youth culture killed my dog(s)

  

Shrieking and honking its way out of the cough-syrup nightmares of a nation of feverish preadolescents, HELLHOUND LINER 0011 TRANSFORM! (Maken Liner-0011 Henshin Seyo!) is, barring my ignorance of an entire genre of movies about evil space amoeba-squids sending monster robot bugs to smash an Earth defended by children in giant space helmets and rocket-firing submachine guns aided by talking cybernetic pet dogs who occasionally transform into spaceship-combining super dog robots, a unique film experience.

                             

Americans of a certain age will remember our 70s cartoons; suffocated by emasculated parent-approved blandness, full of funny dogs and singing teenagers solving mysteries, interrupted with public service announcements by has-been actors eager to work off their drunk driving charges. This was a reaction to the acid rock psychedelic-biker-Manson Family grindhouse insanity that was creeping into our culture courtesy The Hippies, to be fought at every turn by the Silent Majority and their henchmen at Action for Children's Television. Japan had their own anti-cartoon crusaders, legions of kendo moms and PTAs agitating against Go Nagai's Shameless School and other national disgraces. 

But while American producers knuckled under and wimped out, Japan doubled down on the wild, filling their 1970s kidvid with outlandish action-adventure quivering with barely repressed raw power. That's where HELLHOUND LINER 0011 comes in, and keep in mind this isn't some kind of weird desperate failure produced by some forgettable fly-by-night outfit. It's from Toei, the Walt Disney of the Orient, the industry leader in fantastical fantasy films for children, hosts of their popular Manga Matsuri summertime children's film festival, which in July of ’72 gave Japan's kids this story of friendly transforming robot dogs and their orphaned master seeking vengeance upon an entire race of deformed space devils. 

HELLHOUND LINER 0011 TRANSFORM!, or as Toei would like you to know it, “Go Get Them 0011”, has a solid anime pedigree with direction by Takeshi (Captain Harlock, Great Mazinger, Grendizer) Tamiya and a script by Tsuji Masaki and Toei legend Yugo "Little Prince And The 8-Headed Dragon" Serikawa. However, it's Hiroshi Sasagawa whose imagination powers HELLHOUND LINER - the film is based on his 1963 Shonen King serial "Hellhound Goro", and Sasagawa would go on to a long and fruitful career at Tatsunoko, where he'd give TIME BOKAN its sexy Doronjo-sama and let CASSHAN's transforming robot-dog-jetplane Frenda out of the robot-dog-jetplane kennel.

               

Sasagawa's original Maken Goro manga

The theater lights dim, the Manga Matsuri kids dial the popcorn-throwing back a notch. HELLHOUND LINER 0011 starts, and immediately you're assaulted by the soundtrack, deeply painful atonal free-form jazz, like Miles Davis, an irritable Miles who won't quit stepping on the goose that somehow got into his studio. There's all sorts of tinkly percussion, echoey beatnik scat vocals, reverb'd keyboards and a beefy sax that is simply drilling a hole into your skull. As the background for a children's cartoon, this is nothing less than a sneak attack. One imagines parents enduring twenty or thirty seconds of this before simply walking out of the theater and abandoning little Saburo to the mercy of whatever creepy deviant is stalking children in

Tokyo this week.  

Parents, this is pretty much your cue to get out. Just get out.

As the credits roll we're treated to amazingly detailed cutaway diagrams of the inner workings of the various horrifying monsters that will soon be smashing civilization as we know it. "Civilization" for this picture is represented by Mid-Century Modern dome-parabola architecture, shining white concrete, enormous roads full of pointy space cars, and moving sidewalks to get our Citizens Of The Future from school to home and back again. Our hero Tsutomu Hayashi is a normal latchkey kid whose dad is a scientist with a little moustache and whose mom isn't around and may never have existed. Neighborhood kids make fun of Tsutomu because his dad predicts Earth is threatened by space aliens. And I don't blame them, that's pretty crazy. But it's OK because Tsutomu doesn't need human friends, his pals are four stray dogs. Don't you wish you had dogs this great? Three dogs like the puppies Ace, Jack, and Joker, and their mother Queen, who would stand by you no matter what? Sure you do.

                   

As it happens Tsutomu will have the last laugh on the skeptics. Earth is, in fact, invaded by space aliens from the Planet Devil. They have a complicated multi-faceted approach to maximizing their Earth-invasion effectiveness while thinking outside the box in synergizing their impactful expectation-managing, involving creepy tentacle monsters, giant electro-mechanical insect demons, and legions of what appear to be cat-faced amoeba bugs, all led by bulb-headed freak Golgoth. 

The first step in any Earth invasion? Kill all the scientists, as shown in a pre-title sequence where hapless weathermen are tentacle-violated. Professor Hayashi, noted anti-alien speaker, is the next target. The aliens "plant" a bomb disguised as a cactus (in a tasteful modernist crystal plant pot) inside the Hayashi home, in the hope that home decor accoutrements will go unnoticed in a woman-free household. However, our intrepid dog-mom Queen somehow knows the difference between an alien bomb and real plants, and, along with her three puppies, snatches the cactus grenade in her jaws and escapes to the woods just in time to be vaporized in a giant explosion. A heartbroken Tsutomu has lost his only friends. Or has he? 

