Nobody remembers this one exists. Four episodes of pure proto-Hamtaro chaos, before the TV show softened everything into commodity cuteness, here the hamsters actually feel like small animals with real problems, not mascots waiting for merchandise orders. It's the version that was never meant for you, only for the kids of people who worked at Shogakukan, which somehow makes it the most honest thing the franchise ever made. You're watching something that survived on accident, passed around in the dark before Hamtaro became a brand.

Hamtarou's first animated outing is a direct-to-VHS OVA of four short episodes from 1999, originally available only by mail order. In one story Natsumi comes home to an empty cage, only to find her hamster hiding under her blanket. In another, Hamtarou and the Ham-Hams try to recover a biscuit that Bijou dropped into a vase, and Hamtarou gets himself lowered in like a crane-game claw. A third follows his jealousy of Natsumi's classmate Shirohara, and the last sees the Ham-Hams scheming for sunflower seeds. The tone is light and comic throughout.