Looking back at my review of Chu Bra, I can’t help think that the Brian who wrote that would be disgusted with the Brian who’s about to write this. But you know what, that Brian thinks Puni Puni Poemi is one of the best anime of the 2000s, so he can shut his goddamn mouth. That’s right, the so called past, I’m taking you down. With this following outrageous claim.

Gokujyo was one of the funniest anime shows I’ve seen.

Of course, I’m going to have to qualify that. It couldn’t actually manage to be one of the funniest anime shows throughout the hour’s worth of material in its 12 five minute episodes, but its highs ilicited some of the biggest (and guiltiest) laughs I’ve had from anime.

Based on a gag strip by Maya Miyazaki, the show had a troubled run. Various episodes were decreed unsuitable for television broadcast, leading to suggestions it was some sort of publicity stunt to encourage later sales of “uncensored” DVDs or push people to the DMM site where it was streaming.

Having watched it now, I’m not sure that was the case, as there’s less nudity than the comic version and there’s not really much censoring there. If you knew you were never going to be on the telly from the get go, why didn’t you do some of the strips where everyone’s naked? What the pulled episodes seem to have been censored for is exceptionally filthy jokes rather than anything erotic.

The show revolves around Aya Akabane, who is a rich teenager sent to an all girls high school, her classmates, her biker gang member sister and the school nurse (the other member of said biker gang). Rampaging hormones, teenage stupidity and convenient plot device personality disorders result in frequently lewd slapstick and farcical situations over twelve five minute episodes. It’s the Three Stooges if they were Japanese teenage girls and their shorts had been about masturbation and lesbians.

There’s been a number of these tales of horrible teenage girls, written by women, for men (is there some ludicrous conjunction that otaku use to describe them?) that have made their way from comic to television since the late night anime boom kicked off. I want to say the early Bob Shirohata show Momoiro Sisters (1998) was the first to do this on late night TV, but I might be wrong.

Gokujyo was the first show in recent memory that brought to mind those early days of the late night anime boom and the Wonderful slot (where Momoiro Sisters aired) in particular. Like Wonderful, Gokujyo sat inside an bigger entertainment programme (In this case SKE48 no Sekai Seifuku Joshi). And like the Wonderful shows, it was at its best when it showed a complete disregard to the idea of making the characters likeable.

Of course this is 2012, and sometimes it can’t resist the lure of the sentimentality. The final episode is the worst for this. The characters get all soppy over a character leaving who has barely been in the show, and when she has, the other characters didn’t really care for her all that much. Given how short the series running time is, they could have used this time better.

At its best though, it is full of cruel monsters engaging in the most ridiculous sexual slapstick. Maya Miyazaki made her name on erotic comics and while the anime won’t fully embrace the near gynaecological physicality of some of her punchlines, it does often make for a refreshingly physical farce. There’s some good character-based and verbal gags in there too, though some of that is lost through self-censoring, resulting a couple of the characters barely having personalities in the anime. Not that they are anywhere approaching nuanced from what I’ve seen of the comic, but a few missing visual gags would have helped differentiate what can seem very similar “straight man” characters in the anime.

By the end of the series you’re left with a filthy minded show that occasionally reached some great, grotesque, heights with its gags, but never quite managed to stay there.

Download Dynamite In The Brain Episode 41 – Urusei Yatura Beautiful Dreamer

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Top Striker isn’t very good, yet it has its charms.

It often feels like a weird hybrid of World Masterpiece Theatre and a sports anime. A big part of this is due to it being a Nippon Animation production, but the design by Nobuhiro Okasako comes across as an odd choice. While, to my knowledge, he didn’t design any WMT shows he did do some design work on Adventures of Pepero the Andes Boy which we could kindly describe as a WMT peer. Given that he did the anime character design for the first Captain Tsubasa show, you’d think that he’d have been a good fit.

The difference is that in Tsubasa, Youichi Takahashi’s original designs still shine through in the anime whereas Top Striker is an original work. The irony is that if you put the giant heads of Top Striker‘s kid characters on the bodies of the adult Tsubasa characters, you might get something closer to a normal human being’s proportions.

As it is though, whatever good there is in the layout of some of the football scenes, it often feels like the character designs are scuppering it with their enormous bonces. 

The show also feels like it was a year late, being about a Japanese kid playing football in Italy, yet arriving on screens a year after Italia 90. Did Italia 90 kick start some sort of Japanese interest in Italy that made this show a good idea?

Storywise the first episode feels like it was generated by a checklist. Orphan? Check! Disapproving Aunt? Check! Kindly maid? Check! Avuncular older gentleman? Check! And so on. If you grew up in the 70s and 80s you’re likely to have seen this umpteen times before, both in and outside of anime. I suspect the same is true if you grew up in any decade after the Victorian era. That’s orphantainment!

The reason it still charms is it all that cliched stuff isn’t horribly written, and there’s tiny little touches that make you think they put a little more thought in than they probably needed to. For instance when the show’s avuncular older gentleman, Mr Bertini is due to meet the disapproving Aunt for the first time, we see he’s slicked his hair down to a ridiculous extent in some attempt to pull himself up to the aunt’s social standing. It’s a simple little character piece that tells us more about Mr Bertini just through the drawings on the screen.

Another neat trick it pulls is when we flashback to the town doctor’s earlier career as an ace striker, the show tries to give that scene a pseudo-sixties anime feel both with making the flashback black and white and to some degree in the way the action is shown. There’s just enough charm in the character work and the football scenes to get across the romance of football (and Italy) despite the technical shortcomings and the cliched plot.

It’s still not enough to make me want to watch more, but I can see why they thought people might have wanted to watch it in 1991. While it didn’t make it’s way to the UK, it did air on Franch, Italian and Spanish television. Next time, we will take a look at a 1991 show that did make to the UK airwaves.

Oh, and I almost forgot, a small child’s life is literally saved by the power of football in this first episode. In that someone kicks a football to stop something killing a child. And then an impromptu town celebration breaks out. That helped charm me too. I am a sucker for sports stories where the sports skills can be used to solve EVERYTHING. I blame Sport Billy.

His first work was 拝啓サラダボーイ (Dear Salad Boy?) in 1985. No idea what it was about, but it does have some curious set texts in the English lessons featured in the Comic Park preview pages.

This was followed by the similarly not talked about in English, パニック方程式 (Panic Equation?). Here you can start to see a Toriyama influence come through on the male lead’s character design. According to Comic Park both these strips ran in Special Edition Shonen Sunday as it was then.

Next we have the series that really sets the tone for Koshita’s career, ミニ四駆 RC伝説 燃えろ! アバンテ兄弟 (Which I’m guessing is something like Mini 4WD RC Burning Legend! Avante Brothers). It’s also the first series I could find real details on, but even then I don’t have publication dates for it. It was a strip in Shogakukan’s CoroCoro Comic Special designed to promote Tamiya’s Avante 2001 radio controlled (RC) car. As that came out in 1990, it would suggest the strip hit around that time too.

During the 80s, the RC hobby boomed and so did Tamiya’s fortunes. There were two prongs to this boom, the first was the launch of a non-RC range of battery powered mini four wheel drive (4WD) cars in 1982. By 1987, they had sold 10 million mini 4WD, leading to the launch of a mini 4WD themed manga in the pages of Monthly CoroCoro Comic, Dash! Yonkuro by the late Zaurus Tokuda. This was followed by a Dash! Yonkuro anime in 1989.

The other key to Tamiya’s boom was the release of their first four wheel drive RC car, the Hot Shot in 1985.

This meant you had a situation where kids would get started with the mini-4WD, then move onto the 4WD RC racers as they got older. If you don’t believe me, then check out the preview of ミニ四駆 RC伝説 燃えろ! アバンテ兄弟 on comicpark.net. It is a shameless instructional document on how to enjoy your Tamiya product.

The older brother has an RC Avante, so the kid brother goes to the shop and buys the Avante Jr, the mini 4WD brother of the Avante. There are even photos of the cars in the strip. And in case you don’t get the message, kid brother wears a top with 4WD on it, older brother a hat with Avante on it. BUY BUY BUY, RACE RACE RACE!

Let us also take the time to note the superb slogan of the Avante line of cars – BEING NUTS IS NEAT.

While we didn’t get the cartoons or comics, the RC & mini-4WD craze spread far and wide, our local model shop in Spalding, Lincolnshire did great business in selling mini-4WD cars to our year when I was at secondary school, with some moving onto RC as they got older. Even now I find the Tamiya logo sets off some nostalgic trigger in my brain.

Next from Tetsuhiro Koshita was Dodge Danpei, running from 1989 to 1995 in CoroCoro Comic, but we’ve covered this in its own post here.

Then, we get the big series where Koshita truely becomes Tamiya’s go to guy for selling their cars to kids, in the way Zaurus Tokuda had been in the 80s - Bakusō Kyōdai Let’s & Go!!

Much like his other Tamiya strip it involves two brothers who race Tamiya cars, cars that you could then go to the shops and buy, with little pictures of the anime characters in the corner. It ran in CoroCoro Comic from 1994 to 1999 and spawned three tv series that ran during 1996 to 1998. In retrospect it feels like these sort of series are the connective tissue between the robot model kit selling shows of the 80s and trading card game selling shows of the late 90s/00s.

They’ve got the elements of SD look that the robot shows started to move to with the popularity of console games, they’ve got the kit building element of Gundam and its followers, but they’ve also got the stronger protagonist identification that Pokemon and the shows that came in its wake have.

2000 for Koshita saw him return to strips that weren’t designed to sell toys, with Get the Goal!! 4v4 Arashi. It did still stick to the tried and tested formula of young boys and sports, this time focussing on 4v4 football, the Dutch coaching system that gained popularity in youth football. While it didn’t get the anime that Dodge Danpei and Lets & Go did, it did get a Gameboy Advance game.

And a pencil.

Such is the parcity of facts on this strip that the pencils are mentioned on the wikipedia page for the manga.

Then, it was back to working with Tamiya in 2004, with Kattobi Racer! Dangun Wolf. This was to tie in with the Dangun Racer line of models. Whereas the Mini 4WD race in seperate lanes, these are designed to run in the same lane and run each other off the course. Basically imagine if everyone in a bobsleight contest went at the same time and their bobsleighs had motors.

In effect you’re seeing the physical battling aspect of Pokemon work it’s way into the markets that it elbowed out of the hearts and minds of children.

Then, apparently there was something called STRONGEST WATCHDOG GAO, that I have no clue about. Anyone?

That was followed by another football manga, Goal Getter Yao, which only lasted one volume.

Then we get onto what seems to be the next part to Koshita’s career. Whereas before he’d been building characters and stories around Tamiya’s products, since 2008 there’s been a run of series based on other people’s characters. Firstly a Yatterman manga to tie into the very successful revival on television and the cinema. Then in 2010, he worked on a Toy Story series based on the Disney/Pixar property and an Inazuma Eleven series based on the Level 5 videogame. 

That last one is a natural fit, as it’s very much in the mould of both Koshita’s sports manga and the sports/rpg hybrid videogames that were often made from them.

Please do correct anything I’ve got wrong or add any obvious missing aspects in the comments. There’s very little in English about Koshita, so there’s plenty of room for me making mistakes here or overlooking the obvious. Never the less, I do feel like I’ve made some more connections in my mind about how we got from Gundam to Cardfight Vanguard.

Download Dynamite In The Brain Episode 40 – NINJA MONTH PART 4 – Naruto

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Download Dynamite In The Brain Episode 39 – NINJA MONTH PART 3 – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

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Download Dynamite In The Brain Episode 38 – NINJA MONTH PART 2 – Renaissance Laser Ninjas

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Has there ever been a manga that broke big by shamelessly aping the biggest manga of its era? I’m going to guess not.

Today, the big manga is One Piece, and reportedly some editors want creators to make their strips more like Eiichiro Oda’s record breaking comic. In 1991, Shonen Jump had two behemoths of the medium on its pages, Dragonball and Slam Dunk. You could see their influence in both manga and anime of the day, but with Dodge Danpei you get two blockbuster series emulated for the price of one.

Based on a manga by Tetsuhiro Koshita, it feels like someone looked at Slam Dunk and said “well, another basketball manga would be too obvious, what’s another indoor ball game where you use your hands? Oh I know, dodgeball! And while you’re at it can you make it look like a poor man’s Akira Toriyama? Thanks.”

The end result is a hero who looks like a red headed Goku, a friend who’s a Krillin look alike and dodgeball uniforms that look like Toriyama designed body armour. Plus, other occasional Toriyama-esque touches like the shape of some characters eyes & eyebrows and silhouette hairstyles.

This first episode introduces us to hyperactive brat Danpei, and Danpei to the dodgeball team. This involves some nonsense with a dangerous loose dog and the thugs who own it being dealt with through the use of DODGEBALL SKILLS. I hope the rest of the show kept up this theme. Need to change a light bulb? Throw a dodgeball at it. Cooking a meal? Throw a dodgeball at it. Filling in tax returns? Throw a dodgeball at it.

We then get a scene where Danpei’s unnecessarily hot mother dresses up as a shark to scare her son, before being given the standard perverted camera pan up her swim-suited body. It’s not at a Gear Fighter Dendoh level in oddly Oedipal creative choices, but it does feel a little odd. Probably can’t blame the animators too much here, as a Google image search reveals that this is definitely Koshita’s thing.

Finally, this is all topped off a piece of lunacy that turned me around on this episode. Danpei visits his dad’s grave, and we get a superimposed shot of his dad in his dodgeball gear. Which has Games Workshop style SHOULDER SPIKES. Danpei then accidentally knocks the gravestone over, revealing a secret compartment containing a SPECIAL SECRET DODGEBALL. With a flame logo on it.

Outside of the irony-free gusto that the show has, there’s little to recommend here. Even more than Metaljack, this show feels like what I imagined all the early nineties TV anime that we didn’t get to see because we were too busy with OAVS to be like. As with many other shows of the era, the videogame spin-offs seem to be remembered better than the actual manga and anime that spawned them. As well it might, as Dodge Danpei had seven videogames based on it in the span of 1992-93.

Koshita had bigger hit with Lets&Go in the late nineties and more recently has been working on licenced strips such as Yatterman, Toy Story and Inazuma Eleven, a property that draws from the same well as Koshita’s own works did. Maybe even bit from Koshita himself.

Do you like music? Do you like anime? Do you like uninformed judgement cast down on anime music?

Then Anison Armageddon is for you!

We’ll take TEN anime songs from the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s & today and, between our panel of “experts” and the audience, decide which is best. But these aren’t just any old anime songs thrown together, there is a THEME. A mystery theme that will entertain and inform.

We did a trial version on our podcast, Dynamite In The Brain, where we reviewed Xmas anime songs, so if you aren’t sure what this will be, check that out.

There is only one place you will see MADstravaganza this year, and that is at Kitacon! Not Minami. Not Amecon. This is it, people. This is all you are getting for 2012.

The sixth MADstravaganza proper, it will be the usual grab bag of nonsense, fun and happiness. After 5 years of this, I know what I’m doing, so put your brains in my hands and let me hit them with my audio/visual sticks.

(unlike seemingly every other event, there will be no actual quizzes, tournaments or contests)

(there will be dancing, possibly by cats.)

hey does anyone know what a good harem show is? No, nobody knows.

does golgo 13 died? yes, he doesn’t.

what does harry hill look like? Like this, but a real human, not a drawing.

what does rumiko takahashi think of everest? She preferred the Ted Moult ads to the Craig Doyle ones.

what page in the story rascal by sterling north does rascal go into the neighbors farm? page 42

hulk red, spidey not married, what’s next for marvel? Stagnation

what did sterling north get sick from in the book the rascal? Raccoon Pox

what was the manga called with the big cat in 1993? Ushio and Tora

how to be my own batman? Keep attending the theatre with your parents until they are inevitably gunned down in a mugging gone wrong. It’s bound to happen eventually, law of averages.

how to see a ghost? Rent out the film Ghostbusters, it’s full of them!

who is audience for rock n rolla? Idiots

who killed monk’s wife trudy? Lieutenant Randy Disher

who sings the superjail theme song? Cheeseburger

Have they come up with a way yet to distinguish the arcs of Gundam AGE yet? Is this the Flit arc? The Ambat arc? Whatever it’s being called or will be called, I’m calling it the first fifteen episodes of Gundam AGE.

There’s a tendency when writing positive things about this series to try and defend it from its critics. I am going to try and avoid that, because it’s a waste of time. Gundam fans are the worst for creating a non-existent ideal in their heads of what their favourite show should be. I know this because I have my own non-existent ideal that the past three Gundam series have singularly failed to live up to.

So far though, Gundam AGE gets closer than most. And here’s why.

Different body types. This isn’t even a Gundam thing. There’s some difference in body types in the original series, but nothing approaching Gundam AGE‘s array of near spherical grandfathers, underclass manual labourers with tiny legs, pretty boy pilots with hair shaped like ears, and kids with out of control blue fringes. What it reminded me more of was Leiji Matsumoto’s character design work, but that might just be the sci-fi setting as Level 5 like this sort of variation in their other works like Professor Layton and Inazuma Eleven. It’s just a little more swish coming from Sunrise than when it comes from OLM.

Just one Gundam. Gundam variants are fun, and they sell more model kits, but I do like the idea of giving a Gundam a mythical quality by making there be only one. And in Gundam AGE, it literally has a mythical quality, with the idea of a Gundam lost in the past, and resurrected by the hero Flit. Plus the AGE system is a clever way to have variants, but still keep only one Gundam in the show.

Mystery. While the show hits a lot of beats  familiar to long time Gundam fans, it does something different in making the whole first 15 episodes essentially a mystery story. That mystery is who are the Unknown Enemy? By the fifteenth episode we have an answer, but more many more questions. The characters themselves though become so driven by revenge that by the time the reveal is made, they have arguably dehumanised the enemy in their minds that the answer is meaningless. Certainly it appears that way for one of the leads.

Big Dumb Sci-Fi Idea The show has a bunch of old Gundam concepts, sometimes dressed up in new names, but it also has the big dumb sci-fi idea of the show – the AGE system. It is essentially a 3D printer that creates modifications for the Gundam based on combat data. You know who else uses 3D printers? The designers at Bandai who work on Gundam model kits. Adding to the sense that the mecha design is going from Gunpla to Anime rather than vice-versa, is that the AGE system created modifications attach themselves to the Gundam frame as if they were pieces of a model kit.