Soon it's Tsutomu's birthday and Junior is shocked. Queen and progeny are safe and sound! Absent Dad explains via videophone; even though their bodies were destroyed in the explosion, he was able to save their canine brains and implant them successfully into some dog-robot bodies, each with its own super dog-robot-body super power. Tsutomu gets a giant space helmet able to translate barks into human speech. Happy birthday!  

It's during this magical videophone birthday present moment that the aliens attack Dad in his research center, and Tsutomu and his dog friends must embody the film's title and transform into Hellhound Liner 0011!

                      

sure, why not

As hideous monsters emerge to destroy humanity, HELLHOUND LINER 0011 shifts into high gear. Tsutomu helmets up and his canine cyborg commandos transform into a super jet to invade the secret Devil sanctuary inside an erupting Mt. Fuji and destroy Stage One of the Devil plan. Earth's cities are engulfed in a horrifying nightmare as giant praying mantis monster Mandaras destroys bullet trains with his Super Sonic Knife and jet planes are sliced in half with his Rainbow Ray. And if that wasn't bad enough, Mandaras' swollen forearms burst open and birth thousands of disgusting metal-destroying ticks, which devour the Tokyo Tower.

                

hideous monsters and their hollow hideous monster planet

Golgoroth helpfully informs Earth of their declaration of war via an experimental psychedelic short film containing one word, the kanji for "death", dripping with blood (subtle!). As the Devil Planet rains neutron bombs down on Earth, they prepare their ultimate plan - to use their Moon Bomb to shatter Luna and smash its remnants into our planet, killing everybody and ruining Earth for centuries. How will this benefit the Devil Planet? Who knows? They're devils! And as our world faces a desperate crisis Prof. Hayashi succumbs to his injuries, leaving Tsutomu alone with only cyborg dogs for company.

                 

Though the Earth is set to launch their space fleet in a massive military assault, Tsutomu and Liner attack first and invade Planet Devil itself, unleashing an orgy of robot-dog ray-gun destruction on the space monsters. Ace uses his eye beam, Jack his fire breath, and Joker transforms into whatever comedy relief is necessary, while Tsutomu uses his father's final gift, an automatic ray gun that also fires rockets. They're opposed by legions of Devilians and the monsters Mandaras and Escargon, a giant acid-spitting snail with way more mouths than is necessary or tasteful. But together Tsutomu and the dog-cyborgs overcome all the monsters and stop Golgoth's Moon Bomb with less than one second to spare.

                  

HELLHOUND LINER 0011 comes out of a thriving field of science-fictional juvenile adventure - it shares a lot of thematic DNA with Toei's 1970 Manga Matsuri flick 30,000 MILES UNDER THE SEA, which also features a young boy and his fairly implausible pet fighting giant monsters. 0011, however, raises the stakes at every opportunity. You’ll see a super mechanical fighting beetle shoot its head off and destroy a highway overpass, a talking dog with the voice of CYBORG 009's 007 (Machiko Soga!!) turn into a sexy centaur and wink at a 10 year old boy, the same boy who later dons a space suit to shoot rockets at a giant slug whose abdomen is lined with fanged jaws and whose eye-stalks shoot dripping acid, all accompanied by the piercing soundtrack by Takeo Yamashita, who wrote the score for the game show “I Crush The Perfect Crime Detective.”

                   

Remember these are ordinary dog brains. This is what dogs think about, apparently

Of course they can’t spend a lot of time on subtle nuance in a fifty minute film designed for a theater full of short-attention-span kids out on summer break and stuffed with candy. Like Toei's later Manga Matsuri shorts starring Mazinger Z, Devilman, Getta Robo, Grandizer, Great Mazinger, and various combinations thereof, the film throws us into the deep end and lets us drown in the sea of Macrodons and Mandarases. However, unlike a movie starring Mazinger Z or Kamen Rider, we have no idea who Hellhound Liner 0011 is, and we'll never see those characters again. 0011 is a one-off, a instantly dated snapshot of what Toei thought would entertain children for fifty minutes in between shorts starring Barom-1 and Chappy The Witch. No consideration was given to marketing, no focus group testing, no corporate long-term plans hampered the journey of this film from the subconscious to the movie screen.

                                  

original Manga Matsuri posters for '72

As such, perhaps it gives us a unique look inside the surging, turbulent, media-assaulted psyche of the Japanese youth of 1972. Frightened of giant monsters and aliens and absent parents, wishing for friends and pets and birthdays, fascinated by rockets and space travel, desperately wanting a rocket-firing ray-gun of their very own. Which begs the question, do we want these things because we see them in these sorts of movies, or are things like this put in movies because they know what kids want to see? Maybe a little of both is at play here. I only know one thing for sure; one of those rocket-guns would. be. SWEET. 

Special thanks and a tip of the Let’s Anime hat to Bluefixer for making this available!

Ten Times As Big As A Man

This review originally appeared on the Anime Jump website in 2005.







