let's anime

you're all winners

2009-11-23T11:24:00.003-05:00

That's right, everybody who reads "Let's Anime" is a winner. But in a different, more correct sense, only the people who sent in Prince Planet fan art are the REAL winners here. If only all of the conflicts afflicting mankind could be solved with Prince Planet fan art! The world would certainly be a more surreal place.

At any rate, here are the champions of the Great Prince Planet Fan Art Contest Of 2009, Sponsored by Let's Anime and MGM Digital Media in association with Hulu and YouTube! All Rights Reserved!!

Our first entry was by Guy, who won us over with his energetic heavy metal portrayal of Prince Planet.

When he's not drawing Prince Planet, Guy writes about anime at the Guy Hates You blog!

Next past the goalpost was Dylan, AKA "Ninjatron", with this great sepiatone depiction of Bobby and Diana.

Dylan is the man behind the Astro Boy World blog, your one stop shop for all your Astro Boy news.

Salvatore M. of Philadelphia PA came through with a peppy B&W illustration!

Meanwhile Larry C, who writes a great obscure world television blog, worked up this slick color piece that I like very much!

And not to be outdone, Sarah M. brings her "A" game with this swell watercolor illo!

I know the cut off was five entries, but I got this drawing from Emma which has the only Warlock representation here, so I'm going to share it with everybody even though I am clearly violating my own rules.

Thanks to everybody who participated and you will all be getting Prince Planet T-shirts in the mail at some point in the near future. I'm being vague about the time frame because I have to go out and buy envelopes and do all that stuff, it's not like I can just have the Let's Anime Mail Room guys do this, because they're really busy. Also because they don't exist.

All artwork is (c) its original creators. Prince Planet is (c) MGM. No rights are given or implied without express consent of Major League Baseball.

Next time at Let's Anime; something completely unrelated to Prince Planet in any way, shape, or form!!

contest is over!

2009-11-13T15:38:00.004-05:00

The great Prince Planet contest is now over, I've gotten five entry drawings. Thanks to everybody who participated! We recieved some great art and we'll be posting it right here in a few days, so check back with us soon.

Remember to head on over to Hulu and watch some more Prince Planet! Thanks again to MGM Digital Media for making this all possible.

You can also visit the Mister Kitty site and hear the American and Japanese Prince Planet theme songs and a mashup of Prince Planet audio!

cartoons by Meg Evans

Prince Planet Is Back!!

2009-11-08T21:44:00.004-05:00

It's exciting news for Prince Planet fans! Starting Monday November 9th 2009, 46 episodes of Prince Planet will be released on Hulu and YouTube. It's been thirty years since Prince Planet last aired on American television. Now, after years in MGM's archives, this fondly remembered series is zooming out of the vaults and onto your monitors in a new, digitally restored version! All your favorite characters are back - Dan Dynamo, Diana, Pops Worthy, Adji Baba the Arabian wizard, Warlock the Martian Magician, Krag the Master Of Misery, and that guy on Radion who was always asleep at the switch whenever Prince Planet needed more juice -they're all just as you remember them, and now you don't have to fiddle with the UHF antenna. Aliens, robots, monsters, gangsters, alien robot monster gangsters - all the excitement of Prince Planet is returning just when we need him the most.

Prince Planet Pastels!

We here at Let's Anime are really excited about this. Probably too excited. Anyway, thanks to MGM we have some promotional goodies to give away - T-shirts! So we're going to have a contest. Here are the rules.

1. Employees and staff of Let's Anime and their relatives are not eligible for this contest. Since we do not have any staff or employees I do not see this being a problem.
2. The first five (5) people to send Let's Anime their original Prince Planet fan art drawing will recieve a Prince Planet T-shirt.
3. Drawings must be of Prince Planet and one or more of the following: Diana, Dan Dynamo, Adji Baba, Warlock, or Krag. Your choice. Color, black and white, whichever you prefer. If you want to draw Bobby instead of Prince Planet it's OK.
4. Drawings must be ORIGINAL - this must be your own work. I know how to use Google Image Search too, smarty.

Prince Planet art by Meg Evans

5. Digital media is fine.
6. Drawings need to be scanned and saved as a .jpg file, 72 or 100 dpi, at least 400 pixels wide. Please don't send any files larger than a meg or so.
7. If you don't have a scanner, take a digital picture of the drawing and email that.
8. Email image files to: terebifunhouse@gmail.com
9. Include your NAME and your MAILING ADDRESS. This information will NOT be given to anybody and will remain a top secret of Let's Anime.

Prince Planet art by John Gaydos

10. Contest is open to United States and Canada residents only. Sorry guys, my budget for this stunt does not cover shipping stuff around the world.
11. I will post the winning drawings in an upcoming Let's Anime blog post.
12. Contest ends at 11:59pm MONDAY NOVEMBER 16th 2009.

The t-shirt looks like this!

Remember, email those drawings to terebifunhouse@gmail.com and watch Prince Planet on Hulu and YouTube starting November 9th! Special thanks to MGM for making this all possible!

IMPORTANT NOTE - I have now recieved 5 entries and the contest is now closed. There's some great artwork and I will be posting it at Let's Anime in a few days. Thanks to everybody who contributed! If you want to send fan art anyway, please feel free to do so.

More Meg Evans Prince Planet fan art

Prince Planet, of course, was first broadcast on American television in 1966. Dubbed by Copri International, this 52-episode television series was released by American International Pictures, the same outfit that provided us with gems like THE WILD ANGELS, DIE MONSTER DIE, RIOT ON THE SUNSET STRIP, BEACH PARTY, GHOST OF DRAGSTRIP HOLLOW, WILD IN THE STREETS, and much of Roger Corman's ouvre. AIP's Japan connection includes anime titles like ALAKAZAM THE GREAT, live-action hero shows like JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING (or GIANT) ROBOT - which is also now available on Hulu! - and films involving big Japanese stars like Gamera and Godzilla. AIP was bought by Orion, which was in turn absorbed by MGM. So the question is, what influence did Prince Planet have on North American anime fandom?

possibly unauthorized Usei Shonen Popi metal click toy from the 60s

In the years between 1966 and 1979, Prince Planet became a fixture in the minds of many of America's television generation kids. Of course the 1960s was a wild time for Japanese cartoons - the term "anime" had yet to be coined and instead the favored catchphrase was "terebi manga" - and instead of a constant barrage of magical schoolgirls and giant military robots, the nascent anime field was experimenting and finding its way with a wide variety of shows featuring a wide variety of characters. This is the era that gave us Astro Boy, Marine Boy, Gigantor, Eighth Man, Speed Racer, the Amazing Three, and other series less known in the United States like Cyborg 009, Cyborg Big X, Ken The Wolf Boy, Attack No. 1, Princess Knight, Skyers 5, Kamui the Ninja, Ninja Sasuke, Sally The Witch, Pirate Prince, Rainbow Soldier Robin - a bewildering variety of programs produced by an industry just finding its way. Usei Shonen Popi enbraced this "anything goes" aesthetic as a freewheeling adventure show willing to do anything. Robots, tiny aliens, gangsters, monsters, spaceships, death and destruction, frankly bizarre characters like Warlock and Krag, and a series-long story arc that might have been the first of its kind for any animated series anywhere all percolated in the minds of impressionable youngsters, and as these youngsters grew up and found out there was a thing called "Fandom", naturally the concept was applied to Prince Planet.

flyer for Prince Planet Foundation

In the late 1980s, armed with a C/FO membership directory that listed fans by their interests, I set out to get in touch with everybody I could find who expressed any interest in Prince Planet. The result was a loose network of pen pals and tape traders. We swapped copies of Prince Planet episodes, wrote fan fiction and drew fan artwork and cartoons, and even published a few fanzines.

Meg Evans cartoon from the Prince Planet Foundation fanzine

When I started the print Let's Anime, one of the earliest articles was a feature on Prince Planet. Throughout the 1990s I continued to get emails from people desperately looking for Prince Planet episodes. Although several unauthorized releases were being sold through grey-market channels, we continued to hope that MGM would one day legitimately make Prince Planet available to the general public. And now they have, so I suppose we can get back to where we were as children and simply enjoy the thing.

Which is what I intend to do, and I highly recommend you all spend a little time watching Prince Planet on Hulu and YouTube!

This post is approved by the Great Seal Of Prince Planet!

Artwork in this post is (c) its original creators.

By the way, Prince Planet now has a Facebook page. Naturally.

Jack And The Early Morning Witch

2009-10-30T16:00:00.003-04:00

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'.

Honey Honey's Wonderful Adventures

2009-10-20T11:57:00.004-04:00

Can a European teenager and her cat find love and happiness while being chased throughout the world by a mysterious thief and four ethnic stereotypes in the wild and wacky days before World War One? That's the question asked every episode of HONEY HONEY, the show that kept many of us glued to our cable TV sets in the early 1980s!