The lessons of the last 15 years of anime designed to sell toys/games, is that you have to make the characters’ experiences with the “toys” in the show as close as humanly possible to the customers’ experiences in the real world. That’s a tall order for a show about pilotable robots (compare it to the LBX robots of Level 5′s Danball Senki), but this feels like an intelligent attempt to address it. Can it do it better than the shows that have shouldered out robot shows from the daytime schedules? Time, and money, will tell.

I’m looking forward to see how the generational gimmick makes a difference as we jump 26 years ahead in the story and join Flit’s son, Asemu as he becomes the hero of the series.

Download Dynamite In The Brain – Episode 37 – Ninja Scroll

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Download Dynamite In The Brain – Episode 36 – Genius Party

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This is a tale of bad choices, wasted money and photos of idiots dressed as elves.

But enough about TSR, what about me?

Well I never dressed as an elf, but I did pick the wrong CCG game to play and then wasted a bunch of money on it. I would go onto to do this four more times before learning my lesson, but those are posts for another day.

Caught on the back foot by Magic: The Gathering‘s launch and subsequent success in 1993, TSR created their own CCG. With it being based on D&D one might think that they would have been onto a winner. As successful as Magic was, TSR had the grandaddy of fantasy gaming IP in their back pocket. That had to count for something? Right?

No, it did not.

The problem was they panicked.

The finished product was a mess, not unplayable, not the worst CCG in the world (we shall get to that in due time), but it was so, so sloppy and half-arsed. Rather than commissioning new original art, they just sliced up existing AD&D art into card sized shapes. Not just art, but also hex maps.

It was so devoid of detail that some of the original cards were just a name and a picture. Later on they would use photos of LARPers. I don’t know what the LARPers or the customers did to deserve that. The quality of the card stock used for the cards was pretty cheap too. The only thing it really had going for it was that you got a lot of cards in a booster.

Launched in 1994, it unfortunately coincided with my university holidays and a summer job. So I had plenty of money to spend on CDs I no longer listen to, RPGs I never played and this TSR CCG that arrived at our local games shop/club/Apple dealer. I was not alone in being tricked by the TSR & AD&D name, all our club started playing. Some bought the ridiculously over-sized rules clarification book they produced. TWICE. Some even bought their later CCG, the less rushed Blood Wars. 

I think I was into it for about a year, moving onto other CCGs in 95/96, before finally being turned off the whole CCG deal by one of the worst games I have ever attempted to get my brain around.

So, Spellfire, one more step on the road to TSR’s eventual downfall and takeover by Wizards of the Coast. It was pretty bad, and I’d have been better off without it, but at least it wasn’t Dragon Dice.

from Shameless School by Go Nagai

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The best produced, best written, bad roleplaying game ever made.

For starters, what other RPGs boast a GEOF DARROW cover? Were full colour throughout? And printed on high end glossy paper? Just as an inanimate object, Underground was better than pretty much anything else on the market.

Sorry, Ray Winninger’s Underground.

Not entirely sure why Winninger got to prefix his game. Sure, he’d written some good DC Heroes material, in particular a Watchmen adventure and the great Watchmen sourcebook. But beyond that his name didn’t mean much to me.

It came out in 1993, and it shows. I believe the original plan was for three books, each satrising a different concept of heroism, with this one taking on the American ideal, and specifically superheroes. It’s a big old allegory for the treatment of Vietnam veterans, but with super powers and big guns.

It’s Marshal Law the RPG, basically. Which is fine, as I love me some Marshal Law.

I think the other heroic ideals to be dealt with that never came to fruition were the ideal of the Teutonic Knight (there’s some sketched in background involving Germany and the Church of Scientology iirc) and some form of “Eastern Hero” (wuxia infuenced maybe?).

I can’t say for sure because I sold it a few years ago.

Despite the setting and idea of the game being right up my alley, not to mention incredibly well written, the game itself is a clunker of a rule system. I never managed to run a game, the character generation alone drove me up the wall. A friend, Barry, managed to get a few sessions out of it, before he had the PCs cross over into his D&D campaign and we forgot all about struggling with Underground.

It’s a shame, because on every other level, the writing, the art, the production, it’s a great game. Everything works together to create this game world. Except the game itself.

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Of course, the fact the show was a series of shorts aimed at children and based on characters from a popular line of American greetings cards, may go some way to explaining your disbelief.

For that show was Suzy’s Zoo.

Based on Suzy Spafford’s characters, the show was directed by Hidekazu Ohara, who first came to my attention in his short, Professor Dan Petory’s Blues, on the Studio 4°C anthology Sweat Punch. He also worked on the Cannon Fodder segment of Memories, and oddly enough you can see some of that in Suzy’s Zoo. Particularly in how it recreates a particular hand drawn look.

It’s a technically impressive piece of work, not just in how it makes 3D models look hand drawn, it exceeds Hipira in this respect, but also the sense of weight they give the models. They aren’t just solid lumps, for example Witzy’s the duck’s feathers have a different weight to the main body of the model, leading to a much more convincing movement.

The writing is acceptable for kids animated short. It’s got some good gags, but it’s not as strong as say a Shaun the Sheep in the physical comedy department, nor as verbally funny as late period Peppa Pig (if you doubt Peppa Pig‘s strengths, I recommend the episode “Grampy Rabbit’s Lighthouse”. Brian Blessed as a shouting elderly rabbit. I think that’s all that needs to be said).

But it’s certainly better than any other greetings card character cartoons that history has spat out. I’d take Witzy and friends well animated whimsy over the wretched Getalong Gang any day of the week.

Poyopoyo is here. 

Akitaro Daichi returns with another gag manga adaptation. Which if you’ve followed his career is enough of a reason to celebrate, as he’s got a better understanding than most on how to transfer them to screen. Namely, don’t lose the gags.

Even better though, is he’s brought with him Rie Ooshima. She worked with him on the Kuruneko adaptation. And very few other people. This interview with Daichi discusses how they approached that series. In particular he mentions not using storyboards (instead just using the strips) and pre-scoring both it and Gag Manga Biyori.

On Poyopoyo, Ooshima is working as Animation Director, and it’s certainly a fuller world than Kuruneko’s. The look is more in the spirit of Daichi’s work on Legendz and Grrl Power. And while the spherical cat is consistent with the manga’s design, the human characters have been given some spit and polish to make them more charming.

Noted animal voice actress Ikue Ohtani (Merle, Pikachu, Tony Tony Chopper) voices Poyo, the cat. And vocal legend Akira Kamiya plays the father of the family who adopt the cat. And apparently the grandmother too!

While Poyopoyo isn’t Kuruneko, I’ve been waiting so long for a Daichi gag show to get picked up by someone I’m unduly excited to see it on Crunchyroll. And who knows, maybe it will foster some interest in the superior Kuruneko and Gag Manga Biyori? (SPOILER: It won’t).

from The Abashiri Family by Go Nagai

Hey gang, remember this? Posts where I talk about every RPG/Wargame/Boardgame I’ve played? Well it’s back.

And what better place to pick it up again, than R Talsorian Game’s mecha-themed roleplaying game, Mekton. Running on the same system as their Cyberpunk RPG, I picked up Mekton II second hand while at university. Then never got round to playing it. This is a recurring theme in my RPG purchases.

That didn’t stop me purchasing their next edition of the game Mekton Zeta, and its supplement Mekton Zeta Plus. While Mekton II, like earlier editions of Teenagers From Outer Space, didn’t really wear its influences on it’s sleeves, Zeta was clearly shouting I AM AN ANIME RPG. The cover had upgraded from Ben Dunn’s pastiche on Mekton II, to having the real thing in a painted Yuji Kaida cover. Inside you had a chapter called “Running Anime” that addressed how to get an anime tone to your games.

As good as the basic game was, once you added the Mekton Zeta Plus supplement, it really became the anally retentive mecha fan gamer’s dream. Not only would it let you create stats for pretty much any mecha you might want to imagine, the level of detail meant if had “official stats” for mecha (like weight/height etc) you could effectively reverse engineer a mecha into the game stats.

RTG eventually were involved in the second volume of the anime magazine V-Max, leading to anime gaming articles where you could see the power of that reverse engineering in practice. Do you want to pilot Giant Robo in a RPG? Well volume 2 issue 2 of V-Max gave you that chance.

Not that I did. Instead I ran a couple of heavily derivative campaigns of the my own design. The first was MYSTERY HUNTER ROBO. Which was basically X-Files with giant robots. Including one based on Ninjzz from The Bots Master. This is what happens when you players make their own robots. The problem I ran into was that only about half my RPG group liked anime. So after I put that on hold, we formed a splinter rpg & anime watching group and ran a sequel campaign called HADES EXPLORER Q. Or HEQ for short.

In that campaign the heroes travelled in the titular ship to another dimension called Hades where the villains of Mystery Hunter Robo (a terrorist organisation made up of dragons) had come from. They then got mixed up in the politics of that world while trying to prevent an invasion of Earth.

A third campaign, BONE MACHINE, never got off the ground and instead I returned to the campaign years later using a different anime themed RPG, but that’s another post.

Other campaigns I had sketched out but never ran included GIGA INFINITUS: THE BIGGEST ROBOT IN THE UNIVERSE and I.D.O.L. FORCE. The latter involved David Bowie forming a team of new robot piloting pop stars to battle his former team mates, the now evil Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. In the 70s the three had piloted a Getter Robo style combining mecha together.

If you are interested in finding out more about the game, check out MektonZeta.com

So, people have been asking if we were going to do a live Dynamite In The Brain at a future convention. I’m not sure that’s really option given the conversational nature of the podcast, but the format of Xmas Special definitely lends itself to a panel.

Mainly because it has been done before. In fact, an Anime Song Jukebox Jury may have been the first anime con panels I attended back during one of the Shinnenkai conventions in the late 90s. One of the songs played then was the misjudged rap song by the You’re Under Arrest spin off band, Tokyo Policewoman Duo.

If we were going to invoke that old panel, I wanted to play that song in homage. I tracked it down, and… there’s not much rapping, and it’s hardly as embarrassing as I remember. So I wondered if there were more anime songs with characters rapping. Obviously themes featuring rap have grown in popularity in the last decade, but there’s a lot of fun to be had with the actual characters rapping.

The problem is searching for “anime rap” leads you to people rapping about anime, rather than rap from anime.

Then I remembered the abbreviation “anison” (for Anime Song), and sure enough “Anison Rap” leads you to this awesome wiki about the history of rap in anime songs.

Most shocking of all, was the mention of the second theme tume to Manga Hajimete Monogatari that debuted in December 1979. That’s only a month after The Sugar Hill Gang’s Rappers Delight was released. While there’s obvious Disco influences, there’s an undeniable rap element to it that either speaks to how quickly rap’s popularity spread into the mainstream or puts a lie to the idea that Rappers Delight or King Tim III “broke” rap to the masses. Either way, it was a fascinating discovery, and the wiki is full of many more. Did you know Arale-chan put out a rap record? Or that Shigeru Chiba cut a rap track? I didn’t, but I do now. And that knowledge makes me feel great!

In case you were wondering what Patlabor would be like if the heroes were a cyborg cop sentai team with bolt on mecha suits and a robot dog that battled crimes planned by New Wave LARPers and executed by biomechanical robots, well I have the answer for you. It’d be a lot like Armoured Police Metal Jack.

This was astoundingly derivative. When I went in search of early nineties TV anime mediocrity this was the sort of thing I was expecting to find. But I wasn’t expecting to find something so densely packed with other people’s ideas done wrong.

Having lots of outside influences isn’t a crime, nor will it neccessarily mean your show is horrid. The franchise that reshaped the television anime landscape in the nineties, Neon Genesis Evangelion, wore its influences on its sleeve too. So what was Metaljack doing wrong? Outside of having a workhorse director and low production values, that is.

It’s influences were shows that were still fresh in people’s memories.

For starters you’ve got cyborg cops. Robocop had spawned all sorts of copyists in Japan from the arcade game ESWAT to the 8-Man revival OAV. Falling between those we had Metal Jack. Only, it doesn’t stop there. The cyborg cops have Super Sentai colour coding.  They have Saint Seiya-like crown helmets to allow their flowing Eighties manes to fly freely in the wind. The main character is basically a Ryo Saeba clone. The monsters they fight are “biomechanical” monsters, so you’ve got the well strummed Alien and Guyver riff being played too. And while not clear from the first episode, you can throw some Bladerunner into the mix too.

To further throw you off kilter, you’ve then got villains who look like they’ve walked in from some other show entirely. That show being Neon Day-Glo Legend of The Galactic Heroes.

At its heart you get the feeling it wants to be a modern take on tokusatsu shows, it shares elements with Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, and more obviously the Metal Hero series. The Metal Hero series Space Sheriff Gavan had influenced Robocop’s look in the first place and in the 1989 series, The Mobile Cop Jiban you had a downed cop turned into a cyborg.  Who fought biomechanical villains. Just like Metal Jack. It was then followed by Winspector where you had a team of cyborg/robot cops, with its sequels following a similar line with various teams of cops.

So not only does it feel like mess of anime and sci-fi influences, it also is very much a “me too” show aping trends in tokusatsu of the time. And given that the animation is pretty threadbare, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t have just watched the real thing instead.

We’ve a new episode up there today, talking all the best anime of 2011 and what we are looking forward to in 2012.

Plus Anthony reveals which anime character he most indentifies with…

Also, in case you missed it over the holidays, can I recommend our Xmas Special. We review anime related Xmas songs, and even if I do say so myself, it’s the best thing we’ve recorded for the show so far.

No need to change your podcast feeds as it is using the same feedburner RSS address. And it’s still on iTunes.

And as soon as I’ve sorted out some sort of cross posting plugin, the podcast should start reappearing here too.

Furthermore, I have some actual honest to goodness classic Awesome Engine style posts coming later in the week. Possibly a new installment in my ever popular “What Anime Really Looked Like” series of posts too.

It’s going to be a busy year so let us tie 2012 to the train tracks and run it over with Awesome Engine and Dynamite In The Brain.

If there’s one flaw in this Secret Santa lark it’s my laziness in using MyAnimeList. In general I’m against it due to a feeling it turns art into an endurance test fuelled by a collection of numbers. Watching cartoons shouldn’t be the equivalent of compiling baseball statistics.

On top of that, the MAL user interface is a pretty horrible experience. So while I attempted to complete a list, the list wasn’t complete. Meaning of the three choices I was given by my Santa, I’d already seen two. In fact, I’d reviewed one of them on this site. Luckily the third, Cromartie High School, was a show I’d seen little of and had lying around ages waiting to be watched.

Rewatching I remembered my big problem with the few episodes I’d seen. It’s not Sexy Commando Gaiden. That’s not its fault, but like director Hiroaki Sakurai’s other gag works (Digi Charat, Detroit Metal City), I find that I wish Akitaro Daiichi was directing instead. Their styles are similar enough for Daiichi’s comedic choices to shine through and give him an edge in appealing to my sense of humour.

That being said, I’m not sure what else he could do better with this material. Unlike the fast exchanges of a Sexy Commando or Gag Manga Biyori, Cromartie frequently proves to be INNER MONOLOGUE: THE SHOW.

So many gags rely on the juxtaposition of the stoic exterior of these high school toughs and their less than gruff inner lives. On top of this there is the contrast with the few characters who lack inner monologue, heightening their weirdness. This leads to a lot of close up shots of determined faces with comedic voice over monologues (for instance, the toughest 16 yr old in school panicking about his motion sickness or an afro-ed gang leader pondering the mechanics of joke construction). 

The big advantage of this for the animation budget, is you don’t need much actual animation. While it is nowhere near as obviously cheap as the 2011 adaptation of Cromartie creator Eiji Nonaka’s current manga, Double J, it is still certainly an exercise in thrift.

Not that it matters, as the material is pretty strong, and it has a not so secret weapon in Norio Wakamoto’s voice as mysterious robot student Mechazawa. Even if the visuals are occasionally leaden and a little uninspired, the jokes themselves are well written and performed.

And the wrestling references it throws in add to its appeal to me specifically. You’ve got a character named after Akira Maeda, another whose nickname is a Stan Hansen reference and most importantly a character based on Don Frye.

That’s right, I said Don Frye. Not Freddie Mercury. Hokuto mistakes the character Freddie for “a wrestler” rather than the singer that the rest of Cromartie seem to think he is. I ask you this, who do you think more closely resembles Cromartie’s Freddie?

It’s shame that the live action got Yoshihiro Takayama to play motion sickness suffering Takenouchi, but didn’t get Frye to play Freddie.

So, not the greatest gag anime out there, but arguably the best to get a UK release. Which is now out of print..So, there you go. Merry Xmas!

No. Because that’s not a sad girl in the snow, it’s Leon Everett, here to join us and review anime related Xmas songs. And then test his mettle and anime knowledge against Anthony in Brian’s Awesome Anime Quiz.

Leon’s plug: XMoonLilyX’s Hetalia Video Blog

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Anthony is on holiday, so Gary Hedges joins me to talk Saban dubs that made it to the UK. We’ve even seen some of them. Plus: a brief history of Saturday Morning Kids TV in the UK, how breakfast TV was saved again and again, facts everyone thinks only they know, interrupting dogs and much, much more.

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We are joined by Lewis Smith for a lengthy talk about Sunrise’s superhero buddy comedy, Tiger & Bunny. There were some recording problems during this, meaning we lost some material. I think I edited it to make sense, but apologies in advance if you hear call backs to things you didn’t hear earlier.

00:00 – 50:00 SPOILER FREE series overview
50:00 – 100:00 SPOILER-laden in depth discussion of the show. And there might be some Big O spoilers in there too. Though possibly not as I couldn’t recall exactly what I was trying to recall. You have been warned.

Lewis’ plug: Zen Creations Canvas Painting

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Once more we travel back in time a decade and visit an anime froma that time. This time we are joined by John-Paul from fightbait anime podcast who along with Anthony will tell me why I am so wrong about Shinichi Watanabe’s puerile masterpiece, Puni Puni Poemy.

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Leon Everett is back again, this time to tell us all about the Distant Worlds concert at the Albert Hall. Then we discuss the 2001 Rintaro adaptation of the Osamu Tezuka manga, Metropolis.

