Entertainment Joys
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Wed Oct 19, 2022 5:39 pm
Despite having some TV series and anime I've neglected, my binges remain eclectic and sometimes random. Since life is short and "joys" can be hard to find (entertainment or otherwise), I usually indulge them. And I enjoy this column as an appropriate outlet to type about them, so thanks all around to the folks who contribute and read besides me. I know I've kind of hogged it over the last year or two.
The latest random binge may be my most infamous, and certainly an animated series which is fairly polarizing. Many mock it as heavy handed info-tainment at it's worst, while others claim it started a movement. And certainly those who grew up with it would be in their 30's and 40's now and are among the most environmentally and socially conscious generations we've seen (even more than the Baby Boomers turned out to be). Yes, I am watching the series that wanted to "take pollution down to zero, "CAPTAIN PLANET & THE PLANETEERS." It seems every notable online personality from Nostalgia Critic to random dudes with blogs have been tearing into this thing since the modern internet began. Yet despite such polarization, it lasted 6 seasons and 113 episodes from 1990-1996 on TBS on cable and broadcast syndication elsewhere. For a show that debuted in the midst of "Ninja Turtle-Mania," it proved to have tremendous staying power. Off the top of my head the only other cartoons created in the 90's that lasted anywhere near as long were "BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES" (which switched networks, titles, and character model styles in the late 90's) and, hilariously, FoxKids' "BOBBY'S WORLD" (that ran 7 seasons and 81 episodes). Granted, having a media mogul like Ted Turner as a passionate co-creator likely helped a great deal towards its longevity. Still, he didn't eat costs as long as Fox has for "THE SIMPSONS" (which has been a "loss leader" for well over a decade).
So I suppose someone might ask, "Why in the world would you want to binge Captain Planet?" And my answer is twofold. First, morbid curiosity about a show which lasted a surprisingly long time that I'd only seen about a dozen or so complete episodes of at the time (and usually dismissed). And secondly, with a world on fire with polar icecaps melting, pandemics raging, resources becoming scarce, a rising population and on the cusp of a capitalist dystopian nightmare, I wondered if it would still seem so "extreme" nowadays, at a time when many of it's mouth-foaming lectures actually came to pass.
I sometimes wonder if the woe of "CAPTAIN PLANET" were that it's messages and warnings, which proved prophetic, were sometimes delivered in such a ham fisted and preachy way that they had the opposite effect. Maybe too many Americans really are like Wheeler, just without a Gaia or four friends to talk them out of it.
Anyway, I'm having an interesting time with the series and do not regret binging it. It has its problems but I also think it was hardly the only preachy, simplistic cartoon at the time. It just was the one which maybe did so the most often, with a big media mogul behind them, and it arrived when such shows were quickly being phased out for better fare like B:TAS or X-MEN which could make similar appeals in a more nuanced way.
The latest random binge may be my most infamous, and certainly an animated series which is fairly polarizing. Many mock it as heavy handed info-tainment at it's worst, while others claim it started a movement. And certainly those who grew up with it would be in their 30's and 40's now and are among the most environmentally and socially conscious generations we've seen (even more than the Baby Boomers turned out to be). Yes, I am watching the series that wanted to "take pollution down to zero, "CAPTAIN PLANET & THE PLANETEERS." It seems every notable online personality from Nostalgia Critic to random dudes with blogs have been tearing into this thing since the modern internet began. Yet despite such polarization, it lasted 6 seasons and 113 episodes from 1990-1996 on TBS on cable and broadcast syndication elsewhere. For a show that debuted in the midst of "Ninja Turtle-Mania," it proved to have tremendous staying power. Off the top of my head the only other cartoons created in the 90's that lasted anywhere near as long were "BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES" (which switched networks, titles, and character model styles in the late 90's) and, hilariously, FoxKids' "BOBBY'S WORLD" (that ran 7 seasons and 81 episodes). Granted, having a media mogul like Ted Turner as a passionate co-creator likely helped a great deal towards its longevity. Still, he didn't eat costs as long as Fox has for "THE SIMPSONS" (which has been a "loss leader" for well over a decade).
So I suppose someone might ask, "Why in the world would you want to binge Captain Planet?" And my answer is twofold. First, morbid curiosity about a show which lasted a surprisingly long time that I'd only seen about a dozen or so complete episodes of at the time (and usually dismissed). And secondly, with a world on fire with polar icecaps melting, pandemics raging, resources becoming scarce, a rising population and on the cusp of a capitalist dystopian nightmare, I wondered if it would still seem so "extreme" nowadays, at a time when many of it's mouth-foaming lectures actually came to pass.
- Spoiler:
- The first two seasons are the longest at 26 episodes apiece and I am midway through the second. My initial takeaway is that it is quite heavy handed and blunt in its messaging, but that at least some of the hatred and venom lodged at it is a bit unfair. Yes, it is ironic that Ted Turner, a man whose carbon footprint is larger than many entire states, helped produce a show that lectured (mostly poor and middle class) kids about littering or consumption. But the fact of the matter is a ton of cartoons were preachy and heavy handed for that generation; it'd just started to become less popular during the 90's. DIC produced the first 3 seasons and most of their shows during the 80's, including INSPECTOR GADGET, ended with a PSA where the main character explained a blunt moral. FILMATION, which arguably ruled the 80's with FAT ALBERT, HE-MAN, SHE-RA, and BRAVESTARR, also were champions of such things. Nothing is more absurd than He-Man, a fictional toy mascot who gets powers from a magic sword, lecturing at the end of an episode that something is "make believe" or that getting vitality from an unknown substance is wrong. And even 2-3 episodes of STATIC SHOCK from the 2000's had Static performing similar PSA's about gun violence, dyslexia, or illiteracy. But somehow Captain Planet was the show that went too far, I guess.
A part of me actually finds it a little tragic that at least some of the negative environmental outcomes the show warned about 25-30 years ago are being experienced now. That said, other parts are unintentionally hilarious or short sighted, and I am having fun with those aspects, too. Plus, it was one of the first major voice acting roles for the late, great Ed Asner, so it is a way to hear some of his performances for the first time. There was a lot of fanfare for the first season for featuring many "celebrity" voice actors mostly as "Eco-Villains," but a chunk of them (Meg Ryan, Jeff Goldblum, David Rappaport and Sting) were gone by season 2 and a few more (Whoopi Goldberg, James Coburn, Dean Stockwell, and Martin Sheen) would depart after season 3 (when the show switched titles, became produced by Hanna-Barbera and started airing new seasons exclusively for TBS). Heck, Tom Cruise had supposedly been cast as Captain Planet himself and voiced 6 episodes worth of material before being recast and redubbed by David Coburn (no relation). Aside for Asner (Hoggish Greedly), the only two real "celebrities" who were cast in 1990 and stuck for all six seasons were LeVar Burton (Kwame) and John Ratzenberger (Rigger, Greedly's henchman).
In a way the toughest thing about discussing the show's characters is many of them rarely show much of it. The formula of the show can become all consuming beyond for brief snippets or occasional focus episodes, but I suppose that is true of many cartoons. And thankfully, the show's intro explains the premise about as good as the pilot or anything else. Despite trying to be rooted in the "real world," it is a show where at least some gods and goddesses are real, and magic (and aliens) exist(s). Gaia, the spirit of the Earth herself (voiced by Goldberg for seasons 1-3 and Margot Kidder for seasons 4-6) woke up from a century long nap on Hope Island and declared the pollution problem as getting out of hand. A part of me does genuinely wonder if pollution was that much worse in 1990 than in 1890. There were fewer cars and no nuclear power, but TONS of coal burning and deforestation, with often toxic, overcrowded cities emerging. So much like one of DC Comics' Guardians, she lobs five magic rings to five random (yet worthy) teenagers who represent every inhabited continent on Earth (aside for Australia, because Gaia only had five rings and shrugged). On Hope Island she has magical powers and can even show "Planet Vision," which is usually prophetic. Outside of it she can only appear as a ghostly phantom, usually to give orders. She's essentially their mission control. Quite how she invented, created, or paid for all of the Planeteers' solar tech or other living items (like food, air conditioners, and wind sails) is a mystery; more magic, I guess. Like every do-gooder in the series, she is weakened by pollution or any damage to Hope Island. In fact, even the Planeteers' losing faith in her and ditching their rings can weaken her; when Zarm tricked four of the Planeteers into doing that early in season 1, she got so weak she became mortal. She can also only leave Hope Island in a corporal form as a mortal. Always wise and full of exposition, Gaia can be protective, and vaguely lets on that Ma-Ti is her favorite Planeteer. Aside for her and Zarm (her spacefaring, war mongering rival), no other gods seem to be identified so far. They could be the only two, akin to yin and yang. Her magic rings are the Planeteers' source of power, but they don't work if they're in too polluted an area, if a Planeteer's mind is polluted (via drugs), or if they lose all hope. Since hope is so essential, it makes some sense that Gaia chose impressionable teenagers versus adults. So far the only other people able to use the rings besides Gaia's Planeteers have been one or two random kids who find or steal them, and they usually can't control them. So the Planeteers are kind of like ecological Green Lanterns, complete with matching dresswear.
Now for the Planeteer roll call. There's Kwame (LeVar Burton), representing Africa, who is the leader and has the Earth ring. And that is really most of his character; he leads. Sometimes he is stressed if he feels he isn't leading well, and was actually the first Planeteer to lose so much hope for their mission that his ring (briefly) stopped working. But beyond that, he just leads. It's somewhat of a typical "trait" of characters who do that, as can be seen with Leonardo, Cyclops, and even Aqualad in the first season of YOUNG JUSTICE. Kwame can be especially outraged at plots which target Africa and it's wild animals, but not much more than his pals. His main catchphrase is being the one who ALWAYS says, "Then let our powers combine." His second catchphrase, which he often cheers, is "Outstanding!" Linka (voiced by Kath Soucie) represents the Soviet Union from 1990-1991 and by the third season that suddenly became "Eastern Europe." Because even after the Cold War ended, no one wanted to say "Russian" too loudly for a while. The blonde bombshell has the Wind ring and while she has some cool patches on her vest, they're never explained. She is fond of birds and like most of the Planeteers, is naturally athletic. Her catch phrase is "Bozhe moi!" like most stock Russians of fiction; it would have been fun if she ever met Colossus from the X-Men, who was still shouting, "Lenin's Ghost!" well into the 2000's. Linka is assertive but also usually logical, and a computer whiz (or hacker). Gi (voiced by Janice Kawaye), represents Asia and has the Water ring. Out of all of them she's the most interested in underwater activities (swimming, diving, wind-sailing) and creatures, especially dolphins. Ma-Ti (Scott Menville, long before he was Robin) is the youngest, who represents South America and has the Heart ring. The supposed "uselessness" of that ring was so infamous that it literally inspired a TV Trope. Yet despite all of that, if you watch the show, Ma-Ti's Heart ring is arguably the most powerful. As Gaia explains in the pilot, it is technically always "on" in a subtle way, allowing Ma-Ti to psychically communicate, or sense, the other Planeteers, animals, or random people nearby. In many episodes he uses it to summon wild animals to aid them, especially aquatic or polar ones such as whales and penguins. His Heart ring can occasionally pacify uncorrupted minds, or briefly ease pain. Out of all of the Planeteers, he is arguably the most loyal to the cause, never quitting on the team to Zarm like his pals did once. Ma-Ti is the most empathic on the team, but sometimes has angst about being the smallest and weakest (despite the fact that in the pilot, he literally swings on a vine Tarzan-style to save his pet monkey, Suchi). Suchi is the unofficial sixth Planeteer and his bond to Ma-Ti allows them to work as a team, kind of like Redwing and Falcon. He originally lived with a tribe of indigenous people and is the most connected to nature.
And then there's Wheeler, voiced by Joey Dedio from North America (and specifically, Brooklyn, New York) with the Fire ring. Since he represents the continent where the main audience came from, the show saw him as a general POV character. He's the one who needs the most explanation and convincing in the pilot, and he is virtually always the one whose ignorance leads to Gaia (and the other Planteers) going on an instructive speech about whatever the crisis of the day is. He's obnoxious, often reckless, and has an obvious crush on Linka which he pursues at most times (Gi and Kwame have crushes on each other but it is more subdued). Much of the interaction between the Planeteers involves Wheeler as the lynchpin. I have no idea why he got that name; maybe the producers really loved "TAXI." He is arguably the most useless of the Planeteers. His Fire ring is mostly a laser-beam which causes as many problems as it solves. And his bullheadedness has sparked many a trap or argument. His ignorance is always astounding for someone who claims to be an eco-defender. So far his gaps of knowledge included not knowing where ivory comes from, why illegal dams are bad, why deforestation is bad, why chemical runoff is bad, why NUCLEAR MELTDOWNS are bad, why it is bad to DEVOUR THE EGGS OF ENDANGERED ANIMALS, and so on. I imagine this was part of why the first season ends with a time traveling 2-parter which literally justifies Wheeler's placement on the team (by showing in an alternate timeline that if he'd never joined, Gaia was incapable of finding another uniquely ignorant-yet-hopeful hero to lob her ring at, and the Planeteers ceased to be). Yet because Wheeler got so much focus, so many lines of dialogue (including one-liners) and was the one who usually changed the most in every episode, he often became the favorite for many viewers because he wasn't so perfect. I think I like Ma-Ti or Linka the best and sometimes am just amused by what a moron Wheeler usually is. I'm waiting for him to ask Gaia why pollution is bad. His character model always has untied shoelaces, which makes me wonder if he actually passed kindergarten. But in his defence, Wheeler has his uses. Despite not being the leader, his assertiveness often forces the team to action (since Kwame is usually calmer and more rational). He's also the least gullible of all of the Planeteers, who usually believe whatever they're told by someone who doesn't look like an obvious villain. At times he can be a rallying figure when the others are demoralized, and his willingness to take chances has saved the day many times. Plus, at one point he claims to have some practiced skill at escaping ropes, which is very handy in this series. These kids get captured all the damn time. The girls of "TOTALLY SPIES" probably looked up to them.
As for Captain Planet himself? I still don't know what to make of him. Is he another Earthly spirit like Gaia or a creation of the Planeteers' collective imagination? Does he enter some limbo dimension when he isn't summoned, or literally does not exist otherwise? I don't know whether he is a character or just a summoned creature like a dragon from FINAL FANTASY. He is absurdly powerful when in his natural element, able to transmute himself or other objects (especially metal), strong enough to literally RIP OUT A NUCLEAR POWER PLANET AND THROW IT INTO THE SUN, and is immune to all physical harm. His only weakness is pollution, and boy howdy, it's worse than Kryptonite. Every villain has toxic waste or smog on hand to lay him out like a wet noodle. It's implied that if he dies, the power of the rings (and Gaia) may be lost forever, but it's not as obvious as, say, the "Eye of Thundera" from "THUNDERCATS" (which Lion-O would always lug into battle on his Sword of Omens). Yet he is the cause of the worst pollution of the entire series -- bad jokes. Take every lame pun, quip, one-liner or wisecrack from every bad cartoon and shove it under a green mullet, and you have Captain Planet. His catch phrase is, "The power is YOURS!" which is a bit silly since the Planeteers usually summon him twice an episode, and always for the climax. With his bad jokes, overbearing presence and inability to wear pants (he didn't even have boots for the first few episodes), Captain Planet is more like Captain Awkward Dad. You never see anyone laugh at his jokes. Even the Planeteers just endure them. Yet somehow, Captain Planet is aware of pop culture; he makes an Arnie joke at one point.
Every episode ends with a brief "Planeteer Alert" PSA, which is like the morals at the end of most 80's shows. I imagine this going out of style in the 90's, yet the show sticking with it for unironic reasons until Bill Clinton was re-elected helped spark some of the backlash. And they highlight one of the fundamental problems of this well intentioned show: the solutions it proposes, even in 1990, were miniscule and avoided the fundamental problem. That problem was the people (or corporations) in charge and the politicians they own. Kids can collect all the trash, turn off all the unused lights or bike all they want, it won't matter at all if a few dozen corporations are responsible for 75% of the world's pollution. One PSA even suggested "writing a letter to your Congressperson and tell them to enforce environmental laws," which got a laugh out of me, since most politicians were bought out by the polluters long ago. There are even a few episodes and PSA's warning about overpopulation, but they don't quite connect the link so clearly that the empowerment of women around the world, and contraception, would handle that problem more than finger waving about "having small families." Can you imagine a cartoon telling kids to not have so many babies once they start shagging now? And of course, Wheeler was the one who went "Pfft, I can have all the babies I want, ey-YO!" until he literally had a head trauma induced hallucination about a society of overpopulating mouse-people ("The Population Bomb"). And even THAT episode missed the connection that it wasn't overpopulation that screwed the mouse-society; it was being ruled by a brutal, short sighted dictator. The argument that all overly populated societies inevitably turn to fascism was made a few times, but I am not sure is so automatic. BTW, the Planeteers were more amused by Wheeler suffering head trauma which was so bad that he hallucinated, than concerned. When someone is knocked unconscious in a wind-surfing accident and starts babbling about mouse societies, bring him to a hospital, you hippies!
Whether by magic or construction, the Planeteers own some of the best solar vehicles around, especially for 1990. Their Geo-Cruiser can fly as high as any jet, and they have solar powered subs, helicopters, and even motorcycles. Despite the high tech, they're simple enough that five teens on an island without a hanger can keep all of them maintained and clean. If they just patented that stuff, they'd do more to stop pollution that thwarting the schemes of obvious villains. They could even use the money to buy politicians to push their agenda, like the polluters do. But, it is just a kid's superhero cartoon. Even if it sometimes comes up to the point of the real cause to many problems, while simplifying it too much, that I imagine it got frustrating for many viewers. For example, many episodes involve the Planeteers trying to convince people in Third World countries not to sacrifice their environment for cashing in now. The usual response is some variant of, "That's good for you to say, rich kid, but we're starving now and can't think about tomorrow" and is usually overlooked. And the reason they are that desperate is due to exploitation. But in this show, thwarting a villain and offering a slightly more workable economic solution always pans out.
