was created as a wooden puppet, but dreamt of becoming a real boy. The name "Pinocchio" is derived from the Italian words pino (pine tree), and occhio (eye), i.e. pine-eye. In the Tuscan dialect, pinocchio is the term used to refer to the pine nut.

[edit] Appearances in popular culture

The 1940 Disney animated movie Pinocchio is based on the book "Pinocchio: Tale of a Puppet" by Carlo Collodi.

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Japanese manga Artist Osamu Tezuka was inspired by this story when he created the popular icon Astroboy. In addition, the story of Pinocchio was made into an anime television series by Tatsunoko Productions in 1972 as Kashi no Ki Mokku (Mokku the Oak Tree), and again by Nippon Animation in 1976 as The Adventures of Piccolino (Pinocchio was renamed "Piccolino" in this version). Tatsunoko's series was shown on HBO in the United States in 1992 as Saban's Adventures of Pinocchio.

The Japanese superhero Kikaider (1972), created by Shotaro Ishinomori, was partly inspired by Pinocchio (and by Frankenstein's monster).

Not actually an adaptation of the story proper, the video game Toy Pop released by Namco in 1986 features a character named "Pino", who was inspired by the Pinocchio character. It was a Japan-only release until it was included in Namco Museum Vol.1, which was released in the United States in 1995.

In a similar vein, the 1995 Super Famicom title Wonder Project J, released in Japan by Enix (now Square Enix), is a raising simulation in which a robot child named "Pino" is taught human emotions and feelings by the fairy helper of Dr. Geppetto in the hopes of eventually becoming a human boy. In the canon ending, Pino will activate the J circuit, appearing to die, but the sequel reveals that he has been reborn as a human child.

Pinocchio (The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy)

Pinocchio briefly appears in the 2001 movie Shrek and has a larger role in the 2004 sequel Shrek 2 and the 2007 sequel Shrek the Third.

Pinocchio and Geppetto are both major characters in the ongoing comic book series Fables, written by Bill Willingham, first published in 2003.

Pinocchio appears in two episodes of the animated TV show The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy: "Nursery Crimes / My Peeps" and "Billy Ocean", with the running gag that the dimwitted Billy consistently mispronounces Pinocchio's name.

The computer-animated television series Pet Alien features Geppetto as a minor character, where he is searching for Pinocchio.

The first episode of season 4 the of animated TV show Family Guy (aired in the UK in 2007) contains a brief spoof sketch featuring Pinocchio and Geppetto as they appeared in Disney's film.

An episode of the Adult Swim stop motion animated clip show Robot Chicken features Pinocchio in a frozen forest constantly lying to make his nose grow for fire wood including the lie "I have no idea where Geppetto's body is buried."

On January 1, 2007, an adapted parody of the famous story was created on the popular website Freak Safari. [1]

Pinocchio story was one of the episodes of Juuni Sensehi Bakurestu Eto Ranger.^{[citation needed]}

In The Hello! Morning skit corner,Geppetto(Makoto Ogawa) was an old man who always forgot things and in the 7-16-06 episode,it was revealed he was involved with the Little Match Girl (Okada Yui). Pinocchio (Konno Asami) appeared at the end of the skit saying he was very lonely today.

Russian-born disco composer Boris Midney produced a twelve inch "Pinocchio" album, sung by his incidental vocal group Masquerade including tracks like "I'm Attached to You" and "Wooden Wooden Puppet".^{[citation needed]}

Takashi Nakamura's A Tree of Palme (2002) takes us into a darker and more twisted version of Pinocchio (although Steven Spielberg also shows a glimpse of this shattered childhood psyche in his Pinocchioesque character David in A.I.)

In Power Rangers: Operation Overdrive, the Red Ranger, Mack Hartford, was eventually revealed to be an android created by his father, Andrew, to be a son since he (Andrew) was unable to find the right woman due to his line of work (archeology). In the final episode, Mack managed to defeat the last of the series' villains so as to protect the Corona Aurora and to protect his father and friends, but he did so at the cost of depleting his energy and sustain irreparable internal damage. For this noble act, the Sentinel Knight, the Corona Aurora's guardian, used the treasure to not only revive Mack, but make him a full human. It is unknown though if the allusion to Pinocchio was intentional.

From David Bethell's review of A Tree of Palme: "The opening shot of a woman at a window that dissolves into moving scenery below us is so Lynchian one wonders if the following story is in fact her dream; and then immediately we slip into what seems like typical Japanese animation but this is so not the case. This is the story of a robot boy made of living wood! This is Pinocchio from the dark corner. Every child we meet in this film (the young and the old) has been severely abused (usually by their own parents). Stumbling amongst them is the robot wood boy Palme who longs to be human and on this desperate search toward love (which is what makes us human and at the same time elevates us above our humaness) he unwittingly evolves in himself the darkest of all human traits.

The line "I never knew a heart could hurt so much" is what this movie portrays and then delivers us from. There are heart-breaking moments into flash-backs of damaged pasts and then glimpses into bright happier futures where we hope goodness reigns. Palme is nothing less but so much more of the Pinocchio story that is always unfolding in our modern society where childhood seems forever shrinking and forever lost".

[edit] References

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