TezukaOsamu.net’s page on the Metropolis manga

00:00 Distant Worlds
10:15 Metropolis

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Leon Everett joins us to discuss the Lupin III film, The Castle of Cagliostro.

00:00 Zelda 25th anniversary symphony concert, Dragon Gate UK & MCM Expo
14:41 The Castle of Cagliostro

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A special Halloween episode of DITB. We talk 2009 CG vampire anime Hipira. Originally a story book by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) and Shinji Kimura, it got a series of shorts made by Kimura and CG master Kodai Sato.

Then we discuss IMDB’s highest rated animated vampires themed shows/movies. Which briefly turns into an episode of Cash In The Attic.

00:00 Hipira
25:20 IMDB Vampire list

And finally, Anthony appears a guest on episode 127 of Fight Bait’s Whiskey Thursday, so check that out.

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If you like swearing this episode is for you. We are really earning the explicit tag on iTunes this time round with the final segment of this episode. Otherwise it’s just a casual chat about recent anime. So beware of spoilers (though I think we generally brush over anything too significant outside of the last segment).

And as we cover a lot of stuff, time codes!

00:00 Preamble (Eugene Mirman & Pretty Good Friends, Anthony’s Internet Woes)
03:20 One Piece Episode 517
14:20 Hunter x Hunter remake
25:00 Gundam AGE
37:20 Phi Brain
42:50 Ben-To
46:48 Dramatic readings of internet reaction to Blood-C episode 12

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In which Japanese limited animation makes a really bad decision with regards to animal character design.

We’re back to the wonderful world of ORPHANTAINMENT. For those keeping count this is the third confirmed orphan protagonist so far, and the second to come from classic literature. In this case it was coming from NHK, rather than a World Masterpiece Theatre production, and while its heart was in the right place, its hands weren’t.

For those not familiar with the novel by Francis Hodgson Burnett, it involves a orphan girl, Mary Lennox, going to England from India, following the deaths of her parents. She is going to stay with her uncle, Archibald Craven. Both Mary and Archibald have to be softened from their individual grieving by the intervention of the chipper and perky lower classes, in the form of maid Martha, her brother Dickon and gardener Ben Weatherstaff, and by nature. Which comes in the form of the eponymous Secret Garden and a robin.

There was a 1975 BBC adaptation that got repeated when I was a kid, and I remember hating it. Even hearing that opening theme today makes me mad. I mainly hated it because it wasn’t a cartoon or funny. Well, this 1991 version tries to solve that by adding funny animals!

These animals that appear to be attempts at classic American-style cartoon animals, but end up looking like the sort of overly rendered cartoon animals you’d find on cheap greetings cards in the Eighties. You know, before Purple Ronnie came along and changed everything. Chief among these animals is Mary’s cat Patty, whose uncharming antics battle to dominate this episode with Mary’s tantrums. I like cats, but this pink, malformed menace irritated me. Chi, she is not.

When you consider it was the replacement for Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, it comes up lacking. Though I do wonder if that series’ heroine was an influence on the design choice of making Martha and Dickon non-white characters (perhaps the single interesting artistic choice in the show). But it’s pretty lacking in a vacuum too really. The lack of competence in the production hamstrings it regardless of what show it was replacing. Which probably explains why no-one is interested in it in 2011 (though it did get a box set release in Japan a few years back).

As forgotten as this series is, its replacement in 1992, Oi! Ryoma, languishes in English language obscurity even further. It doesn’t even have an entry in Anime News Network’s encyclopedia.

Back?

Good.

One of the things that stood out in the first episode of Gundam AGE was that Haro bounced. And often that involved a lot of stretch and squash. For the life of me I couldn’t recall how much this happened in previous shows with Haros that I had encountered. Not wanting to hook the VHS player up to watch the movies, I went to the salvation of the lazy researcher, Youtube.

Here’s a problem with looking up Haro clips. People like to take videos of their Haro collectibles. So after I fought through video of alarm clocks and cat / Haro interaction, I got to this clip of Haro walking up some stairs. Not much stretch and squash there, but this second clip has some in the section where Fraw Bow gives Haro a kicking.

I found some other clips attached to “comedy” videos that indicated that Gundam Seed had stretch and squash Haros too. I couldn’t find any for other iterations though, the Gundam 00 clips had very rigid Haros, often hovering using their little flaps. Most likely though, I guess it all depended on the animators for any given scene. Maybe those with Gundam more readily at hand can share their favourite Haro bouncing scenes. Back to the point at hand.

Here’s why bouncing Haros are great.

At their core they are essentially what adults use to explain to kids how animation works.

Remember how it felt to learn how it worked, and that more importantly, that you can do it yourself? Haros, when they are used as bouncing balls, rather than dumpy robots or spherical mechanical flies, tap into that feeling. Sure, giant robot samurai with laser guns and swords are cool and everything, but more people can draw a Haro. And they could probably animate it bouncing too.

Haros are the squeaky voiced powerball door into animation. Let’s hear it for the Haros!

And now for one of those episodes where I make Anthony watch something against his will. In this case it’s the first episodes of a whole load of early 70s Dynamic Productions TV shows. We’re talking Devilman, Mazinger Z, Dororon Enma-kun, Cutie Honey and much, much more. Haunted houses, de-uglification, crushed mice, seedy faces, keyrings, indomitable stupidity, acoustic guitars, banana skins and a dead dog hanging from a tree, it’s all here in another exciting episode of Dynamite In The Brain.

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The best anime of 1991 according to Animage readers.

This Sunrise property is one of those shows I was vaguely aware of, even before I started to properly watch anime. I believe this was likely due to it being mentioned in Super Play, a UK SNES magazine that was probably the most otaku-y of the UK games magazines of the time. Alternatively, it might have been via Japanese games magazines, as classmates were importing them around this time. More recently I’d come across it in the resume of Mitsuo Fukuda, director of Gundam Seed (BOO!) and Gear Fighter Dendoh (YAY!).

Despite the acclaim poured on it by the Animage readers, it was initially a flop. Cancelled early, it only ran 37 episodes. Its success came in tapping into that fanatical base with OAV sequels that moved the action on roughly in real time. According to wikipedia, the fanbase was initially mainly female (80% for the early OAVs). I wish there was more in English about the franchise’s trajectory as it seems on the surface like a precursor to the “kept alive by otaku” franchises that exist today. Particularly those boosted by a fanatical female audience.

So, what about this first episode?

Well it’s a pretty clever set up that gets the main character into the position of being the show’s lead. Our hero, Kazami Hayato, is escorting a new Cyber Formula race car, Asurada, to a race qualifier, when it is set upon by villains trying to steal it. This forces him to drive the car to get away, inadvertantly making him the driver for at least the next seven days due to the genetic fingerprint ignition and its lengthy reset time. Meaning that in the next episode he will have to race, rather than the intended driver.

I probably should have mentioned that Asurada is also the car’s talking AI. You know, like KITT in Knight Rider. Except this AI is a little more realistic. While it can clearly help out with situations a racing car might be expected to deal with, it’s completely useless when faced with, say, a helicopter trying to pick it up with a giant mechanical grabber.

The designs from Takahiro Yoshimatsu scream 1991 more than the other two shows we’ve looked at from that year. Rampant spikey haircuts, glassy eyes and jaws you can cut glass with abound. It’s not the most angular show of the nineties, but combined with the flat colours the character design firmly dates it from there. Yoshimatsu has plenty of other tricks in his arsenal, most recently he directed and designed Nyanpire, but if you want to see a 2011 take on the 90s angular look, check out his designs on the Hunter X Hunter remake that just started.

The other notable name that I see on the ANN credits is Kazuki Akane (Escaflowne, Heat Guy J, Noein, Birdy Decode) as one of the unit directors. By the looks of things he’d been at Sunrise a while at this point, having worked on Ronin Warriors and Jushin Liger. Later on I should take a look at what talents were nutured by which studios in the 90s.

Do you like orphans? Do you like Nuns? Do you like singing? Well you were in luck in 1991 as House Foods World Masterpiece Theatre adapted Maria von Trapp’s memoir The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

Now, I’ve never read that book, and don’t think I’ve seen The Sound of Music. Certainly not as an adult at least. It feels like what I know about the story I know only through cultural osmosis. So I’ve not really got much to judge this adaptation against.

Likewise, I don’t think I’ve seen an entire World Masterpiece Theatre series. Certainly, I’ve seen bits here and there, I think the last one I dipped into would have been the Story of Perrine. But not enough to say where this looks to stand in the oeuvre. Someone else will have to be judge of whether this is good or bad WMT.

What I will say is this. Nuns must be fun to animate.

The animation is certainly fine for TV animation early on, with Maria in her Austrian tomboy get up and exploring Salzburg, but once the nuns appear then we start to get some fun movement. The solid black robes allows for interesting clothing movement without getting bogged down in the detail of folds and rumples. Nuns are like living shadow puppets.

With just a face and a shape the animators get across a lot of different personalities with little effort. The faces are of course designed by Shuichi Seki. Seki’s early designs were on shows adapting western properties, Vicky the Viking and Little Lulu. The aforementioned Perrine was his first WMT design work.  From then his open, slightly bean shaped faces became the look of WMT. More recently he did the character design for the Gokyoudai Monogatari TV show.

Unusually for a WMT show, the plucky orphan here is an adult. Actually when I think about it, it’s fairly unusual for pop culture as a whole. The good thing is that because of that, despite annoying all the other nuns, Maria doesn’t come off as too cloying. The ending theme not so much with it’s alternating HAPPY FAMILY SCENE / MISERY approach.

The other thing that struck me was some of the establishing location shots seem to linger unnecessarily long. Then I realised that is animation as travelogue. These background paintings are actually pretty accurate depictions of actual real life locations. Locations that were thousands of miles away from the intended audience. So let them soak it in.

While it’s nicely made for a TV anime, the main thing that is tempting me back is the promise of the opening sequence that the mascot animal of the show is a full grown cow. I am curious as to how they plan to make that work, if indeed they do.

Not Goldfish Warning, Goldfish Forecast. That’s what Toei call it, so that’s what I’m calling it.

I was originally planning on doing another “What Anime Looked Like In 199X” post for 1991, but I thought I’d actually dip into a few of these shows first. Starting with Goldfish Forecast.

The show’s position in history is that of a precursor to Sailor Moon, in that many of the staff would move onto that show. Notably it shares a director in Junichi Sato, and a composer in Takanori Arisawa. Kunihiko Ikuhara (Utena, Penguin Drum) and Takuya Igarashi (Ouran Host Club, Star Driver) directed some episodes on this show too. But you could have learnt that from wikipedia anyway. 

Based on the shoujo manga by Neko Nekobe, it’s basic plot should be that of a heart warming melodrama. An orphan whose only friend is a goldfish battles evil upper-class schoolgirls and the family lawyer who is trying to steal her inheritance. It could almost be a WMT storyline.

Except into that has been inserted an pink haired chirpy Arale-chan-alike with near super human speed, a kid who dresses like Maverick from Top Gun and a whole load of farm animals with near human intelligence. Then the orphan herself is fairly unlikeable. And everyone over reacts to everything to the point where their eyes are popping out their heads.

The first episode contains two stories, the first introduces us to Chitose Fujinomiya, the poor little rich orphan who’s been booted out of Metropolitan Academy with her valuable lucky goldfish, Gyopi. She is found by the students of impoverished Countryside Junior High, led by pink haired, Super Deformed, hyperactive moppet Wapiko.

They help her get back her inheritance and she buys the school so she can use it to get revenge on her former Metropolitan Academy classmates who turned on her.

The second story sees Chitose’s corrupt lawyer team up with the Metropolitan Academy student council, while the revived Countryside Junior High starts to take in new students, some of which are actually human beings.

It’s not particularly packed with gags, but there’s a degree of humour from the characters and more from the extreme reactions they have to events. There’s not enough use made of big eyes that squish and stretch and explode nowadays. In Goldfish Forecast they are the most energetic part of the human body, except maybe for Wapiko’s super fast legs.

Also there’s a lot of funny looking animals. Animals that are technically about as far away from being anatomically correct as you can get while still being recognisable as cows, chickens, pigs and cats are always pretty funny. This is why I’m excited about Akitaro Daichi’s Poyopoyo show next year. Who doesn’t want a show about a spherical cat?

So, a pleasant enough show that warmed up some creators before they started making a big impact. 

Leon Everett is back to discuss Cowboy Bebop The Movie. And to perform an acapella version of the Big Shot theme tune! And we answer the question that was on everyone’s lips following Episode 22 – What was the name of the Pog mascot?

Anthony wants you to watch his Redline AMV.

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Now this was encouraged in maths exams, but less so in TV shows. It’s the point at which the writing begins to point out the conceits of the show and the mechanics of earlier scripts. It’s all very fun and meta, and often the episodes that do this are really great. But once you’ve let the genie out the bottle it’s pretty hard to get it back in again.

The most famous is probably the “Homer’s Enemy” episode of The Simpsons. As I recall, before the site sadly disappeared from the internet, this was a big vote getter on Jump The Shark Dot Com’s list of when The Simpsons jumped the shark. People vehemently hated it. Personally, I find it funny, but it did mark a point where they started to point out the conceits of the show and you started see the foundations that had made it great for 8 seasons get undermined, leading to bad ideas like a sober Barney and cartoon violence with no consequences.

Community flied dangerously close, dangerously early, last season with “Paradigms of Human Memory”, their fake clip show. Admittedly, it flies close to the wind most episodes due to the Abed character, but by constructing chunks of shows that did not exist, yet making them believable as real episodes, you could see a little too much of how an episode is written. Again though, it was a great episode.

It’s a general flaw with the Dr Who revival too, with too many writers who grew up with Doctor Who using the show to explore their own fandom of the character rather than writing straight forward Dr Who episodes. At this point I think we get the conceits inherent to the Doctor/companion relationship and it probably doesn’t need to be explored that much more. They’ve made for some good episodes, but it’s getting tired.

2) Forget what made you good and focus on what made you popular

Aka “listening to the fans”.

Two examples spring to mind, the first is Psych. It started as a great little detective show, and as great as the chemistry between its leads was, more importantly it had good mysteries to solve each episode. Unlike Monk, which had drifted far from being a whodunnit show, the mysteries were the focus early on and they worked. The technique of showing the viewer Shawn’s zooming in on clues allowed you to play along as couch detective.

However, that wasn’t the element that the fans loved. They liked the 80s pop culture references and the Shawn/Juliet non-romance romance. So by season 5 it was now bogged down in 80s pop culture and the non-romance turned into a romance. All to the detriment of the mysteries as they often got sidelined by stunt guest stars and an uneffective ongoing love triangle plot.

The other example is Hetalia.

What is great about Hetalia is the ludicrously specific historical gags. What the fans love though is gay innuendo. First TV series has the right balance, the second does not and it all becomes rather tiresome. Thankfully they seemed to realise this and the third appears to readdress the balance, helped in part by increased focus on other “countries”.

3) Getting bored of the characters you are writing

Sometimes shows get too popular and are making too much money to be cancelled. Again The Simpsons falls under this category. They even mention on early season commentaries that there were characters the current writers were bored of, like Mr Burns. Of course the advantage with the Simpsons is that it has a large cast and if they want to make it larger they can just draw new characters. A bigger problem is in live action comedies.

Like Friends.

Now I don’t know for sure that writers were bored with the Friends lead characters, and I don’t even like the show that much, but I ask you to compare the characters at the start of the show and the end of the show. Have they not turned into grotesque caricatures by the end? If you need a further contrast, look at Paul Rudd’s character. He seems like he’s come from a perfectly normal, rational sitcom and accidentally walked into a world occupied by screeching idiot monsters.

Are there other reoccuring problems you see in TV shows where they appear to be inadvertantly suiciding themselves?

Do you have other examples?

From Shameless School by Go Nagai

Brian’s fixed his PC and we’re back, back, back! We get hyped about the new Kamen Rider series, Kamen Rider Fourze. Then we talk about the forthcoming Autumn anime that have peaked our interest. Also we somehow end up talking Entourage, college weirdos and POGS!

PLUS: The internet comes alive with re-enactments of angry youtube posts

NOT TO MENTION: Anthony wants you to watch his Redline AMV.

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It’s all about Redline, the latest work from Takeshi Koike. Brian’s seen it far too many times at the cinema over the last year and a half, and now Anthony’s finally had a chance to check it out. So we talk about it for an hour. Plus: Speed Racer gets belatedly analysed, cosplay updates, shameless spreading of internet rumours and a ridiculous metaphor that Brian can’t remember if he used or not.

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I tried to live by that rule, briefly, with my CD buying in 1999, but I do still like that thrill you get with new things. Thrills are fun. If he taught us one thing, then that is what Tharg taught us. I think pop culture ephemerality has its place, not everything has to stand the test of time and can just be for the now. Plus, if you check things out when they are new, then you get the chance to be one of those gatekeepers of taste for future audiences. If only gatekeeper of taste came with a cool uniform.

Eventually though it gets harder and harder to keep up with new things as your life begins to fill with responsibilities, and so it’s easier to look to the annals of history for tried and tested entertainment. So I want to do at least one episode a month of Dynamite in the Brain where we look back at an anime film or tv show from 10 years ago. It’s part laziness and part the fact that we got a bump on downloads for the FLCL episode.

So what do I think is worth a revisit in 2011?

Well, it was a good year for films. Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven’s Door (which should be our first episode on this topic), Spirited Away, Metropolis, Cat Soup and Millennium Actress. At least two are great films and the rest are at least worth a viewing. There was also WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3, but I’m yet to see that.

OAVs of note included Read or Die, Puni Puni Poemy and Animation Runner Kuromi. There was also Alien Nine and Spirit of Wonder: Scientific Boys Club, two I missed but would like to check out at some point. Oh, and there was Kai Doh Maru, which might be worth revisiting to see if I can relinquish my throne of the only guy who kinda liked it.

TV Shows? Well that’s a tougher call. Hare+Guu still holds up that’s for sure. Mahoromatic wasn’t my cup of tea, but animation-wise still seems fairly strong. Beyond that? Well, for sure Noir will be remembered, but that is quantifiably no good. Don’t argue with me on this point, I’ve taken the measurements. s-CRY-ed? Galaxy Angel? Seems unlikely that they would hold up, or even that they were that great to begin with?