HONEY HONEY began as a manga success from the pen of shoujo mangaka Hideko Mizuno - perhaps the only female resident of the famous Tokiwa "manga apartment house" in the Toshima district of Tokyo (other residents included Fujio-Fujiko, Shotaro Ishinomori, and some guy named Osamu Tezuka). She would later go on to critical and commercial success with FIRE! But before FIRE! there was HONEY HONEY. Or as we like to call it, "The Wonderful Adventure Of Honey Honey".

Honey Honey and Phoenix share a manga moment; Flora fumes

Honey Honey's manga appeared in "Ribon" in 1966 and ran for several years; Mizuno's Tezuka influence is obvious but there's stylish, breezy fashion to her pen line, moving away from the rounded kiddy look and towards the more ornate style we'll come to see as "shoujo". Though HONEY HONEY is set in the early 20th century it's not slavishly devoted to the period; Honey's 60s' bubble hairdo is kind of a tip, but the series itself refuses to take ANYTHING seriously. Animated in 1981 by Kokusai Eiga-sha and broadcast on Fuji TV, the cartoon emulated its star by making its way around the world and onto American TV sets.

Honey Honey children's book based on episode 6

Honey Honey herself is an orphan, working in a Viennese restaurant just trying to make ends meet. One day while serving a gigantic roast turkey, a white cat leaps into the restaurant and into her life - chased by a gang of cops, royalty, and various stuffed shirts! As it happens the white cat happened to be hanging around outside the royal palace where Princess Flora was entertaining suitors with her fabulous new gem, the Star Of The Amazon. Annoyed by the constant parade of weak-chinned Euro-trash, Flora stuffs the ring into a fish and hurls it out the window, proclaiming to one and all that whoever finds the ring shall win her hand in marriage. Well, when you're a hungry cat and a fish falls from the sky, you eat every bit of it, including the ring inside. Hence the gang of well-heeled cat chasers, and the white cat's furious leap into Honey Honey's face, and the trajectory of the giant roast turkey as it is delivered with more than customary speed. And thus we begin the Wonderful Adventures Of Honey Honey.

Far from the typical shoujo soap opera of tragic romantic misunderstandings, HONEY HONEY refuses to take itself seriously. The bumbling, pompous, stereotype suitors, the hair-trigger temper Princess Flora, and Honey Honey's willful troublemaking as she careens wildly across Europe make for fine viewing. Pulp adventure is represented by the Makio "Harlock" Inoue-voiced Phoenix, the mysterious masked thief who swings in to rescue Honey Honey just when he's needed most (we'll be seeing more of his type of character later in "Sailor Moon"). Is he just after the Star Of The Amazon, or does he harbor feelings for Honey Honey? This enrages Flora, who lusts after Phoenix herself and can't understand why he won't come to his senses and propose to her.

Furious Flora, Herr Gustav

Geronimo, Oil Dollar, Pika Pika

In the meantime Flora has to deal with Herr Gustav, King Pika-Pika, Sheik Oil Dollar, and Native American tribal leader Geronimo, who chase Honey Honey around the world and occasionally double cross each other trying to find that white cat so they can get married to Princess Flora. Honey Honey herself, though voiced by CANDY actress Matsushima Minori, isn't a typical shoujo heroine. She'd rather bum around Europe than be a princess, won't stand for cruelty or injustice, and woe betide anyone who dares to threaten her beloved Lily. Paying lip service to the Mauve Decade time period, HONEY HONEY never lets historical accuracy get in the way of sight gags, culminating in a King Kong-referencing final episode complete with 1970s skyscrapers.

Phoenix breaks the fourth wall

The journey begins as Honey escapes Vienna via balloon. Landing in Venice, she helps a young couple elope and winds up in Rome, thence to the Swiss Alps and a William Tell adventure. Then to Munich. Heidelberg, Amsterdam, Brussels. Paris, Orleans, Arles, and the Grand Prix in Monaco. Escaping by boat through the Mediterranean she arrives in Barcelona and hurries to Madrid, Toledo, Gibraltar, Lisbon, and London, where she meets both a long-haired guitar group and Robin Hood. It's also in London where, with the assistance of the King, the Star Of The Amazon is removed from Lily. Hey, that's the end of the show, right? Wrong. Kidnaped by Vikings - yes, Vikings - and taken to Norway, Honey learns she is actually heir to the throne of Priscilla, a tiny nation overthrown by the usurper Slag when Honey was an infant.

The evil Slag

Far from being a thief, Phoenix is really a secret agent working to restore the rightful rulers to the throne of Priscilla. Kidnaped by Slag's ninja-style raiders, Honey is taken to his secret castle in Russia. Escaping with the help of a flying saucer (used as an explanation for the Tunguska Explosion in Siberia) Honey travels to Moscow and south to Constantinople, where both she and Phoenix are sold into slavery. Phoenix is bought by Princess Flora, and Honey is left to become the latest addition to a sultan's harem.

I Dream Of Honey

It's not so bad for Honey because she gets to dress like Barbara Eden and help with magic tricks, and she gets a flying carpet which takes her to India and Japan and Los Angeles and finally to the show's climax in New York. By the time the series ends three different groups are chasing after Honey Honey for three different reasons and when the show wraps with a giant ape climbing a skyscraper holding Princess Flora, we take it all in stride.

I don't think anybody saw this coming.

Plenty of boy cartoons are watched by girls, but HONEY HONEY may have been the first girl cartoon watched by boys, in America anyways, after the show somehow made it into English and onto Pat Robertson's CBN cable network. Dubbed by "Sound International Corp." along with LEO THE LION, HONEY HONEY was broadcast in the vital Sunday noon timeslot that, unless you're sports, is ignored by all. The offices of "Sound International Corp" are now occupied by a chemical company. At the time I happened to notice LEO in the TV listings and the family VCR was sitting idle waiting for somebody to re-run STAR BLAZERS. Why not check it out? I was pleasantly surprised to learn LEO was the sequel to KIMBA THE WHITE LION (the first episode I saw helpfully featured a flashback to Leo's younger days) and, relaxing in the afterglow of my viewing discovery, decided to check out HONEY HONEY. I knew of an anime called CANDY CANDY, maybe this was a re-titled English dub? No sir, HONEY HONEY was its own thing. At first I didn't give it much attention, but after a few weeks the anything-goes style and Perils Of Pauline melodrama had its hooks in me.

Western-style Flora and Slag menace Honey in the manga

Comparing the original comics to the TV series, we find the anime begins faithfully but takes a sharp left turn somewhere in the middle of Europe. Blazing its own trail, the story is sometimes dicated by the writers and sometimes by the show's early cancellation - an extended American sequence involving Hollywood, Old West cowboys and Indians, and Chicago gangsters was excised. The storylines where Honey Honey becomes a judo champion in Japan and Honey's adventures on the Titanic also got axed. Thankfully, the manga's original ending among the jungle tribes of Africa also did not surface to embarrass us all on television.

The Great Honey Honey Dynamite Chase

The animation itself is a mixed bag. Kokusai Eiga-sha ("Movie International Company") produced animation utilizing a wide variety of sources involving a wide variety of skill levels, from beginning students to seasoned veterans. A list of their series reads like a secret history of Japanese animation - the J-9 series BRYGAR, BAXINGAR, and SASURAIGAR; the treasure-hunting ancient astronaut series ACROBUNCH, highspeed robot sportscar GALVION, Mission Outer Space SRUNGLE, ecological disaster robot series BALDIOS, Greek mythology comedy LITTLE POLLON, motorcycle racing drama FUTARI DAKA, robot boy comedy DOTAKON, and their own version of Little Women, FOUR SISTERS OF YOUNG GRASS. Like most other Kokusei Eiga-sha series, HONEY HONEY is now available for distribution from Enoki Films. HINT HINT EVERYBODY, RELEASE THIS SERIES ON DVD ALREADY.

episode 22 Honey

HONEY HONEY itself is typical Japanese animation television; clunky in parts but zippy when deadlines and budget allow it to flourish. Episode 22, "Snowbound Castle", was the high-water mark for the show; character designs are kawaii-ed up, animaton becomes fluid and expressionistic, and things just get cartoonier in general.

Yes, it's sharp.

After its CBN broadcast HONEY HONEY vanished into the mists of time. Sony Home Video reportedly released the first four or five episodes on VHS, along with other 80s titles like Curious George and "Video 45s". I've only seen evidence of the first episode myself. More than two decades later the Sony release remains the only legacy of HONEY HONEY in the United States (it was more popular in Europe, as are all Japanese cartoons). In Japan the show failed to capture an audience; perhaps a little too old fashioned for a 1981 audience, who probably asked the question we have asked, why is a 1966 manga JUST NOW getting a TV anime show? What's the deal with that? As anime fandom grew in the United States few remembered HONEY HONEY; unless you were paying a lot of attention to basic cable on Sundays in the middle of the 1980s it simply did not register. Even LEO THE LION got a few public-domain home video releases in later years, but nobody wanted to deal with HONEY HONEY. "Sound International Corp" disappeared, my letters of inquiry unanswered.

As a matter of fact I do own this cel.

In this era of total availability, where everything has DVD box sets or torrents, it remains an elusive quarry. But in a way, that fits the series perfectly - we're stil chasing HONEY HONEY.