Back when UHF television was the great babysitter for the nation, all sorts of crazy shows wound up getting syndicated and parceled out to the upper reaches of the broadcast dial. One of those shows was KING KONG / TOM OF T.H.U.M.B. Long after its original 1967 premiere as part of ABC's Saturday morning lineup, this show got a new lease on life entertaining children on weekday afternoons after school. That’s where I saw it, sandwiched between MIGHTY HEROES and ROCKY & BULLWINKLE. Watched, enjoyed, filed away as a pleasant memory; and only when I got copies of episodes from some guy in Australia did I notice that KING KONG / TOM OF T.H.U.M.B. was animated by the Toei Animation Company of Japan, the same folks who produced many of the other shows that populated my personal pantheon of TV potentates. Who woulda thunk it?







Actually, KING KONG was one of the first co-productions ever attempted between hungry American cartoon outfits and cheap Asian animation studios. It's a system that proved lucrative for both parties and would lead to greater and greater percentages of American TV cartoons being written in the States and animated in Japan or points east. KING KONG's American side, Rankin-Bass, would later become famous as the producer of THE HOBBIT (a Toei co-production) and those endless Christmas specials starring stop-motion puppets of Burl Ives and Fred Astaire and the kicky character designs of MAD MAGAZINE stalwart Paul Coker Jr. Rankin-Bass's predilection towards cherry-picking top American illustration talent is evident in the credits for KING KONG, which lists MAD and EC Comics legend and good ol' Georgia boy Jack Davis as character designer. It's hard to spot after the layers of cleanup, but his touch is visible, especially in the older characters.







But enough of this trivia. What about KING KONG? Well, for what it is, a 1967 TV cartoon written in one continent and animated in another, this show is pretty entertaining. It's got a great theme song ("TEN TIMES AS BIG AS A MAN!!"), the animation is stripped-down basic, the character designs show the clean-looking international style so popular with all Japanese exports of the period, and the stories are all self-contained 8-minute vignettes with little time for anything but action.







Bobby, Susan, and their hairy friend. And Kong.





Young Bobby Bond lives with his scientist dad and teenaged sister Susan on Mondo Island, home of the giant King Kong (copyright RKO Radio Pictures, Inc). Jimmy and Kong form a fast friendship and together they defeat monsters, invaders from space, centurions from the depths of the earth, evil white hunters, and the machinations of the evil Doctor Who. No, not the BBC guy with the police box, but an evil scientist who looks like Captain Marvel's Dr. Sivana as drawn by Chester Gould, full of dastardly plans to kidnap Kong and use him to either conquer or destroy the world, whichever comes first. You may remember him from the Toho film KING KONG ESCAPES - also a Rankin/Bass co-production.







The Evil Doctor Who



As a cross between JOHNNY QUEST, GIGANTOR, FRANKENSTEIN JR, and ADVENTURE ISLAND the show fits neatly into the mid 1960s, a time when children's TV cartoons were able to feature action and adventure, a glorious age of fun and excitement ended only by the monstrous onslaught of Action For Children's Television. If not for these shrewish bluenoses, American animation might have continued to match Japanese cartoons in the two-fisted entertainment category, and American cartoon fans might now be obsessed with American panty-flashing maid shows instead of the Japanese ones. KONG enjoyed a bit of success in the ‘60s; merchandising included toys, books, and even a board game.









The companion show TOM OF T.H.U.M.B. is just as entertaining, if not more so. A wacky spy romp in the GET SMART vein, TOM stars a secret agent who used to be a janitor. He and his assistant, a stereotypical 60s “Oriental” named Swingin’ Jack, were caught in an experimental shrinking ray and instantly reduced to Smurf proportions. Naturally his minature stature comes in handy when battling the evil plots of M.A.D. (which stands for “Maladjusted, Antisocial, and Darn Mean”, as we’re reminded every episode). The show is still fun to watch. The dialog is deliberately corny, the plots are bare-bones excuses for gags, and the agents of M.A.D. speak in foreign accents that range from Russian to Hispanic to Brooklyn, sometimes in the same sentence. Tom’s outfit, by the way, is the Tiny Human Underground Military Bureau. Yes, I remember all this stuff from when I was 8. And before you bring up INCH-HIGH PRIVATE EYE, this show did it first.







Tom of T.H.U.M.B. blastin' away 'cause he got little-man syndrome.



The DVD release is a swell package, you get 8 Kong episodes, each with 2 Kong segments and 1 TOM OF T.H.U.M.B. segment, separated by the original bumper segments. Vol. 2 has the KONG pilot episode as well. The transfer is sharp, and while the colors seem to be a bit washed out, that's understandable for a show that's been sitting in 16mm reels in somebody's vault for the past 20 years. I noticed some varispeed artifacting in one episode due to cheap time-compression, which is an odd thing to see in a show that hasn’t been broadcast in 20 years. Still, this is a $10 DVD you buy at Target, of a dimly-remembered licensed show from the mid-1960s, released by a now-defunct studio, so you can’t really expect Criterion quality.





New York crowds already have King Kong fever as we can see by this bystander's T-shirt.