Obviously it’s not surprising that higher budgeted movies and OAVs would stand out more than shows with TV budgets. Its part of the reason why my mind gets boggled when people complain about “bad seasons” or “bad years” for anime. I’m pleasantly surprised if there’s FIVE films/shows a year that I LOVE. Because that’s about my limit for pretty much every other form of media at this point. The rest is just ephemera that few will remember anyway.

So what other anime from 2001 is worth revisiting?

Hey gang! We’re back from Ayacon 2011, and we’ve filled an entire podcast with chat about it. What events did we go to? What cosplay did we wear? What did we buy? What did we see? All this and the MADstravaganza 5 playlist too.

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It’s Ayacon next weekend, and we’re going to be there. In this episode we talk about what we are looking forward to at the con. Plus: Brian’s brief, glorious webcomic career and Anthony’s mastery of accents!

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This episode is all about Halo Legends. Anthony made Brian spend THREE POUNDS of your Earth money on a DVD that was certainly an anime anthology about the videogame Halo. Has Anthony pulled a reverse Pugyuru? To find out, use your ears to listen to the newest episode of Dynamite In The Brain.

N.B. We do not reveal what a “Reverse Puyuru” is in the episode. Or even mention it.

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Today we talk about the Spring anime shows we’ve been watching over the last three months. They involved a lot of demons, some bawdy humour, superheroes and eating exotic foods. All this plus minds going blank and the promise of someone wearing make-up!

NIS America’s Enma-kun trailer:

Tiger & Bunny at Anime On Demand

Toriko at Funimation

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1931 Aerial Momotaro

Oft cited early anime, this reportedly has Momotaro getting involved in a war between Penguins and Albatrosses. Or is it just Albatross? You’d think that the fact I’m writing this on the internet means I could just check for myself before writing it rather than just discussing it. Clearly you’d be wrong.

Anyway this was on one of those compilation box sets of pre-war anime that came out a few years back. That was one of those worthy gestures that everyone appreciated, but not many actually wanted to watch. Nice to know it happened though.

1974 Uriqen Animal Rescue League

There was a penguin in this team of animals that did good deeds, but the one picture of it on the internet was down when I wrote this. All I know beyond that is that it aired in Germany.

1981 Dr Slump

Took place in a village called Penguin Village. Beyond that, were there any penguins in the series?

1983-1988 Penguin’s Memory

As the self-declared leading Animated Penguin Historian, and I think my B in GCSE History backs up my claim to that spot, I’m declaring this as the key point in Animated Penguin History. In Japan at least. In Switzerland it is clearly Pingu. And here in the UK it would be that belated arrival at the “teams of funny animals in action stories” table, Avenger Penguins.

Anyway, back the melancholic, possibly alcoholic penguins.

This 1983-1988 ad campaign for Suntory beer featured cartoon penguins of the sort that pervade Japanese Pop Culture through the 80s and beyond. Look to your Parodiuses, to your that episode of Azumanga Daioh where the little girl whose name escapes me dressed up as a penguin, to your Doki Doki Penguin Lands. This dumpy cartoon penguin clicked in an era of super deformed video game characters and has an influence well into the 00s. As we shall see.

So popular were the adverts, that they made a film about them. You know, like how they made TV show out of those Caveman adverts and they somehow decided to make TWO films out of those Rowan Atkinson Barclaycard adverts. Except this film was about the Vietnam War and involved penguins.

1986 Mister Pen-Pen

This chap created by Mayumi Muroyama got two TV specials in 1986. He was keeping up the the dumpy cartoon penguin approach to penguins in cartoons. Look at him! Look at him in his hat and bow tie!

1995 Ninku

Then in 1995, in the adaptation of the ninja comic, Ninku, a realist approach to the penguin made it to the screen. As well as capturing the realistic look of a penguin, it also caught their ability to carry women on their backs at high speed, their combat prowess and their potent farting ability.

1995 Neon Genesis Evangelion

Also in 1995, there was this shorter running show about giant robots that featured a realistic fiordland penguin. And less farting. Oh, and he was named after Mister Pen-Pen. Less of a gentleman though, he wasn’t addressed as Mister. Nor did he wear a hat and a bow tie.

1995 Badtz-Maru

Completing the trio of penguins that marked the mid-90s Penguin boom, was the screen arrival of Sanrio’s delinquent penguin Badtz Maru. He’d originally shown up in 1993, throwing a brick through Hello Kitty’s greenhouse I guess.

1996 Bucket de Gohan

Ginpei the penguin was the star of this zoo themed show based on Kiriko Kubo’s manga. It was directed by Osamu Dezaki’s big brother Satoshi.

1996 Magical Shiho-chan

Of course, if there’s a craze, there’s pornography. And the 90s penguin boom’s pornography was Magical Task/Magical Shiho-chan. Well actually, a quick youtube search reveals it to be an extremely belated, porn version of the Studio Pierrot Magical Girl shows. Don’t think about that too long, it is as creepy a premise as you think it is, and yet could also be argued as being the subtext of those original shows in the first place.

Anyway, the magical mascot character here was a penguin.

Moving on!

1997 Manmaru The Ninja Penguin

His eyes are enormous voids with which to drag you in. He racked up an impressive 48 episodes worth of animal ninja-ry and a Sega Saturn game, before fading into in penguin obscurity. Worth noting the Manmaru manga started in… 1995. What was up with penguins in 1995? Even the US got in on it with The Pebble and The Penguin. Maybe something in Real Penguin History had happened a year or so earlier and the entertainment industry was cashing in its mackerel?

2006 Pokemon

In 2006, the long running animal battling show introduced the character Dawn and her trademark pokemon, Piplup. The creature was popular enough to be the lead critter in the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon spin off (though that one is apparently a human who was turned into a Piplup). This spin-off Piplup wears a bow tie, is this another Mister Pen-Pen nod? Or are penguins in bow ties just adorable and you’d be a fool not to make one wear one?

2008 Penguin no Mondai

This CG show contains the leading penguin in the modern anime climate. That penguin is called Penguin Beckham. Again it’s a dumpy penguin, though this one borders on the spherical. Bringing the super deformed aesthetic full circle, a number of spin off projects have artwork that ape the look of 80s super deformed robot model box art.

So, that’s a brief history of penguins in anime. Let me know in the comments if there’s any notable additions I need to make. 

So my first point of call was Anime News Network’s page for the show. The first thing I noticed was that none of the writers listed were underlined. This usually indicates that this is their only credit in ANN’s database. And that is the case here.

So who were these guys? Particularly who is Masafumi Nishida, the name listed as series composition and a writing credit on every episode?

Well, turns out he’s an actor/director/screenwriter/playwright.

This was interesting to me, as one of my favourite shows of the last few years was Gurren Lagann, which had been written by Kazuki Nakashima, another creator with a background in theatre rather than animation. And in watching older Osamu Dezaki shows in preparation for the Anime 3000 podcast I appeared on, I was struck by some of the theatrical approaches I saw in them. I don’t think the T&B team of writers get animation in the same way that Nakashima does, but they’ve definitely made for a fresher show with different nuances than you might have expected.

Notable works from Nishida include the wrestling comedy drama Gachi Boy: Wrestling With A Memory, cancer drama Fireworks from the Heart, and volleyball sitcom Mama-san Volley de Tsukamaete.

Last year he worked on the live action version of Fujiko Fujio’s manga Kaibutsu-kun (there had been anime versions in 1968 and 1980). That, along with the management company Queen-B, seems to be the factor that ties the writers together.

Nishida, fellow Queen-B client Tomohiro Suzuki (3,4,7,11) and Unibird member Yuya Takahashi (9,10,12) all worked on Kaibutsu-kun. And the writer of episode 5, Yasujirou Tanaka is also a Queen-B client. All have backgrounds in theatre, writing and acting.

Now it’s not all that surprising that there’s a management company that’s tying this together, you see it here in the UK most obviously with comedy shows, and I’m sure it happens elsewhere too. I imagine it happens all the time in anime too, it’s just when you get this situation with a whole load of guys with little to no anime experience writing a hit it makes it stand out.

And based on his work on Tiger & Bunny I’m definitely interested in checking out more of Nishida’s work. Probably starting with Gachi Boy if I get the chance.

NB: it looks like Nishida does have some former anime experience from a segment on the NHK show “Shakin‘”.

Today we are joined by Kitacon committee member Leon Everett to talk FLCL. A lot. Everything from the show itself, to AMVs, to cosplay and much, much more.

Kitacon

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Today we answer you, the listener’s, questions! Find out just how badly we’d run a university course, what DVDs are sitting on our shelves unwatched, whether we favour subs or dubs, what we think about Evangelion, who the Tyler Perry of anime is and much, much more.

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Anime Dub Live IV at Ayacon
Tyler Perry

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Today we talk Anthony’s taste in comedians from the sitcom News Radio, upcoming anime series that we might interested in watching if we ever find the time, why caveman fiction is better than science fiction and our main topic is the 2001 Crayon Shin-chan film – The Storm Called: The Adult Empire Strikes Back!

Anime News Network’s list of Summer anime
Joe Rogan episode of WTF with Marc Maron
Andy Dick episode of WTF with Marc Maron
Dame Dame no Uta

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Today we are joined by Ayacon Events Overseer, Jon Anning to talk anime themed RPGs. Hear tales of UK cons of yore, RPG in-jokes that don’t really work in the cold light of day, unreadable old conbook articles, Guyvers vs. Vampires, Brian’s voice gradually turn into the Fast Show’s Bob Flemming and much, much more. If your name is Barry you must listen to this!

RIFTS
Teenagers from Outer Space
Dragon Magazine Letter about using anime in D&D

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Nintendo characters circa 1990 were trapped in a box.

The limitations of the sprites on the NES meant they were trapped in either a square or rectangular box. The square box has a pretty obvious parallel with super-deformed designs, squatness is forced on you if you are designing within a square.

Now a rectangular box would surely give an opportunity to design a character with more human proportions. That may be true, but these boxes were quite small. If you had a sprite 16 pixels high (and you weren’t combining spirites), and you go on the assumption that the ideal adult human proportion is eight heads high, you’d only have 1 or 2 pixels to draw a face.

For instance If you take Mario, he has a 7 pixel face on a 16 pixel body.

And his roided up incarnation, Super Mario, has a a 12 pixel face on a 32 pixel body.

So rather than taking up an 1/8th of their height they are taking around 1/3-1/2 of their form.

Now let’s take a look at some anime characters to see how their proportions compare.

The eternal presence that is Doraemon is more head than anything else, taking up more than 50% of his height.

Hat, the hero of Magical Hat, has a bonce that consumes 30% of his height.

Musashi likewise has a 30% head (more if we included all his headdress)

Meanwhile in the world of OAVs, Yang Wenli of Legend of the Galactic Heroes head was pretty much falling into the 1:8 ideal.

Now lets look at some of the videogame outings for these guys around this time:

As you can see in the above video, Doraemon is clearly identifiable in his NES version. Is the rest of the game in the tone/look of the franchise? Probably not, but your money maker is the Doraemon iconography.

Even though he benefits from the Megadrive’s increased capabilities, Magical Hat’s design, is more squat than the anime’s. He’s still identifiable though, and maintains all the design elements. It’s worth noting that the manga design resembles the game more than the anime.

Karakuri Kengo Den Musashi Lord really displays exactly how miniaturised character designs might end up during this era. Is our stumpy samurai still recognisable in this head-heavy form? Just about.

The LOGH guys were confined to home computer strategy games for a while, eventually making it the SNES in 1992. While the portraits of the characters look a lot like the originals, they are just that, portraits. The game itself is still a text heavy strategy adventure for spods.

If you check the blog, CHOKOCAT’s Anime Video Games you’ll see that there was a vague divide to the sort of anime, the sort of game and systems they appeared on. Anime that appealed to otaku and had designs that were more realisticly proportioned, tended to appear on home computers in adventure and strategy games. Anime that appealed to the mass market and had more cartoony designs tended to appear on NES (and eventually SNES & Megadrive). Somewhere in between was that wooliest of consoles, the PC Engine.

It’s not a hard and fast rule, you’d see things like that LOGH game above on the SNES and even on the NES you’d have more realistic proportions attempted. But those attempts tended to be fairly horrific, this Sakigake!! Otokojuku game for example:

Obviously, as “Visual Novels”, the home computer anime game market survived past the deaths of the many systems that supported them during this time, and the death of the OAV market. In fact I wonder if it surplanted the OAV market to a degree? Someone who knows and cares more about those two topics should look into that.

What I do know is that we do see that market now feeding the late night/DVD/BD anime market segment with the various Visual Novel adaptations we’ve seen over the last 15 years. It strikes me as odd that a medium that developed as a way to ape anime designs more accurately, ended up decades later with character design trends that frequently translate so poorly into animation.

One video game company who do get animation character design right, is Level 5. Which is why I was quite happy for this historical post suddenly turn topical the other week when it was announced they’d be developing the new Gundam project, Gundam AGE. Obviously games systems today don’t have the same design constraints as two decades ago, but Level 5′s designs have varied proportions and more importantly they aren’t overly designed. They should transfer easily from game system to game system to animation to toys to merchandise with little need to compromise with each move.

Compare that to evolution of SD Gundam, starting as simple capsule toys versions of Gundams, the design ethic ended up frequently being more complicated than your full sized robots as they became a flurry of shiny attachments.

OK, this is drifting now. It’s like when I bought a 360 last year, all of a sudden I felt like was being called on to have an opinion on videogames again. My interest only stretches so far. Next time – TV anime, not videogames and the year 1991.

It’s part two of our Marvel Productions chat wtih Gary Hedges!

Trapped in a world we never made, we talk juvenile puppets, ponies, repatriated Real American Heroes, things we thought were Guyver, Billy Zane and much, much more.

Muppet Babies
Robotix
GI Joe
Jem & The Holograms
Defenders of the Earth
Glo Friends
Spider-Man

We’ll be back next week with the first part of our RPG episodes.

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Gary Hedges is back! For another trip down memory lane, this time the one marked Marvel.

Face front True Believers as we go all the way back to the 1970s live action Spider-man. No not that one, the other one! Then we take in some international superheroes, a fast food eating vampire, some amazing friends, an amusement park ride with some serious health & safety issues, scented toys, ANTS, ANTS, ANTS and robots in disguise.

And guess what, there was too much chat to contain in one episode. So we’ll be back next week with MORE.

Japanese Spider Man
Battle Fever J
Tomb of Dracula
Spider Man & His Amazing Friends
Dungeons & Dragons
Charmkins
Gallavants
Transformers
IMDB’s Top Ant Films

Thants.

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At first glance Azazel-san seems to share with Enma-kun the idea of bringing of the myths of the past into the present. That is just the surface though, it’s what those myths represent and how civilisation looks upon them that is at the core of the series. Where the demons in Enma-kun prey on mankind, the demons in Azazel-san bring out the basest of human behaviour.

I mentioned in the last post that distaste for older anime/manga may be down to a sense of civilisation vs the barbarism of the past. Well, Azazel-san addresses that head on. We are firmly in modern Japan, and brought into this world, are demons summoned into the service of pseudo-detectives. Each demon has powers over man’s most shameful behaviour, destroying the veneer of civilisation and reducing people to barbarians of one form or another.

The central joke is that mankind doesn’t really need much encouraging on this point, as various people who hire the detectives and their bound demons are usually grotesques themselves. So far in the series we’ve had a harridan (a parody of iconic character Sazae-san), a selfish vegetarian, a obese stalker, a drunken advertising executive and an obnoxious brat. While the demons would like to deal out some sort of punishment to humans of their own, much of the time they are tools of a human’s own desires, forced to act through various magicks. No one ever ends up completely satisfied, even our supposed “heroes” tend to get pyrrhic victories.

Unlike Enma-kun’s hotchpotch of mythology, Azazel-san is surprisingly specific in its choices of entitiy, their appearance and their associated powers. The title character is a goat demon, and takes his mastery of lust from the Pan idea of goat demons and his position within the show from Azazel’s relationship with the idea of a scapegoat. While seperate ideas in their original mythologies, history and occultism has associated and corrupted the two. So if you wanted to be fair to Go Nagai, you could say he simply speeds up the process when he deals with mythology in Enma-kun and his other series.

Azazel-san, like Enma-kun will pretty much let you know whether you will like the show or not within the first episode. The tone is set early, and Tsutomu Mizushima (xxxHolic, Squid Girl) was the ideal choice for director. It plays to his strengths, namely comedic tension bordering on horror (and vice versa) and comedic ultraviolence. The show hasn’t generated the same level of aversion as Enma-kun, in fact some commenters in the previous post expressed getting enjoyement from Azazel-san.

While it’s more modern in its visuals than Enma-kun, there’s only really one character so far who’s really felt a nod to modern sensibilites, the female lead Sakuma. Even then, her character avoids the usual off the rack personality thumbnails. And she’s an adult! The ostensible male lead, Akutabe (ostensible, because he actually gets very little screen time), feels more like a 90s character. Imagine Hell Teacher Nube shot through the prism of early 90s Satoru Akahori shows, and you’re getting close to his look. The guest characters have a tendancy towards gag manga grotesquery (what is up with the dog people?). And the demons, in their summoned forms… well, they are kind of Onstadian.

Azazel & Ray Smuckles. Seperated at girth?

If anything it’s the form that causes viewers problems. Running at 12 minutes it’s half the length that some viewers seem to expect, and you get complaints about the pacing or that it should be longer. It’s probably exactly the right length and pacing, and if anything, you can throw a stone and hit any number of other anime series that would benefit from shorter episode lengths.

I highly recommend the series, particularly if you’ve liked Mizushima’s darker comedies. The general level of animation that Production IG bring to the show is really high too. I’ve been down on the more serious TV shows they’ve put out over the last decade or so, but this lacks the stiffness that you see in some of those shows. Episode six in particular has both some great naturalistic acting and unusual action sequences that are worth your time.

Today we are joined nobody, to talk about 2004′s absurd maid comedy Pugyuru. One of us hated it!

Plus a whole bunch of chat about other things, as Anthony is introduced to anime’s scariest weasel and Brian gets annoyed at Satanists making things up.