Now for the villains. There's roughly eight of them and it's good to group them in bunches. At least that's what I have done. Now despite the groupings, all the "Eco-Villains" have what I call "Go Pollution!" moments, where they're so obviously into pollution that it may as well be a fetish. But they're not all the same and have some variance. They frequently team up with each other as the show goes on past the middle of season 1.
Republican Businessmen:There is no better way to describe it, especially nowadays with a GOP that has taken their mask off. In appearance order, this would be Hoggish Greedly, Looten Plunder, and Sly Sludge. These three always involve schemes to earn cash by destroying the environment, either deliberately or as a knowing consequence. Greedly often is involved in mining, deforestation, or automotive-style schemes. Sludge usually deals with reckless sanitation and dumping, and out of all the Eco-Villains is probably the least malicious (though still plenty malicious). Plunder's schemes initially involved poaching and war-profiteering, but also involve real estate and toxic cost cutting of farming or manufacturing. I mean, in the pilot, Greedly's crime was wanting to drill for oil in a nature preserve; in real life, Republicans can and have sold federal lands and parks for this purpose. Plunder and Sludge at least go through the motions of either hiding their pollution or at least trying to publicly minimize its effects, at least usually. By season 2, Plunder has clearly cracked and starts cackling more. Despite their common goals, they rarely team up with each other unless a part of an extended group. Plunder and Greedly team up the least, probably because they're rivals.
Plunder is easily the worst of them, directly responsible for murdering humans and/or animals. His debut episode features a legitimate ivory smuggling ring which kills elephants. In another, "Ultimate Pollution," Plunder tricks two Middle Eastern cities into attacking each other to sell military weapons to both (which, also, happens in real life and proved prophetic). And in "Send in the Clones," Plunder is eager to accept child labor for one of his factories (albeit multiplying clones of one child, Nico) and literally pay the starving clone-kids in nothing but peanuts. Out of all of the Eco-Villains, Plunder is the most realistic, akin to one of the Koch brothers.
Mutants & Monsters: The ones who at least have some physical mutation which compels them to be evil. Duke Nukem (yes, with the same name as the video game star) physically thrives on radiation and toxic waste, so he is compelled to cause meltdowns or meddle with nuclear power plants in order to physically flourish. A moderately more tragic example is Blight from "BATMAN BEYOND." Little exposition is ever given, but Nukem was once a scientist who seems to have deliberately turned himself into a radioactive monster because he feels it's inevitable that humanity will nuke itself and he wants to rule what is left -- in a Hawaiian shirt. As a kid he was my favorite, if only because he could physically fight Captain Planet, but he shows up rarely (and usually as a team-up villain). And the other is Verminous Skumm, a mutant who was "born in toxic waste," as Gaia explained, "and hates the environment." Yet is seems that Skumm's real target is humanity, and he only pollutes as a means to sicken or kill the most people. It's never stated whether he was a rat who became more human or a human who was mutated into a rat; I guess the former is implied. Skumm can mutate humans into rat-people as minions, which is totally reversible, but the Planeteers only bother in one episode (because a few of them get infected). Jeff Goldblum was initially cast as Skumm, and I won't get into the horrible implications of casting a Jewish actor as a near literal evil rat.
Lumped into this would be Captain Pollution, who is very infamous. Dr. Blight eventually made a machine to duplicate the Planeteers' rings into evil counterparts, and he's the evil Captain Planet. Unfortunately, he is way more of a wimp than I think most people remember. He appears in only 4 episodes, and 2 are from season one. As the opposite of Captain Planet, he can be harmed and weakened by any pure, clean element -- including water from a hose or SUNLIGHT. In his initial appearance, he attacks the heroes three times and loses each affair; the only reason it is a 2-parter ("Mission to Save the Earth") is because the Planeteers have to recover their rings and talk an old Cold Warrior named Commander Clash into fighting for the environment (of course). Dr. Blight had to bail him out every time, and the Eco-Villains frankly would have been better off trying to kill the Planeteers with their "evil rings." I haven't gotten to season 4 yet, so maybe he does better there. I lumped him as a "monster" because Dr. Blight at least regarded him as her creation, much like Frankenstein's Monster.
For the Evils: The ones who are just evil and pollute to be evil and pollute. These would be Dr. Blight and Zarm. Zarm is just an evil, warmongering god; perhaps the god of war himself. Dr. Blight, though, is probably the most infamous villain from the series aside for Greedly. She has a lock of hair over her eye, covering a hideous scar. That may or may not be the cause of her evil, since her sister is beautiful enough to be a famous actress. Dr. Blight has no financial incentive to destroy the environment, or any physical reason like the mutants. At times she wants raw power for herself, from sources like a "Tree of Life" or even Gaia or Captain Planet himself (who she wants to dissect). But other times she wants to destroy stuff or help the other Eco-Villains for the pleasure of it. She is so into pollution that she made a perfume for herself which is just concentrated smog. She also is lustful for her AI sidekick, MAL (or "MAL-BABY!" as she always calls him), but since MAL is mostly voiced by Tim Curry, the world may forgive that. Dr. Blight is the first of the Eco-Villains to team up with another, and seems to frequently collaborate with the Republican Businessmen as their go-to scientist. She seems to prefer teaming up with Sludge, Plunder, and Greedly. Probably her most infamous act, in later seasons, is trying to go back in time and sell a nuke to Adolf Hitler (or, his TV censor approved avatar).
An unintentional detail which undermines some things is the fact that it's usually the villains' voice actors who sound like they're having the most fun. Goldblum totally hammed up his season of being a Saturday morning cartoon villain, which Maurice LaMarche (who went on to replace many of the celebrity villains) kept up. Meg Ryan moans her dialogue as if the director told her to read every line as if it was from that one scene from "WHEN HARRY MET SALLY" (you know the one), which the late Mary Kay Bergman maintained. In a 2012 convention reunion, Asner merrily stated how much fun it was to voice Greedly (one of his first major villain roles), complete with all the snorting laughs. Tim Curry was just starting his "second career" of voice acting during the 90's and tore through it all with his usual vigor. Even "tough guy" actors like Martin Sheen and James Coburn seemed to be having a ball playing cartoon villains with no backstories or motivation. Meanwhile it's the Planeteers, aside for Wheeler, usually stuck with the stuffiest dialogue.
I also like how every villain has a themed henchman, as if they're all working for the "Guild of Calamitous Intent" from "VENTURE BROTHERS" and get them doled out by obligation. Greedly has Rigger, Nukem has Leadsuit, Plunder has Argos Bleak, Sludge has Ooze, and the aforementioned MAL for Dr. Blight. Argos Bleak even got his own episode once, which helped spice things up a little. In a later episode Zarm admits to influencing dictators on Earth over the centuries and it would have made sense just to state that he was the secret power behind the Eco-Villains. He unites them in season 2 but I don't think they quite go there. As the show goes on, despite having 8 or so reoccurring villains, three start to dominate: Dr. Blight, Hoggish Greedly and Looten Plunder. Greedly in particular shows up for at least one 3 episode stretch in a row. And I like how Skumm has named his helicopter "the Skummocopter," in classic toy ad glee.
Even though I haven't finished the first two seasons, I've already seen a few of the show's more "infamous" episodes. One thing going for it is that the show was willing to show some serious, bleak stuff for the time -- especially pre-BATMAN:TAS. In Plunder's debut episode, "Last of her Kind," although they try to sanitize it for the censors, the episode makes it very clear that Plunder is operating an ivory ring that slaughters elephants in a livestock-like "killing floor," complete with a pile of elephant skeletons briefly seen outside. "Population Bomb" awkwardly covered, well, overpopulation (which gets mentioned here and there in other episodes). So far the darkest episode I've gotten to is the second season premiere, "Mind Pollution." Despite the blunt title, it's not quite as ridiculous as some "anti-drug" episodes that many bigger budgeted, live action sitcoms or dramas did during the 90's. Many anti-drug PSA episodes of the time seem to focus on marijuana (even that "CARTOON ALL-STARS UNITE" team up thing). Well, this time Skumm whipped up a designer drug (which is still a problem today) named "Bliss" which turns people into zonked out zombies. Linka's cousin Boris gets hooked on the stuff, which makes him so delusional that he doesn't fear pain. Later when Skumm leads a horde of drugged out kids after the Planeteers in Washington, D.C. (subtle), Boris slices his arms open jumping thru a window (and we see him bleeding profusely), then O.D.'s on screen after downing a mouthful of pills. Skumm manipulated Boris into getting Linka hooked on "bliss" by sneaking it into her burrito (also subtle), so we get to see her full on tweeking. Even Captain Awkward Dad was clearly furious, offering fewer jokes and even threatening to hook Skumm on his own supply.
A surprising number of episodes (most, so far) are written, co-written, and/or co-plotted by three people. Too many writers can sometimes effect how things go down. Since these seasons were produced by DIC, some episodes appear as straight up rehashes of scripts from their previous shows. One episode, "Don't Drink The Water" from 1991, is amazingly similar to an episode of "INSPECTOR GADGET" from 1983, "Dry Spell." Both episodes involve the villains doing something to the water in a city so they call resell it at insane prices: for the Eco-Villains it was poison, and for Dr. Claw it was a drought. Heck, another episode of "INSPECTOR GADGET," 1983's "Unhenged," focuses exclusively on solar power (and includes Gadget himself trying to put solar panels on his house), which was way more controversial during the Reagan era. Other episodes are overwritten and suggest that the world of Captain Planet has no concept of law. In 1991's "Domes of Doom," Looten Plunder disguises himself as another identity to con the countries of the world to legally sign over control of their forests to him. He then unmasks himself on live global TV and admits it was all a con. Yet the effected countries still seem obligated to pay him a fortune for his latest scheme; I don't know how a contract signed under an admitted alias is binding. Despite the themes of responsibility and all that, you rarely see any of the Eco-Villains get arrested, even when they totally commit actual crimes. Many times the polluting efforts of the "Republican Businessman" villains aren't crimes because they technically had permission from a local or federal entity, which is fair enough. But Skumm didn't even get arrested when he became a legit drug dealer (during the Bush Sr. administration). Greedly kidnapped a business rival and took over her factory at one point and the Planeteers just let him go after he agreed to shut down his scheme to save his son. Villains who escape in every episode are one thing, but often times they're at the mercy of Captain Planet or the Planeteers and they just...walk off. Even in "HE-MAN & THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE," He-Man at least went through the motions of wanting to put Skeletor in jail before he teleported away every time; same with the "TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES" and Shredder.
Speaking of which, one episode, 1991's "Trouble on the Half Shell," seems to partially exist to reference Captain Planet's reptilian rivals. There are at least 3-4 references to the Ninja Turtles in the episode, which are all pretty blatant. Wheeler links pizza with turtles, and Captain Planet is saved by a giant turtle (and a robot) and mentions stuff like "Turtle Power" and "in some shows being exposed to toxic waste makes you superheroes, but not in real life." The amusing irony to this is while the 1987 TMNT cartoon didn't get preachy or educational about the environment, Archie Comics' licensed TMNT Adventures, written by Stephen Murphy (Puma Blues) was INCREDIBLY preachy and environmental, to the point that it wasn't far removed from Captain Planet. One arc literally involved a demon emerging from a nuclear power plant; another seemed to justify grand theft auto (or rather, jetski) if it meant saving whales, even if those whales could be legally killed by whalers hired by another country (in that case, Japan, where whaling was still legal in the 90's). Many stories seemed to act as if beating up individual loggers accomplished anything. Murphy denied being as heavy handed as Ted Turner in one magazine interview, which I find pretty oblivious.
I sometimes wonder if the woe of "CAPTAIN PLANET" were that it's messages and warnings, which proved prophetic, were sometimes delivered in such a ham fisted and preachy way that they had the opposite effect. Maybe too many Americans really are like Wheeler, just without a Gaia or four friends to talk them out of it.
Anyway, I'm having an interesting time with the series and do not regret binging it. It has its problems but I also think it was hardly the only preachy, simplistic cartoon at the time. It just was the one which maybe did so the most often, with a big media mogul behind them, and it arrived when such shows were quickly being phased out for better fare like B:TAS or X-MEN which could make similar appeals in a more nuanced way.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Thu Oct 27, 2022 12:17 pm
As an update to my latest binge, or a "Planeteer Alert" if I wanted to be cheeky, I've officially started season 4 of the long running show. I am past the initial three seasons of 65 episodes produced thru DIC which launched the series from 1990-1992 and firmly beginning the last three seasons animated thru Hanna-Barbera, which Ted Turner had just purchased, from 1993-1996. Hanna-Barbera went from PIRATES OF DARK WATER to Captain Planet; what a shift. At any rate, I feel most of the collective memory about the show focuses mostly on the first three seasons. At least those are the seasons where a majority of the memes come from, or that Nostalgia Critic once roasted.
The seasons are getting shorter and Season 4 will be the last which is over 13 episodes (and at 22 episodes, is still shorter than seasons 1-2). Even more drastic changes come in for the final season, but I am a ways from that. It's been...an interesting binge so far.
- Spoiler:
- I am still fascinated by this show for various seasons. A part of me feels that a good chunk of people unfairly criticize it or at least were overly harsh, as there were tons of cartoons in the 80's and 90's which got preachy or wanted to teach kids "lessons" or so on. The other part of me at least understands that Captain Planet kind of earned some scorn because at times its message is heavy handed and simplistic, even sometimes hypocritical, even with that context. I am also astonished at the levels of violence the show was allowed to get away with, since far better shows were neutered from censorship boards over that stuff. A case-in-point is "Fare Thee Whale," the penultimate episode of season 2. It features the graphic spearing, dragging, and grinding into pulp of whales. You see whales gush blood as they're speared, drug bleeding into a massive boat and then leave blood puddles in the ocean. This was more violent than anything Batman: TAS or X-Men were allowed to do. I know syndication has more relaxed censorship rules than a show specifically made for a network, but it's still pretty extreme. I can understand fans being bitter about, say, Ninja Turtles never being allowed to cut anyone with their weapons, but Ted Turner could show people dying on screen, slicing their arms open jumping thru windows ("Mind Pollution") or animals literally being butchered in the name of "education." It reminds me of a commentary Brad Bird did for "THE INCREDIBLES" during a scene where Bob Parr gets cut on the arm by a robot on Syndrome's island, where he claimed that all the action cartoons of the 80's and 90's where no one was "allowed" to get hurt likely had the opposite effect, teaching kids there was no risk to such crazy heroism. Japan, in contrast, doesn't coddle their kids anywhere near as heavily as Americans did with their cartoons. Aside for that, "Utopia," the second season finale, is kind of a hilarious anti-gang episode thru the prism of the end of the George H.W. Bush era where Kwame has a nightmare about street gangs literally taking over a parallel world. Like, literally; Dr. Blight and Skumm somehow arm enough street gangs that they conquer the world, and they can make "normal" teens evil just with enough slime. It is an episode that 100% misses the point about economic inequality and political disenfranchisement being most of the reasons why street gangs seemed to reach a critical stage at that time, and instead goes with the "these kids are just self destructive" mantra. This episode also shows a family dying in a drive by shooting, which is another case of insane violence that better written shows could never get close to.
There is some more attempt to flesh out the Planeteers more as the seasons go on, although they do stick to archetypes heavily. I think I enjoy the vocal performances of the main cast more than the writing, if that makes any sense. Like there is more of an attempt to give Linka or Kwame hobbies (even if it seems very odd that Kwame of all people starts going on B-movie binges), but during a typical episode they usually shift to type. I do get a sense that by the end of season 2, the writers realized that just handing Wheeler the "idiot ball" in every episode was at least too predictable, so they at least try to pass it around. Kwame is actually the "ignorant person who needs stuff explained to him" in the last two episodes of season two, for instance. The show decides to make Linka so much of an animal activist that she doesn't even like it when animal predators kill prey to live, but begrudgingly accepts it.
I would say that one of the angles of the show which makes me uncomfortable is the frequent lecturing that it directs towards impoverished communities in the Third World (who are almost always of color). Quite a few plots involve various Eco-Villains tricking a community (such as a poor Latin American or South American town, or a Native American reservation) into some polluting scheme for quick cash and the Planeteers shaking their fingers, and having to hear various versions of, "It's tough to care so much about the environment when we are are starving or literally too poor to have a TV in town," get ignored or dismissed so easily. The show suggests that these communities wouldn't be poor if only they'd turn to greener economic solutions, which is at best a misunderstanding and at worst a case of blaming victims. Native Americans, for instance, aren't on arid, terrible lands because they consume too much or were too eager to sacrifice their land to Looten Plunder for cash; they were thrown there by the U.S. government which has always tried to cheat them or destroy them since before our founding. The show arguably reaches peak hypocrisy with a season 3 episode, "Canned Hunt," where the show displays a surprising amount of nuance for hunting by explaining there is a difference between fair, honest and legal hunts to maintain animal populations versus "canned" or scam hunts to appease losers looking for trophies. By sheer coincidence, Ted Turner was a hunter and runs a business involving selling bison meat, so OF COURSE he would want an episode which lectures people not to hate all hunters. So "CAPTAIN PLANET" is literally a show with more understanding for (white, male) hunters than for poor people in Central America or Native lands.