Sure, maybe this show is only getting a DVD release because of the current KONG film. So what? If it gets forgotten classics like this show onto home video, I’m all for it. Maybe this series will inspire more outfits to unlock their vaults and share the goodness with us. At $10 a pop (or less, nowadays) that’s hard to beat.



KING KONG VOL. 1&2, released by Classic Media / Sony / Wonder.

Magnos The Robot, I Suppose

This review originally appeared at the Anime Jump website in 2004.

Many people think of Japanese animation as high-tech, sophisticated entertainment for adults; animation that breaks the boundaries of animated entertainment and stuns audiences with originality and innovation.

These people are of course completely wrong.

As evidence to the contrary, I present the only possible argument; a rebuttal that is smashing in its impact and draws one to an inexorable conclusion that brutally shatters paradigms, even as it opens up new worlds of possibility.

The argument? MAGNOS THE ROBOT aka MAGNETIC ROBO GAKEEN, a mid-1970s Toei giant robot show that combines all the classic elements of Japanese anime: hackneyed plot, clichéd characters, outlandish and impractical mechanical design, and bizarre, incomprehensible villains and monsters. Combined with deadpan American dubbing, the end product can only be described as kitsch. Released on DVD in the US by "Liberty International Publishing", MAGNOS is a simple, tape-glitches-and-all transfer of an earlier VHS release that once graced the kiddie section of America's video rental stores and thrift shops.




No grand vision went into making MAGNOS. Driven by market forces, the creators simply threw together whatever elements they could rip off from other, more successful anime shows. Giant super robots, fantastic ultra-scientific secret bases, grotesque evil creatures – they’ve all been done before, and done better. However, the producers of MAGNOS took the bizarre visuals and childish storylines of your typical robot drama and cranked everything up to eleven – and as with all kitsch, their efforts had the opposite effect. Instead of appearing fantastical and awesome, MAGNOS THE ROBOT simply looks outlandish, impractical, and faintly ridiculous.



Earth is in big trouble; horrific creatures from the depths of the earth, actually ancient astronauts from outer space, have declared war on the surface world. Even though national monuments are being blasted into pieces, the United Nations refuses to listen to Sir Miles Nevers, the only one with any sort of idea who’s attacking us. Apparently the UN believes that sometimes things just explode for no reason. Is Sir Nevers a scientist, a naval officer, a industrialist? MAGNOS never tells us. Nevers has a gigantic nuclear powered flying battleship, a combat unit of helicopters and antiaircraft cannon, and a complicated combining-robot fighting system. However, all this equipment is completely useless, because what Nevers DOESN’T have is a hairy, disgruntled, denim-clad, kung-fu-fighting 70s style antihero to pilot his robot and save the world.

Enter Janus, who is a disgruntled karate champion with bad hair and a wardrobe straight out of the Levis department of your local Sears. Anybody who’s ever seen any 70s giant robot show can tick off the subsequent plot elements: Janus is asked to pilot the robot. Janus refuses because he’s the 70s style antihero and they never volunteer for nothin'. The horrific monsters attack! Janus, shocked at the fighting ineptitude of Nevers’ gang, is compelled to show these amateurs exactly how he did it in the karate ring. He changes into a tacky jumpsuit and is tossed into the robot cockpit, where his fighting spirit and cocky, never-say-die attitude succeed where skill and training fail.



But wait! What about the girl? There’s ALWAYS a girl in these shows, and it’s ALWAYS the professor’s daughter, and her and the hero NEVER get along, for at least three episodes. Well, MAGNOS is no exception. In fact, Nevers’ daughter Ester is absolutely vital to the plot. You see, Nevers built his Magnos robot in two parts, and one part is piloted by his daughter, and another part has to be piloted by a tough karate champion guy. I know some parents go to extreme lengths to hook their children up, but this is ridiculous. Actually the male-female thing fits in with the whole “magnetic” theme of the show – with a positive and a negative, MAGNOS evokes both your Electrical Engineering 101 syllabus AND your Tantric Sex manuals.



You see children when a man robot pilot and a woman robot pilot love each other very much...

The 1970s were known as the decade of the ridiculously elaborate pilot-entering-his-giant-robot scene, and MAGNOS upholds the tradition magnificently. First our heroes don stupid-looking jumpsuits. They get into rocket-propelled elevators and make special arm movements, which magnetically change their jumpsuits into even stupider-looking jumpsuits. Once inside little flying cars, they’re shot out of the nuclear battleship, along with the parts of their robots. The flying cars dock with the robots, and Janus and Ester wind up fighting evil inside some of the most inept looking machinery ever designed for a Japanese cartoon. Seriously, these two robots – “Magnon” and “Magnetta”- resemble gingerbread men more than they do combat equipment. Naturally they’re useless against the monsters of Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, so they must combine into Magnos. This requires the following sequence: Janus and Ester leap out of their robots in mid-air and whirl around each other face to face, while the pieces of Magnos are shot out of the nuclear battleship. All this whirling somehow turns both Janus and Ester into some sort of rectangular yellow box, and as the pieces of Magnos come together in the sky, this rectangular yellow box becomes Magnos’ belt buckle. Magnos itself is another terrible robot design – think of Go Nagai’s STEEL JEEG and then exaggerate the less plausible, more outlandish features. Magnos has pumped-up steel muscles, a head that doesn’t turn, blades that pop out of the hands, and tiny wrists and ankles (this becomes a plot point later, believe it or not).