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You can find Anthony Askew on the web here and on twitter here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

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“The animation I dislike immensely, even though it is kinda good, it’s good animation, it’s just good for the 1980s, not now.”

“I could not sit through 1 episode very well because of how retarded and perverted it was. I have never hated perverted anime but this was something out of its league it was that bad.”

“Truly if you call yourself an anime fan , do not , i repeat do not watch this anime show.”

“Average and an ugly main character, He really looks horrible”

“boring .dropped after i saw that huge penis monster in the OP.” (how jaded do you have to be to be bored by penis monsters? Huge ones at that.)

“I was kinda turned off by the art since it looks like a kids show” (says the guy with the Gintama avatar…)

“Why are remakes always as crappy as the old ones ? The art is like, wannabe new but it still has this gay old feeling to it. And the story is pure shit and the ” comedy ” fails hard. True faGGotry show for you guys to sub.”

—

Set in the past, and based on a 38 year old comic, Enma-kun clearly rubs some people up the wrong way.

It seems that it is the very evocation of the past that tends to upset people so. Why does a reminder of the past elicit this reaction? Is it because it is an unremembered past?

Or if you believe that the now is most civilised we have ever been – is the past a wild and untamed land of barbarians? Something that needs to be fought in order to maintain our civilisation?

It’s certainly not uncommon to find anime fans complaining about character designs or animation looking “old” and chalking it up as a negative. Particularly when it is used in modern material. Is it a reaction against a nostalgia that a younger viewer cannot participate in or that they feel actively excluded from?

Certainly I’ve been anti-nostalgia myself when younger, but I am more ambivalent to it now. And even then I had indulged in what LCD Soundsystem called a borrowed nostalgia for an unremembered eighties – a lot of my love of Urusei Yatsura is for how it invokes an 80s Japanese suburbia I’ll never experience.

And for all the criticism Enma-kun might get for being “old” it’s also received criticism for being too modern in some of the animation choices. The truth is it’s a very modern show, and if it tried to be anything but it would be a far less interesting show.

The reason it works so well is that tension between the past and the present that drives some viewers away.

The least obvious way is in how the show the goes out of its way to evoke the 70s time period. It drops in songs from the era, visual references, even current affairs references in a way that is far in excess of anything from the actual era would have done. It’s excessively 70s, more 70s than any show genuinely from that era and in doing so it is resoundingly modern. It’s what the 70s look like from 2011. It’s an affectionate view but a definitely a modern view. Something like an animated Heartbeat with demons and dick jokes.

The second way is in the changes made to the material. Ostensibly adapting the manga, rather than remaking the TV series, there are a number of key differences. Most obviously is Tsutomu, the human lead of the manga, is reduced to a near background character and Harumi, a school girl the same age, slotted into his role. Not only is this a nod to the marketing demands of the modern era, but she fulfils another role that is absent from the original material.

Harumi acts as a sardonic narrator and commentator on the material. She’s the viewer surrogate who points out the absurdity of not just the anime, but the original manga. When two characters show up, unintroduced, in one episode, for a completly throwaway scene, her reaction was exactly the same as when I saw that scene in the manga. It’s a complete non-sequiteur, and she calls it out in way that is very much the modern eye looking at the past excesses of Go Nagai. It’s also a reminder that this is a cartoon, something that happens a lot with both the cameos of Go Nagai himself (something he never shyed from in his own work) and many jokes that break the fourth wall.

Other changes to the material that reflect the modern nature of the show are in the censorship. As far as it might go in it’s vulgarity, and it goes pretty far, it stops shy of presenting actual nuditiy. At first you might think it’s saving itself for the BD/DVD release, but the censorship turns into visual gags of its own in later episodes as it becomes clear the characters themselves are also seeing the censorship.

Another notable visual change is in Enma-kun’s final attack, itself a seperate piece of nostalgia within the general nostalgia of the show. Enma-kun now vanquishes his foes with a giant mallet in a manner that is deliberately set up to call to mind show director Yoshitomo Yonetani‘s Gaogaigar (1997) and the Goldion Hammer attack. It’s another reminder that this is a cartoon given life by real people. It’s not something unique to cartoons but cartoons do it really well and it is part of their core popularity (see Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur or Out of the Inkwell). There’s an element of the theatre and music hall in the artifice of animation, and it’s a good creator who doesn’t forget that.

Finally, the other big change, or rather addition, is the presence of Enbi-chan. Enbi-chan comes from a 2000 self-parody comic, that reversed the genders of Enma-kun’s leads and amped up the sexual humour to obscence levels. Here she’s likewise toned down, but certainly a modern presence in this show that appears old on the surface. Despite being the more modern creation than Enma-kun she is not spared the barbs of Harumi’s commentary.

So why is it, despite all these modern elements,  it elicits reactions from people complaining that it’s old? 

I recorded an Anime 3000 podcast recently, and Daryl Surat talked about the realism of Osamu Dezaki’s work after I brought it up discussing one of his gag shows. After the podcast I think the word I was really looking for was something like earthiness or worldliness. That’s something that I feel is at the core of what rubs a section of anime fandom the wrong way, particularly about older material.

Well, Go Nagai has earthiness by the truckload.

Despite the modern polish of the animation, these are character designs from a 1973 manga, an analogue age that is likely beyond the memories of fans raised on the slick, clean look of 2000s anime. And Nagai was earthy THEN, so imagine what his work looks like to younger eyes now? It’s going to challenge their sensibilities and if their sensibilities are found wanting then you’re going to to get the sort of reactions I quoted at the start of this post. It’s kind of like how some people instinctively hate the countryside or certain cities. It’s unfamiliar territory for some people, some will get a thrill out of exploring it, others will be scared or not want to deal with it.

The ribald, near the knuckle nature of the humour will be too earthy for some too, but there are those who hated this show yet loved the show I will be talking about next, so I think the aesthetics are more important than the actual material.

It’s fitting that there is this tension between old and new within the material, because that’s is essentially what the plot of the show is about too. You’ve these monsters and demons from mankind’s history (Go Nagai is an equal opportunity myth mangler, all of history’s monsters seem to share a common origin here), that are thrust into what was, in the original material, modern Japan. We now have a Japan of 40 years ago presented through (and to) modern eyes.

NEXT… Yondesmasu yo, Azazel-san.

Today we are joined by Ivan B. to talk anime in France during the 80s and 90s. Ivan has run the panel “Sacre Bleu!” at Kitacon since the convention started so if you want to know more why not check that out if you get the chance.

There may be some sound issues, for some reason Ivan and I came back quieter after we lost Anthony early the recording. Hopefully Levelator has hidden all sins.

Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.

You can find Anthony Askew on the web here and on twitter here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

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Gary Hedges returns to continue our discussion of the DiC shows from our childhood that had Japanese animation talent working on them in one form or another. We forgot to record the first 45 minutes of the podcast so if we seem a little flat to begin with it’s because we’re going over stuff we just talked about again. Those missing minutes were gold too. Nevermind though as there are a lot of minutes in this latest episode of Dynamite in the Brain, the podcast that loves anime and hates fun!

Co-production information taken from Megna Co-production database.

Robot Man and Friends
The Popples
The Kingdom Chums
ALF Tales
Beverley Hills Teens
Dinosaucers
Lady Lovelylocks
Barbie & The Rockers.
The New Archies
Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theatre
Sylvanian Families on Amazon – DiC Version and Cribbens Version.
Diplodo
Starcom

Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.

You can find Anthony Askew on the web here and on twitter here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

Gary Hedges now has a twitter account, so you can follow him there.

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I’m working on a panel for Ayacon about the relationship between wrestling and anime/manga. Looking at the two BIG peaks of joshi pro-wrestling, namely the Beauty Pair and the Crush Gals, I was curious in how that was reflected in girls anime of the time. Particularly given that I knew two series with wrestling influences (Cutie Honey, Pretty Cure) come from eras when joshi wasn’t that big a success.

Going back to the TV Asahi top anime survey of 2005, there aren’t any Magical Girl shows from those peak periods. The top Magical Girl anime from that list were:

1) Sailor Moon 1992-1997

2) Sally The Witch 1966-1968, 1989-1991

3) Pretty Cure 2004-

4) Magical DoReMi 1999-2003

5) Cutie Honey 1973-1974, 1997-1998

6) Card Captor Sakura 1998-2000

7) Majokko Megu-chan 1974-1975

8) Himitsu Akko-chan 1969-1970, 1988-89, 1998-99 

There were two obvious omissions that surprised me from that survey – Magical Princess Minky Momo (1982-83, 1991-92) and Creamy Mami (1983-84). Both did show up in the accompanying web poll though. 

Are there other shows pre-2005 that are worth mentioning in terms of popularity (ignoring all the post-Sailor Moon deconstrutions from Sailor Moon alumni like Utena, Princess Tutu, Pretear etc).

I’m particularly interested in any popular shows from 76-79 and 84-89 where fighting bad guys was the focus as opposed to age-shift wish fulfilment. Was there any need for this sort of story when girls were getting that story, in the flesh, from All Japan Women?  

What post 2005 additions would you expect to show up a survey around 2015? As much as it has the current fan fervour around it, Puella Magi Madoka Magica strikes me as less likely to be fondly remembered en masse as Shugo Chara. 

1.Watch Anime.

You’d be surprised how many people who are right here at this con don’t watch anime. Maybe they are sitting beside you? Maybe they are on the convention committee? These people aren’t here for the love of anime, they’re here out of some Pavlovian need for the ritualised socialising built up around these events. It’s sick, I tell you. Some of them aren’t even wearing cosplay.

Which means it’s really easy to appear an expert to them just by watching something. Of course they won’t care and may even sneer out of self-loathing. But never mind that, because you are on your way to passing yourself off as an anime expert!

2. Take note of who made the anime you like.

I don’t mean the animation studio, as that’ll screw you in the end. If you doubt this, find someone who watched another GONZO show after they liked Last Exile. They’re probably the same people who don’t watch anime any more.

No, you’ll need to take note of actual directors, character designers and screenwriters who created the show. Anime News Network and Wikipedia are your friends here. Then once you get used to that, advance to animation directors, key animators and storyboard artists.

Start throwing those names around like you know what a key animator or storyboard artist does. Unless they are one, nobody else will know either. And the people who are will be happy that you appear to know what they do.

The added bonus is that you’ll start to only watch the anime that you’ll like. You’ll find this is a big improvement over taking a shot in the dark and getting jaded by shows about teenage girls doing nothing or adaptations of text adventure games with ideas above their station.

3. Co-opt smarter people’s opinions as your own.

The best place to go is Ben Ettingers’ Ani Pages Daily blog (http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP). The man knows his stuff like nobody else writing on the topic. So if you’re going steal, steal from the best.

However, he doesn’t update that often, so why not co-opt the opinions of people who’ve already co-opted those opinions. A lot of lurking on 4chan will pay off here, though you might want to try /m/ rather than /a/.

If you don’t have time to lurk, smoke out some opinions by starting a thread about Osamu Kobayashi or Akiyuki Shinbo. You’ll soon have all the incendiary second hand opinions to appear to be passionate about anime.

4. Have an opinion on everything.

By now you should be getting an idea of the corner of the anime world that you are going to be an expert on. However it is not enough to be the master of a tiny province of knowledge, you must now declare war on everything you don’t know anything about.

Fandom is a zero-sum game, and to win you must destroy everything everybody else likes. Of course, we’ve established that at this point you are only watching the anime you will actually like, so you have two options.

You must endure the pain of watching anime you don’t like.

Or just look at the websites and sneer at the character designs.

I suggest the latter option.

5. Post on message boards.

Start throwing around your knowledge and half baked opinions on message boards. I suggest being aloof and matter of fact about everything you say. It’s about being certain that you are right, rather than actually being right.

Get too aggressive and you’ll just be another message board crank. And never defend your position. You are in the right, so it doesn’t need defending.

6. Start a blog.

Message boards will only take you so far. Your now rampant ego deserves a home of its own. You might be tempted to review things or deal in the facts you’ve learnt.

DON’T.

These are for weaklings and may accidentally expose your carefully hidden ignorance. Remember, this is ZERO SUM FANDOM.

Opinion pieces taking down everything you don’t like are much better and will get you more readers. You can always drop actual knowledge in comments, as you take down chumps.

Alternatively, disable comments altogether so that all dissenting voices are silenced (known in the business as the VonSchilling maneuver).

7. Write conbook articles.

This will give you a false sense of authority, as it will make it appear that other trustworthy, competent people think you know what you are doing and you haven’t been making up nonsense all along.

Oh and the first half of Honey & Clover and all the left field stuff Jolly Roger subs were fansubbing.

Gary Hedges joins us to discuss the DiC shows from our childhood that had Japanese animation talent working on them in one form or another. We’ll be back with part 2 of the chat in Episode 8.

Co-production information taken from Megna Co-production database.

New Yorker article on Haim Saban
Ulysses 31 OP (Schofield/Gopher version)
Mysterious Cities of Gold OP & Box Set
Inspector Gadget OP
Heathcliff OP
The Littles OP
Poochie TV Special
Pole Position OP
Rainbow Brite

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You can find Anthony Askew on the web here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

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We’re back from our break with a look back at Kitacon 3 and the events therein. Then we discuss some of the new spring season anime series that we’ve seen.

Kitacon

Kitacon Action Castle

Tiger & Bunny @ Anime On Demand
Gintama @ Crunchyroll
My Ordinary Life @ Crunchyroll
Sket Dance @ Crunchyroll
STEINS;GATE @ Crunchyroll

Toriko OP
Dororon Enma-kun Meeramera OP
Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san OP
X-Men OP

Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.

You can find Anthony Askew on the web here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

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Sazae-san, Doraemon, Anpanman, Shin Bikkuriman, Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Hai Akko Deso

Oishinbo, Obocchama-kun, Dragonball Z, Manga Hajimete Omoshiro Juku, The Laughing Salesman, Sally the Witch

Magical Hat, Parasol Henbee, Ranma 1/2 Nettohen, Yawara, Chibi Maruko-chan, Heisei Tensai Bakabon

Tsuruhime Ja!, Daddy Long Legs, Samurai Pizza Cat, Brave Exkaiser, Mashin Hero Wataru 2, NG Knight & Lamune 40

Idol Tenshi Youkoso Yoko, Moretsu Ataro, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Moomin, Magical Angel Sweet Mint, Karasu Tengu Kabuto

Patlabor on Television, Robin Hood no Dai Boken, Magical Taruruto-kun, Edokko Boy Gatten Taro, Karakuri Kengo Musashi Lord, Peach Command Shin Momotaro Densetsu

The Three Eyed One, Pygmalio

TV anime was loving super deformity and just a general sense of the pre-Yamato cartoon look in 1990. As well as the previously discussed stumpy robots, the SD and CB (Chibi/Child Bodied) look was all over the place. You could find it in both in modern material and in the adaptations of classic manga that had influenced the look to varying degrees.

In fact the sheer body of material coming from classic manga, makes me think that the idea we were sold on around Giant Robo OAVs, that of “retro anime” was already in full effect in 1990. That’s if it ever really existed and wasn’t just a continual current from when the so called retro was modern.

Let’s take a look at when those manga started, and when their anime began.

Sazae-san – 1946, anime started in 1969 and will carry on long after you have died.
Doraemon – 1969, anime briefly appeared in 1973, then 1979-2005, before being given a reboot.
Anpanman – 1968, anime started in 1988.
Kiteretsu Daihyakka - 1974, anime started in 1988.
Hai Akko Deso – 1980, anime started in 1988.
Oishinbo – 1983, anime started in 1988.
Obocchama-kun – 1986, anime started in 1989.
Dragon Ball – 1984, anime started in 1986, switched to Dragon Ball Z in 1989.
Laughing Salesman - 1968, anime started in 1989.
Sally The Witch – 1966, first anime ran 1966-68, second began in 1989.
Ranma ½ – 1987, anime started 1989.
Yawara! – 1986, anime started 1989.
Chibi Maruko-chan – 1986, anime started in 1990. A second, still running version began in 1995.
Tensai Bakabon – 1967, first anime in 1971, second in 1975, third in 1990, fourth in 1999.
Tsuruhime Ja! – 1973, anime started in 1990.
Moretsu Ataro – 1967, first anime in 1969, second in 1990.
Karasu Tengu Kabuto - 1986, anime started in 1990.
Magical Taruruto-kun – 1988, anime started in 1990
The Three-Eyed One - 1974, anime started in 1990
Pygmalio - 1978, anime started in 1990.

Some of the other shows had manga, but started so close to the anime that I believe they were designed as multimedia projects. It looks like that Parasol Henbee is one of these, which is notable due to the fact Fujiko Fujio (A) was behind both the anime and manga. Between him and Fujiko F. Fujio they accounted for four of the shows airing in 1990 (Doraemon, Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Parasol Henbee, Laughing Salesman). Coming up behind was Fujio Akatsuka with Tensai Bakabon and Moretsu Ataro.

So our tally is one manga from the 1940s, six from the 1960s, three from the 1970s and nine from the eighties. Four of those are still visible today (Doraemon, Sazae-san, Anpanman and Chibi Maruko-chan). Had I been bit more prompt with this post, you could have added Dragon Ball too, but Dragon Ball Kai is being replaced by Toriko.

With the recent Level E adaptation going back to a manga that started 15 years ago, the plundering of the past still goes on, but I wonder if we’ll see it to this extent again? Maybe we have and didn’t notice due to the sheer quantity of other anime?

The often simple, overly cartoon-y look of these anime is very striking when you compare it to today’s anime, and even when compared with post-Yamato, pre-OAV anime. My gut tells me that post-Evangelion, you saw material that would have been on OAV move back to TV, and that changed the general look of anime on TV. Future posts will test that theory.

There is one other element influencing TV anime that struck me while looking for the images for this post. I mentioned it in the stumpy robots post, but when it came up for Parasol Henbee, I realised it was bigger than robots.

Often when searching for images, rather than the anime showing up in the image search, it was the videogame that had more of a presence on the internet. In part 3, I’ll be taking a look at the interaction with videogames during this period.

Still working my way through Lupin III specials as I get the chance. This one I’d been wanting to watch for a while as it’s another that Hiroyuki Imaishi (Gurren Lagann, Panty & Stocking) did some key animation for. While it was a little bit of a let down on that front, it’s still a solid outing and another case for the specials of the 2000s being a better crop than the 90s ones that Funimation released.

