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.

i am terribly sorry.

Still in crazy busy mode. Anime North went well and there was much classic anime discussioning, but I still have obligations to fulfill and miles to go before I sleep, or at least before I get a free couple of hours to write something on this blog. In the meantime you should go out and purchase this:



It's the latest issue of Otaku USA magazine, featuring a big article by yours truly all about Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999, with extra sidebar material by Tim "Star Blazers" Eldred! Additionally there's work by the always great Darius Washington, Mike Toole, Daryl "Destroy" Surat, and others much more talented than myself. So don't let my lazy behavior keep you from wallowing in 1970s Japanese cartoons, go buy magazine! Talk at you soon!!

INTO THE MACHINE!!!

Lodging deep within the brains of millions of prepubescent youths, JACK AND THE WITCH is one of those movies you see on some UHF station's afternoon movie timeslot when you're home from school with a fever or it's a rainy summer day or you're stuck at the relatives and are aimlessly turning the knobs on that giant woodgrained RCA monster - the knobs make that satisfying "klunk" as you switch from channel 2 to channel 3, and you have to fiddle with the tint once you get up into those rabbit-ear channels, and you sit there by the set inhaling ozone and faint scorched plastic until things look just right.

Twenty years later you thumb through some incomprehensible Japanese book listing every animated film ever released in Japan from 1941 until 1990 or so, and you see a picture that jogs your memory hard, like a fist, and you stand there shocked as you realize that no, you didn't DREAM that movie or IMAGINE it or HALLUCINATE it after one too many shots of Dimetapp Children's Cough Syrup - it actually exists, for once your memory isn't cheating. There actually is a Japanese animated film about little witches who fly broom-helicopters on fire missions against a spectacularly homely boy named Jack and his carload of animal friends, there really is a movie filled with spooky castles and crumbling balustrades and legions of devilish imps, featuring a giant machine that exists only to turn friendly woodland creatures into evil witches.



That's JACK AND THE WITCH, a movie seemingly produced to give children nightmares and confuse the hell out of adults. Released in 1967 by Toei Animation Company in between two rock 'em sock 'em CYBORG 009 films, JACK isn't based on a fairy tale or a popular manga or an ancient legend. It's its own thing, a bastard cross Between some whimsical Hanna Barbera TV cartoon and all the scary parts of the best Disney movies.

Directed by Japanese animation pioneer Taji Yabushita, JACK is not nearly as linear as some of his more familiar works like ALAKAZAM THE GREAT (1960) and ADVENTURES OF SINBAD (1962). However, JACK's flat character designs combined with lush, expressionistic backgrounds are proof positive of Toei's mid 60s schizoid split between wannabe Disney and wannabe UPA. Released over here by American International, this film was dubbed by Titan Productions, the outfit that handled Astro Boy, Gigantor, and many other imports. Close listeners can hear Corinne "Trixie" Orr and Billie Lou "Astro Boy" Watt voicing several different characters. Other than impacting the subconciousness of impressionable youths, this film made almost no impact on American anime fandom at large - American anime fans would obsess over early Miyazaki films and the voice talent of EIGHTH MAN, but lacking star animators or super robots, JACK AND THE WITCH spent years in obscurity, or at least a slightly higher level of obscurity than it now currently enjoys.



OUr titular hero Jack is a cleft-palated young hellraiser with his own car full of animal chums. Yeah, that's it, that's all the introduction you get. As the film opens he's bombing through the house - yes, driving IN THE HOUSE - in his Model T, blissfully ignorant of things like legal driving age or roads or seat belts. Well, wouldn't you know it, after a song about how the world is a lovely place, he gets into a race with a little girl witch named Allegra who rides a chopped and channelled broomstick/helicopter. Happens all the time. Allegra offers Jack a ride on her broomstick and takes him straight to an evil castle. Don't accept rides from strangers, kids!

Turns out Allegra and her more adult witch commander-in-chief Auriana all live in the terrifying castle and their hobby is turning innocent children and woodland creatures into hideous imps of Satan. This is accomplished by means of a giant machine made up of mostly of bones. "INTO THE MACHINE!!" the imps chant as our heroes are vaccummed into its depths. "INTO THE MACHINE! INTO THE MACHINE!!" It's a rhythmic cry that scarred the memories of many a TV-watching kid. Jack escapes the harpy machine- but mouse pal Squeaker doesn't!



