Just an ordinary day for our miss catastrophe!
Ippatsu Kiki Musume (イッパツ危機娘) (literally meaning "Sudden Danger Girl" and sometimes translated as "Miss Critical Moment") is a Japanese manga series written by Shigemitsu Harada which was serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine completing up to 6 volumes. An anime series adaptation was aired on TBS for 16 three minutes long episodes from October 4 to October 28, 1999.
The series revolves around Kunyan, an Anime Chinese Girl who faces a number of situations where she faces death, such as being locked in a sauna or halfway down a python's gullet, and who tries to save herself through ways which fail because of her use of Insane Troll Logic or simply because the universe hates her, and will only be rescued by pure coincidence.
Think of a way of getting yourself out of this tropes, Kunyan!
- Almost Out of Oxygen: In episode 11, Kunyan stuck her hair in the drain of her bathtub filled with water, unable to free herself and facing imminent drowning.
- Americans Are Cowboys: In one episode, when Kunyan and her friend Linda need to lasso a rock to save themselves (It Makes Sense in Context), Linda begs to do it because she's an American and therefore adept at cowboy-roping skills.
- Anime Chinese Girl: Kunyan often wears an odango haircut, a qipao for club reunions and secretary jobs, and in episode 9, she claims to come from Shanghai.
- Black Is Bigger in Bed: One episode has Kunyan and Linda trapped in a barrel that's filling up with water, putting them at risk of drowning. Kunyan discovers that she gets lifted whenever Linda opens her mouth, so she tells Linda to open her mouth wider so they can escape. Linda does so by describing how wide she had to open her mouth to "service" her former boyfriends, with the biggest being Mike the black guy.
- Bowdlerization: The anime cuts down on the overt fanservice that was in the original manga. Granted, the anime still has nudity, but it's a lot more restrained and less sexualized, and it doesn't get any more explicit than toplessness and Barbie Doll Anatomy.
- Cats Are Mean: The last television short has a white cat Kunyan brings in her apartment who turns on her hairdryer and tries to throw it in her bath.
- Cosmic Plaything: Kunyan lives more than your usual Butt-Monkey. Episode 7 shows that even when she's living a peaceful day, she can get stuck in her own toilet because of her apartment doors which all open on the corridor!
- Cozy Voice for Catastrophes: Every episode has a comically serious male narrator who's charged to explain how the troubles began at the start of the episode and how they resolved at the end.
- Cringe Comedy: A lot of the situations Kunyan gets herself into are designed to make you feel physically uncomfortable.
- Deus ex Machina: In episode 9, after falling from 33 feet because she fell between two buildings, Kunyan survived... by landing on three teenagers who were looking under her dress!
- Dirty Old Man: The old official in episode 14 tried to grope Kunyan, has an inflatable doll and at least one mistress.
- Distracted by the Sexy: In episode 10, Kunyan flashes her naked crotch at the boxers to end the fight early so she can run to the bathroom.
- Ditzy Genius: While her ditzyness puts her in tricky situations, Kunyan will almost always find a creative way to get out of it which relies more or less on science and mathematics in a practical way.
- Dumb Blonde: Played with Linda: she's ditzy enough to put herself at the edge of a cliff on a bike, but smart and strong enough to succeed an improvised lasso shot and let down Kunyan all by herself near falling.
- Face Hugger: Occurs in episode 2, where a snow crab wraps itself around Kunyan's head. Turns into a non-alien version of Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong when the crab exudes a creamy white liquid all over her face.
- Fan Disservice: A series about a cute young woman tearing herself out of situations like boiling in a sauna with both dislocated arms and legs or facing imminent drowning half-naked in her bathtub because her hair are stuck in the drain will easily fall into this.
- Gross-Out Show: Ippatsu Kikimusume is this trope in three-minute chunks. Kunyan survives each life-threatening situation by executing a preposterous escape plan that
Crosses the Line Twice, often to the point of horror. If you watch this, you will be grossed out. You will also learn physics. - In Medias Res: Often, the reason why Kunyan put herself in tricky situations will be shown after her current trouble is exposed.
- Insane Troll Logic: While Kunyan usually is logical, she can be... surprising sometimes. In episode 11, while she stuck her her hair in the bathtub drain, she realizes that people take in air through their mouths and release it through their butts... so she tries to reverse the process and breathe through her butt. Then when her friends discover her predicament, they try to help her by applying CPR through Kunyan's anus...
- Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: In episode 9, Kunyan wedged herself between two buildings only to prove she's not afraid of heights.
- Phenotype Stereotype: Linda is a blonde american girl who can yell in english in some situations.
- Potty Emergency: In episode 10, while she works as a showgirl for a boxing match, Kunyan has a sudden emergency to go to the toilet and only has three minutes (the time of a round) to evacuate. Naturally, it fails in all possible ways.
- Sauna of Death: The first episode has this: presenting the series' Finagle's Law setup, the door isn't locked but she can't open it because both her arms and legs dislocated simultaneously. When she tries to open the door with her mouth, the first attempt bashes her nose against the door and the subsequent nosebleed makes the knob slippery and harder to turn.
- The three-minute TV shorts has two others in different ways: the eighth episode where the three women are stuck naked in barrels on a boiling fire, and the second to last episode where a vehicle parks in front of the phone cabin's exit, leaving Kunyan boiling under a firing summer sun.
- Scenery Censor: Given how many episodes involve Kunyan and/or her friends in the bath, conveniently-placed props and body parts (arms, heads) are used to cover up exposed bits.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: In episode 11, Kunyan wakes up with her hair caught in the drain of a bathtub filled with water, unable to free herself and facing imminent drowning. She "realizes" that since people take in air through their mouths and release it through their butts, she should be able to reverse the process and breathe through her butt. Naturally, it doesn't work. Her friend Linda enters, realizes what's happening and... attempts CPR on Kunyan's butt, having come to the same conclusion. Their friend Naja, supposedly the Only Sane Woman of the group, also comes to the same conclusion, and runs off to get an enema in order to help save Kunyan.
- Swallowed Whole: Kunyan escaped this fate thanks to her... inner gas and a balloon.