Episode guide: some of these are from the American titles and some of these are translated or transliterated from the Japanese. If you have every episode of the series in English with the title cards intact, please drop me a line.

1. The Cat Ate the Diamond
2. Much Ado About Water
3. See Naples and Escape
4. SOS Alpine Express
5. The Red Arrows of Berne Forest
6. Hamelin is Full of Cats
7. The castle of Lovely Cats
8. Windmill Vane Phoenix
9. Only One Can Be our Sun Princess
10. Cinderella Tonight
11. The Witch House of Orleans
12. Circus Rooster
13. The Blue Hurricane of Monte Carlo
14. Cathedral Bells Ring
15. Smile, Madrid
16. Fortress of Gibraltar
17. World's Best Sponge Cake
18. Lily's in Big Trouble!
19. Honey Run! 20 o'clock
20. Secrets of Honey
21. Honey Kidnapped
22. Snowbound Castle
23. The Great Science Fiction Chase
24. Prince Menace
25. Lily Sold
26. Magic Departure
27. India Flying
28. Flora's Great Flowers
29. Hello, Goodbye, New York (last episode)

special bonus: Honey Honey in Hollywood! Spot the cameos.

Under The Western Influence

2009-09-27T16:14:00.002-04:00

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 Sarah Polley. 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.

what I did on my vacation

2009-09-10T10:59:00.003-04:00

Been a few weeks since anything new popped up on the old Let's Anime. Why is that? Huh? It's because the end of summer is traditionally a time for reflection and contemplation, a time for spiritual and philosophical renewal, and also a time to squeeze in a little vacation. Which is what we did.

So we went to Tokyo and took a lot of pictures and did some sightseeing and bought a lot of neat stuff, and that's part of why there hasn't been any new Let's Anime action here. Another reason is the upcoming Anime Weekend Atlanta, happening September 18-20 in the Cobb Galleria Center and Renaissance Waverly Hotel in what is technically the city of Atlanta!

As one of the founders and a continuing bad influence I naturally have many important duties at AWA, one of which is the late Saturday night event known as "Old School Classroom". This video-room event is basically a clip show featuring snippets of those crazy old Japanese cartoons that have all the kids excited. This year's theme is "1960s" so that means everything from Astro Boy to Tiger Mask to Cyborg Big X to Cyborg 009. That event is going to wrap up with an entire episode of "Honey Honey", even though the cartoon is technically not from the 1960s. But it's my panel and I can do whatever I want.

Another AWA event I'll be at is the Sunday afternoon extravaganza known as "Thirty Years of Star Blazers". That's right, it's been thirty years since Star Blazers first burst forth upon American television sets, and we've assembled an all-star cast of fans and pros to talk about this seminal experience, including original Nova voice actress Amy Howard Wilson, Starblazers.com webmaster and comic author Tim Eldred, and other notables.

Friday afternoon I will be holding forth on a topic near and dear to my heart, a panel about Western literature that has inspired Japanese cartoons. This doesn't just mean Nippon Animation World Masterpiece shows, either! Lots of crazy stuff you never knew existed or didn't really feel the need to know existed awaits your eyeballs.

And of course Friday night at ten PM you must not fail to attend JAPANESE ANIME HELL, the original crazy clip show highlighting the weird and wacky, the failures and the fantastics, the disturbing and the damned paraded across the screen for your entertainment.

So if you happen to be anywhere near Georgia in the next week, you owe it to yourself and to future generations to attend this year's Anime Weekend Atlanta! Once it's over I promise regular posting here at Let's Anime will resume with all possible speed. Isn't that right, Inflatable Prince Planet?

2009 is Showa 41 - listen along with CYBORG 009

2009-08-16T13:11:00.005-04:00

Found in a MANDARAKE store in Tokyo by Tim "Starblazers.com" Eldred, this CYBORG 009 Asahi Sonorama single is, if you happen to be my brain, something that is constantly playing in the background at all hours of the day or night. I'm a big CYBORG 009 fan. I like the cartoony big-foot Shotaro Ishinomori style, I like the angsty, turned-into-fighting-cyborgs-against-our-will story, I like the bizarre monster combination enemy cyborgs they're thrown against, and most of all I like the fact that American fans of the show are thin on the ground so there isn't a lot of competition when it comes to grabbing CYBORG 009 toys or books at the anime cons (not that there's a lot of 009 stuff at anime cons these days).

As we will remember from the last time I wrote about CYBORG 009, the series is about nine people from all walks of life who are kidnaped by the evil Black Ghost and turned into cyborg soldiers with various powers and abilities. They rebel against the Black Ghost and spend three movies, three television series, dozens of manga volumes, and one Asahi Sonorama single battling for the peace of the world.

The cool thing about this disc is that it's from 1966 and uses the theme song and the basic story from the contemporaneous Toei feature- but instead of cheaping it out with production art from the film, the "book" part of this "book and record" set features all-new Ishinomori artwork. At least it's not artwork I'd seen anywhere before, and I think I'd remember seeing a lot of these illustrations somewhere in my, ahem, sizeable collection of 009 books and memorabilia.

Thanks to the miracle of my turntable and the Internet you can now listen to this Asahi Sonorama record your very own self! Side one is here and side two is here. Remember to set your computer to 33 1/3 RPM for maximum enjoyment!

So cast your mind back to 1966 and enjoy the story of Cyborg 009 and his comrades in cybernetic arms as they struggle to defend us against the Black Ghost! Feel free to sing along with the theme song if you know the words... I believe everybody can handle the first nine lyrics.

Spaced Out Japanimation, Man

2009-07-24T12:53:00.004-04:00

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.

challenge to remember the go-bots

2009-07-07T11:01:00.002-04:00

Back in May at Anime North I sat in on the "classic anime" panel, where the topic of conversation sort of meandered amusingly, and we were rude to kids in the hall (not THE Kids In The Hall, just some actual kids in the actual hall) who were interrupting our important discussion with their tremendously annoying squeals. At one point, discussing the way Japanese toys made it over to North America in the 1980s sometimes without benefit of TV series support or any familiarity with the shows in question -a topic I've covered here before-, my befogged brain twitched and served up a tidbit of memory of a certain toy. Released as part of the "Go-Bots" line of transforming robot toys, this plaything was actually from SPACE ADVENTURE COBRA, the Buichi Terasawa manga turned into the TMS anime series all about Cobra and his Psycho-Gun and the various sexy ladies that help him on his sexy outer space adventures. Wow, I hadn't thought about that toy in a long time, not since I was in high school working part time at K-Mart and killing time wandering through the toy aisle marvelling at how K-Mart was selling Xabungle toys and Dunbine toys and who knows what else.

At any rate a couple of weeks later we were rooting through an antique mall and lo and behold, there it was, the "Go-Bot" in question. Five dollars and an inane conversation with the clerk about it being a "Transformer" later, and it was mine! Proof my brain is still the boss!

Given the name "Psycho", this space-age sports car was a proud addition to the mighty "Go-Bots" line of toys. But if the "Go-Bots" were all poorly-animated sentient robots who transformed into vehicles for the benefit of chortling, easily amused preschoolers, then why are there two human shaped people sitting in the passenger seats?

That's because this toy was originally known as the "Psychoroid", the passenger vehicle of the definitely-not-for-preschoolers Cobra, a freebooting space adventurer with a powerful laser gun built into his left arm, a sexy robot companion, and a taste for the full-figured gals that exist only in the mind of Buichi Terasawa.

Bandai licensed the toy out to Europe who took out the missile launchers, renamed it the "Future Machine", and happily passed it on to America, who were pleased to get yet another transforming robot toy to cram onto the overstuffed shelves of toy stores across the nation.

With a few clicks and turns this sporty speedster becomes an amazingly clumsy robot that barely looks as if it can stand on its own, let alone help Cobra or the "Go-Bots" battle in the far flung world of the future.

Cobra inspired an interesting line of toys as seen here captured in photos from "My Anime" magazine.

Who wouldn't want a toy of Cobra's utilitarian spaceship "Turtle", as well as a toy Psychogun to wear on their very own arm? The schoolyard bullies will definitely respect you once you start waving that Psychogun around.

Also released as "Go-Bot" model kits were two mecha from the Tatsunoko series MOSPEADA. One was an Alpha Fighter relabeled as good "Go-Bot" leader "Leader One", and the other was a Mospeada Cyclone bike renamed as "Go-Bot" villain "Cy-Kill". You know, because he's a motorcycle, and he's evil. That's the kind of subtle understatement we've come to expect from American cartoons of the 1980s. And yes, I'm aware "Go-Bots" were based around a Japanese toy line called "Machine Robo", except for the ones that were from "Diaclone", and that some of the "Machine Robo" toys became "Go-Bots" and some became "Transformers". And I totally do not care. Toy lines that aren't based on cartoons about Psycho-Guns and/or sexy space ladies are of no interest to me.

So, farewell to the "Go-Bots"! So long suckers! Give my regards to the "Rock Lords!"

JUST DOING THIS TO MESS WITH OUR HEADS

2009-06-24T10:53:00.004-04:00

Wouldn't it be great if Kodansha's "Osamu Tezuka Manga Complete Works" editions were in English? Well, they kinda are.