Jack's animal posse escapes the creepy, gargoyle-carved-pillared castle with their own harpy prisoner, an amiable sort who's not averse to fun. Their impromptu dance party back at the house is interrupted by Jack's return; not to mention a fierce claw-chain attack by Allegra, which is halted by the simple expedient of whacking her on the skull with crockery until she's unconscious. Stricken by sympathy, Jack stops the animals from exacting any more violence on Allegra, but he's repaid by her knocking him down as she wakes up and escapes. Cheer up Jack, it won't be the first time a girl makes a sucker out of you. Every hesitant schoolyard crush is writ large on the animated stage here as Jack comes to grips with his strange new feelings towards this weird female creature.



Anyway, Jack and the animals realize they've got to rescue Squeaker. Their castle home invasion is sidetracked by Allegra, who's their friend again! Sure she is! She tricks our heroes and they fall into a pit populated by giant bugs and talking Sid & Marty Krofft mushrooms. But all psychedelic experiences must eventually come to an end and soon it's time for Jack to face the harpy-transforming machine. INTO THE MACHINE JACK! Saved at the last minute by desperate anti-wind power sabotage by Barnaby the Bear, Jack must now travel to the ice caves to rescue Allegra, who was banished there for her failure! Jack has a thing for the bad girls. He frees the witch-sicle with a smash from a huge crescent wrench - but then must face the angry vengeance of Auriana, whose swinging pendant chain sends Jack and Allegra into a crazy underwater volcano dimension of swirling psychedelic colors! When Jack's captured animal pals trick Harpy Squeaker into breaking the witch-queen's crystal ball, Auriana's power takes a serious hit - Jack and Allegra pop back into the regular non-psychedelic world (or at least as regular as this film gets) and Auriana changes into a weird Oni-type goblin, inflates a giant dinosaur skeleton balloon, and sets a time bomb before she escapes!

However, as it always happens in these movies, the witch is hoist by her own petard and both the castle and the witch are destroyed in a giant explosion. All the harpies are changed back into the little boys and girls and animals they once were, and the ruined castle changes into a beautiful forest. Allegra changes from her creepy witch look into a blonde. As the film wraps, children and animal friends ride off into the sunset in Jack's car, the end credits roll over dramatically-lit shots of actual models built of the film's characters, and early 70s children all over the world have nightmares.



Did I mention that JACK AND THE WITCH is a strange film? Too bizarre for younger children, not nearly comprehensible enough for older children, and possessed of none of the pretentious artistry that allows adults to admit they enjoy cartoons, it's an odd beast that refuses to be neatly categorized. Perhaps the last gasp of Toei's struggle to produce fairy-tale Disney style animated features, its European facade is permeated throughout by hints of Asian folkways; the Oni-demon Auriana transforms into, the sasumata-carrying harpy guards, and the swirling bands of fire lifted straight from Yabushita's work on SARUTOBI SASUKE. Maybe the legacy of JACK AND THE WITCH goes beyond entertaining kids in 1967; perhaps its destiny is to put us all back in touch with that confused pre-teen trying to make sense of the mysterious ways of a world that gives us girls who are sweet one minute and scary the next; a world that gives us movies like, say, JACK AND THE WITCH.

THE FLYING PHANTOM SHIP

FLYING PHANTOM SHIP and I got started at roughly the same time, the summer of 1969. While I was busy being born and the rest of the world was grooving in the mud to Sha Na Na at Woodstock, the fine folks at Toei Doga released this film. FLYING PHANTOM SHIP could be seen as a shorter and less ambitious followup to HORUS PRINCE OF THE SUN, but, apart from the excellent key animation by the Hayao Miyzazki / Isao Takahata combo, it's that film's exact opposite. While HORUS is an ambitious, prehistoric fairy tale epic full of symbolism and deep mythological import, FLYING PHANTOM SHIP is a paranoid Space Age actioner built to deliver kid-sized kicks and thrills. And as such, it's an unqualified success.



We are speaking, of course, of a film that features a giant flying derelict sailing ship, captained by a ghostly apparition in a skull mask, which is actually a super-scientific aerial battlewagon equipped with lasers and missiles. Its mission is to defeat an international conspiracy which defies mankind with giant robots, enormous talking crabs, and a popular, addictive soft drink that eventually dissolves you into mush. Our hero, the boy Hayato (assisted by his loyal dog) is tragically orphaned in the midst of a worldwide crisis. Rush-hour Tokyo is interrupted by Self-Defense Force tanks manuvering to attack an enormous rocket-firing robot Golem bent on smashing the city to bits. Hayato reels as he uncovers the awful truth behind his millionaire benefactor, and his attempt to warn the world is halted by the invasion of enormous crusteaceans. He eventually learns the secret behind his true parentage and finds himself captaining a super scientific undersea battleship on a kamikaze mission to the bottom of the ocean. Most other films would get away with one or maybe two of those concepts. Not FLYING PHANTOM SHIP, which cheerfully shoehorns enough insanity for eight or nine movies into its sixty minutes.