Season 3 actually has a few of the episodes with that "infamy" attached to them. One of them is "A Formula for Hate," which is known by most fans as "the AIDS episode" as it focuses heavily on teaching people things about HIV and AIDS. While the episode is heavy handed and sometimes corny (as the show often was, and as many shows in 1992 were), this is one case where I would argue some of the criticism is unfair. At the time it was one of the first TV shows which tackled the subject head on and actually included genuine facts. Remember, in 1992, President Bush Sr. and the Republicans were still mostly underplaying AIDS as a disease only "undesirable" people got, and did little to try to diminish misinformation about it (as a draft for how the GOP would treat Covid-19 in 2020). The episode itself was inspired by the story of a real life boy who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion who had to go on TV and patiently explain to adults that, "no, not everyone with HIV asked for it and feeling people with AIDS deserve it is cruel and dishonest." Of course, here, the misinformation is spread by Verminous Skumm for reasons which are absurd even for him (he claims spreading hate about AIDS will lead more people to die from it). It is a bit stupid for Captain Planet and a high school basketball coach to literally talk an entire town out of being hateful with mere facts and slogans, but it IS a cartoon (and Captain Planet does, technically, have the power of Heart so it may be part of his powerset to give extremely convincing speeches). The show's heart was in the right place on this one, and the celebrity guest voices for it were interesting. Elizabeth Taylor, one of the first major celebrities to become an AIDS activist, guest stars, as well as Neil Patrick Harris as the kid who contracts HIV, at a time when he was still "in the closet" as it were; he didn't "come out" until 2006 and was still "confused" about his sexuality, especially at a time when it wasn't encouraged to be openly gay, as late as 1997-1998 when he dated Christine Taylor (no relation). It is brief, but there is one part in the episode where a Harris' character's best friend has to angrily "explain away" the implication that they could be gay since his pal has HIV. So as heavy handed as this episode seems now, in context it was surprisingly progressive.
On the other hand, the show does reach a bit of self defeating absurdity and hypocrisy with another episode, "If It's Doomsday, it Must Be Belfast," which is another infamous meme episode. The show delves into very complex political struggles and boils them down into "THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS" level simplicity. Skumm and Duke Nukem want to trigger the nuclear end times by hiding a nuke in three areas of then-civil strife: Belfast during "the Troubles," Israel/Palestine, and South Africa as apartheid was ending. This forces the Planeteers to try to convince six people from different sides to work together to prevent it. Because Belfast involved white people, it gets most of the focus with wildly inaccurate summaries of the conflict, and terrible accents for the locals. But the other areas I would argue fare worse. The main message of the episode is "it's foolish to kill each other today for sins which happened in yesteryear," which suggests both sides did things which were wrong. The problem is that message doesn't fly in South Africa in late stage apartheid; you can't do "both sides" stuff when one side are white supremacists. Even in the episode, the masked white thugs literally fill a black church full of bullet-holes in a drive by, and the local black woman is basically told many times that she needs to be understanding or recognize that they're all Africans, which is absurd. The irony is even the episode itself realizes what a shaky concept this is: the Planeteers fail to convince anyone of how dire the situation is, and Gaia has to come up and zap everyone with future visions of a mutually destructive nuclear apocalypse to resolve things.
I must say that while I still think Looten Plunder and Dr. Blight may be the most ruthless and cruel of the Eco-Villains, Verminous Skumm sure gets close. He's not only directly responsible for killing Linka's cousin on screen or personally tormenting a kid with HIV, but he also literally hid a nuke in the city of Jerusalem. That is all kinds of messed up.
I still don't know what to make of Captain Planet himself, beyond his dues ex machina powers and absolutely horrible puns. Seasons 2-3 try to establish some limitations to him besides being weakened by garbage. He can only remain active for a limited period of time, and his power is finite. He "recharges" by returning the powers to the rings, and can sometimes do this to avoid death. One episode, "The Great Tree Heist," establishes that he's not completely invulnerable to physical harm as he's ground up, off screen, by Hoggish Greedly's tree-pulpifying machine. Then again, I wouldn't put it past Greedly to somehow mix in toxic stuff to any gadget to weaken Captain Planet, as all the Eco-Villains did. Ma-Ti nearly passes out from feeling Captain Planet's pain, and the Planeteers are unable to resummon him for most of the episode (and even when they do, he's severely weakened). But the best case of this is in the season 3 premiere, "Greenhouse Planet." Dr. Blight has trapped Ma-Ti, Kwame, and the cipher for the U.S. president on a rocket to Venus, so when Captain Planet does his "the power is YOURS" bit, the pair are out of orbit and CAN'T reclaim their powers. So Captain Planet is forced to exist, with duller colors and at 40% of his power, for the rest of the episode. He actually had to pilot the Geo-Cruiser and use a crowbar, and broke a sweat carrying three teenagers on his shoulders. This is all interesting, but doesn't quite establish him as a character instead of, essentially, a Nature Genie with limitations.
Another season 3 episode, "Hog Tide," casts doubt as to whether the Planeteers are Gaia's first champions and whether she was really asleep from 1890-1990. It is set in 1940 and focuses on a very similar quintet dealing with the grandparents of Greedly, Blight, and Rigger. The facts of the episode are ambiguous, as Gaia was telling the story to entertain them during a hurricane and some of the Planeteers think she was making it up as she went along. But later episodes will supposedly back up the idea that Gaia woke up at least once or twice during that century. In fairness, I don't sleep straight thru most nights either. And Gaia still seems to need more sleep than Odin (whose "Odinsleep" usually lasted anywhere from 24 hours for a week or two, depending on the adaptation). I do like that even in a story which Gaia may be making up, she makes sure to include the fact that most of the Planeteers get captured, bound, and gagged for some third act peril. Even she knows the tropes.
Season 4, though, there is a noticeable shift. The title gets changed to, "THE NEW ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN PLANET," with the Planeteers themselves no longer in the title of a show where they usually garner 80-95% of the focus. They keep the intro animation, but change the theme and have David Coburn recite the narration instead of LeVar Burton, and he is WAY cheesier and it doesn't work nearly as well. The memorable main theme is banished and the show instead tries to do a more orchestra-type score; in fairness, that is an auditory shift which began in late season 3. There are some changes to the Planeteers' clothing, at least in terms of the colors. And aside for Ed Asner, all of the original "celebrity villain voice actors" are gone, replaced by industry pros like Maurice LeMarche and Jim Cummings. Even Whoopi Goldberg is gone as Gaia, replaced by Margot Kidder. So far, Kidder is...not as good in the role, but she likely needed the steady work. Some of the colors, in general, are more muted, such as Looten Plunder's sleazy green pimp-suit.
You can tell they wanted the fourth season, which debuted on TBS, to start with a bang. The season premiere is a two-parter and it also features the return of Captain Pollution. His return further reminds me of Frankenstein's Monster; a toxic waste spill on the shore of the island where he was originally destroyed in season one causes him to literally reassemble himself out of the sludge, kind of like how in one movie Frankenstein's Monster is revived by a random thunderbolt hitting his grave. This time around he is more formidable, giving Captain Planet a running battle around the world which reminded me a little of the fight between Superman and Nuclear Man in "SUPERMAN IV." The main conflict of the episode are that the Planeteers, who are bickering about whether it is more important to save trees or animals (as ecologists do, I guess), have to deal with both a toxic waste spill and Sly Sludge dumping junk into a salt mine. They summon Captain Planet to deal with the former as they deal with the latter, but the kids wind up trapped in the mine because Captain Planet is taking too damn long to defeat his counterpart. This time around Captain Pollution makes sure to constantly douse himself in toxic stuff, and physically grows larger the more he does so. Despite all that, at the end of the episode the Planeteers STILL nearly kill Captain Pollution with a friggin' garden hose (since pure elements, like common tap water, can hurt him). Still, when left to his own devices and not taking orders from Dr. Blight, Captain Pollution was more dangerous. The only downer is because David Coburn voices both, you have a double dose of the same guy doing cheesy one liners or impressions. I swear, no cartoon character ever is as proficient at telling the worst jokes possible as Captain Planet.
This 2-parter also tried to flesh out the Planeteers' home lives more. It is kind of crazy how they waited over 3 entire seasons to start fleshing out their main cast more. The quintet resolve their bickering by sharing tragic tales from their childhoods, which are all five flavors of traumatizing. Ma-Ti arguably has the worst one, as his parents presumably died in a fire set by illegal tree loggers who they were trying to stop from destroying the Amazon. Kwame watched a herd of elephants get slaughtered by poachers, while Gi held her childhood dolphin friend in her arms as she died of water pollution. Wheeler had an abusive dad who literally sent him out to bully other kids into giving him cash for "bottles," which I assume were alcohol, and he was apparently homeless and living with older kids in Central Park since he was about ten; he may literally be an elementary school dropout. Earlier seasons had implied that Wheeler was homeless before Gaia threw a ring at him, but this confirms it. Linka's love of birds came from her despair at canaries being killed so her father could survive working in a filthy Soviet mine, but that seems a bit less horrible than the others. Still, imagine eating your cereal to this kind of stuff in 1993.
The seasons are getting shorter and Season 4 will be the last which is over 13 episodes (and at 22 episodes, is still shorter than seasons 1-2). Even more drastic changes come in for the final season, but I am a ways from that. It's been...an interesting binge so far.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Thu Dec 08, 2022 7:28 pm
As an update, I finished by binge of CAPTAIN PLANET & THE PLANETEERS last month. I'd left off at the beginning of season 4, which was the first season where new episodes debuted on TBS and not standard network syndication. They would all be repackaged later in syndication (I vaguely recall seeing reruns early in the mornings on WPIX or UPN in the late 90s), but seasons 4-6 were the ones which began airing almost exclusively on Ted Turner's own station. It'd move on to Cartoon Network and Boomerang, of course.
So, yeah, that was CAPTAIN PLANET. I still think some of the hatred it gets is a little unfair, but I can understand why.
- Spoiler:
- Season 4 is not only the first season to be produced by Hanna-Barbera (the first 3 had been produced by DIC), but it is the first season to introduce new villains. They are "the Slaughters," a mother and son team of Mame and Stalker Slaughter. They're poachers, and arrived at a time when the show was trying to shift Looten Plunder away from that as his primary "eco-crime" and establish him more as a general Lex Luthor kind of evil businessman. They don't appear anywhere as often as the other, older Eco-Villains, aside for Captain Pollution (who only ever had those two 2-parters in seasons one and four). The other new villain is a henchman, Tank Flusher III, voiced by Frank Welker (who voiced Suchi, Leadsuit, and other various animals and guest characters). He was an ex-actor turned henchman for hire who answered a newspaper ad by Sly Sludge in the fourth season premiere, and then decides to remain on staff with Sludge, alongside Ooze. Unlike Ooze, who is small, weak, and incompetent (like Rigger), Flusher at least is a big muscleman who has brute strength as an advantage. He looks like a first sketch of Brock Samson.
Season 4 also starts the process of introducing some relatives of the Eco-Villains. Looten Plunder's nephew, Robin Plunder, is the villain behind "Going Bats, Man," which was playing on the misconceptions of bats and how people try to exterminate them unfairly (and mess up the ecosystem). The episode came out in 1994 and is full of a ton of Batman references. Out of all episodes for the late Kevin Conroy to do a guest voice in, you would think it'd be that one. But instead it's "Jail House Flock," where Greedly tries to build houses over wetlands illegally. Conroy voices an Army Corps of Engineers official who is ultimately on the Planeteers' side. The oddest bit about this episode is Greedly frames Captain Planet and the Planeteers for a crime, and they're arrested by a local sheriff. For some unfathomable reason, Captain Planet (and Suchi) agree(s) to stay behind in lockup for most of the episode. How on Earth could Captain Planet be booked? He has no name, no fingerprints, he isn't even a real person; he's some summoned avatar. Conroy's character ultimately helps trick Greedly into admitting his guilt on a hot mic in open court, so if you squint you could maybe imagine it's Batman under some disguise helping Captain Planet. Batman's certainly teamed up with more absurd heroes.
This season is also the only season where the romantic tension between Linka and Wheeler goes anywhere. In "Missing Linka," Linka quits the team and returns home to Russia to take care of her sick grandmother. Wheeler takes it the worse and winds up shadowing her in Russia as she investigates (what else), some local problem involving a mine which is making everyone sick. He saves her life under disguise several times, but eventually Linka notices. They expose the villain and save everyone, but she still wants to stay behind, and gives Wheeler a tender farewell kiss. Unfortunately, it's rendered moot a few minutes later when Linka's grandma recovers and all but orders her to return to the Planeteers so she doesn't waste her life. Aside for a few trips down a carnival "Tunnel of Love" or some dreams from Wheeler, their relationship never gets any more solid than this.
The only "controversial" episode is the fourth season finale, "Teers in the Hood." It's a heavy handed episode about gang violence, which once again misdiagnoses the symptoms instead of the cause. It is so strange to watch episodes like this; CAPTAIN PLANET & THE PLANETEERS overall has a fairly progressive, Democratic anti-pollution message, until they cover gang violence: then they get as blamey and judgmental as any Republican. Of course, in '94, most Democrats were "tough on crime." For some odd reason, amid a story about gang violence (a friend of Gi's gets shot during a drive by, and the Planeteers go undercover, "21 JUMP STREET" style, to find the shooter), images of civil rights leaders are shown at random. The message is very clearly, "these social justice warriors of color died to give you civil rights, and this is what you do with it," which is a horrible and backward message (especially at the time since the Reagan-Bush Sr. era had gutted America). Also awkward was the fact that since Wheeler was the only one of the Planeteers with any kind of "street experience," he is the one filling in the others about slang or turf trends. Gi nearly drowns the crook responsible, only to be talked out of revenge by Wheeler, in one of his better moments.
Season 5 aired from 1994-1995 and kept the same character designs and colors, as well as the orchestral musical cues (since the rock/synth sounds left with DIC, apparently). By this point one of the show's annoying trends is "negative continuity," where characters forget or ignore things they'd already gone through. Wheeler, for example, has to be told more than once that dolphins are mammals, not fish. A worse example is the season premiere, "Twilight Ozone," where Ma-Ti believes a mysterious illness which is causing blindness and mutations in animals is caused by aliens. The rest of the Planeteers treat him like he's nuts, and the episode is intended to imply that Ma-Ti is learning a lesson about not taking tabloids seriously. But there'd already been two episodes in the previous four seasons (Season 2's "The Ark" and Season 4's "You Bet Your Planet") which not only established that aliens do exist, but the Planeteers met them personally for an extended period. Sure, Ma-Ti was wrong, but they should have at least entertained that it could have been aliens. Zarm had even spent thousands of years away from Earth destroying other civilized planets, proving that "life is out there." While some episodes occasionally switch things up with Kwame or Ma-Ti, Wheeler still was almost always the one who "held the idiot ball" in many episodes and needed a lecture. The closest Linka and Gi get to it is "In Zarm's Way," where their argument over nature vs. nurture with human beings ends up risking two kids' lives when Zarm decides to test that theory. We also meet Dr. Blight's pretty actress sister, Bambi, in "Hollywaste." The irony to this episode is all of the Planeteers assume Bambi is evil because she's the sister of a villain, which is quite a display of prejudice from "enlightened" kids. Unfortunately, while Wheeler is the only one with an open mind, it's only open because Bambi is hot, and he wants in her pants! The plot involves filming a fake Captain Planet movie featuring the actual Captain Planet appearing for "stunt work." Dr. Blight absurdly tries to impersonate her sister, despite the fact that she's older, heavier, and is scarred on half her face. We also conform that Hoggish Greedly's grandfather, Don Porkaloin, was real in "Ghost of Porkalion's Past." That episode also features Captain Planet in drag, for anyone who wanted that.
The fifth season marks a last hurrah for the show as it was, as well as offers the final appearances of most of the Eco-Villains. In "No Small Problem," Sly Sludge tries an old scheme from season one: tricking people into thinking he can shrink garbage to earn a fat contract. The only difference is this time he really CAN shrink garbage, albeit with a machine rented from Dr. Blight. His shrinking process is only temporary, waring off after an hour or so. Sludge finally learns that he can actually earn money recycling, like Mr. Burns once did, and he and Ooze seem to reform to commit to that. It's implied since that is how the episode ends, and we never see Sludge again. The Planeteers reformed an Eco-Villain; the system works!
"Who's Running The Show" is the fifth season finale and where things get a bit absurd as Ted Turner all but inserts himself into the show. He voices a thinly veiled avatar who runs a TV station trying to show ecologically themed programming, but has to fight everyone, including four Eco-Villains who take over the station, take him hostage and run pro-polluting programming. It is as ridiculous and heavy handed as it gets, as Turner pretty much makes himself a victim of anti-ecology forces. The Planeteers also briefly cosplay as the Flintstones, who were Hanna-Barbera's best known franchise. This episode is the last hurrah for Verminous Skumm and Duke Nukem, especially after the latter decides to try to detonate a real nuke live on camera. Even Dr. Blight was hesitant about that one.
Season Six, circa 1995-1996, is kind of like the "Red Sky" seasons of TMNT. It's a season hardly anyone remembers since by them most fans were not watching anymore. It also changed a bit of the format. The Planeteers all get recolored clothes or redesigns, especially Gi (who gets longer hair). By far the worst is a new intro, which is a lame rap song written and sung by Fred Schneider, of the B-52's (who are a new wave band, NOT a rap group). It's like getting Ice T to sing a heavy metal song. It consists of edited clips from previous episodes, and the cheesiest lyrics a wealthy, middle aged white man could come up with. Captain Planet is "the big mack daddy of ecology," indeed. All of the Eco-Villains have been written out aside for Dr. Blight (and MAL), Hoggish Greedly (and Rigger), Looten Plunder, and the Slaughters. Roughly 20% of the episodes don't even feature any Eco-Villains, just misguided or misunderstood business people. That is fine and a breath of fresh air, it just is odd to do that in the final season, instead of throughout the previous five. It makes it seem as if that was done to save some money on guest voice actors. Gaia also shows up a lot less often this season, as the Planeteers mostly operate without her. There is more of an attempt at comedy by including Looney Tunes style sound effects for some of the action. Yet the plots can sometimes be just as grim. Gaia also shows up a lot less often this season, as the Planeteers mostly operate without her.