Yes! A charmingly typewritten synopsis of his classic shojo manga PRINCESS KNIGHT! True, the rest of the comic is in Japanese, but it's a start. Is there more?

AMBASSADOR MAGMA aka SPACE GIANTS! All right! So, how different is this from the Space Giants show we enjoyed as children?

Yeah, that's pretty different. For one thing, token Caucasian reporter "Liz" isn't even mentioned! Hey, what about KIMBA THE WHITE LION, you know, JUNGLE EMPEROR?

No, that's not Santa Claus there, it's Hige Oyaji and a grown-up Kimba - now named Leo - bravely facing the elements atop Mount Moon! A grown up Kimba?? What the heck?

Yes, the original manga goes places NBC would not dare to enter. At least not in cartoon form. But enough of these popular Tezuka works - did Kodansha release Complete Works editions of his more, shall we say, obscure manga?

Yes! Yes they did. JET KING, the story of an alien boy who can change his shape at will to better defeat evil, has a spoiler right in the English synopsis, so don't read it! Also in this volume, HIKARI is the story of a boy with crazy hair and two handguns who fights gangsters. Based on a true story.

But what about ASTRO BOY? I can hear you now, where's TETSUWAN ATOMU? Okay, here's your MIGHTY ATOM already.

This volume contains the story "The Three Magicians", which was one of the first Astro Boy stories I was ever exposed to, as it is also the subject of this LP:

Those three magicians get around.

Somebody should take the hint and get to work giving this classic Tezuka manga some actual North American releases; PRINCESS KNIGHT would sell like cotton candy at the fair and who would pass up a chance to own the original stories behind SPACE GIANTS and KIMBA THE WHITE LION? Not me! In the meantime, I suppose we'll have to be content with 30 year old typewritten summaries.

ROKUSHIN GATTAI GOD MARS!!

2009-06-09T09:50:00.004-04:00

Six enormous colorful super robots erupt from hiding to protect Takeru Myojin, a 17-year old member of the Crasher Squad who, in reality, is actually a space alien named Mars from the planet Gishin with super ESP powers sent here to destroy the Earth! Will his fellow Crasher Squad members let their suspicion and mistrust of Takeru ruin their friendship? Will Emperor Zule succeed in killing Takeru and detonating the Earth-destroying bomb hidden inside the super robot "Gaia"? Will Takeru's twin brother Marg resist Zule's mind control before he's forced to battle Mars to the death? And will Takeru/Mars realize his six super robots will combine to form the Six God Combination God Mars, the most powerful robot in the universe? The answers to all these questions may be found in ROKUSHIN GATTAI GOD MARS, the 64-episode 1981 series from Tokyo Movie Shinsha that raised the bar for colorful, well-designed super robot animation as well as heart-rending cosmic sibling melodrama.

One of TMS's few robot anime titles (the others include their 1980 remake of TETSUJIIN-28 and 1983's SUPER DIMENSION CENTURY ORGUSS), it quickly downplays the "enemy robot of the week" formula in favor of cosmic soap opera, and the melodrama and tears continue right until the end of the series. MARS, a 1976 Shonen Champion manga series by pioneer Mitsuteru Yokoyama, drew on the science fictional ESPer hero themes explored in his earlier works such as BABEL II and THE NAME IS 101, spiced with flavors of the giant robot guardian motif originated in his TETSUJIIN-28 and GIANT ROBO series.

TMS continued the evolution in GOD MARS. Where there was once one super robot guardian, GOD MARS now gives us six separate super powerful giant robots that combine into one ultra-unstoppable mechanical deity, the centerpiece of a shiny, colorful space opera that captivated audiences around the world.

The story? 17 year old Takeru Myojin is a member of the Crasher Squad, the rapid-reaction space unit of the Earth Defense Forces in the future year 1999. Troubled by strange dreams, confronted by mysterious assassins from outer space, Takeru learns his real name is Mars. As an infant, he was sent to Earth from planet Gishin as part of a secret plan by its evil Emperor Zule. Possessed of super ESP powers, Mars can summon the gigantic robot Gaia, which in addition to being your typical super strong robot, also contains a super bomb capable of destroying the entire planet Earth! The emperor's plan is thwarted, however, because Takeru rejects Zule and Gishin, instead choosing to defend his adoptive home planet alongside the Crasher Squad - Mika Hinata (girl), Akira Kiso (chubby guy), Asuka Kenji (captain), Naoto Izyuujin (the cool guy), and Namida (audience-identification kid), all led by Commander Ohtsuka (exactly the same character from TETSUJIIN-28, right down to the pot belly and moustache).

Luckily for Takeru and the Earth, his real father on Gishin secretly sent five other robots to Earth. Awaiting Takeru's summons, these five robots - Sphinx, Uranus, Titan, Shin, and Ra - slumber in locations across the globe but when Takeru commands "ROKUSHIN GATTAI!", they burst forth from their hiding places and combine into GOD MARS.

With a reputation built on anime adaptations of high-profile manga including shojo titles (ROSE OF VERSAILLES), sports drama like AIM FOR THE ACE, and the long-running adult comedy LUPIN III, TMS was known for bright, stylish animation with an international flair. ROKUSHIN GATTAI GOD MARS would be no exception. The show practically vibrates right out of the TV with the brightest, cleanest, cheeriest color palate since that time the NBC Peacock dropped acid at a wild Technicolor corporate party. The skies are impossibly blue, the trees are vibrantly green, rockets blast with clouds of flame, ray-guns scintillate and sparkle. The Six God robots aren't wasted in some tedious rainbow motif but each have their own color schemes and visual identities, and the God Mars combination is distinctive and friendly, a big clunky multicolored skyscraper of a robot that must have been a bitch for the animators. It's a series that caught American anime fans' eyes when it was nothing more than opening credits on a compilation tape; even jammed together with hundreds of other OP titles from hundreds of other similar super robot cartoons, GOD MARS stands out.

Thematically GOD MARS also excels. Abandoning the traditional 8 year old boy audience entirely, GOD MARS adopts melodramatic space opera storyline full of tragedy, loss, and heartbreak, embodied in its fan-favorite character, Takeru's shy, retiring, dreamy twin brother Marg. Held in the palace of Zule on Gishin, Marg telepathically warns his brother of impending danger until Zule brainwashes him for use as a living weapon against Takeru in a tragic battle of brothers. The first third of the series is filled with angst and more than a bit of sloppy emo brotherly emotion as both Mars and Marg agonize over the fates that have kept them from a normal sibling relationship. Meanwhile, Takeru's pals in the Crasher Squad and the EDF begin to realize that Mars is a space alien related to the other space aliens who are destroying Earth, and also, if he dies, the whole world goes boom. So there's a lot of suspicion, soul-searching, moody moping, and protective custody. Meanwhile the girl Gishin super-ESPer ace Rose swears to defeat Takeru, but eventually realizes that not only is Gishin wrong to attack Earth, but as one of the few speaking female roles in the show, it's up to her to provide some hetero non-incest romantic interest; so we're treated to a half-hearted romance between Rose and Mars. This in no way dimmed the Mars/Marg relationship, which would inspire reams of disturbing twincest fan fiction and set the template for a generation of dreamy boy-love dreams.

The show makes a brave attempt at romance between Mars and Rose, but you can tell their hearts really aren't in it, especially as a late-series plot point involves Rose being possessed by the spirit of Marg! It's a shame because Rose is one of those starts-off-evil but later-becomes-good characters with one of the few real character arcs in the show, and deserves to be more than a beard. Nobody takes the Rose/Mars hookup seriously, the nonexistent romance between Mrs Myojin and Commander Ohtsuka is more believable.

The 64 episodes of GOD MARS are divided up into three distinct sequences; the Gishin Chapter, the Marume chapter, and the Earth chapter. As the fight with Zule wraps, Earth finds itself smack dab in the middle of one of those fugitive space-princess sagas as Flore arrives, a refugee from a war on planet Marume, where the evil emperor Giren has conquered the planet next door. Sought by both Giren and the mysterious space pirate ship "Frontier", Flore is given asylum on Earth, and just like what happened when the United States gave asylum to the Shah of Iran, Earth is attacked by both Giren's space fleet and by the Frontier, captained by the mysterious Gasch. Luckily for all concerned Flore has super ESP powers. Takeru and the Crasher Squad travel to Marume and involve themselves in the civil war between two peoples defined by their magnetic orientations. No, seriously.

Emperor Giren and Flore battle psychically

This 'Marume Chapter' is really curious; we're treated to Gasch's space pirate ship which is equipped with sails and masts and bowsprits, one of the lead figures in the Marume war is a religious leader we can only refer to as the "Space Pope", there is an extended combat sequence where guys on skis battle tanks and airplanes, and the power level of God Mars is amplified to such an extent that Takeru can stand on the surface of a planet hundreds of light years away and call his robot protectors from Earth, who arrive within minutes to fill up air time with yet another repeat of the Six God Combination Robot Combination Sequence, two solid minutes of animation that can be used and re-used and re-re-used every episode.