Meanwhile, of course, the enemies of mankind have been chilling out and watching this entire transformation take place. Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada is far away in another galaxy, so he’s forced to rely upon his minions to conquer Earth. Led by Brain, a grotesquely ugly green fellow with a giant brain that resembles an afro, they include a robot guy, a woman made out of fish parts, and some kind of lion person. They’re all full of great plans for defeating Magnos and conquering the Earth. Most of these plans involve gigantic monsters made from combining Earth animals – resulting in LSD-inspired combinations like Batroacher and Octo-Crabus X-3. Yes, it’s monster design via Conan O’Brien’s “If They Mated”.



The Brain, Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, and the majestic Octocrabus X-3

The dubbing is terrible. The mix is awful, resulting in incidental music drowning out nearly every important line of dialog. The actors read their lines competently enough, but the script can’t decide if it wants to be silly and self-referential or deadly serious. Of course, when the bad guy is named Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada and most of Brain’s lines consist of “What treachery is THIS?” it’s hard to maintain a serious tone. At least SOMEBODY was having fun with MAGNOS.

It’s hard to say how seriously this was taken in Japan, anyway. After all, this IS a show where a giant bat-cockroach attacks an oil refinery, where our karate hero Janus is shown karate-chopping a BULL in a flashback. The show is just wild enough, just kitschsy enough to make me think that everybody was in on the joke. At least I HOPE nobody was taking this seriously. The animation isn’t as lame as the storyline; perfectly competent Toei TV show animation, much as you’d see in any TV anime of the day. Some of the fighting scenes are actually fairly well done. “Well done” – never thought I’d use that phrase in connection with MAGNOS.



KARATE BULLFIGHTER!!

Curiously, the Spanish track on the DVD has a better audio mix than the English track. MAGNOS was a big hit in Italy under its original GAKEEN title, and it would have been nice to see the Italian opening credits, maybe some Italian dialog. But this is a bargain basement DVD release, and anyway, special features would destroy the low-rent atmosphere MAGNOS works so hard to maintain.



Grace Jones - actress, model, musician, Bond Girl, otaku?? This is a REAL Grace Jones LP.

Yes, I said DVD – MAGNOS THE ROBOT makes a fine addition to anybody’s DVD collection, as a counterpoint to all those expensive box sets full of anime designed for the hip, artsy, with-it, modern aficionado of the animated art. MAGNOS takes us directly back to the time when the term “Japanese cartoon” meant cheap, lurid, violent children’s entertainment. If you’re concerned about the image of Japanese animation as a mature art form for intelligent adults, avoid MAGNOS, because it will make you cry. However, if you’re in the mood for outlandish junk-food cartoons about clumsy-looking giant robots battling the monsters of Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, then MAGNOS is the one to watch.

badge of honor

At Anime North a few weeks ago my wife spotted something groovy in the dealers room. No, not glomping crossdressing furry cosplayers – but something that was actually related to Japanese cartoons! Namely, a set of buttons from Albator.



You know, Albator! The French language version of Toei’s 1978 Captain Harlock series, broadcast to the Francophone world in the late 1970s. Albator, whose name was changed from “Captain Harlock” because, as the story goes, the French localizers were afraid children would confuse the character with “Captain Haddock” from the popular Belgian comic Tintin. Because the characters are so much alike! There isn't a similar story to explain why every other character in Captain Harlock got his or her name changed, nor why all the music was thrown out in favor of vastly inferior replacements.





At any rate the buttons are pretty cool. Not just because Tadashi Daiba – sorry, “Ramis” - is clearly missing an eye, or the general sloppy fan art vibe of the artwork, but mostly for the 70s era CBC logo plastered onto the images. Albator was broadcast on the French-language CBC – sorry, “Radio-Canada Television”- starting in 1979, and along with other French-language anime hits like Goldorak, Candy Candy, and Le Roi Leo, gave the Francophone Canadian anime fan a distinct advantage over the Anglophone Canucks, who were forced to make do with Star Blazers and Force Five on Buffalo UHF stations.





You might notice that one of these characters is not like the others. Sure, Captain Future, the '78 Toei series based on the pulp series by Edmond Hamilton, was popular in Europe, where he was known as "Capitane Flam". However, how a button of Captain Future’s girlfriend “beautiful Joan Randall” wound up with some Albator badges is anybody’s guess. You know those Japanese cartoons, they all look the same. And the character's slight name change only proves the Electric Company's hypothesis that a Joan can become a “Johan” merely by adding our good friend “silent h”.

Jack And The Early Morning Witch

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!! The wacky tripped-out Toei anime film JACK AND THE WITCH, which we have enthused about elsewhere on this very blog, is running tomorrow, October 31st, Halloween, at 8:00am Eastern Standard Time on the THIStv network. I encourage you all to tune in and enjoy this film in the comfort of your own home, preferably with the sugary breakfast cereal of your choice. Thanks to frequent commentator Sobienak and his announcement on the Anime Hell blog: http://animehel.blogspot.com/

Check listings here: http://www.this.tv/index.php?day=31

Stay tuned to LET'S ANIME for more new news about old cartoons! Seriously, I do have some news coming up in the next few days, I ain't kiddin'.