This is proven in "Whoo Gives A Hoot," the second episode of the season. Looten Plunder's dumped Argos Bleak, instead employing two bumbling henchmen named Oakey and Dokey Pinehead. Yet when the Planeteers try to stop Plunder's chopping down of an "old growth forest," he orders his henchmen to arrange for the kids to be put in "toe tags and body bags." That's more harsh than in Batman! This is actually one of the series' better episodes, despite the comic relief henchmen. Plunder points out that renting federal land for pennies on the dollar and then chopping down all the trees for profit is perfectly legal. The best the Planeteers can do is try to prove endangered animals are in that forest (especially a spotted owl), so a judge can halt the process. Unfortunately, Wheeler keeps screwing up their photographs, and a judge gives the teens only 3 days to come up with proof. They have a spotted owl chick, but it won't "prove" which species it is within 3 days (and I guess DNA evidence for owls doesn't exist). Plunder's henchmen ruin every shot, and the judge denies the Planeteers' motion. Yet when the Planeteers end up finding negatives of their photos and convince the judge to reverse her ruling, it is too late -- Plunder's already clear cut the forest, and dares them to stop him again. It is an episode that showcases the real dangers are corporate friendly laws and the politicians who wrote them. But this kind of nuance is rare.
There was also "Five Ring Panda-Monium," an episode which heavily implies that Mame Slaughter stabbed someone who ratted her out off camera. The Slaughters in general were overly violent, willing to shoot at both the Planeteers and police with "for real" hunting rifles. Keep in mind over on FoxKids in 1996, Spider-Man couldn't even disturb pigeons on rooftops.
It also hit me by this season how many scenes of animals suffering, dying, or being killed that the show got away with. Some of it is even quite graphic. Yet if a superhero show had a handgun, the censors were all over it.
Less notable is, "Twelve Angry Animals," where the spirits of extinct animals decide to put humanity on trial for the crimes against them. They pick...the Planeteers, the five humans LEAST likely to hurt anyone and are actively trying to help. It's like declaring revenge on the mafia, and then targeting monks. The Planeteers, of course, are easily guilted into assuming the sins of all of humanity and agree to be punished, but the spirits ultimately adopt a "this was a warning" lesson...again, for the wrong people.
"A Good Bomb Is Hard to Find" is the last meme-notable episode. It also features Dr. Blight crossing the villain line by traveling back in time to 1945 with her future self in order to literally sell a nuke to Adolf Hitler. Neither Hitler nor the Nazis are named or have their symbol shown, and "Der Furher" has a different mustache, but it is obviously supposed to be Hitler. The meme part is when Captain Planet is summoned, and a "death stare" from Hitler makes him weak for a moment. The Captain claims that he wasn't prepare for the "level of hatred from his monster," as even "toxic thoughts" can hurt him. There is a moment at the end when everyone is scuffling, and Hitler grabs Ma-Ti, only to release him after a headbutt. Yes, Ma-Ti headbutted Hitler; I NEVER want to see anyone call him lame again.
"Greed is the Word" sees Tank Flusher III work for Greedly alongside Rigger, since Sludge had reformed. Now they're swapping henchmen! It does make the show seem like it exists in the VENTURE BROTHERS universe. The episode also mocks BAYWATCH mercilessly, despite it, too, also having ecological messages, likely because Ted Turner was jealous it wasn't his show.
The series finale is "101 Mutations" (guess which movie was in theatres), where Dr. Blight runs a cruel puppy mill and genetically experiments on dogs. It is just another episode, but if you want to squint, it does imply that Blight was mauled off camera by her own abused dogs.
So, yeah, that was CAPTAIN PLANET. I still think some of the hatred it gets is a little unfair, but I can understand why.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:17 am
A short one, I promise!
Anyone like GARGOYLES? That wonderful Disney Afternoon show which aired from 1994-1997 (even if the third season, "The Goliath Chronicles" from 1996-1997 isn't considered "canon")? Ever wanted to see it return? Well, it is back (again) as a comic book!
Dynamite Entertainment released GARGOYLES #1 last week, written by Greg Weisman himself (the series' co-creator and story editor). It is the first comic book continuation of the series since Slave Labor Graphics' comics from 2007-2009. It picks up from where season two of the cartoon and those comics left off, but the debut issue is mostly a recap so you can just dive right in. The first issue sold 100,000 copies with 78 covers, which is the total of animated episodes. Anyone who is curious should check it out, it is worth it.
Anyone like GARGOYLES? That wonderful Disney Afternoon show which aired from 1994-1997 (even if the third season, "The Goliath Chronicles" from 1996-1997 isn't considered "canon")? Ever wanted to see it return? Well, it is back (again) as a comic book!
Dynamite Entertainment released GARGOYLES #1 last week, written by Greg Weisman himself (the series' co-creator and story editor). It is the first comic book continuation of the series since Slave Labor Graphics' comics from 2007-2009. It picks up from where season two of the cartoon and those comics left off, but the debut issue is mostly a recap so you can just dive right in. The first issue sold 100,000 copies with 78 covers, which is the total of animated episodes. Anyone who is curious should check it out, it is worth it.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Werel Mon Jan 09, 2023 7:26 pm
Anybody played Inscryption? I am hopelessly addicted, I think I've done three full playthroughs and am thinking about doing a Grimora Halloween costume this year. It's the most engrossing, weird, fun, creepy game I've had the chance to play in a while, and I don't even usually like deck-drafting games or TCGs.
Just beat challenge level 110 of Kaycee's Mod and now feel like I pretty much have to 100% the game, or P-03 will make fun of me.
Just beat challenge level 110 of Kaycee's Mod and now feel like I pretty much have to 100% the game, or P-03 will make fun of me.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by KMR Tue Jan 10, 2023 5:10 pm
I played Inscryption! It was a cool experience, and extremely immersive in a fascinating (and creepy) way. I did find the gameplay annoying at times, but pushed through it because I just had to see where it was going. I just did one playthrough, but it was definitely a memorable game.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Thu Jan 12, 2023 5:41 pm
I haven't played that. I'm not much of a gamer. I never was, but especially not for the last decade or so. I think the last video game I played regularly was Facebook's Marvel Alliance game, and they yanked that in 2016.
In terms of my DVD binges, at the end of the year for some ungodly reason I was in the mood to watch the USA NETWORK "Street Fighter" cartoon that ran from 1995-1997. I was always curious about it especially since for some fans it got confused for the anime, "Street Fighter II V," that came out around the same time and was being released by Manga Entertainment (then Manga Video). But since the TV series is loosely based off the 1994 live action film, I rewatched that for the first time since, well, I saw it on cable about 25 years ago. People lambaste both and both have been the inspiration for memes since the modern Internet began, but they were alright.
Lately I am binging the 1984-1987 "TRANSFORMERS" series (or "Transformers: Generation One" as fans call it). It's the only incarnation of the franchise I remotely cared about or watched avidly as a kid. But this time, not only am I seeing all the episodes, I am seeing them in intended continuity order; watched seasons 1-2, the rewatched the 1986 animated film (which I am more familiar with since my high school buddies and I rediscovered it when it was re-released on video in 1999), and am now watching seasons 3-4 which took place after. It makes a whole lot more sense now. Mostly.
In terms of my DVD binges, at the end of the year for some ungodly reason I was in the mood to watch the USA NETWORK "Street Fighter" cartoon that ran from 1995-1997. I was always curious about it especially since for some fans it got confused for the anime, "Street Fighter II V," that came out around the same time and was being released by Manga Entertainment (then Manga Video). But since the TV series is loosely based off the 1994 live action film, I rewatched that for the first time since, well, I saw it on cable about 25 years ago. People lambaste both and both have been the inspiration for memes since the modern Internet began, but they were alright.
Lately I am binging the 1984-1987 "TRANSFORMERS" series (or "Transformers: Generation One" as fans call it). It's the only incarnation of the franchise I remotely cared about or watched avidly as a kid. But this time, not only am I seeing all the episodes, I am seeing them in intended continuity order; watched seasons 1-2, the rewatched the 1986 animated film (which I am more familiar with since my high school buddies and I rediscovered it when it was re-released on video in 1999), and am now watching seasons 3-4 which took place after. It makes a whole lot more sense now. Mostly.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Werel Fri Jan 27, 2023 7:12 pm
I don't know how to recommend this in a way that does it any justice, and "you should really watch this 6-hour YouTube video" is not an easy sell in any case, but:
This is the single best video essay I've ever seen, it made me cry several times, and I'm still walking around feeling altered as a person a week after watching it.
It is nominally a review of a never-exported Japanese PS1 game by someone with a really fascinating form of neurodivergence. But it's also a meditation on the subjective experience of time, childhood, loss, and memory. I dunno, y'all, just watch it if you have 6 hours and want to feel some things.
This is the single best video essay I've ever seen, it made me cry several times, and I'm still walking around feeling altered as a person a week after watching it.
It is nominally a review of a never-exported Japanese PS1 game by someone with a really fascinating form of neurodivergence. But it's also a meditation on the subjective experience of time, childhood, loss, and memory. I dunno, y'all, just watch it if you have 6 hours and want to feel some things.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Thu Feb 02, 2023 1:13 pm
Because some folks like my accounts of what collecting anime was like during the ye olden days of the 1990s, I'll mention my latest attempt to "re-buy" a series I had owned on VHS as a teen in the 90s on the upgraded format of DVD. I've done that for much of my "collection" ages ago, aside for stuff which I am now embarrassed to have owned as a teenager in the 90s: specifically, MAD BULL 34 and VIOLENCE JACK (and to a lessor degree, M.D. GEIST). Perhaps as a metaphor for a lot of things, I sometimes don't realize that my tastes in anime have changed over the past 15-25 years until I revisit one of the "lessor" titles of my old collection, as in stuff which isn't shrouded by nostalgia goggles or wasn't actually good or redeemable. One of the last times I did this was when I "re-bought" GUY: DOUBLE TARGET, which was an odd sci-fi "near hentai" that ADV/AD Vision incredibly sold on their main line as any ol' anime like BLUE SEED or LOST UNIVERSE in the 90s. They re-released it on DVD just before they shut down, appropriately in their "Happy Carrot" imprint. It was...regrettable.
The very last time I did this was when I re-bought the 2 episode OAV for HURRICANE POLYMAR: HOLY BLOOD, which wasn't as bad but still not great, beyond for some of the combat animation of the first episode and the theme song. That's on an earlier page of this topic.
This time, I tried it once again for GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE (and it's sequel, GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE II), and I must say it's worked out. But then again, it has a good pedigree.
The 1980s-1990s were a golden age for OAV's in Japan, and many creators were using that format to release stuff which likely never would have found a home on a TV station. A lot of it was an excuse to offer products with more violence and/or nudity and exploitation of lady characters. And since many of these OAV's were short (45-60 minutes for a one shot or rarely more than 6-10 episodes for an episodic series), they were easy fodder for American distributors to dub and release during "the VHS era" that I put at the late 1980s to 2002 (the last year 99% of American anime distributors released new content on VHS). Central Park Media/U.S. Manga Corps, AnimEigo and Manga Entertainment (then Manga Video) seemed to especially rely on OAV's (or films), but every distributor had a bunch. I forget exactly when GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE hit the shelves; my hazy memory says it was the late 90s when I was finishing high school (I'd gotten into anime in junior high, which for me was before 1996). The violence and cursing was my primary focus as a teen, with excessive nudity just being one of those things I accepted without realizing how exploitative it was.
What saves GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE is that it wasn't just trash by folks no one had heard of. It was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the same man responsible for a slew of OAV and film anime hits in the 1980s and 90s like WICKED CITY, A WIND NAMED AMNESIA, DEMON CITY SHINJUKU, CYBER CITY ODEO: 808, BIOHUNTER, and two of the biggest films of the era, NINJA SCROLL and VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST. It was written by Buichi Terasawa, best known for COBRA (or SPACE ADVENTURE COBRA to some). Kawajiri especially tended to focus either on dark fantasies or dark cyberpunk with fantasy elements, and GOKU: MIDIGHT EYE is closer to that. Basically if you liked or heard of CYBER CITY ODEO: 808 (a 3 episode OAV), this is almost like a spiritual cousin.
Manga Video provided two dubs; one for the U.S. and one from their Manga UK division (which is a very separate division and operates almost like another company in a bizarre way). The U.S. dub is one of many, many anime dubs of the 90s that I almost consider "thankless" for it's star, Steve Blum (or Steven J. Blum). Before he got the lead in COWBOY BEBOP which became the darling of Adult Swim and then dubbed a film instalment in 2001 which helped propel him into better paid regular voiceover work, Blum was starring or co-starring in a TON of forgettable anime titles no one has ever heard of. Want proof? How about RED HAWK: WEAPON OF DEATH? Ever heard of it? Of course not, no one did. But Manga Video dubbed it and Blum starred in it, and it wasn't great but work is work. Other U.S. voice actors who starred in it are Wendee Lee (a frequent co-star of Blum's in anime dubs, including BEBOP) and Kirk Thornton. Unlike RED HAWK, Discotek Media saved GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE from the limbo of being out of print with a DVD and blu-ray release. They even included a brief interview with the writer and director, which is surprisingly candid.
As I said, not only do these two OAV's offer tons of action and violence, they are incredibly exploitative of women. Literally every woman who turns up in each one winds up naked and/or sexually assaulted (or almost sexually assaulted). There really is no reason for it beyond for it's own sake. Another henchwoman in the first one literally is a half-naked cyborg who wears motorcycle handlebars on her shoulders so she can be "ridden" by a smaller man as she chases after targets (who she kills with lasers shot from her mouth). A tamer version of her is even included on the original VHS art for the series in Japan, which are even racier than what Manga Video came up with. As a teen I shrugged this stuff off as par for the course, but now I see it for how bad it was and am glad that anime, by and large, has moved on from this in the last 10-15 years. The end theme for both OAV's is "Fighting In The Danger" sung by the late Katsuragi Yuki, which is amazing. Quite a few of Yoshiaki Kawajiri's OAV's and films featured some amazing songs by some of the best Japanese singers at the time. I could listen to it all day, which is good, since the DVD menu keeps it on loop.
GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE didn't sell too well at the time. I imagine the big problem is that for American anime audiences, "Goku" is the name of one and only one character, and he stars in DBZ. It likely caused confusion, especially in an era when "the Internet" was still a budding new thing Al Gore was claiming he invented, and confusion rarely sells. As two VHS tapes it would have cost $40, which is a bit much for this; I just got the DVD off Amazon for almost half that. I still liked the first adventure better than the second, but despite the flaws I did enjoy it, and one of Blum's less fondly remembered performances.
The brief interview with Yoshiaki Kawajiri and Buichi Terasawa is surprisingly candid. They flat-out admit that they only use women in the OAV's as sexy props to "make Goku look cool" and since they deliberately made an overly misogynistic world in GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE, there was no place or interest in giving the women real personalities or contrasting them with other characters. I was amazed by their honesty. Try getting, say, Frank Miller, who was making the same kind of comics here in America like DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, SIN CITY or RONIN to admit that he's really into dating woman young enough to be a granddaughter (a theme which pops up a TON in his work), or a fetish for sex workers, and I am sure Miller would go on and on about being an artiste and "breaking norms" and all that. People were grossed out when John Bryne admitted some of that stuff in the early days of chatrooms, but at least he was honest. So I found the honesty of Kawajiri and Terasawa very refreshing. That doesn't excuse it, but at least they weren't too chicken-spit to just admit they write what gets their rocks off like too many of their American counterparts at the time.
And if you want to hear that song, and see the Japanese VHS cover art and see that I am not kidding about the designs, watch it here.
The very last time I did this was when I re-bought the 2 episode OAV for HURRICANE POLYMAR: HOLY BLOOD, which wasn't as bad but still not great, beyond for some of the combat animation of the first episode and the theme song. That's on an earlier page of this topic.
This time, I tried it once again for GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE (and it's sequel, GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE II), and I must say it's worked out. But then again, it has a good pedigree.
The 1980s-1990s were a golden age for OAV's in Japan, and many creators were using that format to release stuff which likely never would have found a home on a TV station. A lot of it was an excuse to offer products with more violence and/or nudity and exploitation of lady characters. And since many of these OAV's were short (45-60 minutes for a one shot or rarely more than 6-10 episodes for an episodic series), they were easy fodder for American distributors to dub and release during "the VHS era" that I put at the late 1980s to 2002 (the last year 99% of American anime distributors released new content on VHS). Central Park Media/U.S. Manga Corps, AnimEigo and Manga Entertainment (then Manga Video) seemed to especially rely on OAV's (or films), but every distributor had a bunch. I forget exactly when GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE hit the shelves; my hazy memory says it was the late 90s when I was finishing high school (I'd gotten into anime in junior high, which for me was before 1996). The violence and cursing was my primary focus as a teen, with excessive nudity just being one of those things I accepted without realizing how exploitative it was.
What saves GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE is that it wasn't just trash by folks no one had heard of. It was directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, the same man responsible for a slew of OAV and film anime hits in the 1980s and 90s like WICKED CITY, A WIND NAMED AMNESIA, DEMON CITY SHINJUKU, CYBER CITY ODEO: 808, BIOHUNTER, and two of the biggest films of the era, NINJA SCROLL and VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST. It was written by Buichi Terasawa, best known for COBRA (or SPACE ADVENTURE COBRA to some). Kawajiri especially tended to focus either on dark fantasies or dark cyberpunk with fantasy elements, and GOKU: MIDIGHT EYE is closer to that. Basically if you liked or heard of CYBER CITY ODEO: 808 (a 3 episode OAV), this is almost like a spiritual cousin.
