Maruchi Arachi
Series sponsored by
Korean Cinema’s Celluloid Fever: The 1970s
May 15 - 26
Lim Jeong-gyu’s proudly original debut—about two feral kids who grew up in a cave until a kindly tae kwon do master turns them into unstoppable kicking machines—set a Korean animation box-office record that held for more than a decade.
Before K-animation went cute, it went full tae kwon do. Two feral kids, Maruchi and Arachi, grow up in a mountain cave after their grandfather is murdered by the villainous Blue Skull 13, until a kindly master drags them off to Seoul and turns them into unstoppable kicking machines. From there it’s tae kwon do tournaments, underwater science parks, killer robots, and a final showdown with Blue Skull’s plan for world domination. Adapted from a wildly popular MBC children’s radio serial, this was director Lim Jeong-gyu’s debut and a proudly original Korean production at a moment when most homegrown animation was lifting heavily from Japan. On release it set a Korean animation box-office record that held for more than a decade, and its theme song lodged itself permanently in the national brain. Restored in 2022 by the Korean Film Archive and Image Power Station.
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