Under The Western Influence

This year at AWA and at Anime North back in May, I did a panel all about Japanese cartoons based on Western works; two hours of me showing clips and talking about them, only making stuff up occasionally. Seeing as how it's been weeks since I did a column here, I need something I can throw up pretty quickly. So here goes! My panel was by no means a comprehensive or complete overview - just anime I happened to have on hand that was at least vaguely interesting to look at and worth talking about for five or ten minutes. Since I first did this panel in Canada I started off with some Canadian content.



Written by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery in 1908, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES became a worldwide success, especially in Japan. If you are Canadian or watch PBS in the States you're already familiar with the story and/or Megan Follows. If you aren't, it's about a young orphan girl who's adopted by a middle-aged brother and sister on a farm on Prince Edward Island. Expecting a boy, the pair soon overcome their initial reservations and Anne becomes a member of the family.



"Akage No Anne" was produced by Nippon Animation Company in 1979 as part of their World Masterpiece Theater series, with animation by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. Nippon Animation is airing a Anne prequel - "Hello Anne - Before Green Gables" right now as part of the House Foods World Masterpiece Theater. Currently unavailable in the English speaking world, the failure of the American "anime industry" to rake in cash by releasing this series is proof of massive brain damage on somebody's part.



FABLES OF THE GREEN FOREST is another show Canadians are more familiar with than Americans. This anime series, originally titled "Rocky Chuck", was based on books written by Thornton W. Burgess, eminent conservationist from Cape Cod, who over the course of his career wrote more than 170 books and 15,000 newspaper columns. His characters Sammy Bluejay, Johnny Chuck, Polly Chuck, Peter Rabbit, Chatterer Squirrel, Paddy Beaver, Grandpa Frog, Uncle Billy Mouse, and Joe Otter were introduced in his first novel, Old Mother West Wind, published in 1910. The anime series was produced by Zuiyo Eizo (the predecessor to Nippon Animation). America got exposed to the anime incarnations Chatterer The Squirrel and pals through the good offices of ZIV who dubbed this series in a haphazard and whimsical fashion.





The TOM SAWYER ANIME, based on the Mark Twain book, was a World Masterpiece Theater series produced by Nippon Animation in 1980. Dubbed for American home video, it was released by Just For Kids to an indifferent market. Not nearly as surreal as the Hanna-Barbera Tom Sawyer that featured live-action Tom, Huck, and Becky Thatcher being chased by an animated Injun Joe. Other World Masterpiece Theater series include Swiss Family Robinson, Dog Of Flanders, Remi, Hans Christian Andersen stories, Pollyanna, Peter Pan, Daddy Longlegs, Von Trapp Family Story, and Lassie. No, not Lassie's Rescue Rangers. Just Lassie.



Toei's 1980 TV special LITTLE WOMEN wound up getting dubbed for America by Harmony Gold. Based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott written in 1867, it's the story of four New England sisters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy who come of age during the American Civil War. You know how one of the characters in the book dies of tuberculosis? Not in this movie. There was also a Little Women anime TV series called "Four Sisters Of Young Grass(?) in 1981.



HEIDI is naturally based on the popular children's book by Johanna Spyri about a Swiss orphan who goes to live with her hermit grandfather in the Alps. Animated as part of Nippon Animation Co.'s Worldwide Classics series, with direction by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata; the pair have a great time animating the endless expanses of Swiss Alps and bright blue skies. There is a Heidiland theme park in Switzerland where yodelling is enforced by law.

SINDBAD, being an adventure character whose appeal has lasted centuries, is a natural to become a Japanese cartoon. The character originates in ancient Middle Eastern tales of an intrepid sailor from Basra. The classic English version is from Richard Burton's 1001 Nights. No, not THAT Richard Burton, the other one. The movie THE ADVENTURES OF SINDBAD is a Toei film released in 1962, dubbed by god knows who, and a staple of public domain home video.



SINDBAD ARABIAN NIGHTS is a Nippon Animation Company series from 1975 and stars Sinbad, Aladdin, and Ali Baba together again for the first time! 1001 NIGHTS - produced by Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Productions- is one of three animated films aimed at an adult market in the late 1960s and early 70s that wound up bankrupting Mushi. I have an English trailer for this film but have never seen a full dubbed version.




L. Frank Baum's WIZARD OF OZ has been animated by Japanese folks on at least four occasions. One of them is a mere twelve minutes long. The Toho version released in 1982 stars the voices of Lorne Greene and Aileen "Annie" Quinn. I think we wrote about that one already.



Based on the Russian fairy tale, TWELVE MONTHS is a Toei/Soyuzmultfilm coproduction released in 1980. Anya is sent out into the cold woods to collect flowers in midwinter by the evil queen, but is saved by the twelve spirits of the months of the year. The somber, fantastical characters and cool color scheme are close to Toei's other 1980 film, Towards The Terra.