The big problem the special has is that its ambitions often outweigh its budget. A good example is a scene near the climax, where characters are running down a set of stairs. The scene starts from a POV shot, with fully animated stairs and a sense of movement, only for it to cut extremely quickly to a static long shot of the action. The special is full of thwarted ambition like this.

What it has going for it though is the script and characterisation. This is a rare special that seems to deliberately try to span various different tones the character has been presented in, and it pulls it off without seeming disconcerting. Most notably it presents a Lupin III world that is a lot more bloodthirsty than we normally see in these specials. Even Zenigata has an edge we don’t normally see. On the flip side of that we also get some of the more extreme cartoon reactions of the animated Lupin canon.

Story wise, we’re not in jet setting mode as the action is confined to San Francisco, but we are firmly in historical conspiracy mode. And the conspiracy is a doozy this time around, taking in the history of Alcatraz, various notable US criminals and politicians.

How much do the characters look like the animators might have seen a Monkey Punch drawing at some point in their lives?

Another good outing for Toshimitsu Kobayashi on character design (see Missed by a Dollar). Again the non-Fujiko female characters look a little like they are from another show, but there’s only one this time. The male characters capture the Monkey Punch look very well, with their trapezoid torsos, gangly limbs and knobbly joints. There’s a lot of variety in the Magnificent Ten-style supervillain team who show up, plus there’s some well executed nods to US pop culture with a Columbo-like shabbily dressed detective and a set of Blues Brothers-alikes.

How ludicrous are the capers?

The opening heist on a gambling ship stretches credulity nicely. The rest of the film is conventional by comparison, but the aforementioned plot supplies the ludicrosity and the location of the finale and the reason for its existence is quite audacious.

How much is Goemon involved in the story, rather than just a third act deus ex machina?

Goemon’s not at the forefront, but the story provides him with something unique that plays into his personality. It’s a more interesting use of the character than as deus ex machina and slicer open of treasure containers.

We take a look at the upcoming Spring season anime. Find out what unexpected show Brian is looking forward to. Thrill as Anthony is called a pervert. Listen as Brian gradually loses his voice during the recording. All this and a poorly crowbarred in HP Lovecraft quote can be found on the latest exciting episode of Dynamite in the Brain, the podcast that loves anime and hates fun!

Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.

You can find Anthony Askew on the web here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

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We take you on an episode by episode journey through the first series of under-watched and under-appreciated Gag Manga Biyori. Then we take a look at the recently announced schedule for Kitacon. Plus Panini Sticker talk! All this and more on the latest exciting episode of Dynamite in the Brain, the podcast that loves anime and hates fun!

Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.

You can find Anthony Askew on the web here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

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We wrap up our talk about all the shows that aired on Fuji TV Wednesdays at 700pm from the sixties to the eighties. Then we discuss Level E and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. All this and more on the latest exciting episode of Dynamite in the Brain, the podcast that loves anime and hates fun!

Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.

You can find Anthony Askew on the web here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

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In our first episode proper, we talk about all the shows that aired on Fuji TV Wednesdays at 700pm from the sixties to the eighties. Plus big questions are answered about cavemen, dinosaurs and gangs. And I drop loads of references that go over Anthony’s head. All this and more on the latest exciting episode of Dynamite in the Brain, the podcast that loves anime and hates fun!

Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.

You can find Anthony Askew on the web here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

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(via せんす・おぶ・わんだぁ)

I love this Eiji Yokoyama (Scramble Effect, Space Convenience Store) cover illustration.

Bill, The Galactic Hero

(via Amazon)

According to this site - this seventies edition was illustrated by Fujiko Fujio! Anyone know which one of them it was?

Star Smashers of Galaxy Rangers

(via スペースオペラの巻)

Star Smashers of Galaxy Rangers

(via Amazon)

This more recent one I believe is by Masuda Mikio.

The Technicolor Time Machine

(via Amazon)

Yes, that is Monkey Punch illustrating this 1976 edition. The idea of this post came from a twitter discussion a few weeks back comparing Spike from Cowboy Bebop to Stainless Steel Rat & Lupin III. It struck me that Monkey Punch would have been a good artist for Harry Harrison’s sensibilities, and was pleasantly surprised he had indeed illustrated a Japanese edition of one of his novels.

In this introductory episode Anthony Askew and I chat about how we got into anime, UK anime conventions, favourite anime, the early 90s grey import console scene, watching bootleg films during school time, and much, much more.

Dynamite in the Brain, the podcast that loves anime and hates fun!

Theme music by Paul Smith of quiet quiet band.

You can find Anthony Askew on the web here. He also writes for DefConTwo, so why not check that out too.

Join our Facebook fanpage.

Kaiji Season 2 – the most wanted sequel for a certain section of anime fans. You know, adults.

Toriko – This probably can’t fail. Cooking manga taken to ludicrous extremes. The anime will probably be solid with flashes of brilliance, it is a Toei SJ adaptation after all, but should be a good boost for the manga.

Tiger & Bunny – What’s that? A robot show from the guy (Keiichi Satou) who designed the hell out of Big O? I’m in.

Blue Exorcist - Tensai Okamura (Darker than Black, Cowboy Bebop the Movie), doesn’t always hit it out the park, but he’s better than most. So this A-1 Pictures show should be worth checking out.

X-Men – Iron Man was exactly what a Yuzo Sato Iron Man show would be like. What little of Wolverine I’ve seen was a step up. Hadn’t realised X-Men was next, will be interested in seeing what we get this time.

Dororon Enma-kun – Brains Base do Go Nagai? From the director of GaoGaiGar? Excitement levels rising!

Cardboard War Chronicles - As strong a job as OLM have done with Pokemon over the years, their relationship with Level 5 has produced some cracking animation both on screen and in the games. So this new show from the pair of them has my interest.

As I’m stopping for a while I thought I’d write about my approach to bargain hunting.

First things first, Auctions Only. The Buy It Now on DVDs is full of people selling second hand goods more expensively than if I shopped wisely on Amazon, Play etc. If you want real bargains, you’ll need to bid.

If you’re bidding on an auction you need to know your your limit from the outset. In all but one of these cases I set myself a limit of £3 per disc (including P&P). This is because most of the time I am either buying on a whim, or I know that the item will show up cheaply with some frequency.

If I am bidding to win, as I was with the Dirty Pair box set, then I set the limit at 80% of what it would cost new or on Amazon marketplace.

As far as avoiding bootlegs, the big clues tend to be the subtitles they list, the disc count to episode ratio or the sleeve scan. You don’t see too many below the £3 mark in Auctions, and they tend to be obvious. Though that may be my time at Videolog talking there, I do know otherwise intelligent people who’ve been tricked by bootlegs. And once in my haste I bought a Gundam model made by BENDAI…

Finally, you should set up searches to find what you want and I recommend the plugins eBay has for Firefox and Chrome to monitor your bids.

Here’s the list of my haul since last April:

• Doctor Who – Series 1 Vol. 2 – £2 I’m planning on seeing just how cheap and how far I can get the Dr Who DVDs. Due to the commentaries on the boxsets, you can pick these single volumes up dirt cheap.
• Rushmore – £2.24
• Doctor Who – Series 1 Vol. 1 – £1.94
• Shaun of The Dead – £1.99
• Bottle Rocket – £2
• The Life Aquatic – £1.99
• The Darjeeling Limited – £2.04
• Azumanga Daioh v.5 – £3 Middle to end volumes of shows go cheap, but don’t show up often unless you get a fool trying to sell a series volume by volume, or someone is off loading stock.
• Azumanga Daioh v.4 – £3
• Dirty Pair Part 1 – £19.70
• Shigurui – £4.79 This was the DVD set I forgot I bought.
• A Serious Man – £3 This was really tricky to get cheap and in order to get it for two quid plus P&P I used a risky trick. Though not that risky when the stakes are spending £3 on a DVD. After a few weeks of trying to get this I was able to get a rough idea of how many people were after it. Once one auction went, the price of the next one would rapidly rise as people bid against one another. My trick was to bid on THREE all ending within 24 hours of each other. This split the people bidding and luckily I only ended up with winning only one.
• Blood Simple – £1.98
• The Man Who Wasn’t There – £1.99 The seller included a FREE GIFT, which turned out to be a bootleg copy of the Nicholas Cage version of Wicker Man. I’ve not watched it in case it’s a The Ring-esque situation and Nicholas Cage in his bear suit will climb out the TV.
• The Ladykillers – £1.99
• No Country For Old Men – £1.99
• Burn After Reading – £1.99
• Intolerable Cruelty – £1.99
• Azumanga Daioh Vol. 6 – £1.99 This appeared to be overstock as not only was it sealed and stickered, the seller accidentally sent me it twice!
• Heat Guy J – £6.74
• Coen Brothers Collection – Fargo/Raising Arizona/Miller’s Crossing – £5
• Tokyo Godfathers – £1.99 The only item I had problems with and the seller replaced it without complaint.
• Tekkonkinkreet – £1.99
• Metropolis – £2.20
• Memories – £2.99
• Millennium Actress – £2.45
• Nadia Vol. 10 – £1.99
• Martian Successor Nadesico Vol. 6 – £3.00
• Martian Successor Nadesico Vol. 6 – £2.99
• Gunbuster 2 – £5.97 The only Buy It Now item – it was marked down in an eBay shop.

The problem was I wasn’t convinced it could keep it up and so put off watching the rest. Turns out I was right, but it is still a strong outing for the gang. Playing out like something of a mix of earlier The Fuma Conspiracy OAV and a Da Vinci Code parody means that elements of the plot feel familiar, but at the same time it feels very much in the flavour of the TV version of Lupin III. Jet-setting, absurd interpretation of real historical events and fantastical treasures abound here.

While Zenigata doesn’t get the screen time you might want, due to Goro Naya’s age and health, there’s a good balance in what the gang get to do. I particularly liked how especially selfish Fujiko is here, quite distinct from the defanged version that so often gets used.

It’s been a long time since I did a Lupin III review so lets get back to the three questions that define how much I’ll love a given Lupin special.

How much do the characters look like the animators might have seen a Monkey Punch drawing at some point in their lives?

The gang’s character designs are strong here, but as usual a lot of the supporting cast is a little TMS generic. The henchmen though seem quite Monkey Punch-y and even faces on some characters look a little plain, most of the bodies seem to be proportioned like a Monkey Punch character (curvy women and men with rectangular bodies and gangly limbs). Of the unique characters in the film, the named villains come off the best, with some distinct over the top designs that call to mind Monkey Punch. Probably some of the best villains since Elusiveness of the Fog. They mention that one of them has a past with Jigen, anyone know if any are taken from earlier manga?

How ludicrous are the capers?

The story is about the secret treasure/doomsday weapon of a group of scientists who fled the Catholic church to found the Fuma ninja clan in Japan. I think that counts for a five star ludicrous caper before you add all the little set pieces and globe trotting.

How much is Goemon involved in the story, rather than just a third act deus ex machina?

Outside of a special where Goemon is the focus, this is probably as good as it gets for him. Involved from the get go, lots of action, lots of stoicism and little in the way of griping.

Again, I shall write more on these at a later date. Certainly a Chowder series review at the very least is due now that it’s over. Plus there’s the fact that it (and Violence Jack) are the main search hits this site gets so I should play to that audience once in a while.

Honourable Mentions:

Flapjack - another show that went away. A bit hit and miss for me, but the hits like “Lost at Land” were great.
Mad – Uneven mix of parody and toilet humour comes across as a modern, American version of Round the Bend.
Robotomy – the underpromoted member of Cartoon Network’s PG rated shows, this is a lot of fun, even if it feels a little like Superjail-lite.
Archer – if it wasn’t for the cast I’m not sure I’d bother, though I do find it a big improvement on earlier Adam Reed shows.
Ugly Americans - like Robotomy, the involvement of Augenblick Studios give it a Superjail-lite feel on occasion, but the mix of grotesque animation sequences and its warped version of sitcom moralising paid off eventually.
Sym-Bionic Titan - Enjoyed the 70s robot homage to begin with not to mention Brian Posehn as Octus, but my interest waned. Might go back to it later.
Young Justice Pilot – A bit too self-serious coming off Brave and the Bold, but certainly a solid piece of work.

There’s one show I caught that I thought really stunk and that was The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. And I’m not alone as its ratings in the US have tanked. I know Disney in part bought Marvel to have something to sell to young boys, but rushed, cheap looking Film Roman shows aren’t going to cut it in a market with Ben 10, Generator Rex, Batman The Brave and the Bold and soon Young Justice. The only folks who seem to like the show are ageing Marvel zombies whose fandom blinds them to the shoddy animation.

Here’s my five:

Durarara!! – despite a second half with a serious writing problem, this was a great mix of offbeat urban fantasy and energetic animation.
Kuragehime – Takahiro Omori’s second show of the year might be even better than his work on Durarara!!, and displays the diversity of his talents with this josei comedy.
STAR DRIVER – finds the common threads in magical girl and mecha shows and sews them together in a slick looking package.
Panty & Stocking w/ Garterbelt - Imaishi steamrolling chumps. If you don’t like this, then maybe cartoons aren’t for you.
Tatami Galaxy - Clever fleshing out of novel into a jigsaw puzzle of a cartoon from Masaaki Yuasa.

I shall write about these at length on a later date. Well, apart from Durarara!! as I’ve done that already. Really should have had something up for Tatami Galaxy already but got distracted by Red Dead Redemption and then Fallout New Vegas. Shame on me.

Honourable Mentions

Giant Killing - the strengths of the manga shine through DEEN’s perfunctory animation and some serious mangling of foreign languages.
HEROMAN – Great looking animation and concept hampered by pacing problems.
Hetalia World Series - The gay innuendo is becoming an obvious crutch now, but when it sticks to historical comedy its great.
Gag Manga Biyori + - No one’s translating, but looks like its keeping the high standards set in the first three series.
Squid Girl - bursts of Tsutomu Mizushima brilliance show up (spot the obligatory Sam Raimi shots in episode 1), but it’s a little too safe and the characters too bland for my tastes.

There’s a bunch of other shows that might be just as good as the ones I’ve mentioned that I’ve not seen due to either time or waiting for the DVDs. And there’s a load I’ve seen a couple of episodes of that were mediocre to terrible, and they don’t deserve a mention. Or were so odd they might get a post of their own in the future.

Yumerio Patissiere/Yumerio Patissiere SP Professional, Battle Spirits Shonen Gekiha Dan/Battle Spirits Brave, The New Three Musketeers, Heartcatch PreCure!, Beyblade Metal Fusion, Dragon Ball Kai

Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri, ONE PIECE, Romance of Three Kingdoms, Naruto Shippuden, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Chibi Maruko-chan

Sengoku Basara Two, Sazae-san, Star Driver, Shimajiro, Animal Detectives Kiruminzoo, Gin Tama

Tamogotchi, Fairy Tail, My Three Daughters, Bleach, Bakugan Battle Brawlers: New Vestroia, Thriller Restaurant

Digimon Xros Wars, Stitch, Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s, Kaasan – Mom’s Life, Inazuma Eleven, Marie & Gali

HEROMAN, Anpanman, Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan, Gokujō!! Mecha Mote Iinchō, Shugo Chara Party

MAJOR, Jewelpet Tinkle, SD Gundam Sangokuden Brave Battle Warriors, Sgt Frog, Katekyo Hitman Reborn!, Elementhunters

Gokyoudai Monogatari, Detective Conan, Beast Player Erin, Letter Bee/Letter Bee Reverse, Bakuman, Pokemon Diamond & Pearl/Pokemon Best Wishes

So, pretty much what it looked like last year.

The main changes has been less nostalgia. Dragon Ball Kai is the remains of that mini-trend of recent years, as we’ve not had a real Yatterman replacement and no classic characters showed up in the evening slots that Mazinger and Golgo 13 occupied last year. The shows occupying those slots were the two Letter Bee shows and reruns of MAJOR.

There was also a lack of traditional worthy/literary anime from NHK. Rather than being replaced by a like-minded series, Beast Player Erin was replaced by Star Wars Clone Wars. Instead we got the puppet adaptation of the Three Musketeers filling that role of wholesome entertainment. Other notable US cartoons showing up this year included Transformers Animated and Dora The Explorer (which had replaced Soul Eater in ’09).

One Piece had a big year as it hit the previous year’s huge events from the manga. Looking back now its feeling more like an attempt to move the series’ protagonist Luffy into adulthood as the usual cast was sidelined and the screen time was given over to the adults in the series. There’s another big shift due next year, and it will be interesting to see if there’s any effect on the show’s audience figures.

Sengoku Basara returned, but in a daytime slot. Unfortunately it, nor its successor Star Driver managed to equal the success of the previous occupier of the slot, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. The failure of new and new-to-daytime shows to make any impact is probably the tale of 2010′s new before-midnight anime. Heroman and Romance of Three Kingdoms are the other genuinely new shows (if being based on a 14th century novel counts as new) that didn’t really do anything of note. Both underperformed compared to what they had replaced – Gin Tama in Heroman‘s case and Jewelpets (!) in Romance‘s. Everything else “new” was either a continuation, sequel or a franchise show.

Oh, wait. I forgot Lilpri. That did OK for a magical girl show that wasn’t called Pretty Cure. Synopsis sounds like a throwback to 80s magical girl shows where they basically magically transform into a light entertainment career.

And the debut of Bakuman did decently as a MAJOR replacement. So its not all doom and gloom. A modest success can still be eked out, just not one that creates a decent buzz like a FMA or Code Geass has in recent(ish) years

And it is hard to say what could break through in the ways the Yatterman revival, Kaasan and Thriller Restaurant did. A lot of these shows aren’t going to run out of material any time soon and it seems like every “big” current manga is already on TV. And even if you replace a successful show that ends, you aren’t necessarily going to hold that audience.

There’s one big gun that no-one’s pulled the trigger on yet, for a number of sensible reasons. But if we get a full change of cast and if the specials see a drop ratings after that change, I think we will get a full blown Lupin III revival in the way Yatterman did. When? Who knows, but it will be fascinating when it happens.

Gintama The Movie

I’ve seen about 5 minutes of Gintama before, so this film of a story arc from somewhere in the middle of the manga wasn’t really aimed at me. In fact the characters admit as much early in the film. And the action sequences aren’t all that dazzling either.