Manga Video provided two dubs; one for the U.S. and one from their Manga UK division (which is a very separate division and operates almost like another company in a bizarre way). The U.S. dub is one of many, many anime dubs of the 90s that I almost consider "thankless" for it's star, Steve Blum (or Steven J. Blum). Before he got the lead in COWBOY BEBOP which became the darling of Adult Swim and then dubbed a film instalment in 2001 which helped propel him into better paid regular voiceover work, Blum was starring or co-starring in a TON of forgettable anime titles no one has ever heard of. Want proof? How about RED HAWK: WEAPON OF DEATH? Ever heard of it? Of course not, no one did. But Manga Video dubbed it and Blum starred in it, and it wasn't great but work is work. Other U.S. voice actors who starred in it are Wendee Lee (a frequent co-star of Blum's in anime dubs, including BEBOP) and Kirk Thornton. Unlike RED HAWK, Discotek Media saved GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE from the limbo of being out of print with a DVD and blu-ray release. They even included a brief interview with the writer and director, which is surprisingly candid.
- Spoiler:
- Anyway, both 60 minute "episodes" of GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE debuted in 1989 and were very much of the cyberpunk genre of the time. They are set in the then-far future of 2014 and while there are tons of oddness, certain bits actually aged very well and were ahead of their time. The star is Goku Furinji, an aloof and arrogant ex-cop turned private eye. He's one of those 1980s characters who is a borderline chain smoker and wears slacks, a jacket, a small vest and tie...and no shirt, so you can see his killer body. In the first episode, Goku starts investigating a series of "suicides" which tie into a nightclub owner who is moonlighting as an international biological weapons dealer (whose main henchwoman is a cyborg who likes to wear nothing but panties and has mesmerizing peacock feathers that spring from her, uh, lower back or rear region. I told you there was oddness). In order to escape being brainwashed, Goku gouges out his left eye with a knife and drives his car off a Tokyo pier into the water. A mysterious, unknown figure not only rescues him, but replaces his eye with a powerful cybernetic eye which can literally tap into and assume control of any computer system on Earth, from computerized construction equipment to video cameras to satellites. Goku can even destroy the planet on a whim if he triggers every nuclear warhead to launch at once. He's also handed a telescoping, indestructible bo-staff of infinite length which can shoot lasers from one end because...it was 1989. The idea of computers running everything was still science fiction in 1989 but today (or even in the real 2014) was surprisingly accurate. The kinds of GPS tracking that Goku uses satellites for which was amazing stuff in 1989 is routinely used by people on Google to locate take out restaurants. Anyway, thankfully Goku doesn't want to destroy the world or just use "the left eye of god" to make himself rich robbing banks; he still just acts like a private eye, only one who has an advantage over the sleazy tycoons or well connected figures who usually escape the law. The first episode is more emotionally satisfying, which was a fact I'd remembered from my first go around. GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE II is really just a second episode, where he has his first weird case since becoming empowered. It has an anti-militarization theme and spends a lot of time without Goku, who is mostly led by the nose by the latest pretty woman in his orbit. A cynic could say it almost is a poor man's AKIRA, only way shorter, as Goku stumbles across a living military weapon turned demigod who he has to figure out how to take down. Hilariously, he does this by researching the best weapon any military around the globe has, and then makes a factory build it and remodify it into his car, which he turned into an imitation Batmobile (or Gokumobile).
As I said, not only do these two OAV's offer tons of action and violence, they are incredibly exploitative of women. Literally every woman who turns up in each one winds up naked and/or sexually assaulted (or almost sexually assaulted). There really is no reason for it beyond for it's own sake. Another henchwoman in the first one literally is a half-naked cyborg who wears motorcycle handlebars on her shoulders so she can be "ridden" by a smaller man as she chases after targets (who she kills with lasers shot from her mouth). A tamer version of her is even included on the original VHS art for the series in Japan, which are even racier than what Manga Video came up with. As a teen I shrugged this stuff off as par for the course, but now I see it for how bad it was and am glad that anime, by and large, has moved on from this in the last 10-15 years. The end theme for both OAV's is "Fighting In The Danger" sung by the late Katsuragi Yuki, which is amazing. Quite a few of Yoshiaki Kawajiri's OAV's and films featured some amazing songs by some of the best Japanese singers at the time. I could listen to it all day, which is good, since the DVD menu keeps it on loop.
GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE didn't sell too well at the time. I imagine the big problem is that for American anime audiences, "Goku" is the name of one and only one character, and he stars in DBZ. It likely caused confusion, especially in an era when "the Internet" was still a budding new thing Al Gore was claiming he invented, and confusion rarely sells. As two VHS tapes it would have cost $40, which is a bit much for this; I just got the DVD off Amazon for almost half that. I still liked the first adventure better than the second, but despite the flaws I did enjoy it, and one of Blum's less fondly remembered performances.
The brief interview with Yoshiaki Kawajiri and Buichi Terasawa is surprisingly candid. They flat-out admit that they only use women in the OAV's as sexy props to "make Goku look cool" and since they deliberately made an overly misogynistic world in GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE, there was no place or interest in giving the women real personalities or contrasting them with other characters. I was amazed by their honesty. Try getting, say, Frank Miller, who was making the same kind of comics here in America like DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, SIN CITY or RONIN to admit that he's really into dating woman young enough to be a granddaughter (a theme which pops up a TON in his work), or a fetish for sex workers, and I am sure Miller would go on and on about being an artiste and "breaking norms" and all that. People were grossed out when John Bryne admitted some of that stuff in the early days of chatrooms, but at least he was honest. So I found the honesty of Kawajiri and Terasawa very refreshing. That doesn't excuse it, but at least they weren't too chicken-spit to just admit they write what gets their rocks off like too many of their American counterparts at the time.
And if you want to hear that song, and see the Japanese VHS cover art and see that I am not kidding about the designs, watch it here.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Mon Feb 06, 2023 1:16 pm
One thing I am enjoying about the current era of anime is being able to finally watch series which were considered "classics" at least when I was younger that were just too expensive or difficult to find during my youth in "the VHS era." SLAYERS was one of the primary examples but over the weekend I finally got to watch the far shorter but also far more controversial OAV series from 1991-1992, DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS. For quite a few years it was presented as one of the "classics" of supernatural anime horror, at least when the market was still young in the U.S. The 2 episode OAV of DEVILMAN was one of my first anime series so I've always had a soft spot for some of the darker material, even if that usually (and unfortunately) means wading thru a lot of exploitative stuff. I finally got to watch it over the weekend, and it was...an experience.
DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS was based on the dark historical fantasy novel "Teito Monogatari" by Hiroshi Aramata, although it was heavily influenced by the live action 1988 film adaptation "TOKYO: THE LAST MEGALOPOLIS." The story uses the deadly 1923 Great Kanto earthquake as a centerpiece. A final influence, unfortunately, was the OAV series "Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend" from 1987-1989 which was incredibly popular in both Japan and the U.S. as one of the granddaddies of hentai (along with LA BLUE GIRL). DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS never reaches that level but it definitely is "not for kids" as the old VHS covers used to warn. In the states it also had a weird history where it's ownership has bounced around nearly half of all of the anime distribution companies around. Manga Entertainment (then Manga Video or Manga UK) dubbed and released it in 1993, with a British cast. Then, Streamline Pictures, one of the first anime dubbing and distribution companies in North America, got the license and redubbed it in 1995 with a group of fairly well known voice actors of the time. Streamline stopped releasing new content by 1997 and by the turn of the century (as VHS was in it's waning days in the anime dubbing industry), they began losing many of their licenses (before officially shutting down in 2002). AD Vision/ADV got the rights to DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS in 2001 and released it on DVD, but caused a stink at the time by not including the Japanese track (since DVD's, unlike VHS, could include both English and Japanese tracks). They eventually got those tracks and re-released it in 2003 as a "special edition." It went out of print when ADV shut down in 2009 (although SENTAI FILMWORKS has mostly replaced it, kind of like one of Freiza's forms), and has recently been picked up by, of all companies, Media Blasters (MB). MB was founded in 1997 and is, to date, the last anime dubbing company still based in New York after Central Park Media, AnimeWho, and 4Kids Entertainment shut down. They started out mostly doing hentai and "fanservice," mostly under their "Kitty Media" label. Then in the later 90s and early 2000s they started dubbing some mainstream stuff, namely RUROUNI KENSHIN, BERSERK, BAKUMON, and my favorite out of print satire, COMBAT DUTY SHINESMAN. They experienced major financial trouble in 2012 and laid off 60% of their staff, and mostly went back to only dubbing hentai and fanservice stuff, and lost a ton of their licenses. But they've hung around (and even produce their own dubs in-house) and re-released DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS on DVD and blu-ray last year.
DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS is definitely one of the "grandfathers" of horror anime available in North America. I could never find all four VHS volumes at the time and in that format it would have cost approximately $80 to own (plus tax), which would have been a bit overpriced and made it feel slow and underwhelming. But as a 2 DVD set for about $25, it is perfectly acceptable. To a degree the "plot" is really just a series of weird or spooky moments strung together with many references to Japanese historical figures. The animation is incredibly good for an OAV; Toei just about reaches theatrical quality. That said, even at 4 episodes and 160 minutes, I'd be lying if I didn't think it had some drag. Yasunori Kato is an iconic villain and was the original inspiration for M. Bison in Capcom's STREET FIGHTER II, since that cloaked uniform and cap really is essentially the formal dress of an Imperial soldier (at least at the turn of the 20th century). The biggest demerit is the extreme uses of nudity and violence towards women which was not in the source material but added for purely titillating and commercial reasons by the anime studio. Before anime got "mainstream," it had a bad reputation because of a lot of the gratuitous nudity and the exploitation of harm to women even in non-hentai releases and DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS may easily be one of the examples of those kinds of things.
Streamline's voice cast for it was about as good as anime got in 1995. It included Cam Clarke (yes, Leonardo from 1987's TMNT who was actually the first voice of Kenada from Streamline's dub of AKIRA), Kerrigan Mahan (the original voice of Goldar from Power Rangers), J.C. Henning, Barbara Goodson (the original voice of Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers), Steve Bulen, Edward Mannix, Michael Forest, and Jeff Winkless as Kato. It is kind of fascinating that so many of those actors are mostly known for kid's stuff yet here they were dubbing an anime full of demons stripping women naked and incest. It fills out a portfolio, I guess. Both Clarke and his TMNT co-star, James Avery (the voice of the Shredder) did a couple of anime dubs for Streamline but then stopped abruptly; probably because the pay was so low even by SAG standards.
DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS, much like the 1988 live action film, only covers a quarter of the story and I wonder if one day it may get an anime revamp which is longer and covers the whole thing, but with (obviously) none of the tacked on nudity. Anime franchises get revamped about as often as American ones. But for now it remains a classic for either horror fans or for infamous reasons, and I didn't mind finally adding it to my eclectic anime collection.
DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS was based on the dark historical fantasy novel "Teito Monogatari" by Hiroshi Aramata, although it was heavily influenced by the live action 1988 film adaptation "TOKYO: THE LAST MEGALOPOLIS." The story uses the deadly 1923 Great Kanto earthquake as a centerpiece. A final influence, unfortunately, was the OAV series "Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend" from 1987-1989 which was incredibly popular in both Japan and the U.S. as one of the granddaddies of hentai (along with LA BLUE GIRL). DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS never reaches that level but it definitely is "not for kids" as the old VHS covers used to warn. In the states it also had a weird history where it's ownership has bounced around nearly half of all of the anime distribution companies around. Manga Entertainment (then Manga Video or Manga UK) dubbed and released it in 1993, with a British cast. Then, Streamline Pictures, one of the first anime dubbing and distribution companies in North America, got the license and redubbed it in 1995 with a group of fairly well known voice actors of the time. Streamline stopped releasing new content by 1997 and by the turn of the century (as VHS was in it's waning days in the anime dubbing industry), they began losing many of their licenses (before officially shutting down in 2002). AD Vision/ADV got the rights to DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS in 2001 and released it on DVD, but caused a stink at the time by not including the Japanese track (since DVD's, unlike VHS, could include both English and Japanese tracks). They eventually got those tracks and re-released it in 2003 as a "special edition." It went out of print when ADV shut down in 2009 (although SENTAI FILMWORKS has mostly replaced it, kind of like one of Freiza's forms), and has recently been picked up by, of all companies, Media Blasters (MB). MB was founded in 1997 and is, to date, the last anime dubbing company still based in New York after Central Park Media, AnimeWho, and 4Kids Entertainment shut down. They started out mostly doing hentai and "fanservice," mostly under their "Kitty Media" label. Then in the later 90s and early 2000s they started dubbing some mainstream stuff, namely RUROUNI KENSHIN, BERSERK, BAKUMON, and my favorite out of print satire, COMBAT DUTY SHINESMAN. They experienced major financial trouble in 2012 and laid off 60% of their staff, and mostly went back to only dubbing hentai and fanservice stuff, and lost a ton of their licenses. But they've hung around (and even produce their own dubs in-house) and re-released DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS on DVD and blu-ray last year.
- Spoiler:
- Anyway, DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS is a 4 episode OAV with each episode running approximately 35-40 minutes. Technically the story spans across decades per the narration but in practice it covers events from 1908 to 1927. In Feudal times, Taira no Masakado turned against the Emperor and was beheaded for his crime, but while initially his spirit craved vengeance, centuries of worship by local people made him the "guardian spirit" of Tokyo. At the start of the 20th century, a deceased Imperial soldier named Yasunori Kato has become a demonic sorcerer seeking to awaken Masakado's vengeance to destroy Tokyo, and ultimately the world, during a time when plans were made to rebuild Tokyo into a "modern" city. Kato seeks to do this by, ultimately, haunting two generations of the Tatsumiya family. The troubled Youichirou Tatsumiya works for the government and has an unhealthy relationship with his sister, Yukari Tatsumiya. Yukari starts having psychic dreams about Kato, powers unleashed out of, essentially, nearly being strangled to death as a child by her elder brother who has incestuous feelings towards her which he buries for most of his life. Yasumasa Hirai, an ancient psychic wizard, senses Kato's scheme and tries to stop him, alongside Youichirou's frequently disgusted friend, Jun'ichi Narutaki. They fail, and Kato kidnaps Yukari and implants his "demonic seed" within her (and no, that metaphor is not subtle). Hirai commits suicide in part due to the death of Emperor Meiji and his dishonor over his failure to stop Kato.
The story skips forward to 1923. Yukari has had a daughter, Yukiko Tatsumiya, who her brother and others assume is Kato's demonically crafted spawn. By this point, Yukari is mentally unstable and often cared for by Jun'ichi, while Youichirou refuses to admit the "deadly secret" between he and his sister which ultimately lured Kato to them. Plans are underway to modernize Tokyo and a constant theme is how the ancient ways of magic and mysticism are starting to give way to technology and science, yet there still are "realms" that science cannot explain. Kato returns and tries to use Yukiko as a medium to finally trigger Masakado's vengeance, but the spirit refuses to obey. However, the mere meddling with such metaphysical forces causes the Great Kanto quake, which ravages Japan. In real life it was one of the worst earthquakes ever with death tolls, injuries, and missing people totals in the hundreds of thousands. Flames ravaged the area shortly after, with 38,000 people being incinerated in one instance when fires swept into an evacuation area.
The series ends in 1927, with Yukiko now approximately 13 years old. A shrine maiden, Keiko Mekata, has psychic visions of her inevitable conflict with Kato and her destiny to embody "the goddess of mercy," Kannon, and to this end she marries Youichirou to become closer to his troubled family. Physicist Torahiko Terada has been hired to undersee the rebuilding of Tokyo, especially the creation of a modernized subway system which will help make the city less vulnerable to earthquakes. They've also hired a Feng Shui psychic, Shigemaru Kuroda, to make sure they're not disturbing anything supernatural in their digs. Naturally, the workers keep encountering demons and monsters in the tunnels, and the threat of Kato is ever present. Youichirou is still a creep whose "grand solution" is to just kill his sister and/or niece, yet Keiko has the novel idea of just killing Kato. Gee, what a concept! Since Yukiko is now 13, that means she can be stripped naked for about half an episode to be used as a demonic sacrifice by Kato in yet another quest to destroy Tokyo, which is gross. Even the original Japanese VHS box art shows her naked, which is all kinds of disgusting. This leads to a "final" battle underground where Keiko challenges Kato in one section of the underground while Torahiko, Kuroda, and Dr. Makoto Nishimura and his robot Gakutensoku (the first real life Japanese robot ever built) tear through some demons to sever the heart of the "dragon" Kato is trying to unleash. This is kind of a climatic highlight as Kato is wounded and flees (again), and both Tokyo and Yukiko are saved.
But, surprise! Kato isn't dead, of course. However, he does get a wardrobe change as he engages in his latest scheme yet; trying to pull the moon closer to Earth to ravage it with gravitational forces. Is he a demon or Lex Luthor? Kato somehow does this by using his influence over Yukari to get Yukiko to solve some fantastic equation for him which makes it possible (because even demon sorcerers need help with algebra). In a reveal worthy of "CHINATOWN," the pressure of the impending doom from the Moon gets Youichirou to snap and attack Yukiko, who finally reveals that he, and not Kato, is her biological father. Jun'ichi finally gets to beat the crap out of Youichirou, but that's about the only comeuppance he gets; he even keeps his job with the government! Keiko rides an awesome spirit horse provided by Masakado and rides to the abandoned shrine where Kato is holding up for a final showdown. Because this is that kind of anime, eventually the demons strip her naked (of course), but Keiko realizes that Kato cannot be destroyed with violence, but with boundless mercy and good feelings. Essentially, the same thing Ernest P. Worrell figures out in "ERNEST SCARED STUPID" to make Trantor the Troll explode. The result is the same; Keiko overcomes Kato with merciful feelings and erases his quest for vengeance, and they both vanish. Yukiko and Yukari are finally freed of his influence, Tokyo is saved, and Youichirou is still an incestuous jerk. The end.
DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS is definitely one of the "grandfathers" of horror anime available in North America. I could never find all four VHS volumes at the time and in that format it would have cost approximately $80 to own (plus tax), which would have been a bit overpriced and made it feel slow and underwhelming. But as a 2 DVD set for about $25, it is perfectly acceptable. To a degree the "plot" is really just a series of weird or spooky moments strung together with many references to Japanese historical figures. The animation is incredibly good for an OAV; Toei just about reaches theatrical quality. That said, even at 4 episodes and 160 minutes, I'd be lying if I didn't think it had some drag. Yasunori Kato is an iconic villain and was the original inspiration for M. Bison in Capcom's STREET FIGHTER II, since that cloaked uniform and cap really is essentially the formal dress of an Imperial soldier (at least at the turn of the 20th century). The biggest demerit is the extreme uses of nudity and violence towards women which was not in the source material but added for purely titillating and commercial reasons by the anime studio. Before anime got "mainstream," it had a bad reputation because of a lot of the gratuitous nudity and the exploitation of harm to women even in non-hentai releases and DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS may easily be one of the examples of those kinds of things.
Streamline's voice cast for it was about as good as anime got in 1995. It included Cam Clarke (yes, Leonardo from 1987's TMNT who was actually the first voice of Kenada from Streamline's dub of AKIRA), Kerrigan Mahan (the original voice of Goldar from Power Rangers), J.C. Henning, Barbara Goodson (the original voice of Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers), Steve Bulen, Edward Mannix, Michael Forest, and Jeff Winkless as Kato. It is kind of fascinating that so many of those actors are mostly known for kid's stuff yet here they were dubbing an anime full of demons stripping women naked and incest. It fills out a portfolio, I guess. Both Clarke and his TMNT co-star, James Avery (the voice of the Shredder) did a couple of anime dubs for Streamline but then stopped abruptly; probably because the pay was so low even by SAG standards.
DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS, much like the 1988 live action film, only covers a quarter of the story and I wonder if one day it may get an anime revamp which is longer and covers the whole thing, but with (obviously) none of the tacked on nudity. Anime franchises get revamped about as often as American ones. But for now it remains a classic for either horror fans or for infamous reasons, and I didn't mind finally adding it to my eclectic anime collection.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Hielario Tue Mar 14, 2023 5:36 pm
Man, thank you so much for telling us about those last two, I've been curious about them for a while and there's barely any info online.
-Bit disappointed about Goku: Midnight Eye, since It looked so cool in those AMVs set to Perturbator music, but I guess that's 80s comics for you.
-Now I'm slightly sad I didn't buy that Doomed Megalopolis tape I saw at a closing sale years ago, surrounded by hentai and Neogenesis Evangelion ones. Talk about unsold inventory! My occassional craving for stuff set on the "Taisho" period of Japan due to my beloved Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha games probably helps.
(Also: What's wrong with Mad Bull 34?! It's a hilarious pastiche of american violent films of it's era! And at least one of the protagonists fucks, which is a lot better than the average anime).
-Bit disappointed about Goku: Midnight Eye, since It looked so cool in those AMVs set to Perturbator music, but I guess that's 80s comics for you.
-Now I'm slightly sad I didn't buy that Doomed Megalopolis tape I saw at a closing sale years ago, surrounded by hentai and Neogenesis Evangelion ones. Talk about unsold inventory! My occassional craving for stuff set on the "Taisho" period of Japan due to my beloved Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha games probably helps.
(Also: What's wrong with Mad Bull 34?! It's a hilarious pastiche of american violent films of it's era! And at least one of the protagonists fucks, which is a lot better than the average anime).
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Wed Mar 15, 2023 4:36 pm
Hielario wrote:Man, thank you so much for telling us about those last two, I've been curious about them for a while and there's barely any info online.
-Bit disappointed about Goku: Midnight Eye, since It looked so cool in those AMVs set to Perturbator music, but I guess that's 80s comics for you.
-Now I'm slightly sad I didn't buy that Doomed Megalopolis tape I saw at a closing sale years ago, surrounded by hentai and Neogenesis Evangelion ones. Talk about unsold inventory! My occassional craving for stuff set on the "Taisho" period of Japan due to my beloved Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha games probably helps.
(Also: What's wrong with Mad Bull 34?! It's a hilarious pastiche of american violent films of it's era! And at least one of the protagonists fucks, which is a lot better than the average anime).
You're welcome! There hadn't been much interaction here for a while (since my epic SLAYERS binge) so lately I feared seeming like I was indulgently flooding this topic and gave it a rest. My anime collection is definitely eclectic and has many obscure titles, so I am always glad to share it.
- I liked GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE on my rewatch but there is some lost potential. I'll admit in terms of "1980s cyberpunk anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri," I prefer CYBER CITY ODEO: 808 and overall I prefer NINJA SCROLL and DEMON CITY SHINJUKU. I actually liked BIO-HUNTER, which is another short OAV, but that was dubbed in the late 90s by Urban Video and has been out of print ever since.
- If you want DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS, now is the best time to get it! Media Blasters just released it on DVD/blu-ray and you can get either online for about $25. If I'd bought it on VHS for $80 way back I likely would been bored and disappointed, but for under $30 on one disc it is fair. Many of my local Blockbusters and "mom and pop" video stores at the time were infamous for only having a few volumes of it, never all four tapes.
As for MAD BULL 34, it's one of the case examples of anime that I bought when I was a young teenager that was full of gratuitous violence, nudity, and/or harm to women which wasn't hentai (as I never bought hentai). For those not in the know who may be reading this, it stars a hulking cop slash pimp who is part DIRTY HARRY, part DOLEMITE (only white) and part SGT. SLAUGHTER and his new partner, an innocent Japanese teenager. I admit I probably just made it sound awesome, and it does have some entertaining bits. It has four hour-long episodes and at the time Manga Video released it, I could only find three (at a local NOBODY BEATS THE WIZ, no less). My first online anime order ever was getting that fourth tape. My issue with it is much like VIOLENCE JACK, much of the screen time is focused on stripping every female character naked and either showing her get assaulted, threatened to be assaulted or fondled. It's very exploitative and while I "tolerated" that stuff as a teen (I swear I was just in it for the violence), now that I'm 41 that stuff just isn't my bag anymore. Now, in my defence, A LOT of anime from the 1980s and 1990s had this stuff, especially OAV's, so it was almost unavoidable if you watched anything that wasn't DBZ, Sailor Moon, or Samurai Pizza Cats. I also remember the fourth and last episode (which features the daughter of the lead's murdered partner fighting him in a knockoff Xenomorph armor before stripping naked and trying to seduce him) being underwhelming due to both the plot and the animation (which was of lower quality compared to the first three). I vaguely recall it trying to be more serious for the last half, which for MAD BULL 34 (a series that included a bit where the lead character literally straps grenades to his pubic hair, and no I am not kidding) was awkward.
I'll admit I haven't watched any of it in well over 22 years. I just don't have an interest in rebuying it. Discotek Media re-released it a few years ago, but it seems to have gone out of print almost immediately.
For the record, my latest binges have been another Hanna-Barbera cartoon I'd already heard about but never saw, SWAT KATS: THE RADICAL SQUADRON, which was actually excellent. These days all Hanna-Barbera is known for is the subsidiary of Warner Brothers that coughs up a SCOOBY DOO special or TV series every year, but between SWAT KATS and PIRATES OF DARK WATER, they had some good stuff in the early to mid 90s before Ted Turner officially consumed them.
Right now I am binging the 2012 TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES that aired on NICK and was produced about 3 years after Viacom purchased the franchise outright from Peter Laird for $40 million (with an extra $10 million going to 4Kids Entertainment, which at the time was bankrupt but had the TV rights). It's about as long as the 1987 series, only across 5 seasons instead of ten. I was too much of a die hard 2003 TMNT fan to give it a chance 11 years ago, but I'm a bit wiser now and I am enjoying it for what it is. I could fill entire textboots of references for every episode.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Hielario Sat Mar 18, 2023 2:55 pm
Datelessman wrote: If you want DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS, now is the best time to get it! Media Blasters just released it on DVD/blu-ray and you can get either online for about $25. If I'd bought it on VHS for $80 way back I likely would been bored and disappointed, but for under $30 on one disc it is fair. Many of my local Blockbusters and "mom and pop" video stores at the time were infamous for only having a few volumes of it, never all four tapes.
Oooh, that's nice to know. It's a shame I'm neither american nor employed
. Datelessman wrote: My issue with it is much like VIOLENCE JACK, much of the screen time is focused on stripping every female character naked and either showing her get assaulted, threatened to be assaulted or fondled. It's very exploitative and while I "tolerated" that stuff as a teen (I swear I was just in it for the violence), now that I'm 41 that stuff just isn't my bag anymore. Now, in my defence, A LOT of anime from the 1980s and 1990s had this stuff, especially OAV's, so it was almost unavoidable if you watched anything that wasn't DBZ, Sailor Moon, or Samurai Pizza Cats. I also remember the fourth and last episode (which features the daughter of the lead's murdered partner fighting him in a knockoff Xenomorph armor before stripping naked and trying to seduce him) being underwhelming due to both the plot and the animation (which was of lower quality compared to the first three). I vaguely recall it trying to be more serious for the last half, which for MAD BULL 34 (a series that included a bit where the lead character literally straps grenades to his pubic hair, and no I am not kidding) was awkward.
Oh yeah, you may have a point there. I don't remember it being THAT bad, but admittedly it may have glossed over me due to the kind of media it references being just the same, plus the absurdity and exaggeration drenching everything (Heh heh, that scene with the grenades is exactly why I became aware of it, thanks to big man afficionados at twitter
), so you're probably right. Plus, now that I think about it, I only watched the first two chapters. Maybe I would have gotten more tired if I watched the rest, I'm usually warier of that sort of thing. It's the entire reason I didn't buy The Blind Prophet, after all.¡Anyway! I'll add some joys of my own.
-Asked my american neighbour who's a Lovecraft fan to lend me some stuff in his original language, since I suspect the translated editions belonging to my mother weren't well done and that was why they felt underwhelming. I just finished The call of Cthulhu, and it seems I was correct. It had me panting after the end! The delivery may be overgrown, but I think that's what makes the story scary, more than the actual stuff it's describing, or at least for me.
[Yes, I'm aware of the racism in this one. I'm used to filtering through antiquated idiocy.]
Also, it's pretty fun to recognize where some stuff that I've seen in cosmic horror tabletop RPGs came from.
- Troll Corporation by Pacheco & Pacheco (no relation to the deceased superhero comics artist). A delightful discovery! This tome caught my attention among the contents of a weird stuff bin at a pretty great comics store during my last exam trip to the capital, and it had me chuckling for a week and a half.
It's a compilation of a surreal comedy strip about the work life of a group of office personnel, who just happen to work as professional internet trolls, for an extremely successful corporation, whose business is making everybody else's lives miserable through internet misbehaviour for...well, just for profit, since depressed people consume more (the only one having fun is the director, an egotistical workaholic sociopath in a power suit and heels).
The tome compiles a series of 2-6 page stories about incomprehensible anti-advertising campaigns, people who have developed passive aggression to the point of delivering insults through motivational posters, business deals with supernatural creatures, the profitability of destroying women's self-esteem... Interseped between them, there are some less narrative segments parodying typical examples of business content & concepts that get thrown around social media.
"Do you have children?
Then, let me tell you
that you're poisoning them."
The dialogue and plots balance absurdity with chilling realism really well. And the art is not impressive, but it's very well measured and efficient, and it manages to give every character a clearly defined identity with very little, even if it feels completely subordinated to the (admittedly hilarious) dialogue a lot of times. I was already familiar with some of the authors' previous work since they used to make a couple of strips for a fashion supplement, but their work here is longer and more elaborate.
I was a little surprised that I had never heard of it before, since it had everything necessary to achieve notoriety and longevity, but it seems the authors just decided to not continue with it; after a last story where the workers get a sort of happy ending in the form of long paid vacations, there's an epilogue in which the director explains to the readers how, while at the start of the strip (back in the middle of the new tens) the idea of professional internet trolls still felt fantastical enough, the turning of events through the following years made "our" reality too difficult to keep up with. The authors are basically telling us that the joke does not work anymore.
After some googling, I discovered another factor that probably also contributed to its lack of longevity: the strip was part of short-lived indie satirical magazine Pride and satisfaction, which only lasted for a couple of years before crashing due to lack of profits. This book compilation feels like an attempt to preserve what existed of the strip in paper and earn some extra money along the way, putting a nice bow on the whole thing.
Part of that vibe comes from the printing. It's a very nice hardcover with a cool front-and-back illustration where everybody is working at their desks while their shadows project the images of evil fantasy trolls on the fuchsia-colored wall. Also, there's the outline of a trollface superimposed on the back with some sort of transparent varnish, so it's not immediately obvious unless you look carefully. Surprisingly, the interior eschews the glossy paper that's become typical of contemporary color comics for a kind of porous paper similar to the one I've seen at B&W graphic novels. It's nice to have a book that does not insist on making everything look glossy and metallic for once, you know? I missed that.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Mon Mar 20, 2023 11:34 am
I read quite a few comics weekly and have been reading some Palladium tabletop RPG books in my usual misguided hope to reassemble some of my pals for gaming again, even though most are too busy or far away raising families now. I tried reading Renegade's new Transformers game but lost interest despite the beautiful art and layouts. Palladium is as old school as "MEET THE PRESS" but I seem better able to absorb it.
It's a relatively new release from last year, and Media Blasters may offer it in different region codes. Personally I think region codes are stupid and ineffective. They're intended to prevent piracy of media content, which they've failed to do as virtually every media has been pirated and spread online for free eons ago. All it does now is penalize the few honest buyers who still get physical media. Say I go on vacation to London or Hong Kong, go to a perfectly legitimate store, buy a perfectly legal DVD or blu-ray, and then take it home to watch it. I can't. Wrong code. At best I have to go through the bother of buying a player which can read any code (which is also legal). That is baloney.
CD's, which contain music, have no region codes. Despite the fact that music was being pirated online long before whole movies and TV shows (since audio is easier to transfer than video). I've bought a few soundtracks from Japan and France and had no problem. It boggles my mind.
Long before Twitter, Manga Video/Entertainment's own trailers for MAD BULL 34 made sure to include the "crotch grenades" scene. Even folks who never saw it but bought a VHS tape of Manga's in the 90s or early 2000s and fast forwarded through the trailers would know that scene.
Now, as I said before, a ton of anime has those scenes where female characters are stripped naked, fondled, or there is some shower or "hot springs" scene. The term "fan service" was made for a reason. It is somewhat less common now but EXTREMELY common in anime from the late 1980s into the very early 2000s, especially OAVs, since they never had to conform to the censorship standards of a Japanese TV station (which may seem lax compared to American ones but do exist). An easy comparison is that the BIO BOOSTER ARMOR GUYVER OAVs from the late 80s-early 1990s are more violent and contain one "stripped by tentacles scene" for the female lead (which is in the manga), whereas the TV show version from 2005 does not.
If a piece is strong despite that or has some kind of redeeming value in my eyes then I'm not thrilled about that stuff but I endure it. GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE has that stuff (though nowhere to the extreme of MAD BULL 34) but I feel that the overall animation, story, and dub (again, Steven J. Blum) make up for it. NINJA SCROLL is still considered a classic and it's lead heroine has quite a few scenes like that. GOLDEN BOY was actually a hentai as a manga but the OAV toned it down slightly enough to "fan service" levels and it is still a very amusing and strangely wholesome 6 episode series. I'm not some anti-nudity zealot and I acknowledge tons of live action American movies from that same period also had stuff like that (see: almost any film starring Charles Bronson). I did watch the first 3 OAVs of MAD BULL 34 many times during the 90s and nearly all of my (male) pals at the time saw them. I watched the 4th only once and by then I was in college and was just disappointed in the animation quality and the semi-serious tone of the last half of it (which runs counter to the rest of the series, which isn't intended to be taken any more seriously than "COMMANDO"). But nowadays I've outgrown most of my "tolerance" for that stuff and when it comes up I just wait for it to be over glumly.
I am still slogging thru the 2012 TMNT cartoon and enjoying it. I am about to wrap the 3rd season.
Hielario wrote:Oooh, that's nice to know. It's a shame I'm neither american nor employed
It's a relatively new release from last year, and Media Blasters may offer it in different region codes. Personally I think region codes are stupid and ineffective. They're intended to prevent piracy of media content, which they've failed to do as virtually every media has been pirated and spread online for free eons ago. All it does now is penalize the few honest buyers who still get physical media. Say I go on vacation to London or Hong Kong, go to a perfectly legitimate store, buy a perfectly legal DVD or blu-ray, and then take it home to watch it. I can't. Wrong code. At best I have to go through the bother of buying a player which can read any code (which is also legal). That is baloney.
CD's, which contain music, have no region codes. Despite the fact that music was being pirated online long before whole movies and TV shows (since audio is easier to transfer than video). I've bought a few soundtracks from Japan and France and had no problem. It boggles my mind.
Hielario wrote:
Oh yeah, you may have a point there. I don't remember it being THAT bad, but admittedly it may have glossed over me due to the kind of media it references being just the same, plus the absurdity and exaggeration drenching everything (Heh heh, that scene with the grenades is exactly why I became aware of it, thanks to big man afficionados at twitter
Long before Twitter, Manga Video/Entertainment's own trailers for MAD BULL 34 made sure to include the "crotch grenades" scene. Even folks who never saw it but bought a VHS tape of Manga's in the 90s or early 2000s and fast forwarded through the trailers would know that scene.