Gasch and Flore battle psychically

The Marume saga wraps with peace breaking out among the twin planets and with Takeru and the Crasher Squad learning that Emperor Zule is once again threatening Earth from beyond the death dimension, or some such Kirbyesque nonsense. And thus begins the Earth Chapter. The writers realized they'd written themselves into a corner with the awesome, unbeatable power of God Mars, and so Takeru/Mars is hobbled by psychic handcuffs that drain his life force every time he yells "ROKUSHIN GATTAI!".

The ZULECUFFS!

Only the mysterious space-surfing Rose Knight can show up in the nick of time every episode to distract the villian of the week long enough for Mars to save the day! Yes, years before Tuxedo Mask was rescuing Sailor Moon, the Rose Knight was pulling the same kind of lazy-writers duty in GOD MARS. Who is the mysterious Rose Knight? I wonder if it's actually the character named Rose in disguise?

There, just spoiled the show for you.

A GOD MARS compilation film was released in 1982 and it's that movie which familiarized most American audiences with the show. And "familiarized" is probably too strong a word, as judging from the reviews the movie left most viewers confused and slightly irritated, a natural reaction to any film that shoehorns 25 episodes of action into 95 minutes and hands it to a continent of people who aren't already familiar with the concepts. GOD MARS remains a footnote of the 1980s anime boom, albeit one with staying power; GOD MARS got its own OVA remake in 1988 (featuring a girlfriend for Marg!) and a back-to-basics OVA adaptation of MARS was released by KSS in 1994. Among North American anime fans GOD MARS is mostly known these days for being the subject of some really well designed toys and dreamy boy ESPer fanfic.

Which is a pity; because GOD MARS is an entertaining show. Even if you just want to sit back in the couch and let the Crasher Squad's space attack plane zip through the impossibly blue skies to the tune of the "God Mars" theme song, the show is so colorful, so visually appealing, and so well animated (in parts) that anybody who enjoys animation will find something to like about at least part of it. Had GOD MARS been on American televison in the 1980s I predict it would have been a hit or at least a fondly remembered cult classic; Europe got a good chunk of the show and it's still fondly remembered over there. The closest North America ever got was the TMS/NBC coproduction MIGHTY ORBOTS, a five-god combination robot controlled by clean-cut non-twin Rob Simmons and his robot little sister Ohno. ORBOTS was directed by Osamu Dezaki, creating hands down the best looking American network Saturday morning cartoon ever, though hobbled by typical focus-group approved American cartoon scripting.

know the difference.

It may very well be true that there are vast chunks of GOD MARS that are tangential to the main storyline, if not outright nonsensical digressions. I mean, seriously, space popes?! But all the recycled robot combination sequences and tacked-on plot extenders can't hide the power of GOD MARS - the struggle of Takeru Myojin to move beyond his tragic past and find his place in the world. And if that place is to be the super-ESPer master of an immensely powerful six-god combination robot, then so much the better for us all.

Farewell, Rose! Farewell, Mars!

i am terribly sorry.

2009-05-26T10:45:00.003-04:00

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!!

the quiet time is not so quiet

2009-05-08T11:23:00.003-04:00

Apologies for my lack of blog here for the past few weeks. I've been busy as heck on a few real-life projects that have taken my time and energy that otherwise would have been spent talking about thirty-year old Japanese cartoons, and for that I am deeply sorry. At any rate here's what's been going on instead:

This weekend is the Toronto Comics Arts Festival which I am a volunteer at. It's two days of indy cartoonist stars and legends of comic art meeting the public at the Toronto Public Library Main Branch - and it's free! So if you have a free couple of days it's well worth your time.

Two weekends later:

That's right, it's Anime North, Canada's number-one Japanese animation festival! I'm on staff at that show as well. Additionally, I will be on a "Classic Anime" panel Saturday at noon, and Sunday at 1pm I will be delivering an illustrated lecture on the influence of Western literature upon Japanese animation (meaning: Captain Future, among other things). And Saturday night... well, Saturday night is special.

That's right, Anime Hell returns to Canada for one night only of cerebral-cortex-crushing video madness. Followed by TOTALLY LAME ANIME: AFTER DARK!! Don't miss it.

And then I go to a wedding and then May is over and I spend June goofing off. Er, I mean, writing for Let's Anime!! Of course. See you then!

What Would Jesus Watch - (cartoon edition)

2009-04-18T10:48:00.002-04:00

SUPERBOOK!

FLYING HOUSE!

SUPERBOOK!

FLYING HOUSE!!

SUPERBOOK!!!

FLYING HOUSE!!!

TILTON!!!!!!!!

SUPERBOOK EASTER!!

FLYING HOUSE SALOME DANCE!!

TILTON!!1!!

Whew... glad that's settled.

SPECIAL BONUS: WHAT BIBLE EDITION STARRING ANIME CHARACTERS WOULD JESUS READ?
The Flying House Bible, of course. Starring Corky!

And this makes Tilton happy.

Remember kids - Superbook and Flying House say JESUS IS JUST ALL RIGHT WITH THEM!

(actual dialog in this scene: "Hey it's Jesus!!"

INTO THE MACHINE!!!

2009-04-07T01:16:00.005-04:00

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 aptly named noel's fantastic trip

2009-03-17T10:35:00.002-04:00

No, I did not pay $39.95 for this.

Most of us get obsessed with Japanese cartoons as children, and it's only later that we start to realize part of what attracted us to the things is that they are, at least to Western eyes, really strange. I mean, seriously; when you're a kid you just accept the fact that people might dress up in bird costumes and fight giant mummy robots, or that a World War Two battleship would naturally make a great intergalactic weapons platform. As adults, however, you take a step back and say, "wait a minute..."

I encountered NOEL'S FANTASTIC TRIP as an adult, so I have no childhood confusion about its narrative coherence-- there is none. This film makes absolutely no freaking sense what-so-ever. Equal parts fairy tale, antipollution message, and multicolored hallucinogenic experience, it's a movie that defies rationality, copyright, and traditional notions of "entertainment" and "common sense".

It's about a little girl named Noel. The box copy describes Noel as a boy, but Noel is addressed as "miss" in the film, and the character is introduced singing a daydream song about living life as a country girl, making it clear that whoever greenlit this video release at Columbia hadn't bothered to sit through five minutes.

Noel's Holly Hobby obsession brought to life

Anyway, Noel lives on a floating island along with a zoo's worth of friendly animals. One day while relaxing in the sun after singing a song about wanting to be a country girl, Noel decides the Sun might like some ice cream. So, Noel and her little dog pal Pup take off in their airplane to deliver ice cream to the Sun. Now you might think,a movie about a girl living on an island floating in the sky piloting an airplane to the Sun while playing Good Humor Man, that's kind of out there. Well, just wait, this is the NORMAL part.

Once out of Earth's atmosphere, Noel encounters the Space Shuttle, a 2001 style ring space station, and in some sort of fanfic writer dream scenario, is passed by the Space Cruiser Yamato, or at least a reasonable facsimilie thereof.

We're off to outer space all right.

There's an extended musical number involving stars and asteroids and comets and outer space in general. Next stop is the Planet Gaudy, a glammed out place where everybody dresses as outlandishly as possible until Noel convinces the citizens to take all their clothes off. Leaving a planet of nudists in their wake, Noel and pal reach the Sun, whose enjoyment of ice cream is only slightly marred by a bit of smog drifing in from some unknown planet.

Can Noel find the source of pollution and convince them to enact pollution controls? Diving underwater to escape the billowing clouds and belt out yet another song, Noel's subsea spotlit rock guitar solo is interrupted by the Beatles, complete with Yellow Submarine.

Oh, you thought we were kidding?

After a couple of songs the journey continues, interrupted only by another song, and a smog attack. I guess the smog is tired of the incessant singing too. Who can save Noel now? Super Zoomer, of course! Super Zoomer, a whale in a Superman suit who's a student at the Superman school and can change the course of mighty rivers and bend steel in his bare hands! He answers Noel's SOS and soon his mighty super whale powers have saved the day.

Super Zoomer and the Super School

On the horizon they spot the smog's source, a giant city full of factories spewing out pollution. And songs, also about pollution. Apparently this city, populated by foxes and bunnies and bears, was once nice and sunny, but when the factories came and people started driving smelly cars the air got bad and people got sick all the time. Explained through song, the conflicts of the industrialized world - things we like produced in factories that destroy the land and air - seem very simple, especially when set to music and illustrated with scenes of anthropomorphic animal children playing in aquaducts and junkyards.

Luckily in the cartoon world the problems of industrial pollution can be solved by hollering for Super Zoomer to come and battle a giant talking pollution cloud. Blue skies return to the animal city after Super Zoomer uses his super lung power to blow the pollution far away, where it becomes somebody else's problem. This allegorical battle between a talking super whale and a talking smog cloud seems downright normal compared to the next sequence, which is a musical production involving legions of tricycle riding babies pedalling in aerial formation from the time of the dinosaurs to the present. I repeat, tricycle riding flying babies.

Nothing a choreographed platoon of babies can't solve.