However, there were amusing gags throughout, gratuitous Golgo 13 references and, more importantly, the pre-credit and post-credit sequences are genius pieces of fourth wall breaking gag writing and have an amusing narrative based around the fact Warner Brothers were distributing the film.

And it made me want to check out the TV series, so in that sense it achieved something.

One Piece Strong World

It’s not the best One Piece movie in terms of being a good film, that would still be the sixth film, but in terms of capturing the characters and more importantly, the tone of the manga chapters that were coming out simultaneous to this, creator Eiichiro Oda’s involvement really pays off.

And it’s more accessible to non-fans too than the Gintama movie, as it’s a stand alone story and provides better visual set pieces. Still it’s not for everyone, the people sitting near me were all new to One Piece, and half found it boring, and the other half found it entertaining.

If you are a fan, you’ll likely love it though.

Mardock Scramble

This felt very much like a good idea that was overcooked by adding too many other ideas into the mix. The film is essentially about rape, and how rape is more about control rather than sex. The problem is it’s so overloaded with other underdeveloped ideas early on that it ends up having to spell it out too loudly in the end, with the lead literally screaming an explanation to another character (and thus the audience).

The jist of the story is that an abused and murdered teenage girl is brought back to life and asked to testify against her murderer. She initially accuses the investigators who brought her back of controlling & abusing her, in that they only want her alive to bring the murderer to justice. She is convinced by one of them, an intelligent mouse-turned-bioweapon, to take the stand, but then she in turn starts to become an abuser of sorts.

And that’s not even getting into the memory thefts, body modifications, post-mortem law, privatised detectives, ridiculously over the top villains/victims and other ideas that over egg Mardock Scramble.

It all results in a film that is relentlessly talky for much of it’s short running time (66 minutes), and for my money animated feature films should never be that talky. Had they cut the techno-babble down and engaged in more visual storytelling it would have been a marked improvement.

It’s not terrible as it is now, the central theme is strong and once established, it stands out from the mess surrounding it. I suspect once the remaining two-thirds are animated it will hold together better (and maybe in the end they can cut it all down into a single, leaner film).

Evangelion 2.0

Moved a bit faster on second viewing compared to when I saw it in May, but still feels like a film that’s all middle. Only thing I noticed afresh was that Mari breaks Shinji’s SDAT player, something I’d missed in my first watch. And thinking about how if she’s supposed to look “British”, and is a delinquent who manipulates adults, if she was in any way inspired by the St Trinian’s books/films.

Redline

Nothing new to add from my first review, beyond the fact it was nice to actually hear the first 10 minutes or so properly this time. Still great and light years ahead of anything else shown on the day.

Here’s some observations of why that might be, shot through the prism of a man who loves Urusei Yatsura too much. There was obviously a leak from the talent pool who had been working on early 80s TV anime once OAVs took off. Then once the economic bubble burst you had a money shortage too. So you had shows that were less visually interesting than what had gone before and what was available on OAV or in the cinema.

Then there’s the question of exposure. The so-called “anime industry” of the time generally wasn’t licensing many current (or current-ish) TV shows for video release. Without broadcast exposure, a VHS only release of a TV show wasn’t viable. You had some of the Kitty shows coming out from Viz and AnimEigo, but not much of anything else. Some shows slipped through into English through companies who tend not to be considered part of that same industry for whatever reason.

Here’s the show from that era that probably had the biggest impact on a certain age group of UK anime fandom and my segue into today’s topic…

Samurai Pizza Cats was the name for Saban’s release of the 1990 Tatsunoko/Sotsu show Kyatto Ninden Teyandee. It aired originally in the UK on the Saturday morning format Motormouth (or possibly What’s Up Doc? Pretty sure it was Motormouth though as What’s Up Doc‘s thing was WB cartoons). On the surface you might assume it’s just a funny animal show, and it is, but if you want to see what it really is, you only have to look to the toys.

It’s basically a feline themed Musha SD Gundam.

SD Gundam had been around since the mid-80s, with the Musha SD Gundam concept coming a little later before properly launching in ’87. More importantly for the anime output of the 90s, the first SD Gundam OAVs came out in 1989. There’s also some Saint Seiya influence in the armoured look of Samurai Pizza Cats’ heroes, and one could argue in the ever more ludicrous exaggerated decorations of the Musha Gundam line. And in searching for images for this post I also see a lot of NES, SNES and Game Boy games so I wonder if the SD aesthetic also tied into the popularity of those games consoles.

The result of this conflagration of successes was that 1990 was full of stumpy robots and their stumpy armoured friends.

Mashin Eiyuden Wataru (88-89) Sunrise
Mashin Eiyuden Wataru 2 (90-91) Sunrise
Chou Mashin Eiyuden Wataru (97-98) Sunrise

Unless anyone can point me to something earlier, I’m going to declare this a key work in the development of these shows, as it’s very much a combination of the aesthetics of SD Gundam and Saint Seiya. You can see the original opening here. While it’s clearly an evolution of Super Robot Galatt‘s approach, the robots of Wataru are a happy medium of Galatt’s comically spherical robots and human proportioned robots. Worth noting that Urusei Yatsura and Dragonball alum and future Monkey D. Luffy, Mayumi Tanaka provides the hero’s very recognisable voice here.

Remember what I speculated about videogames having a part to play in the continuation of this aesthetic? Well the PC Engine Wataru game was infamously released in the US as KEITH COURAGE IN ALPHA ZONES, complete with compulsory westernisation of the video game art. It’s things like this that make me thankful we grey imported Japanese PC Engine games (and games magazines) in the UK, rather than waiting for the TurboGrafx-16 to hit the US.

The show comes from director Shuji Iuchi, screenwriter Ouji Hiroji, and character designer Toyoo Ashida. Yes the same Toyoo Ashida who directed Fist of the North Star. His character design work is very different from what you’d expect if you based your expectations on the sort of shows he directs.

The three also worked on…

Mado King Grandzort (89-90) Sunrise

Which slotted in between the first two Mashin Eiyuden Wataru series. Wataru mecha designer, Kazunori Nakazawa isn’t credited on ANN for this show, but returns for the Grandzort OAV sequels and the aesthetically similar Lord of Lords Ryu Knight in 1994. It continues the head band wearing warrior + SD robot theme of Wataru, with the added gimmick of the robots transforming from giant heads. And bunny people who live on the moon. Check the openings here. Your future One Piece actress playing a young boy here is Youko Matsuoka (Alvida).

Given his history with dumpy looking robots, I wonder if Ouji Hiroji had any say on the look of mecha in his later multimedia success Sakura Wars, which had similar proportions but a more “realistic” approach.

Momotaro Densetsu Peachboy Legend (89-90) Knack
Momotaro Densetsu Peach Command (90-91) Knack

Based on the Momotaro Densetsu RPG series from Hudson Soft, the first is a historical comedy where the super deformed heroes wear armour that makes them look like they are cosplaying SD robots, much like the Samurai Pizza Cats. The second does away with even that pretence and shifts the action to outer space. Looking at plastic model kits from the franchise they look like straight up SD robots. In fact I’m sure Sheffield Space Centre used to have some in stock during the mid-90s.

Edokko Boy Gatten Taro aka Tasuke, The Samurai Cop (90-91) Studio Pierrot

Here’s a great example of a forgotten show. Directed by Takeshi Mori (Otaku no Video, The Skull Man, Vandread), there is  next to nothing in terms of images for it on Google Image Search. Its ostensibly an Edo-era comedy, presumably with some parody of Edo police stories like Mito Komon. More importantly it has stubby robots in its supporting cast!
The official English page is here.

Karakuri Kengo Musashi Lord (90-91) Studio Pierrot

Another Pierrot show mixing the historical and stunted growth robots. It seems pretty much a blatent attempt to cash in on Musha Gundam’s popularity. With the added bonus of Masako Nozawa (Son Goku) in the lead role. The official English page for the show is here and you can check it’s opening theme here.

NG Knight Lamune & 40 (1990-1991) Asatsu/Ashi Productions

The first of the Hiroshi Negishi & Satoru Akahori two letter series (NG Knight Lamune, KO Century Beast Warriors, SM Saber Marionette, VS Knight Lamune). If it seems formulaic, it’s arguable that they are working out the formulas here. Or at least reworking them into evil formulas that still permeate the industry today. The concept of the show owes a lot to Mashin Eiyuden Wataru, though the human transported into a fantasy world was hardly original in 1988. Add to that elements of Time Bokan. Then taking into account the “harem” genre, adjust the genders so there are more cute girls and sexy women than men. Finally, make one character homosexual and you have the formula that served Satoru Akahori well for the next decade. And continues to serve other creators to this day (I’m looking at you Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya!).

—

That’s all the TV stumpy robots and people/animals dressed as stumpy robots I could find in 1990. Certainly there’s others later in the decade and I may return to them in later posts. There might even be ones I’ve not uncovered from this year – Perrin had a colouring book from some show I’d never heard of a few Minami’s back that certainly would fit in if it’s not one of the shows above. But I think this was the year the trend hit critical mass.

Yes, I am still writing best of the decade retrospectives. In fact I will soon be writing my first Best Anime of the 2010′s and then I plan on going back to the 1990s. I’ve decided there’s no point in restricting yourself to a “top ten”, sealing off a decade when you see something from that decade after the decade has past or having to wait until the decade’s over before declaring something’s greatness.

Trapeze is an adaptation of a number of short stories written by Hideo Okuda, all featuring the character of the psychiatrist Ichiro Irabu and his nurse Mayumi. This being a Kenji Nakamura show the visual story-telling takes things a little further than a straight adaptation.

For starters, Irabu, a pale overweight man in the short stories, is represented by three different character designs in the anime. One is overweight and has a giant bear head, the second is tall thin bespectacled man with bear ears and the third is a young boy carrying a bear soft toy. Often he will switch between all three within a scene. I’ll let you decide if they are the id, ego and superego or just a neat visual trick.

Moreover, it’s a mixed media piece with elements of live action, rotoscoping and traditional animation all used together. It’s not as polished as Masaaki Yuasa’s experiments in the same, but once you acclimatise to it pays off. There’s elements in the visual storytelling that would be impossible in just live action (and there’s already many live action interpretations of the material so a straight adaptation would be foolish). For instance the representation of the “common man” as cardboard cutouts and how that ultimately pays off in episode 10 is very clever, and I’d quite like to rewatch sometime to see if the various visual metaphors spread across episodes in a similar fashion (in checking episode one to get the screen shots above it looks like they do).

The reason for those visual tricks spreading through the separate stories is because the stories all take place with the same time frame (roughly the week before Xmas). Each episode deals with a different patient of Irabu’s, but often characters and events make cameos or have direct effects from story to story. Like Nakamura’s own Medicine Seller character from Mononoke, Irabu is a detective of sorts. A more obvious comparison would be with Gregory House, only with mental health problems being the target of his investigation. Each episode involves him getting to the bottom of his latest patient’s problems and then providing a treatment.

Despite the psychedelic, cartoonish approach to the visuals and some of the slapstick, the show deals with mental health quite sensibly. The story is frequently interupted by the talking head Fukuicchi who explains the science behind the various symptoms of the patients, but more importantly not everyone is “cured”. Often the patient has to manage their symptoms rather come out the other side as “normal”, or even just admit that they have problems in the first place. Like the real world, nobody’s perfect.

Unfortunately it’s another noitaminA show that’s unlikely to get licensed, and while it’s not Nakamura’s best, the subject matter and execution still make it worth checking out. Though do check Mononoke first.

It’s just one gag: whenever a black cat walks past the dog, ill will befalls the dog. But there’s a good 7 minutes that you can get out it by exploring it and pushing it beyond exhaustion.

Some people wonder why Gurren Lagann connects with viewers for whom other robot shows don’t. It’s because Hiroyuki Imaishi and Kazuki Nakashima understood what is specifically effective in cartoons and rather than just using animation as the cheapest route to sci-fi on TV, they created a series designed to take advantage of what the medium offers. And that included escalation. Not only are the stakes in Gurren Lagann progressively raised with each arc, but it takes the idea of piloting giant humanoid robots and escalates that as well. It escalates it beyond what might be considered sensible by more conservative creators, and by the end you have the giant robot equivalent of the ship falling out the sky onto the dog.

If you want to see the best of the last four years of MADstravaganza, then come to Kitacon III, April 1st to 3rd at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole.

It will be the first time I’ve run it at a hotel con, so if you’ve missed out at the Amecon and Ayacon versions here’s your chance to catch up.

And if you’ve been before, there’ll be all your old favourites, along with a smattering of new clips.

Excretion Without Honor or Humanity

Our first introduction to the premise of PSG is this story of haunted toilets and a giant faecal monster. The premise is a classic Magical Girl Premise, two girls from another world who must fight monsters in order to attain rewards and return to their world. The joke is that the Magical Girls in question are shallow monsters obsessed with sex and sugar respectively.

Much has been made of the visual style and its inspiration from 90s Hanna Barbera fare (it in turn influenced by anime, 60s HB and 50s UPA). As refreshing as it might be when cast against the standard anime fare of today, there are signs that it suffers from it’s multiple dilutions of influences. And unfortunately that’s mostly seen in this first story.

As bold as the design, movement and colours are in the characters, the backgrounds in this episode also are. This means it looks cluttered, overly busy and the foreground gets confused with the background.

There is also a problem with far too much exposition to set everything up. As fun as the opening theme with its auto-tuned Panty, Stocking, Panty, Panty, Stocking mantra is, they could have used that time more effectively by setting up the premise in the theme tune.

I still enjoyed it, but was a little disappointed in the execution. Thankfully that was erased by…

Death Race 2010

Set during the day, as opposed to the night time of first story, the colour design and backgrounds begin to work in the show’s favour. Sushio’s in charge of animation here, and we get a lot of comedy action that is closer to Imaishi’s Re:Cutey Honey episode than the hectic barrage of Dead Leaves. You could argue that some of action comes at the expense of gags per minute, but I’d rather have action than exposition filling that time.

The Clamor of the Beehive

Here we get the introduction of Briefs, the nerdy teenage fanboy of Panty. Who dresses like a Ghostbuster. They meet him when infiltrating a school where students are going missing. The gags start coming a lot faster in this episode compared to the opening two, but at the cost of showcase animation. There’s definitely a question of where their priorities are and balance between the various aspects of the show lays throughout the episodes.

Sex and the Daten City

An episode without a ghost for the girls to hunt, instead it involves the debut of Panty & Stocking’s first motion picture. Only it turns out Panty had unknowingly filmed a porno film, and so they go on worldwide hunt to destroy all copies. Probably the most effective episode all round to date.

Catfight Club

Another episode where the “Anarchy Angels” have a falling out, and struggle to defeat their foe. Probably most notable for introducing paedophile priest gags into the show as we see Garterbelt taking an untoward interest in Briefs. Some funny gags, but not that memorable as an episode.

Pulp Addiction

Whereas this episode about the ghosts of sperm taking over a tissue paper factory definitely sticks in your mind. The gags don’t come as thick and fast as Catfight Club’s but they are delivered with more aplomb. I’m certain the sperm as soldiers gag has been done many times before, but probably not with this amount of thought given to the visuals.

—

In conclusion, it’s clearly not a show for everyone, lots of folks will get stuck at the puerile humour and not see the craft involved. It’s not a show where folks are going to stick with it to see if they might warm up to it. They might not even stick around for the second story in the first episode.

For my tastes, I think it pulls it off quite well. There’s room for improvement, but when you look at other shows, animated and otherwise, mining the same vein of humour it’s doing a lot right. Nick Swardson’s Pretend Time, I am looking at you and your over-long, leaden sketches.

As the first episode throws you in at the deep end I won’t try to do a full synopsis, so lets just reel off what is great.

1. The use of Venetian Masks and Commedia dell’arte imagery. This is what people are claiming is flamboyant and homophobes are claiming is gay about the show. At this point I don’t know if they are going much deeper with the imagery that just using it because it looks cool and different. The fact the bad guys also have this Hellfire Club thing going on with fishnets does make you think that they may have just liked Eyes Wide Shut a lot.

   On the other hand, the hero does have an element of performance to the way he behaves, both in his cracking jokes and his eventual appearance with his robot. And he dresses in white and doesn’t have to wear a mask to activate his robot, so he may be meant to represent Pierrot. Something definitely worth following up on when the series is complete.

2. Using a bonkers giant robot story as a metaphor for being a teenager. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what a secret conspiracy out to break the seals of maidens is a metaphor for. That and the fact it actually takes place with a high school backdrop reminded a little of Devil Hunter Yoko (particularly it’s “every devil is a man in disguise” theme tune) another show that took the basic sexual subtext of many a magical girl shows and pushed it further to the fore. Thankfully this is much better made, and it has the twist of making the magical girl a boy with a giant robot. There’s been plenty of robot shows with school backdrops, but few use the robot aspect to actually reflect school life. It will be interesting to see how this plays out too.
3. Finally, and this is the big one, Takuya Igarashi is awesome. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed direction on an anime this much since Tatami Galaxy. There’s just shot after shot that are composed with such skill it makes you realise how little thought is put into most anime. It feels at times like a unification of his work on Ouran High School Host Club and Soul Eater, with the great acting and comedy of the former and the great action of the latter. And it moves along at a fair clip too, throwing you right in at the deep end. I love the way it gets you into the meat of the story just before the belated opening sequence. While you will be bombarded with mysteries by the episode’s end you don’t feel stupid for not knowing what’s going on. Compare that to the new Super Robot Wars OG anime where it seems to assume you have prior knowledge and so if you don’t, you find yourself wiki-ing mid episode to figure out what the hell is going on. Here you feel they’ll give you your answers down the line, so just sit back and enjoy the show.

And your bonus point of greatness – the Opening animation was apparently by some chap called Shinichiro Watanabe!

Takuya Igarashi is a talent who came up through the Toei machine. In his case he cut his teeth on a variety of magical girl shows before going elsewhere (in this case BONES). Despite what some might say, I still think Toei produce some strong talent (like Mamoru Hosoda and Kenji Nakamura).