THE WILD SWANS, a Toei film from 1977, is a complicated Danish fairy tale about a king with 11 sons and 1 daughter. Our clueless widowed king marries an evil stepmother who turns the boys into swans. Daughter Elisa escapes swanification and must complete various impossible tasks and endure hardship to return her brothers to normal. Another swan-themed fairy tale anime, SWAN LAKE is that great ballet and is also a Toei film from 1981 that reportedly was the first co-production between Marvel Comics and Toei. No seriously, it says so right here in the November 1980 issue of Comics Reader. Fred Patten wouldn't lie!

DADDY LONGLEGS is based on the 1912 novel by the American writer Jean Webster, Mark Twain's grand-niece. Originally published in Ladies' Home Journal, this tells the story of an orphan girl whose tuition at a women's college (based on Vassar) is sponsored by an anonymous benefactor. The novel takes the form of letters written by Judy to her mystery man. Will the friendly, handsome uncle of one of her classmates turn out to be Judy's mysterious Daddy Longlegs? Hint: yes.



This anime version was produced by Tatsunoko in 1979 and dubbed into English in the 1980s by 3B Productions (Tranzor Z, Starbirds). There is a later TV series by Nippon Animation Company released as part of their "World Masterpiece Theater" series.

CALL OF THE WILD - Obviously from the Jack London novel, this Toei television film is surprisingly brutal in its depiction of the rough life in the North. Also features a ninja dog.



FRANKENSTEIN the anime! Loosely based on the Mary Shelley novel, this plodding, tedious adaptation is enlivened by rare moments of extreme violence. The new ending is not an improvement. Produced by Toei as a TV movie in the late 1970s and dubbed by Harmony Gold.

DRACULA SOVEREIGN OF THE DAMNED - this famous 1980 Toei telefilm is based on the Marvel Comics "Tomb Of Dracula" by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. The more fanciful notions of the comic book seem even more fanciful without Gene Colan's masterful artwork, and Dracula cockblocks Satan and eats a hamburger.


Yup, he's eating a hamburger. Deal with it.

So far the 1970s Marvel/Toei partnership resulted in Dracula at McDonalds, Spiderman with a giant robot, and Go Nagai sketching Luke Skywalker. Oh well, one out of three ain't bad.

THE YEARLING (aka "Fortunate Fawn"): the original Yearling novel was by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was published in 1938, and was the story of Jody, a young boy living in central Florida around the turn of the century. His parents won't let him have a pet, but he adopts a fawn whom he names Flag. I don't know how the anime version ends. This World Masterpiece Theater series recieved a really odd anonymous English dub and was sold in dollar stores as "Fortunate Fawn". Fun fact: when the American film was casting in 1939 my great-uncle tested for the part of Jody. Didn't get it, though.

FUTURE BOY CONAN, part of Nippon Animation's "World Masterpiece" series, this was based on the juvenile dystopian SF novel "The Incredible Tide" by Alexander Key, who also wrote "Escape To Witch Mountain". The original book is, as I recall, deadpan and grim, with Conan and Lana fighting to survive in a much less jolly world than we'd see in the anime series. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, this is perhaps the finest 26 episodes of any children's science fiction cartoon ever made by anyone ever.

CAPTAIN FUTURE - based on the 1940 pulp series written by Edmond Hamilton. Curtis Newton was raised in a secret moon base by a an artificial man, an intelligent robot, and a brain in a tank. Obviously he became a space-travelling hero battling evil and injustice throughout the solar system. This 1978 Toei TV series was really popular in Europe. Hamilton's "Star Wolf" became a live-action TV series in Japan in the early 1980s.



LENSMAN was loosely modelled after the seminal SF pulp series by Edward Elmer "Doc" Smith, PhD (food chemistry). The Lensmen are top agents of the Galactic Patrol, civilization's only defense against the Boskone pirate society. The Lens endows its wearer with telepathy and the ability to control minds of lesser strength. The battle between civilization and Boskone escalates until planets, stars, and black holes are used as weapons. The series began in 1936 and continued through the 1940s, with a final book in the series appearing in 1965.



The anime film was one of the first uses of computer animation in a Japanese anime production - not THE first, but close - and was followed by a TV series that hewed slightly closer to the original novels and had a kicky, piano-driven theme song. Other anime adaptions of American SF classics include the Sunrise STARSHIP TROOPERS, an amazingly dull adaptation of a really great book.

The famous Swedish comic strip MOOMIN about the Moomintrolls and their bucolic pastoral existence has been animated on about thirty or forty separate occasions. Mushi Productions, TMS, TV Tokyo, and lots of European studios have all collaborated on different Moomin animated series. There is also a Moomin theme park in Finland, and the shops of three continents are lousy with Moomin toys, dolls, cell phone charms, you name it. The version I have was dubbed into English in Wales.