The song is all about how the world is better now that cars are running on "good gasoline" and how we've saved the world through "clean energy". Is there a better way to promote catalytic converters and antipollution regulation in general? And... that's the movie. Feeding the sun ice cream, meeting the Beatles, calling a giant whale to fight pollution.

At a mere 70 minutes you'd think the film would zip past, but you'd be wrong. Most of the movie is songs, tedious songs. And while the musical numbers are full of colorful, psychedelic quasi-mod graphics, only children small enough to be transfixed by any colored moving shapes will find it entertaining. Those of us older than 4 will be scratching their heads in confusion at this, seemingly a film intended for babies, immigrants, and guys on mushrooms.

NOEL'S FANTASTIC TRIP was produced by the mysterious IRUKA, as the film reminds us in a giant credit at the beginning. Who is IRUKA? Why would IRUKA produce a movie both tripped-out and dull? Research only gives us glimpses of IRUKA as some kind of Japanese music producer, which leads me to believe that NOEL'S FANTASTIC TRIP's primary purpose was to highlight some IRUKA musical production. Since much of the music was rerecorded for the American version I have no way of knowing whether IRUKA's enigmatic gamble paid off.

Apparently Noel was popular enough to sell candy. Image swiped from "the internet".

In America Turner Production Services got the job of localization, which means more work for Peter Fernandez and Corinne Orr, and the Grimes, Curtis, Hammond gang. As part of Columbia's mid 1980s catalog of Japanese animated films, it shares the mysterious "can't believe this is for kids" vibe of their Sanrio films UNICO IN THE ISLAND OF MAGIC and RINGING BELL, but rather than super wizardry or bleak Darwinism NOEL'S FANTASTIC TRIP can only give us the Beatles and super whales.

The film's not without appeal; the character designs have a charming children's book illustration feel and there's an aggressive whimsy in Noel's transforming house/airstrip, the super-school perched on a peak on a lonely asteroid, the Miffy-based animaltown residents. But when half the movie is taken up with mid-tempo musical numbers about stars or country girls or clean energy, you wind up boring older children, confusing adults, and making Apple's lawyers sit up and take notice.

Gigantor: the eternal struggle

2009-03-09T10:26:00.004-04:00

Judging from my referrals there is a fierce desire among the internet-enabled classic anime fans to experience again the New Adventures Of Gigantor, the 1980 Tetsujiin-28 series that was dubbed into English in the mid 1990s and broadcast on the Skiffy Channel for a brief season or two. I don't have any news on the availability of this series - though rest assured I will be alerting you all the moment something breaks - but darn it, I can't sit idly by while people want to experience Gigantor, specifically his New Adventures. So, here are some toys!!

I was lucky enough to pick up some merchandise from this show in the late 1980s when nobody cared about anything that Kenichi Sonoda didn't work on. Here's one of them - a little package of rubber stamps. If you ever wanted to mark all your possessions with the image of Jimmy Sparks and/or his super robot, this was just the thing for you.

The rubber is getting a little brittle after 29 years, and my last stamp pad dried out and gave up the ghost years ago, but darned if we can't make out some pretty good likenesses here. Also some not so good ones.

Once you've exhausted all the fun possibilities of your Gigantor Stamp Set, it's time to move on to more physical pursuits - namely, the Gigantor Top!

Diligent students of the Japanese language will no doubt be able to translate the katakana emblazoned across Tetsujin-28's mighty iron chest - it reads "Chara-Koma", "chara" being shorthand for "character", and "koma" being the Japanese word for "top", the kind you wrap a string around and spin. There, don't say you never learned anything from Let's Anime.

The top itself is metal and screen-printed with a handsome pic of Gigantor, only slightly marred by a giant pin sticking out of his upper thigh. The string has been lost in the mists of time, but rest assured it gave a mighty spin worthy of the name "Gigantor".

And please. Don't even pretend to try to claim that America knows not of Gigantor the Space-Age Robot. There once was a time when Gigantor fever gripped the nation, where young people wanted nothing more than to grab a pistol, put on a pair of shorts, and fight crime with a giant robot. As evidence I present this item from the 1960s:

No, I don't bathe with this every day. But I would if I could.

Oh, powers that be - how much longer must we wait before The New Adventures Of Gigantor appear on DVD - or at least back on basic cable? Let's get it together here guys!

In the meantime I have a desperate plea from one of my readers, who is looking for a cartoon glimpsed briefly on television in Kazakhstan. I'll let Clive tell the story:

I've been looking for a War Animation for years now without any luck.
I caught sight of some of it on TV in Kazakhstan, but I didn't see the
title or any credits, and my letters to the TV stations, Animation and
Anime experts and anyone else I thought could help have either been
unsuccessful or simply met with silence. I am really interested in
finding it, but I don't think I'm any closer to finding it than when I
started. I have a feeling it's an Anime but I have no way of proving
it until I see at least a still from it.

Here's some basic information about it:

Animation Type: 2D (drawn); Colour

Animation Style: The look of the Animation seemed similar to animated television episodes, one-off specials or direct-to-video releases. The character movements were done in limited Animation (much less than the usual 24 frames a second). The look of the Animation suggested it was made from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

Notable Camera Movements: Two shots that occur side by side have stuttering zoom effects as opposed to the standard smooth zoom:

1) A zoom into a close up of a little boy’s concerned face.
2) A zoom into a close up of a little toy wagon rolling down the street.

Where It was Seen: an unknown local television channel from Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 1996 or '97. I was channel hopping and cam across it then. It was overdubbed in either Russian or Kazakh and I'm sure the language underneath it was English, but it wasn't lip-synched, just lip-flaps. This suggests that it was available in English at some point.

Music: There was a classical theme that was quite low and melancholy with a female classical vocal on it.

If you have any information on this mystery war animation, please get in touch with Clive via his Myspace page here!

the little prince and the new power revolution

2009-02-25T10:19:00.007-05:00

It's time once again for another exciting installment of our popular high-tech feature ANIME ON CED! That's right, Capacitance Electronic Disc AKA RCA Selectavision, possibly the most useless video format ever created! Was it a temporary home for Japanese anime home video releases in North America? Yes it was, and it's our mission to seek out and document all examples of... ANIME ON CED.

The best part about buying CED discs is that invariably you find enormous piles of them in thrift stores and antique malls, and once you start thumbing through them, somebody will always come up to you and (1) ask you if you know what they are, (2) inform you that they are laser discs, and (3) ask you if you have a player for them.

All these things happened when I came across today's offering, THE LITTLE PRINCE. Based on the 1943 children's book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, this tale of the boy who lives on the asteroid B612 was very freely adapted by the Japanese anime studio Knack into a 39 episode series that aired in 1978 and '79.

The original novel is a popular and influential work that's influenced people around the world with its charming, dreamlike qualities. The anime series, not so much; our little Prince spends each episode hitching comets down to Earth so that he can express amazement at all the wonderful things and help people with their problems. Broadcast on Nickelodeon in the 80s, the American version's Little Prince was voiced by Katie Leigh, who would later go on to do voice work for "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Totally Spies".

It's tough writing about this show because it's really dull. It doesn't have the crazed thievery of other Knack series like Groizer X or Astroganger, and it lacks the total sub-standard lousy of Ninja The Wonder Boy. My Nickelodeon time was spent watching "You Can't Do That On Television" and "Tomorrow People", so I have no fond memories to fall back on. You can see Knack's team trying to emulate the Nippon Animation Company's World Masterpiece Theater Miyazaki-Takahata style of vaguely Europeanish characters - and it gives Little Prince a class not normally found in Knack productions -but "Heidi" this ain't. On the other hand the style fits right in with Nickelodeon's other Euro-style anime offerings Belle & Sebastian and Mysterious Cities Of Gold.

The two episodes on this CED feature the Little Prince helping a mountain-climbing kid climb the Andes only to be rescued by a surrealistic balloon decorated with a giant eye, and then he visits London where he aids a chimney sweep in his star-crossed romance with a nanny - wait, I mean, with a ballet dancer. Many life lessons are learned.

This disc actually does NOT feature the scene illustrated on the back cover, which seems to be from a "very special" episode of The Little Prince, one endorsed by NAMBLA.

Unlike so many other shows, The Little Prince has been released on DVD,so you're in luck. The bargain retailer East/West also released at least two Little Prince DVDs, one of which coincidentally contains the same exact two episodes that are on CED. I guess somebody at East/West knows what Selectavision discs are, and has a player.

If you have fond memories of watching the show on Nickelodeon, then by all means I would seek this show out in whatever format currently is in vogue. If, on the other hand, your psyche was not imprinted at an early age with the story of the little asteroid guy who loves a rose and tends volcanoes, this one might make for some tough watching.

THE TERROR OF TINY TOYS

2009-02-17T09:31:00.004-05:00

The Japanese robot explosion of the 1980s may only properly be appreciated by the shock waves it generated on the other side of the world. The swelling pressure of thousands of suppliers creating millions of plastic toys, mounting to alarming strength, could only be relieved by using the children of America as a safety valve- children who hungered for toys from these shows and yet DID NOT EVEN KNOW THEY EXISTED. Is this evidence of the fantastically creative work of Japan's anime designers, or were they tapping into a collective unconscious of juvenile desire that knows no nationality? DO STRANGE FORCES FROM BEYOND THE STARS CONTROL OUR DESTINIES?