Now, as I said before, a ton of anime has those scenes where female characters are stripped naked, fondled, or there is some shower or "hot springs" scene. The term "fan service" was made for a reason. It is somewhat less common now but EXTREMELY common in anime from the late 1980s into the very early 2000s, especially OAVs, since they never had to conform to the censorship standards of a Japanese TV station (which may seem lax compared to American ones but do exist). An easy comparison is that the BIO BOOSTER ARMOR GUYVER OAVs from the late 80s-early 1990s are more violent and contain one "stripped by tentacles scene" for the female lead (which is in the manga), whereas the TV show version from 2005 does not.
If a piece is strong despite that or has some kind of redeeming value in my eyes then I'm not thrilled about that stuff but I endure it. GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE has that stuff (though nowhere to the extreme of MAD BULL 34) but I feel that the overall animation, story, and dub (again, Steven J. Blum) make up for it. NINJA SCROLL is still considered a classic and it's lead heroine has quite a few scenes like that. GOLDEN BOY was actually a hentai as a manga but the OAV toned it down slightly enough to "fan service" levels and it is still a very amusing and strangely wholesome 6 episode series. I'm not some anti-nudity zealot and I acknowledge tons of live action American movies from that same period also had stuff like that (see: almost any film starring Charles Bronson). I did watch the first 3 OAVs of MAD BULL 34 many times during the 90s and nearly all of my (male) pals at the time saw them. I watched the 4th only once and by then I was in college and was just disappointed in the animation quality and the semi-serious tone of the last half of it (which runs counter to the rest of the series, which isn't intended to be taken any more seriously than "COMMANDO"). But nowadays I've outgrown most of my "tolerance" for that stuff and when it comes up I just wait for it to be over glumly.
I am still slogging thru the 2012 TMNT cartoon and enjoying it. I am about to wrap the 3rd season.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Wed Apr 05, 2023 12:52 pm
So, I finished the 2012 TMNT animated series. I enjoyed it a lot, but that's not what some folks here want to read. No, people like my flights into the realm of old, obscure anime that tens of people worldwide have heard of. So with that in mind, how about I tell you about another anime I "rebought" from my teenage days of VHS that is out of print and I probably overpaid for, for no good reason. I am talking about AMON SAGA.
AMON SAGA is an OAV from 1986 based on an illustrated novel (or "light novel" in Japan) by Baku Yumemakura with art by Yoshitaka Amano. If that name is familiar, it should be; he is one of the most prolific artists and designers in Japan and the world, best known for GATCHAMAN, TEKKAMAN, CASSHERN, and especially VAMPIRE HUNTER D. He also did art and designs for most of the FINAL FANTASY games from the 1980s into the 1990s (including the most famous instalment FINAL FANTASY VII), and collaborated with Neil Gaiman for a SANDMAN project in 1999. In 1996 alone, he earned $40 million (about $69 million today) for his various works in anime and video games, and sales of prints and so on.
Want an unpopular anime opinion of mine? I never liked VAMPIRE HUNTER D. It was actually one of the first few dozen anime tapes I purchased as a teen and one of the biggest titles I thought was overrated (along with AKIRA, which is beautifully animated and confusing as hell). Most of my problem is the tone doesn't always match. For a vampire slaying saga, the color palette was way too bright, and I am expected to take a vampire slayer seriously who literally has a sentient hand with a face on it that talks to him. He's like the Ventriloquist from Batman (who uses the puppet Scarface to rule the mob, somehow). Now, the sequel, VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST, is awesome. But most of that was due to the animation, more consistent tone, and focusing away from D for at least a third of it. D is kind of like Blade, only with LESS personality or swagger.
Naturally, anything Amano touched eventually got animated, and not all of it was successful or fondly remembered. AMON SAGA is one of those. It's a straightforward "sword and sorcery" story which doesn't have any turns and was never released in America until 2000-2001, when Manga Entertainment (then Manga Video) decided to release it. Clearly if it was gold, someone would have dubbed it during the 90s, and I really have no idea why Manga bothered, aside for the fact that it was an Amano project that nobody else wanted. The box art, which has Amano's designed lead character amid a white background, was noticeable and the DVD version retains that. I remember I bought it when I was about 19 and thought it was alright for a lark. I am only in the mood for "fantasy anime" in fits and starts, and since I wasn't able to get SLAYERS until recently, I mostly dealt with shorter visits to that genre like this, or the original RECORD OF LODOSS WAR OAV series.
So, onto AMON SAGA. The lead character is a young man named...Amon. That should tell you how straightforward this anime is; imagine if LEGEND OF ZELDA was called LINK SAGA or SLAYERS was called LINA INVERSE SAGA.
Manga Video insists all that is 90 minutes on their box, but every other source clocks that OAV as 72 minutes. They pad things out by having a brief "music video" with the lyrical version of the main theme, and then present the English dubbing cast as a clip show with each character, as if we just watched THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. But even with that, it's maybe 80-85 minutes tops. The DVD box also has positive review quotes from Animerica and Wizard magazine; man, that takes me back. Knowing Wizard's staff had frequent preferences to any media which involved monkeys or apes, they probably liked it for the "Dragon-Ape" (which looked nothing like a dragon or an ape, just a red demon thing with claws). Because the dub was done in New York, we have one connection to SLAYERS. Gaius, who steals the entire OAV, was voiced by David Brimmer. His day job is being a fight choreographer for local productions, but he also dabbles in voicework from time to time. He was one of the regulars for 4Kids Entertainment which meant he got a lot of credits on POKEMON, SHAMAN KING, ULTIMATE MUSCLE, and their much hated dub of ONE PIECE. He almost always voices mid-tier villains, so Gaius was practically a chance to show some range. He was credited with 21 episodes of the 2003 TMNT cartoon, mostly as various random villains. And, of course, he voiced the bombastic Prince Philip in two episodes of SLAYERS TRY (the third season and the last to be dubbed in NY by Central Park Media). He's still somewhat active there, especially with NYAV Post, a dubbing studio founded by Michael "Santa Claus" Sinterniklaas. The most recent thing I heard him on was in GKIDS' dub of the CGI film, "LUPIN THE FIRST" (where he voiced, as usual, the mid-tier villain Lambert). Princess Lichia was voiced by Debora Rabbai, who worked on some moderately well known anime from the late 90s to early 2000s like BIRDY THE MIGHTY, AYANE'S HIGH KICK, GEOBREEDERS, and BOOGIEPOP PHANTOM. She's an improv comedian, but Lichia's a pretty generic role and Rabbai didn't put any spice into it. The only other notable voice actor here was J. Robert Spencer, who voiced Mabo and the ill fated Messenger. He's mostly known in NYC for Broadway productions. The only other big anime he voiced was the brilliant, yet depressing, GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES. Dan Olk, who voiced Amon, had a variety of bit parts in some anime during the 90s and the year 2000 but hasn't been credited with anything since. The only "big" anime he dubbed was NOW AND THEN, HERE AND THERE and REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA: THE MOVIE.
AMON SAGA's animation quality was about average for an OAV from 1986; not horrible but not usually impressive. The musical score is pretty memorable, although the lyrical version of the main theme is almost too upbeat, like for a romantic comedy. Some of the action is okay; it isn't overly violent but far more violent than, say, an episode of SHE-RA: PRINCESS OF POWER (which in 1986 was the top fantasy cartoon produced in America). After all my awkward complains about some older anime being rough with their heroines, this one handled a kidnapped princess better than Penny was treated on INSPECTOR GADGET. I originally got it on VHS for $20 in 2001, and for that price I thought it was "alright." I paid about $40 for an out of print DVD (sealed & new) and that was probably too much. Still, despite the fairly straightforward and generic story, I thought it held up better than, say, HURRICAN POLYMAR: HOLY BLOOD or GUY: DOUBLE TARGET. If I had to letter grade it and was feeling very generous I'd give it a B-minus. It isn't anything to be chased down and proclaimed a classic, but something obscure to watch if you want a quickie fantasy anime and don't want to spend more than 2-3 episodes of run time on it. One of those titles generic enough to have fun picking apart or seeing as a lark but nothing offensive or shocking in any way. I wonder if some director in Japan is thinking, "it would have sold better if we showed some boobies" a generation later.
AMON SAGA is an OAV from 1986 based on an illustrated novel (or "light novel" in Japan) by Baku Yumemakura with art by Yoshitaka Amano. If that name is familiar, it should be; he is one of the most prolific artists and designers in Japan and the world, best known for GATCHAMAN, TEKKAMAN, CASSHERN, and especially VAMPIRE HUNTER D. He also did art and designs for most of the FINAL FANTASY games from the 1980s into the 1990s (including the most famous instalment FINAL FANTASY VII), and collaborated with Neil Gaiman for a SANDMAN project in 1999. In 1996 alone, he earned $40 million (about $69 million today) for his various works in anime and video games, and sales of prints and so on.
Want an unpopular anime opinion of mine? I never liked VAMPIRE HUNTER D. It was actually one of the first few dozen anime tapes I purchased as a teen and one of the biggest titles I thought was overrated (along with AKIRA, which is beautifully animated and confusing as hell). Most of my problem is the tone doesn't always match. For a vampire slaying saga, the color palette was way too bright, and I am expected to take a vampire slayer seriously who literally has a sentient hand with a face on it that talks to him. He's like the Ventriloquist from Batman (who uses the puppet Scarface to rule the mob, somehow). Now, the sequel, VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST, is awesome. But most of that was due to the animation, more consistent tone, and focusing away from D for at least a third of it. D is kind of like Blade, only with LESS personality or swagger.
Naturally, anything Amano touched eventually got animated, and not all of it was successful or fondly remembered. AMON SAGA is one of those. It's a straightforward "sword and sorcery" story which doesn't have any turns and was never released in America until 2000-2001, when Manga Entertainment (then Manga Video) decided to release it. Clearly if it was gold, someone would have dubbed it during the 90s, and I really have no idea why Manga bothered, aside for the fact that it was an Amano project that nobody else wanted. The box art, which has Amano's designed lead character amid a white background, was noticeable and the DVD version retains that. I remember I bought it when I was about 19 and thought it was alright for a lark. I am only in the mood for "fantasy anime" in fits and starts, and since I wasn't able to get SLAYERS until recently, I mostly dealt with shorter visits to that genre like this, or the original RECORD OF LODOSS WAR OAV series.
So, onto AMON SAGA. The lead character is a young man named...Amon. That should tell you how straightforward this anime is; imagine if LEGEND OF ZELDA was called LINK SAGA or SLAYERS was called LINA INVERSE SAGA.
- Spoiler:
- Anyway, Amon is a sullen youth with white hair, who travels the land seeking to avenge the murder of his mother by the army of local villain Emperor Valhiss. Valhiss is one of those dudes who seems to be 10 feet tall and clad in a mask and cloak, yet thanks to staging tricks is able to nimbly avoid sword blows. Valhiss' big claim to fame is operating out of a mobile base which is, literally, a mountain sized turtle. Yes, the man literally has built an entire kingdom atop a Kaiju. It not only allows his forces to never be in the same place, but to be able to conquer lands easily by having the giant turtle stomp on cities to soften them up for his army (who are mostly brainless swordsmen). His two key underlings are Denon (captain of the guard and a swordsman with at least half a brain) and Mabo (an old wizard who mostly makes his eyes bug out and mumble incomprehensible magical gibberish). Valhiss, it turns out, seems to have no skin and somehow is able to survive and function with a steam bath treatment and wearing that metal mask and cloak. He's kind of a poor man's Doctor Doom.
Valhiss seems to recruit by staging random competitions in villages, and only appears willing to hire 9 top warriors at a time. Because 8 is too few and 10 is too many. Amon heads into a bar in one such town to infiltrate Valhiss' army to eventually kill him. Once there, he immediately impresses the barkeep by casually downing hardcore fantasy liquor named after snakes, and is also immediately picked on by a barroom bully. That bully is Gaius, a towering fighter (more of a wrestler, really) with a metal skull-cap and a wrestling-like championship belt over his waist. Gaius initially likes Amon's fancy sword, but after he cuts his hand on a bottle trying to grab it, and Amon, the pair spar. Amon's main strategy for fighting a towering brute is to eventually plunge his sword into the ceiling and hang there, out of reach. Gaius is impressed by Amon's guile and agility, and when the rest of the barroom idiots (including one shirtless moron named Vikin) decide this is as good a reason as any to fight each other, Gaius gets in on it. Observing this insanity is Alcan, a rogue who uses a whip and knife and relies more on stealth and cunning, alongside Ho, who is some kind of elf-lizard thing with a tail. Maybe he's a mix of Dark Elf and Kobalt? I have no clue. Ho's entire purpose in this anime is to come out of nowhere and save Amon with a well placed arrow on two occasions. In other words, he's Tuxedo Mask, only without any of the charm, or baggage.
Denon eventually comes around to stage the contest; it is a battle royal in which 9 rope ladders will be laid out for a single man to climb, and will be cut immediately afterward. Amon is one of the last men to qualify due to the fact that he shows mercy to one of the warriors (who Gaius saves him from), and because he spent a few minutes fighting some green demon/Orc guy. Naturally, Gaius, Alcan, Ho, and Vikin also become part of the final 9. At first, their tenure as soldiers for Valhiss consists of hanging around his castle waiting for a job. Amon has various nightmares and flashbacks about his mother's murder, and we see he was trained by the enigmatic swordsman, Ekuna, whose design resembles an early sketch of Vampire Hunter D. The man's described as a poet and carries a lute, so I classify him as some combination of Swordsman Bard. Ekuna adopted Amon after his mother's death as a child, but disapproves of his quest for vengeance (despite spending a decade teaching the kid sword skills), so he secretly tasked Ho with keeping an eye on Amon.
It wouldn't be much of a fantasy story without a princess to rescue, and AMON SAGA has one. She is Princess Lichia, the daughter of King Darai Sem who has been kidnapped by Valhiss (alongside her chaperone, who is credited as "Nanny" in the cast list). Fantasy plots also need treasure, so Valhiss kidnapped Lichia in order to force her father to surrender a map of the legendary "Valley of Gold" as her ransom. Darai Sem has secretly hired Alcan to infiltrate Valhiss' army to rescue the princess, although he is told earlier by a Messenger (that is how the character is listed in the credits) that none of Darai Sem's spies made it through Denon's test. This angers the king enough to melodramatically punch through the window of his ship quarters, but he eventually surrenders the map. This is mostly after the Messenger scares the King with tales of the cruelties that Valhiss may inflict upon Lichia for not getting the ransom, which prove to be unfounded. Don't get me wrong; Valhiss is a creep who lusts after the far younger and nubile teal haired girl. But in the realms of anime OAV villains, he treats her with kid gloves. Valhiss allows Lichia and her "Nanny" to stay in a fully furnished room and even allows a daily swim in a lake for a leisure activity. And while Valhiss goes back on his word and promises to keep Lichia so long as she is "as beautiful as a flower," he never tries to tear off her clothes or rape her. Yes, this is the bar set by mid-1980s anime OAV's. Call him Gentleman Valhiss.
Amon and Lichia briefly meet one night after he sneaks out of his room and spies on Valhiss and his minions, learning of their whole map/kidnapping plot. Lichia covers for him when the guards inspect their room, allowing him to escape. They meet next during a fairly gratuitous scene where Lichia is swimming naked in a lake. Although it isn't so gratuitous because despite her being naked, the anime never shows any real nudity. Clearly, Lichia has never been near GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE. She's attacked by a giant sea serpent which looks like a large phallic object, so that's at least one cliche down. Amon slays it, with an assist from Ho, and Lichia tears off a strip of her robe to use as a bandage over a minor head wound he suffers from the fight. Amon naturally wears it forever. Because nice music plays as they stare at each other, that must mean they're falling in love. It also helps that Amon is the first man Lichia sees who isn't hideous, bald, or has a mohawk.
One unintentionally hilarious thing about this flick is it tries to create unique creatures by combining random ones. One of them are "Owl-Cats," who sound like they should be ruling TikTok but are instead hideous. In a jarring but of unintentional villainous incompetence, the baddies capture the Messenger after the previous night's intrusion and dump him in the pit of another awesome sounding monster, a "Dragon-Ape." They suspect one of the 9 new warriors is the intruder, but when Mabo casts a spell on the Messenger to make him identify which it is, he can't, because he doesn't know any of them. The baddies feed him to the Dragon-Ape anyway, and Amon's gasps of horror are covered by Vikin making a scene about being suspected, throwing everyone off. Denon offers a year's salary up front to any of the nine who give up the intruder, and two twins seem very interested. Eventually, though, everyone's ruses fall apart. Amon tries to kill Valhiss, but is dumped out a trap door and has to fight the Dragon-Ape. Alcon tries to rescue Lichia, but is discovered by Denon and the soldiers. Gaius, who was just wandering around, spots the twins about to jump Amon and offers to team up with them if they'll split that year's salary payment three ways. They refuse and Gaius kills them, but it's a little ambiguous how loyal he really was there. And Vikin also starts staggering around half drunk and beats down some of Valhiss' soldiers, almost by accident. Amon, of course, slays the Dragon-Ape and rescues Lichia, and all the named characters escape on some flying steeds (aside for Vikin, who tries to hang on but is dropped hundreds of feet onto his head and shrugs it off, because he's that kind of comic relief moron).