Other Western-influenced anime titles mentioned were the Toei films Puss In Boots and Animal Treasure Island and Superbook - based on the book WRITTEN BY GOD!!- Tatsunoko's ANIME OYAKO GEKIJO / PASOCON TOABERU TANTEIDAN ("personal computer travel detectives") series from the early 1980s was commissioned by Pat Robertson for the Japanese market, dubbed and shown on various Christian television networks. In the Ukraine, the anime inspired a live-action Barney and Friends-style children's program titled Superbook Club (with the robot Gizmo, or "Robik" in Ukrainian, as the mascot).

Yes, I'm completely aware there are tons of anime titles I have completely neglected to mention, including HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE and the Toei LITTLE MERMAID and many others, including that one that's your favorite. Please feel free to fill up the comments about how I "forgot to mention" these titles, because I love it when you do that.

Spaced Out Japanimation, Man

Back in the misty ages of the past - we're talking the 1990's- when the twin trip-hammer blows of POKEMON and SAILOR MOON had blasted an American pop conciousness already reeling from the art-house opus AKIRA and the cries of disbelief as entire divisions of college sophomores entertained their dateless peers with sensual, late-night screenings of LEGEND OF THE OVERFIEND and NINJA SCROLL... there came a time when the Eighth Seal was opened and THE TRUTH was revealed to America's home video marketing executives.

This TRUTH was, of course, that we'd now reached a point in Western civilization where people would buy DAMN NEAR ANYTHING that had a Japanese cartoon character on it. I'm talking skateboards. "Hook-Ups" T-shirts. Comics drawn in the "manga style" by Americans. And, of course, videos! Videos of new anime releases, videos of anime movies, and videos of anime TV shows from twenty years ago that have been through the "public domain" mill so many times that the "public" is looking desperately around for somebody to take over the copyright just to get it out of the "$1.99 Movies" bin at the Wal-Mart to make way for Dorf golfing videos and remaindered copies of "Batman Forever".

But how to sell goofily-dubbed primitive Toei super robot cartoons to the sophisticated American retailer? One word - packaging.



And that's how Parade Video (distributor of, among other things, the incredible Peter Sellers film THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT) came to unleash SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION on the world! Yes, SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION, the amazing 4-tape set that satisfies ALL your Japanimation needs,as long as your Japanimation needs include "buying a Christmas present for that nephew who will NOT SHUT UP about something called "Japanimation". How many kids asked Santa for, say, GUNDAM WING or ESCAFLOWNE videos, and instead found SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION under the tree? Many a forced grin and a stammered "Thanks, Granpa!" would be heard on Christmas morning that year, I can tell you!

Sold through your snappier mall video outlets like the late, lamented Suncoast Video, SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION stands as a testament both to the staying power of cheap, public domain video AND to a public's brief but intense love affair with those big-eyed Japa-heeno cartoons. Not to mention the "throw it all up there and slap a gradiated logo on it" design aesthetic of the 1990s, where minimalism and taste were abandoned in favor of FLAMES!!! and METALLIC SHEEN!!! If there isn't a van out there with this artwork airbrushed on the side, I can only ask "why not?"




And yet, SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION is not without its charms. This 4-tape set devotes one tape each to GRANDIZER, SPACEKETEERS, GAIKING, and STARVENGERS - all Jim Terry dubs from the seminal super robot TV package FORCE FIVE that entertained us all in the fall of 1980 when the world was young and we wanted nothing more than to climb into a flying saucer that jammed itself into a giant robot armed with "hydro-phasers" and "space thunder" like in GRANDIZER. STARVENGERS enlightened us all to the possibility of jet planes that combine to form super robots battling demons, and GAIKING asked the anime question, what if an alien planet was destroyed by a black hole and the aliens attacked Earth which was defended by a giant robot space dragon that launched a horned super robot piloted by people dressed as baseball players? What if? And SPACEKETEERS - well, SPACEKETEERS had Princess Aurora, whose beauty entranced us all whether she was dressed in her space miniskirt or her space prom dress. Missing from the SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION set is DANGUARD ACE, the series where Leiji Matsumoto really started working out his Velikovsky theories about tenth planets careening wildly through our solar system. But they only had room for 4 tapes in the set, so something had to go.


The subject of a wide early 1980s home video release from Family Home Entertainment, the FORCE FIVE shows could be found in episodic and compilation-film versions in your neighborhood video rental shops. A few years later incredibly cheap public-domain video releases with titles like "Robo-Formers" and "Zalo" began to appear in drugstores and discount shops across the land, poor transfers of FORCE FIVE episodes.



On first glance, SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION would appear to be just another cheap, 6-hour speed public domain copy of a copy of a copy release of our old Force Five favorites. But the surprising fact is that, even though these tapes are recorded in the penny-pinching SLP 6-hour mode, the transfers are actually pretty good. Better, in fact, than the video quality of the bootleg DVD sets that are floating around. When we consider that the FHE tapes are starting to disintegrate because of their age, SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION becomes a possible alternative to our other choice, which is the unthinkable possibility of NOT WATCHING SPACEKETEERS EVER AGAIN. And we can't let that happen.



SPACED OUT JAPANIMATION - exploitative bargain-basement video release? Signpost of a time when anime ruled the video stores? Or valuable part of your balanced Japanese cartoon collection? It's all these things... and more.