Well, I don't know. What I DO know, though, is that years of sifting through trays of toys at garage sales and flea markets have yielded a bounty of Japanese robot plastic that neither knows nor cares of its origins or ultimate destinations. Where did these toys come from? Carnival prizes? Party favors ordered through the mail from the Oriental Trading Company? Bubblegum machine prizes from the local Zayre's or Treasure Island or K-Mart? Let me tell you, when you see a Kroger bubblegum machine advertising GOD MARS robots in a decaying strip mall in College Park Georgia, it will turn your entire worldview upside down.

But enough of that. Allow me to show you photographic evidence of the startling penetration these "orphan" Japanese toy robots had made into American society - circa, let's say 1985.

MAZINGER Z shows off his metal muscles in this tiny super-deformed style inch-high rubber figurine hastily spraypainted a neon green. Yes, the Jet Scrambler is majestically attached to his tiny green back.

Meanwhile a pink Real Robot from FANG OF THE SUN DOUGRAM raises his articulated arm in defiance. in 1984, this two-inch rubber figure was individually wrapped and sold in Spencer's Gifts in the mall with a triangular label reading "Leadworks Taiwan" affixed thereon. I could get an entire column out of the crazy anime stuff I found in Spencer's Gifts, but that's for another time.

Meanwhile, MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM is here represented by a printed cardboard target mounted on a plastic base. This was packaged with a dart gun, encouraging America's youth to regard the "White Mobile Suit" as an enemy. Influence of Zeon spies in the toy industry, I imagine.

If you ever wanted a tiny super robot to wear as a good luck charm to ward off evil, this COMBATTLER V charm fits the bill, coming complete with a little ring for threading and jointed arms and legs. Hard to believe this super robot actually weighs 550 tons, let alone could threaten us all with his super electromagnetic yo-yo.

He never made it to television as part of the VOLTRON series, but DALTANIAS here proudly stands as tall as he can, being only two inches in length. Still, his regal bearing inspires confidence.

For some reason I have a whole bunch of tiny figures from GALACTIC WHIRLWIND SASURAIGAR, the third of Kokusei Eigasha's J-9 series of early 1980s robot cartoons. Unlike Daltanius or most of these other robots, the J-9 never got within a hootin' holler of an American TV release. Not wild enough to be "super robots", way too improbable to be "real robots", shows like Sasuraigar defy categorization by anal-retentive anime fans. At any rate, our tiny inch-high Sasuraigar poses with gun in hand, molded in soft yellow plastic.

The actual mecha from the show is a lot closer to this Takatoku toy. Of course the actual mecha from the show transforms into a space-faring steam engine railway train, the better to allow it to wander freely through space fulfilling the pun in the show's name ("sasurai" means "wandering").

The cast of the show was also tastefully rendered in the medium of multicolored tiny plastic figurines. Why don't more artists express their vision thusly? From left to right we have Rock Anrock, Beat McKenzie, Birdie Show (in pink) and suitably green is I.C. Blues, the computer-genius zillionaire who built the Sasuraigar in order to win a bet. (Character names courtesy C/FO MAGAZINE VOL. 2 # 10, 1985.)

More familiar to American audiences will be this MOSPEADA figure. Is that Stick Bernard or Rook Bartley inside that Cyclone? We may never know. This little snap-together model came in one of those plastic eggs you bought for twenty five cents of your VERY OWN MONEY. The little bit of kneaded eraser at the foot there is to keep him standing up, them little toys aren't so balanced.

And here we have the little GOD MARS robot purchased in the Kroger bubblegum machine. Actually this was a transforming robot, if you got all six robots - Gaia, Sphinx, Uranus, Titan, Shin, and Ra - you could stick them all together to assemble God Mars, just like Takeru does in the show! However, they will NOT, repeat NOT, combine to make a bomb designed to destroy the entire Earth.

Who knows what tiny anime toy treasures lurk in the crevices of automobile upholstery, the corners of toy boxes, under sofa cushions across America? Can the history of Japanese cartoons in America be written in rubber and plastic? We here at Let's Anime say YES.

the yamatocon excuse

2009-02-05T17:19:00.006-05:00

I realize Let's Anime posts have been thin on the ground since Christmastime, and I do apologize. Part of why this is, is because I wrote an article for the Star Blazers website about Yamatocon, the 1983 Star Blazers convention in Dallas Texas. This article is now up at Starblazers.com for you to read and enjoy!

I also wrote a short review for the upcoming OTAKU USA magazine, and that took a little time away from the dear Let's Anime. And of course every week over at Mister Kitty I provide commentary for items of questionable quality culled from our vast comic book collection. So it's not like I ain't been busy.

At any rate we should have something goofy for you here in a little while - so don't touch that dial!

THE MANY MOODS OF CYBORG 003

2009-01-27T10:07:00.002-05:00

Francoise Arnoul, AKA Cyborg 003, is the only female member of the Cyborg 009 team. Throughout the 45-year history of the series, she's known for exhibiting a wide range of expression and emotion, as we see here. Come with us as we explore... the many moods of Cyborg 003.

1. Concerned

2. Nervous

3. Apprehensive

4. Worried

5. Tense

6. Anxious

7. Fearful

8. Uneasy

9. Wacky (with funny hat)

Cyborg 009 is based on the popular manga by Shotaro Ishinomori . Images taken from the CYBORG 009 manga, the 1968 CYBORG 009 TV series, the 1979 CYBORG 009 TV series, the 1980 film CYBORG OO9 LEGEND OF THE SUPER GALAXY, and the 2001 CYBORG 009 TV series, as well as original illustrations by Shotaro Ishinomori and others.

THE FLYING PHANTOM SHIP

2009-01-20T10:15:00.004-05:00

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!!

anime zines of the 1990's

2009-01-07T11:04:00.007-05:00

A little while ago LET'S ANIME explored the Japanese cartoon fanzine culture of the 1980s, a self-published world of anime show synopses and iffy translations illustrated with anime fan artwork ranging from bad to beautiful. Now let's move the clock forward a bit and take a look at what was happening to anime zines in the decade of grunge, Clinton, clear beverages and America Online - the 1990s! Zine culture was America's underground - a fiercely independent self-published universe of crude comics, biased journalism, conspiracy theories, and reviews of whatever record labels would send you that you could later sell for beer money. Distributed by an ad hoc network of comic shops, telephone poles, record stores, and your hipper bookstores; held together by comprehensive review journals like Factsheet Five; the world of zines was embraced by the pop culture tastemakers and became as emblematic of "Generation X" as a copy of Nirvana's "Nevermind" or one of those tribal tattoos that white people once felt they could get away with. And much like Mudhoney or free zines for prisoners, Japanese cartoon zines were a part of that world.

For many anime zines, the early 1990s were merely a flashier version of the 1980s. Fan fiction in particular had yet to make the digital transition and fanfic was still being published in giant plastic-comb bound volumes like the "Anime House Presents" shown here, featuring a lovely Char Aznable cover and stories about Mospeada, Lupin III, Saint Seiya, Dirty Pair, Catseye, and a recurring comic strip mashup between Voltron and Bloom County. Meanwhile in the Yamato world, Star Blazers fans were presenting their Star Blazers/Yamato fan tales in APAs like this one, named after the queen of Iscandar because all Yamato zines were named after female characters. They just were, okay?

But new and strange forces were looming, Godzilla-like, over the horizon. The "desktop publishing revolution" meant that graphic design and typography were no longer the private reserve of print shops and linotype operators. Suddenly regular folks with a couple thousand bucks to blow on computers and printers could create professional-looking documents at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. The new wave of computer-aided fanzine design, combined with the falling prices of high-quality photocopier equipment and the seemingly unstoppable march of Kinko's across the land, meant anime zines could be made better, faster, and stronger than ever before.

One early computer-aided zine was Anime No Shimbun, the offical publication of the Japanese Animation Network, a former EDC chapter in Richmond VA headed by the late Roy Bruce. Anime No Shimbun featured synopses of current and not-so-current titles such as Odin, Nadia, and early moe fave Video Girl Ai, along with reprints of Baycon synopses and reviews of the Robotech II: The Sentinels comic by local favorites John and Jason Waltrip. Fan fiction, Japanese cultural information, general animation news, and a fan comic story entitled "Urusei Gakira" written and drawn by future perennial anime-con guest Steve Bennett helped to fill the zine's pages.

The East Coast was definitely representin' as we see from another 1992 zine, Atlantia, which is the offical news bulletin of the Atlantic Anime Alliance. What is it with fan clubs publishing "official" newsletters? Was somebody out there printing unofficial newsletters? Judging from the editorial in this issue the AAA seemed to be made up of New Jersey area fans determined to become the focal point of anime fandom on the east coast. Let me know how that's working out, guys. A big 3X3 Eyes article by the late Steve Pearl, an article about the AnimEigo Bubblegum Crisis releases and a synopsis of Ranma 1/2 "Get Back The Brides" rounds out the issue.