Igarashi’s got a strong eye for design, as you could see on Ouran High School Host Club and Soul Eater. This marks a return to working on original material, with a scenario by his collaborator on Ouran (and various Magical Girl shows), Yoji Enokido. Word is that this will be a mecha show with magical girl show sensibilities, which combined with Igarashi’s eye and BONES production values should make for a show free of the usual mecha show cliches.

Looking forward to this a lot.

Iron Man

This is curious, as we have Yuzo Sato, the man behind Madhouse’s gambling manga adaptations for NTV, in charge of a show that you would assume has more action than the likes of Akagi, Kaiji and One Outs had. Sato is very good at amping up tension however, so he may be a good match for the non-action parts of Warren Ellis’ scripts. Don’t know if the rest of Sato’s team from his recent projects will be on this too. I expect strong boardroom scenes and action with acceptable tolerance levels.

Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

It’s an Imaishi project. I’m all over it like a rash.

I’m hoping for something resembling his episode of Re:Cutey Honey – namely a hyper-kinetic cartoon that recalls both Hanna Barbera and Tatsunoko Pro. As it happens, the trailer makes it look like we’ll be getting exactly that. So, yay!

Kuragehime

Brains Base & Takahiro Omori (Durarara!!, Bacanno!) arrive at the noitaminA time slot. This has the potential to be pretty, pretty, pretty good. Omori’s a really flexible director and the show looks to have some really nice Kenji Hayama (Mazinkaiser, Getter Robo Armageddon) character design. Not to mention it has a very noitaminA premise, so will likely be a bigger TV ratings hit that Durarara!! was.

Miyanishi Tatsuya Gekijō: Omae Umasou da na

Curious about this dinosaur series, and its related film. A lot of Doraemon talent working on it. It’s another series of shorts which is always something I’m interested in.

Rita et Machin
Karl to Fushigi na to

A couple of kids shows from Nippon Animation that look like they have visual styles that make them worth checking out. Not sure who’s on Rita et Machin, but Jun Takagi’s on Karl to Fushigi na to and that’s a good match.

Robin with his 100 Friends.

Directed by Max Weintraub. This should be interesting as Weintraub is pretty awesome.

I was pretty much done with it before the convention, but the actual con didn’t really deter me from my decision to cut it out of my future convention attending schedules.

The reason why I’m done? Their handling of attendee submitted events/panels prior to the con.

I had no problem running my MADstravaganza event at the con, but getting to that point before the con was like pulling teeth.

For starters, the form to submit them didn’t go up until the end of May. Which is bad, but I think it was still better than previous years. However, it’s then a bit much to not give anyone a human response until four weeks before the convention.

Amecon may not realise it, but attendee submitted events/panels are the last remaining unique selling point of UK residential anime events. Everything else they do you can get elsewhere:

• Anime Industry Guests – you can get the US voice actors at Expo and Japanese industry folk at Expo and film festival events.
• Parties – You’ve regular J-pop events running in London, plus events like the Grand Cosplay Ball and the Cosplay Cruise. And I’m sure similar events elsewhere in the country. Also if you just want to party and don’t require a Japanese or Fancy Dress element, well you do live in “Binge Drinking Britain”.
• Cosplay – Again, Expo has this covered, as do the cosplay based parties I mentioned above. There’s plenty of places to get your cosplay fix that aren’t residential conventions.
• Dealers Room – Expo, of course.
• Anime – Once upon a time we had a sneak preview of Perfect Blue at Minamicon. Nowadays if you want to see the latest anime films before general release, you need to go to film festivals instead.

Rather than treating the attendee run events as an afterthought, conventions should be encouraging them. The final straw was the fact that cosplay events got their own special e-mail sent out to attendees detailing them before the convention and the other events got nothing.

There was a warning sign as to their misplaced priorities early on as they didn’t actually mention anime or manga on their front page for 4-5 months of restarting the site. Combine that with a video programme that you had to hunt down, rather than have given to you in your con bag, and you’re left with the impression of an anime convention that has lost all interest in the reason it existed in the first place. Unless that reason was to import dubbing irritant Monica Rial to the UK every couple of years, in which case JOB WELL DONE!

There is one big downside to fan run events at UK cons, and it was particularly in evidence at this convention. Some people have got it into their heads to treat conventions as some sort of open mic night. So in addition to the open mic abomination that is the “Omake” we also ended up with rip-offs of the BBC radio shows “I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue” and “Fighting Talk” (luckily missed the first and what I saw of the second made me glad I didn’t see all of it, as at least one person on the panel had seemingly missed the point of the format entirely). I don’t know if it’s an extension of the show-off attitude of cosplayers, or that people see the few talented people who can do this stuff well and think it’s easy.

What we need instead is more panels with the passion and obsession of the folks running things like this year’s Takarzuka panel or Ayacon’s Rocket Scientist’s Guide to Space Anime. I shall be putting my money where my mouth is on this front next year, as Ayacon are accepting submissions for events already. I suggest anime/manga bloggers reading this who are planning on attending Ayacon, Kitacon or any of the other UK cons next year do the same. While the people running conventions might have seemingly lost interest in anime/manga, there will be people attending who haven’t, so you’ll find an audience.

Now, had the Amecon gone swimmingly they might have changed my mind about not attending again, but the lack of signs/internal maps, a Student Union that was grim bordering on squalid (you should not be able to smell urine where food is being served) and buildings that were too far apart did a good job of killing any sort of good vibes the convention might have generated.

So I’m out.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to be interested in something where everyone is sounding the death knell and blaming the fans?

Doesn’t that sound like the fun party you would want to be seen at?

—

One thing that struck me in the wake of Satoshi Kon’s death was the fact that a number of  pro- and amateur-industry commentators have crafted a narrative of The Doom That Came To The Anime Industry that they must add to at all times.

For those people, Kon’s death can’t just be the premature death of a talented individual, it has to be tied into the ongoing narrative of how Japanese cartoons are going to Hell in a handbasket.

I’ll cut them some slack, along the people whose first concern seems to be “is his last film going to be released?”, as they are common responses to death, particularly the deaths of creative people who you only really know through their work.

I’m more curious as to how commentators form their ongoing narratives in their writing, and more importantly, identifying what my own are. Pretty sure I’ve been guilty of selling the anime doomsday scenario into the past, especially in the Hate Fun posts (which are mainly hyperbole and exaggeration, plus incredibly easy to write), though I’ve tried to move away from that somewhat this past year towards getting a better, broader perspective.

• Durarara Donuts & Coffee Ad
• Golgo 13 Caffeine Pills Ad
• Murphy’s Irish Stout Ad
• Durarara G Fantasy Ad
• Lupin III Esso Ad
• Durarara Pocky Ad
• Giant Robo Fitz Ad
• Masahiro Chono 2012 Blu Ray Ad
• Kabutoborg x 300 Trailer
• Kabutoborg x Evangelion Trailer
• Chargeman Ken 20th Century Fox Opening
• Oishinbo MAD
• Gurren Lagann x Cutey Honey OP
• Neuro x Guu DX OP
• VuVu ChaCha OP
• Cat GONG
• Kawaii Jenny x Jason Statham Ad
• Lupin OP Paint Shop Version
• TV Funhouse George Clooney/Speed Racer
• Takayuki Hamada Animator AMV
• Chargeman Ken Fan Animation
• Ranma x Sexy Commando OP
• Transport for London Music Video
• Broken Wear
• Alpaca Bebop
• Hotchpotch Station Queen Sketch
• Hetalia x Bacanno OP
• Pokemon x Naruto OP
• Backyard version of WWE
• Yu-Gi-Oh MAD
• Evangelion / K-On Crossover
• Stefania Rotolo Live Goldrake Theme
• Durarara x Kyouran Kazoku Nikki OP
• Evangelion vs GI Joe vs Transformers
• Final Fantasy MAD
• Jumbo Tsuruta Mario Sketch
• Golgo 13 vs. MGS
• Golden Eggs x K-On OP
• TV Funhouse – Kobayashi
• Toshiyuki Inoue Animator AMV
• Big Fire Haruhi Dance
• Sengoku Basara x Giant Robo OP
• F1 x Sexy Commando OP
• U900 – Twist and Shout
• My Boyfriend Is The President
• Idolmaster x Ante Up

The biggest walk out was during Ante Up. Anime fans not liking rap music? What a surprise! Of course I’ve often found the opposite to be true in that rap fans will frequently like anime. From my point of view the Transport for London was the best video, as the open mouthed expressions of bewilderment on the audience’s faces was a cruel delight for me.

Going to try and resurrect some old post themes this week, to see if I can get some “appointment internet” going while I work on some long form posts in the background.

This particular Animator AMV for Toshiyuki Inoue’s work got a strong reaction from the audience when I played it during my MADstravaganza panel at Amecon this past weekend. The panel in its original form started life as an animator focussed panel 3 years ago, but gradually broadened to include everything I like that doesn’t get covered in other panels at UK conventions. Which at this point also includes anime and manga…

This year I decided to drop a couple of Animator AMVs back into the panel to gauge the response. I’ve already built a decent sized audience now, so I can see what else I can throw at them. I was pleased with the responses they got, and this one in particular got a strong response. I was left with the impression that it’s not so much that people don’t have animators whose work they like, it’s more that they don’t know they do.

One of the big inspirations for that first panel in 2007, was Tony Robinson’s Stay Tooned show for the BBC. It took what was a standard cartoon compilation programme that the BBC would run after Grandstand, and added a layer of education to it. In half an hour you could learn who made the different cartoons and what the different elements were that they brought to it. Without that, I don’t think Tex Avery and Bob Clampett would have clicked with me in the same way, and I think that little bit of information needed to join the dots is what the majority of anime viewers lack.

Are you at Amecon? Do you want a break from the rain and walking ridiculous distances between non-descript academic buildings? Then come to MADstravaganza, tonight, at 8pm, in the Dorothy Hodgkin building’s Lecture Theatre 1 (the main theatre opposite the main entrance).

FEATURING:

CHARGEMAN KEN | KABUTO BORG VxV | DURARARA | GURREN LAGANN | NEURO | HETALIA | BUBU CHACHA | FINAL FANTASY | SUPER MARIO BROS | METAL GEAR SOLID | KAWAII JENNY | K-ON | LUPIN III | GIANT ROBO | SEXY COMMANDO | RANMA 1/2 | SPEED RACER | KAIJI | COWBOY BEBOP | BACANNO | POKEMON | NARUTO | EVANGELION | YU-GI-OH | GRENDIZER | IDOL MASTER | GOLGO 13

Seriously, what else are you going to do?

AMECON
Saturday 14th August
8pm in Hodgkin LT1

This? On a loop for 2 hours?

No! Of course not! There’s only one way to find out what the MADstravaganza holds for YOU and that is to be at AMECON! On Saturday 14th August! At 8pm! In Hodgkin LT1!

“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it”. – EB White.

Like that is going to stop me.

The Seitokai Yakuindomo anime started recently as part of the summer season of anime. It’s based on Tozen Ujiie’s 4-panel gag manga that currently runs in Weekly Shonen Magazine. The gags are hung on the premise of an all-girls high school having to open its doors to male students due to a falling birth rate (Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! also uses falling birth rate for a springboard). The main characters are three girls on the school council and the boy they press gang onto the council to represent the new gender in the school. So far, so cliched. School councils and press ganging people onto committees seem to be some of the most popular “me-too” ideas in manga and light novels at present.

The manga of Seitokai Yakuindomo stands out from its peers and influences on two main points. First off, it’s very low on fan service. In fact in terms of art it’s less salacious than Azumanga Daioh. Compare these bikini pin ups, Tozen Ujiie uses far less suggestive angles than Kiyohiko Azuma, who seemed to love that “looking up at boobs” angle more and more as Azumanga Daioh progressed.

The second point is in direct contrast to the first, indeed without the first it would not be as effective. Namely, “dirty jokes”. Obviously this is hardly unique, we’ve already had B Type H System adapted this year, another series whose female lead is sex-obsessed. The differences are that Seitokai Yakuindomo isn’t visually explicit, there’s no romantic underpinnings and while the lead does/says stupid things, she isn’t a complete idiot. Just a partial one when the gag demands it.

Most of all though, the series is highly focussed on gags over characterisation. The four main characters are basically there to be shuffled about into various combinations to set up and deliver gags. In fact they are barely characters. You’ve got Takatoshi (male, defacto straight man), Shino (President of the Council, sex-obsessed), Aria (busty, tells dirty jokes) and Suzu (super-intelligent, comically short). They’re basically hooks to hang jokes on.

A typical gag set up will be as follows:

* Character A says something ostensibly serious.
* Character A then says something stupid/incongruous to the setup.
* Character B reacts to it.

Normally it will have the same character deliver the setup as the punchline, rather than break it down to a standard feed/comic distribution of roles. The straight man often only comes into play in the last panel, commenting on the idiocy that happened in panel 3.

This is why I don’t feel it’s setting out to shock by using “dirty jokes”, but rather just using sex as the incongruity. Sure, the toilet talk adds a frisson to the joke, particularly as the comic doesn’t try to be sexy, but the funny is in how it gets from something perfectly clean to something dirty. It’s cleverer than just drawing a cock on a blackboard (which is still admittedly funny). There’s other joke formula they use (and over use) like Suzu being too short to do something and something innocent looking like something rude from a certain angle, but the one above is probably the most common so far. It’s all very music hall, rather than out and out shock humour.

The anime on the other hand is different beast to the manga, and that’s what I really want to talk about here. If you weren’t aware of the manga, then from a distance the anime might just strike you as your typical slightly smutty otaku bait shows. One thing that really adds to that is the colour palette chosen. Seriously fuck this colour palette. Particularly when it saturates the incredibly dull opening sequence of episode one, playing like the opening to some dumb erotic video game being adapted into animated homeopathic porn. You know what palette I’m talking about.

Yeah, that fucking palette. There’s some blue-green in there too, but the backgrounds in that opening are awash with oversaturated pastel blues and pinks. The blues should be complementary to the browns of the school uniform (at least in the RGB spectrum), but they are so oversaturated that they overpower the characters. The pink just makes it so much worse. This sort of thing is what annoys me the most about modern anime, moreso than poor hat animation!

After a couple of minutes of this opening that seems to go on forever, we get an opening animation full of brazen dick jokes and one of those tedious peppy J-pop songs (not to mention some ludicrously ambitious panning animation).

Then we get an even more ludicrous 3D shot to set up the first gag. Which isn’t that great so let’s skip to the second gag, based on the second 4 panel strip. Prepare to have any humour present killed by over analysis.

Panel 1 / Shot 1

The anime flips the characters around, and pulls the focus from them by filling the screen with a busy, garish background that overpowers the layout. Apart from that it’s pretty much adhering to the strip.

Panel 2 / Shot 2

Here we get a complete change in camera position, as the middle two panels are pretty much the same shot it in the original. By changing the shot, the anime can recreate the beat made by the movement from one panel to another.

Panel 3 / Shot 3

Here the shot is much closer to the original layout, however we now get a budget saving move come into play, where the anime hides the mouth of the character talking off screen. Hooray, one less thing to animate!

Panel 4 / Shot 4

And finally, the punchline is delivered with a shot that’s pretty much straight out of the manga. However, the anime has second response shot that it adds…

This is the sort of shot that doesn’t really happen in the comic, if only due to the restraint of the 4 panel half page format. It’s one place where the anime can take advantage of it’s medium.

Now while that’s not the funniest or the most typical gag on the show, it does demonstrate what the show does best – nail the rhythm of a 4 panel gag strip.

Here’s a few other notes on how it takes advantage of the medium:

• Movement. Gags that rely on movement (e.g. the kick with the shoe flying off the foot) are framed to take advantage of actual movement.
• Asides. Not super-keen on this technique, if only because it’s been done to death by Family Guy, but it will throw in extra shots to illustrate something said, rather than keep to the proscenium leaning step ups preferred by the manga.
• Visual gags. Similarly it will sometimes add visual gags to the background that weren’t present originally. The best example is the strip where Aria’s suggesting boys might join the school to start a harem and in the anime we see someone in the background clearly hoping for just that. That strip’s anime version is also a good illustration of the asides the anime uses, as we get asides to both an 80′s style sex comedy and a Maria-sama ga Miteru style show to match what Aria’s suggesting.

However, as good as the anime is adapting individual strips from the manga, there’s a couple of flaws.

Firstly there’s the issue of repetition, both in terms of the structure and the punchlines. The structure of the jokes can be so similar, that over half an hour it can get wearisome. Add in the fact that so many punchlines seem really similar in the first episode and I wouldn’t blame you for tapping out. Personally I found enough to admire in the mechanics of it to push on, particularly as most of these sort of adaptations let the air out of the gags, and this gets the rhythm right. You, on the other hand, might find the amount of times Shino turns the conversation towards periods somewhat sapping.

The big flaw though reveals itself in episode 3. Or rather in the preview to episode 3. It just gets confirmed in episode 3.

One of the anime’s gags is that in the preview the characters mention what pages from the manga they are adapting next week. Episode 1 covers the first 32 pages, episode 2 covers pages 33 to 56, episode 3 on the other hand only covers page 57 to 60.

Four pages. In a half hour anime. Even Naruto manages more pages than that.

What this meant was we were going to get lots of anime “original” material. And by original I mean they turned the show into exactly what you might have thought it was going in. We get a load of fanservice, gags that outstay their welcome and finally, accidental bestiality.

There’s a fine line that the manga walks with its dirty jokes and in episode three the anime takes a running jump over that line. There’s clues that the screenwriter’s sense of humour might not be on the same page as the comic’s in the first two episodes, but by episode three it becomes crystal clear. The big problem with it is they don’t have the character Takatoshi around to act as straight man to Shino and so her digressions into stupidity go unanswered. Without someone to annoy them in the show, idiots are just annoying you the viewer. Plus she seems more idiotic when the anime screenwriters write her without the original manga’s scripts to base the gags on.

In short, it’s a really awful episode.

Episode four promises more manga adaptations so hopefully that will get back on form, though given how bad episode 3 was that’s the only chance I’m giving it.

If you do have an interest in the mechanics of gag anime I’d definitely recommend the first episode at the very least, as to me it felt much closer to the sort of shows we got during the dawn of late night anime than we get nowadays.

Oh, and the ending animation is really well made, to the point where you’ll wish you’d seen whatever show from an alternate reality it really belongs to.