Is it deep? No. Did it win awards from parents groups or arts councils? No sir. If you mention it in film class, will the other students be impressed? I wouldn't try it. But does it satisfy 1000% percent of your daily recommended allowance of FUCKING AWESOME - the whole reason you watch these darn Japa-heeno cartoons anyway? Yes. Yes it does.

Based on a 1960 SHONEN MAGAZINE story by legendary manga-ka Shotaro Ishinomori, it might have seen an odd choice to film, but Toei had had earlier success with Ishinomori's CYBORG 009 film and TV series, full of the same sort of super-science action. Toei would later release another Ishinomori-based short film - 30,000 MILES UNDER THE SEA, another aquatic-themed SF movie - and while a unique and entertaining film, it's no FLYING PHANTOM SHIP.



If this doesn't push your buttons, you need to go to the doctor and get your buttons checked out. FLYING PHANTOM SHIP is pure distilled cartoon excitement delivered with the slick 60s style of your favorite period spy films or sci-fi TV shows. It was a hour-long reminder of the outlandish cartoon fun that made me love Japanese cartoons to begin with, and I found it in 1990, when my interest in the media was at an all-time low. Apart from the occasional Miyazaki film and the cerebral musings of Patlabor, the early 90s were a moribund time of weak, derivative OVAs and limp sequels sucking the life out of once-powerful franchises. In this muddled environment the boldness of FLYING PHANTOM SHIP was a breath of fresh, thirty year old air.

Too nutty and violent to be "educational", FLYING PHANTOM SHIP wasn't based on a fairy tale or a storybook like many of Toei's 1960s releases. It didn't win any Parents Awards or Certificates Of Merit from Self-Important International Organizations Of Children's Cinema. What it DID do was entertain the livin' shit out of audiences, a hint of juvenile sci-fi actioners like MAZINGER Z and CAPTAIN HARLOCK that would later cement Toei's reputation as an energetic (if not overly concerned with technical brilliance) animation powerhouse.



And yet in spite of my cheerleading the film's nonsensical sugary center, FLYING PHANTOM SHIP can't help but make you think. The script's bolted-together combination of H.P. Lovecraft, Jules Verne, and Ian Fleming might ONLY work set in a postwar Japan in which the industrial giants fueling the nation's economic miracle are the same economic giants who profited from the wholesale rape of China, Korea, and the Philippines during the Pacific War. The notion that things are not what they seem, that behind the skyscrapers and advertising and rock and roll of boom-time Japan lurk horrifying monsters, provides the film's subtextual center. The film's message - that those who claim to be fighting the menace are actually CAUSING the menace for their own evil ends - is a hallmark of paranoid screeds stapled to telephone poles or posted on the Internets throughout the world. And Hayato's futile attempt to warn the world- via cheerfully hosted TV chat show- puts a media-saturated spin on every child's nightmare of Not Being Listened To.



The big-eye Ishinomori character designs are sometimes at odds with the more naturalistic animation, particularly the tanks-in-Tokyo scene that Miyazaki would later use for a Lupin III television episode. There's a real effort made at realism in portrayals of the city, the military equipment, and your nautical spars and yardarms, right down to the undersea flora and fauna that the Flying Phantom Ship moves through. Yet director Hiroshi Ikeda's primary-colored, full-animation style makes it a very 60s-looking movie, kind of a throwback, and a surprising choice for a 1969 animated release. However, the apocalyptic, paranoid tone fits right in with the adult films of the period. The nervous undercurrents, jammed up against typical children's adventure movie cliches like Comedy Relief Dog, Tacked On Girlfriend, and Guess Who Your Real Dad Is, make it hard to tell whether this is a really dark kids movie, or the first attempt at an anime film aimed at older audiences, the kind that would dominate the field in the 70s and 80s. Perhaps it's both.



My fanzine article about FLYING PHANTOM SHIP from 18 years ago. I'm old.

Ignored for years by anime fandom, FLYING PHANTOM SHIP is needed now, more than ever, to remind the world why we got into this stuff in the first place; that sense of outlandish did-I-just-see-that nonsense that engages the big kid in us all. At the end of the day don't we all want to be Captain Hayato, master of his own vessel, sailing into a bright future? Go ahead Captain Hayato!!