If we're talking about trying to get anime fans to come together in peace love and understanding, for my money the must-have zine of 1992 was The Anime Source. Like the cover says, it lists contact information for 26 APAs, 153 computer BBSes, 111 (count' em!) anime clubs, 54 fanzines, 24 magazines, 171 stores, and 88 games. If you couldn't get your anime freak on with this zine then there is simply no hope for you. Publisher Alec Orrock also was behind the zine From Side To S.I.D.E., a entertaining magazine with a focus on Orange Road, Gundam, Yawara, and a fan translation of the wacky crossdressing idol singer manga "Twinkle Idol Stars".

Meanwhile back on the East Coast the Baltimore anime club JASFA was continuing to crank out their newsletter, a short and snappy monthly that cut through the nonsense and let you know what the club was watching and when. Translated episode titles make back issues of this zine priceless, unless you already knew that episode #46 of Saver Kids was titled "The Earth Breaks Up In Five Minutes!!" This issue not only has a great Ren & Stimpy cover - yeah, you KNOW it's the '90s when they start hauling out the Ren & Stimpy references!!- but also features a mention of some new show called "Sailor Moon". I wonder if that will be popular. Another 80s survivor was The Rose, the newsletter of Anime Hasshin, which continued to provide news and information to readers around the country. Always tons of reviews and fan art in the Rose, and this issue was no exception with articles about Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro, Speed Racer, Haruka Takachiho and his Dirty Pair, Dragon Half, and fanart by, among others, Robert "Slow Bob" DeJesus.

And if we rumble way up north for a change of scenery, we might come under guitar-playin' natural distaster attack from the National Anime Terrorist Organization of Minneapolis MN and their zine, Psychommu Gaijin! Pgaijin, as it came to be known, was the low rent punk rock cut and paste fuck you antidote to the rest of the anime fanzine world, much of which could be politely described as, shall we say, slightly anal-retentive. Not Psychommu - spearheaded by young clubbing indy-rock insomniacs, burnt-out fandom gurus, and trouble-making beer enthusiast anarchists, the PGZine cheerfully mixed medical illustrations, band flyers, Kennedy assassination cartoons, Votoms drinking games, a anime version of Battlestar Galactica and weed-huffing Ninja High School parodies with reviews of Macross videogames and con reports. Psychommu Gaijin transmogrified into a website, a Yahoogroups mailing list, and a blog, yet continues to appear sporadically as a free zine handed out at various anime conventions, to the obvious dismay of the authorities.

Across the pond in Belgium the euroanime fans were doing it for themselves with the handsome, glossy-covered, English-language (thanks!) Japanese Anime & Manga Magazine or J.A.M.M. for short. Yes, even in Europe fans felt the need to name themselves with awkward acronyms. The sophisticated European zine culture thought nothing of producing long, detailed essays on Urotsukidoji and ero-anime in general, complete with illustrations (!). Of course there's also some Dr. Slump to take the edge off.

From Florida came the first and perhaps only issue of Anime Zeta, probably the only anime zine to (a) review the Bible cartoon Flying House, and (b) review the Bible cartoon Flying House without once mentioning its religious content. Magazine and newspaper clippings, typewritten articles about Daltanias next to handwritten captions, illustrations lifted wholesale from reference books, and a "news article" about Ted Turner - not Turner Broadcasting or Warner, just Ted Turner - getting the rights to Doreamon (?) make this one a real curiosity.

If there's one thing Florida had a lot of, it's anime clubs. Orlando itself was home to several different outfits, all fussin' and feudin' with each other to see who could be the fussinest and the feudinest. The Japanese Anime Club Of Orlando, a.k.a. JACO, was so impressed by their visit to AWA 2 that they produced a 52-page zine all about the trip. Seriously. Packing up the car, getting traffic tickets, stalking that girl who looks like your ex-fiance, that rocking air guitar performance of the end theme to Megazone 23, photographing their own version of the cover of the con's program book; it's one sloppy love letter of a zine. Not every issue of "Project JACO" was a mash note to AWA, though. Reviews of Bounty Dog, Chirality, and a photo essay of their trip to EPCOT Center rounded out the color-cover Summer 1997 issue. JACO eventually started their own convention, Jacon, thus starting the process which enabled the rest of us to transition from saying "Florida has too many anime clubs" to saying "Florida has too many anime cons."

As the decade sped by in a blur of stonewashed jeans and lackluster techno remixes, anime zines got a lot slicker. Scanners got cheaper and processors got faster and screencaps became something more than just a lucky Polaroid of your TV screen. Section 9, produced by the Grand Rapids Area Anime Club, is representative of its era for several reasons: most of the reviews are for English-language professional releases of titles like Tenchi Muyou, Tekken, Evangelion, and Idol Hunter; the con reports have adopted the modern emphasis on photos of doofuses in costumes, and there is the first mention of some mysterious something called "DVD". Whatever could THAT be? Lots of links to those new-fangled 'web pages' keep this zine squarely in the fast lane of the 'information superhighway'.

The 90s wound down claiming print media was dead and soon we'd all be dot-com millionaires living in a virtual reality world having groceries delivered by Kozmo.com. Zine culture faltered as Jim Goad did jail time, Factsheet Five collapsed under its own weight, and everybody else got jobs working for "Sassy." Anime fan culture transitioned from a club-based fandom to becoming a migrating herd travelling from one hotel ballroom to another. Anime zinesters manned fan tables hawking their anime zines to anime convention crowds who'd rather spend their cash on actual licensed merchandise rather than some homemade pamphlet. Print zines moved towards a "free" model, as exemplified by "Pachi Pachi".

Edited by the mysterious "JobsTurkey", Pachi Pachi was distributed free at whichever conventions the editor found him-or-herself attending. How-to articles on cosplay and anime music videos kept this zine topical and reviews of anime, manga, CDs, etc. were short and to the point. Later issues focused on the anime fan culture itself, which by 1999 had assumed many of its current signifiers - squealing girls, obsession with voice actors, cosplay worship, and general fan entitlement ego-hatting. And in spite of all the editorializing anime zines could muster, the situation hasn't changed much.

Ten years later anime fandom expresses itself online through blogs, through columns on websites large and small, and through a million message boards and livejournals. No longer do we have to sneak copies from the student center office or get a job in the print industry to support the toner monkey on our back. Some of us pine for the good old days of making our marks upon the world with gluestick and X-Acto, but at the same time, nobody misses clearing paper jams or shelling out for PO boxes. We here at Let's Anime look forward to the media-cube digi-zappers of 2029 reminiscing fondly about those quaint, childish "anime blogs" of yesteryear.

(all artwork and text (c) the original creators. Thanks to you, the zine publishers of the 1990s!)

it's xmas and I feel like sharing

2008-12-14T10:53:00.002-05:00

It's that time of year again, and in the spirit of the season I figured I'd share some presents with you. Namely, images of Usei Shonen Papi / Prince Planet menko cards that were passed on to me via old-school Prince Planet fan M.E. So if you want your Christmas to be filled with slightly-off register pictures of Prince Planet and his pals printed on thick slabs of cardboard and intended to be slapped onto the pavement with the mighty force of an 8-year old arm, then you are in luck!

Prince Planet is, of course, the 1966 Tele-Cartoons Japan show based on the Hideoki Inoue manga about a young boy from the planet Radion who comes to Earth and with his friends Diana, Dan Dynamo, and Adji Baba, defends peace and justice!!

Here we see Prince Planet in his "Bobby" disguise, along with Diana, meeting a strange bowtie-wearing man in a park.

On our next card, Bowtie man seems astonished at Dan Dynamo's manly chest and Adji Baba's little beard as Bobby assumes the position to shout "Kazow" or "Kapow" or "Wowee", or whatever the English voice talent decided to have him yell, as he changes into Prince Planet.

Meanwhile, above Diana and her father Pops Worthy, a mysterious white-haired figure hovers in the air like a religious apparition. From the look on his face I don't think he's here to convey holy blessings.

And our assumptions were correct - white haired guy is sending his super robot to go forth and bring destruction to the world! Bad mans!

In a seemingly unrelated card illustration, Bobby and Diana chat while an auto speeds away and evil Martian wizard Warlock watches them from a tree. Warlock has been taking ninja lessons.

When Warlock is around you know evil can't be far off and we see Bobby menaced by chains! Don't worry, he's using his Pendant of Power to change into Prince Planet!

In his Prince Planet identity he's able to evade the chains with ease and in about a minute Warlock is going to get blasted by a lightning-like bolt from Prince Planet's pendant!

And it's back after that car that sped off earlier. Or maybe this is a different car. It's hard to tell.

This could be Prince Planet fighting that giant robot we saw in a previous card, or it may be him just running through fire. Who knows?

Sometimes Prince Planet flies into outer space and battles other super powerful space people including this one who looks as if Kamen Rider V-3 and Space Ace got together and had a baby.

And sometimes Prince Planet likes to dress in his pink outfit. Don't ask, don't tell, that's the motto of the Universal Peace Corps.

Happy Holidays, everybody! See you in 2009!!