The gang (Amon, Lichia, Alcon, Gaius, and Ho) travel together into the forest and bond over campfires and fighting off "Were-Cats" (who I named, but they're werewolf cats, so why not). They wander into an abandoned town where Lichia is kidnapped by some invincible golden armored man, who turns out to just be animated armor. She was in fact rescued by three Middle Eastern wizard triplets (they all look the same), who are also protecting the "Valley of Gold" and animating the armor. Despite having an entire army, Valhiss decides to only take a dozen or so with him into the "valley of gold," which initially is just a cave. Denon, at least, is smart enough to send nameless henchmen ahead of him, in case of traps. Since it is nearly the end of the OAV, there are none. The heroes get the jump on the baddies and have their final battles. Alcon manages to kill Denon with a whip shot to the neck, which I guess means he rolled a "Natural 20." Mabo and the wizard triplets have a magical duel, which mostly consists of the triplets merging into a gestalt form and animating their hoop earrings, while Mabo manifests a snake spell. Their fight is about 5 minutes of trippy animation and mumbled gibberish; magic is fun, right? One of the triplets dies but Mabo is eventually killed. And Amon has his climatic final battle against Valhiss (which is also his second battle against Valhiss). Ho proves to be a skilled enough archer to hit Valhiss through the hand to save Amon at a critical moment, but too poor of one to try shooting another arrow when Valhiss starts to strangle Amon for several minutes. Because he's the hero, Amon eventually throws his sword through Valhiss' head and kills him, as the cave with all the gold collapses, for reasons. Lichia and the King offer to allow Amon to stay with them (and basically shack up with the princess, become royalty, and combine their exotic hair colors to make blue haired babies), but Amon decides he'd rather ride off and have further adventures with Gaius and Alcon.
Manga Video insists all that is 90 minutes on their box, but every other source clocks that OAV as 72 minutes. They pad things out by having a brief "music video" with the lyrical version of the main theme, and then present the English dubbing cast as a clip show with each character, as if we just watched THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. But even with that, it's maybe 80-85 minutes tops. The DVD box also has positive review quotes from Animerica and Wizard magazine; man, that takes me back. Knowing Wizard's staff had frequent preferences to any media which involved monkeys or apes, they probably liked it for the "Dragon-Ape" (which looked nothing like a dragon or an ape, just a red demon thing with claws). Because the dub was done in New York, we have one connection to SLAYERS. Gaius, who steals the entire OAV, was voiced by David Brimmer. His day job is being a fight choreographer for local productions, but he also dabbles in voicework from time to time. He was one of the regulars for 4Kids Entertainment which meant he got a lot of credits on POKEMON, SHAMAN KING, ULTIMATE MUSCLE, and their much hated dub of ONE PIECE. He almost always voices mid-tier villains, so Gaius was practically a chance to show some range. He was credited with 21 episodes of the 2003 TMNT cartoon, mostly as various random villains. And, of course, he voiced the bombastic Prince Philip in two episodes of SLAYERS TRY (the third season and the last to be dubbed in NY by Central Park Media). He's still somewhat active there, especially with NYAV Post, a dubbing studio founded by Michael "Santa Claus" Sinterniklaas. The most recent thing I heard him on was in GKIDS' dub of the CGI film, "LUPIN THE FIRST" (where he voiced, as usual, the mid-tier villain Lambert). Princess Lichia was voiced by Debora Rabbai, who worked on some moderately well known anime from the late 90s to early 2000s like BIRDY THE MIGHTY, AYANE'S HIGH KICK, GEOBREEDERS, and BOOGIEPOP PHANTOM. She's an improv comedian, but Lichia's a pretty generic role and Rabbai didn't put any spice into it. The only other notable voice actor here was J. Robert Spencer, who voiced Mabo and the ill fated Messenger. He's mostly known in NYC for Broadway productions. The only other big anime he voiced was the brilliant, yet depressing, GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES. Dan Olk, who voiced Amon, had a variety of bit parts in some anime during the 90s and the year 2000 but hasn't been credited with anything since. The only "big" anime he dubbed was NOW AND THEN, HERE AND THERE and REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA: THE MOVIE.
AMON SAGA's animation quality was about average for an OAV from 1986; not horrible but not usually impressive. The musical score is pretty memorable, although the lyrical version of the main theme is almost too upbeat, like for a romantic comedy. Some of the action is okay; it isn't overly violent but far more violent than, say, an episode of SHE-RA: PRINCESS OF POWER (which in 1986 was the top fantasy cartoon produced in America). After all my awkward complains about some older anime being rough with their heroines, this one handled a kidnapped princess better than Penny was treated on INSPECTOR GADGET. I originally got it on VHS for $20 in 2001, and for that price I thought it was "alright." I paid about $40 for an out of print DVD (sealed & new) and that was probably too much. Still, despite the fairly straightforward and generic story, I thought it held up better than, say, HURRICAN POLYMAR: HOLY BLOOD or GUY: DOUBLE TARGET. If I had to letter grade it and was feeling very generous I'd give it a B-minus. It isn't anything to be chased down and proclaimed a classic, but something obscure to watch if you want a quickie fantasy anime and don't want to spend more than 2-3 episodes of run time on it. One of those titles generic enough to have fun picking apart or seeing as a lark but nothing offensive or shocking in any way. I wonder if some director in Japan is thinking, "it would have sold better if we showed some boobies" a generation later.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Hielario Fri Apr 07, 2023 11:47 am
Honestly, it sounds like the ideal video store fodder: Nothing mindblowing, but a fun way to spend a friday night. I didn't experience that era of anime, but a lot of OVA like that one sound like they were tailor-made for the rental circuit.
Also: I won't deny that I find your posts on old anime tapes more interesting than ninja turtles, but please don't be so harsh on yourself. This is a thread about random shit that we like after all, not a paid magazine.
Also: I won't deny that I find your posts on old anime tapes more interesting than ninja turtles, but please don't be so harsh on yourself. This is a thread about random shit that we like after all, not a paid magazine.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Hielario Sat Apr 08, 2023 12:14 pm
Well, last month was pretty much crap in anything else but I've finally been eating RIGHT on the roleplaying front. I got a place on a weird "Harry Potter meets Poe" game at the forum, I'm on talks for a KULT:LOST DIVINITY game at one of my less regular Discord servers after several months of not seeing anything that I could fit into my schedule, and the NetCon online convention implemented a new reservation system this year that works like a charm, so I'm playing thrice this week if you can believe It! Call of Cthulhu on wednesday, Tactical Waifu on friday (think Lasers & Feelings but with cute anime schoolgirls and guns) and Geist:The Sin-eaters this same sunday. Woohoo!
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Sun Apr 09, 2023 10:10 am
Hielario wrote:Honestly, it sounds like the ideal video store fodder: Nothing mindblowing, but a fun way to spend a friday night. I didn't experience that era of anime, but a lot of OVA like that one sound like they were tailor-made for the rental circuit.
Also: I won't deny that I find your posts on old anime tapes more interesting than ninja turtles, but please don't be so harsh on yourself. This is a thread about random shit that we like after all, not a paid magazine.
I actually intended the start of my last post to read as "good humored snark" and not "passive aggressive bitterness" (my terms), but tone is tough to express in text sometimes and now that you bring it up, it can totally read the wrong way for anyone who isn't me so thanks for pointing this out. I'll try to be more careful about that in the future.
I have written (barely) paid articles online for websites or, these days, Patreon, but they're 99.5% weekly comic book reviews.
It is cool to see you've dipped into RPing online again. I've been RPing on a forum I manage for non-kink stuff for 21 years now, and counting. I used to run two forums (for mostly the same players) but the second forum/game ended years ago. Sometimes my pals would run their own games and I'd play as a player (something I like to do but which doesn't come up often enough with my troupe), but again, those ended years ago. In high school and the start of college my pals and I played tabletop RPG's, including VAMPIRE: THE MASQUARADE (and most of Whitewolf's old "world of darkness" games, though the only other one I played was WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE),SHADOWRUN, and (of course) DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. I used to make my own crude RPG's and we played one of them for over 2 years. They still miss it and want me to re-write it, but I don't have the time or energy. It would need a major overhaul.
These days in terms of tabletop RPG's, my voracious Ninja Turtles fandom got me to dig up Palladium Books' out of print TMNT & OTHER STRANGENESS game from the 1980s. That led to me reading a few of their other, in print games like SPLICERS, NINJAS & SUPERSPIES, and their 2001 second edition of AFTER THE BOMB, I actually really really want to GM that one. We'll see what goes of it.
Yesterday I went to see THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE, which happened to debut almost 30 years after the last Super Mario Bros. film. It was a lot of fun and very good. Kids these days don't know how good they have it compared to the 90s sometimes.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Wed Apr 12, 2023 2:57 pm
bomaye wrote:Mario movie was pretty GOAT
It was. I really liked it, and I am far from alone. It is still insane that Nintendo was so scared by that bomb in '93 that they stayed away from Hollywood until now, and tons of other video game movies came out in the interim. That we live in a world where the most successful video game film franchise is RESIDENT EVIL, with a whopping 7 films within 20 years (and virtually all of them being commercially successful). But, yeah, I might even see the Mario movie again, and I not only can't wait for a sequel, but to see if Nintendo finally makes movies of other franchises (like LEGEND OF ZELDA) and then tries to pull an MCU by teaming them up, like a relaunch of Captain N: The Game Master. But now I may really be showing my age.
Moving on, my next foray into "obscure anime that I originally watched on VHS and have since repurchased on DVD" shifts to another OAV from the early 90s which also hasn't seen much attention. Yet unlike some of the others, it is still in print and is actually about to get a blu-ray release. Unlike some of the other ones I've talked about here, which were sometimes good for a lark or obscurity hounds, this is one which I think is an overlooked gem or a cult piece. The OAV I am talking about today is A WIND NAMED AMNESIA.
Unlike some of the other pieces from my old VHS anime collection, I didn't watch A WIND NAMED AMNESIA as a teenager in high school. I was actually in college when I watched it, and actually used the campus' VHS TV banks (which they had since many on-campus instructional videos were on VHS) to watch it during some break one year. The only other anime I watched this way was RECORD OF LODOSS WAR and PET SHOP OF HORRORS (which I'd rented from a local Blockbuster Video). Now, A WIND NAMED AMNESIA was hardly a new title when I watched it in the early 2000s. But the reason I waited until then to get it had more to do with the official abandonment of the VHS format by virtually the entire anime distribution industry in 2003.
For a little recap, after defeating Betamax and CED in the 1980s (and Laserdisc in the early to mid 90s) as rival formats, VHS was the primary home video system for over a generation. However, DVD's were starting to emerge by the late 90s and by the turn of the 21st century it was becoming obvious that it was the future. "THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN," a movie from 2005, specifically has the starring character Andy, who is a salesman at an electronics store, lecture a customer about this kind of thing. Mainstream Hollywood productions abandoned the format officially around 2007-2008, no longer releasing new home media in that format. Well, for whatever reason (likely the expense of producing separate VHS tapes for subtitled Japanese dubs), the entire anime industry in North America ditched VHS line wide after 2002, at least half a decade sooner than the rest of the entertainment industry. There was no official announcement or joint statement; it just "happened," like a wind blew into town (yes, check out that metaphor). Any company which still had VHS versions of anime in stock was selling them for fire sale prices; I got the box set of RECORD OF LODOSS WAR at an anime con from a representative from Central Park Media for less than $25, which was probably close to wholesale price. The only exception was FUNimation, and THEIR only exception was for DBZ/GT and Yu Yu Hakusho, under the fair minded philosophy that they'd begun to release those series on VHS and wanted collectors to at least be able to finish their runs. But their runs of those were low and nowadays finding an unopened one on eBay will cost you. Other companies didn't care if they stopped a series in the middle; I vaguely recall the first few episodes of the first dub of GTO being released on VHS and then shifting to DVD, and that wasn't the only one. Anime fans were going to upgrade, or risk being out of pace with new releases from 2003 onward.
I, like some people, was in no rush to make my entire home video library obsolete at the time. But this meant that if I wanted new anime without upgrading, I had to try out titles which I had bypassed in the years prior. Now, in the era where the Internet was a shell of what it is now (the mid 90s to very early 2000s), I primarily got my anime via a few sources. I'd only purchased some via mail order catalog a few times, and that was exclusively via VIZ (then Viz Video). I was in college before I started ordering anime online. About 15% of my anime came from a local NOBODY BEATS THE WIZ, and 75% came from a less local SUNCOAST VIDEO. Going to the latter required a train trip so it was almost like a pilgrimage. There weren't any major online sources to read anime reviews back then; it was the time when the best you had were magazines like ANIMERICA or occasionally WIZARD. There were series I'd heard about from peers or those magazines, but many times I'd just waltz into Suncoast, check out their wall of anime tapes and just see what looked "interesting" and usually, what was affordable (i.e. fewer than 4-5 tapes). A few times a pal or two of mine would "make a day of it" during our wasted youth and head to Suncoast with me, and then we'd usually crash at their place and watch the thing. Naturally, as an anime collector on a budget, OAV's were my best friends. One-shot films or very short series were quite affordable compared to, say, SLAYERS or BLUE SEED or even GUYVER. Yet for literal years I had bypassed that lone tape of A WIND NAMED AMNESIA for bigger and better titles. VHS tapes didn't expire so if a shop ordered one and no one bought it, it sat on a shelf forever until someone bought it, or it closed. It didn't help that Suncoast's anime section was alphabetical, and "WIND" is at the very end of that. Well, now it was 2003 and I was beginning to realize that nobody was releasing any new anime on VHS; nothing on the shelf was after 2002, and 2002 was hardly the biggest year, either. I probably just attributed it to a local problem with that shop (maybe sales were down) and it took me time to realize it was a line wide thing. But it led me to try some different stuff I'd bypassed, and one fateful day it came between A WIND NAMED AMNESIA and ROUJIN Z. One had box art featuring a young woman, a man, a giant killer robot and a highway on it. The other had an invalid crawling out of a mecha, almost in confusion. I picked AWNA, and I guess so did society, since that is still in print and ROUJIN Z isn't.
I am not saying that I want to return to an era where I am unable to research a title I was interested in before buying it so I don't waste money on trash. But what I am saying is that former era felt a little more adventurous and sometimes I admit that was part of the charm. It helped anime feel more edgy and cultish, and not the multi-billion dollar industry overseen by titans like Sony or Warner Brothers that is is now. Today if I hear about an anime called TYPHOON APOXY Z, I Google up some reviews, get a consensus and then decide yay or nay, order it cheap on Amazon and go fetch it from a box in a chain pharmacy run by dead-eyed, wage slave teenagers. But back in the 90s or 2000-2002 ish, it came down to that box art, the blurb on the back and what the warning labels were. At the time I was a gore hound so anything that said, "for extreme violence" was on my radar. Sometimes I got a winner and sometimes I wasted $20-$80 on a dud.
Last night I rewatched A WIND NAMED AMNESIA for the first time in over 18 years and likely for the third or fourth time total. Like many OAV's, it began as a "light novel" (illustrated novel) in Japan and was not a manga. It was written by Hideyuki Kikuchi, a familiar figure who also wrote VAMPIRE HUNTER D, DARKSIDE BLUES and WICKED CITY, which all got animated. The director, Kazuo Yamazaki, the box art proudly proclaims also directed NINJA SCROLL, and along with episodes of SLAYERS and URUSEI YATSURA (which in America was known as LUM THE INVADER GIRL). The OAV has a limited cast of only about 5-6 characters and Central Park Media's box for it goes out of their way to link the Japanese voice actors to other well known anime. This was how you tried to sell a title in the pre-Internet days; stick "FROM THE ERRAND BOY BEHIND GHOST IN THE SHELL" or so on on it. I am glad I didn't get it as a teenager because I would have been a bit too impatient for it. The OAV is 80 minutes long and while far from perfect, is actually a fairly thought provoking science fiction title. Hideyuki Kikuchi was known for dark supernatural stuff with a hint of cyberpunk, but aside for some moderate cyberpunk, A WIND NAMED AMNESIA is more of a sun drenched science fiction tale with a nearly optimistic message which takes place entirely within the United States. It reminds me a lot of some sci-fi movies from the 1970s, only animated in 1990. Central Park Media released it in 1994, and originally released it on DVD in 1998. Discotek Media re-released it on DVD around 2016 and will be releasing a blu-ray version this year.
- Spoiler:
- For a story originally written in 1983 (the OAV came out seven years later), A WIND NAMED AMNESIA takes place only a few years in the future. The titular "wind" swept across the Earth around 1999 and the story picks up about 2 years later, according to the box blurb (the OAV itself is a bit vague on this). It's the turn of the 21st century and the Unites States is in shambles. Buildings are crumbling, the roads are poorly maintained, and what few people seem to be about grunt and act like animals, fighting over scraps of food. As one random enclave in San Francisco fight over a salami, a large bipedal robot bursts upon the scene. It's skeletal pilot long since dead, it is a Guardian and it orders the crowd to disperse, or die. It's kind of like ED-209 from the ROBOCOP franchise, and just as patient; it opens fire on the people barely two seconds later, slaughtering them mercilessly. Out of nowhere, a long haired teenage guy in a headband and t-shirt rides out in his jeep to try to protect the crowd, shooting at the robot with a handgun. Think of him as a younger, more optimistic, and leaner version of Snake Plisskin with both eyes. The scene is watched by an enigmatic silver haired woman in a long dress and no shoes, who tells the man where to shoot the Guardian to disable it. The pair leave together and have the first of many exposition sequences.
Taking shelter in one of the many abandoned buildings nearby, introductions and origins are in order. The woman is named Sophia (or at least she prefers to be called that), while the young man is named Wataru. They each are surprised that the other can speak and appear capable of "normal" intelligence and skills. Sophia was impressed that Wataru wanted to protect the people from the robot, since such altruism is rare. Thru Wataru's extended flashback sequence, we learn what has become of America (and the entire world). Like everyone else, Wataru has no memories of his early life or even his original name. He vaguely recalls coming from a small, friendly town on the west coast. On a typical day near the turn of the century (when a large wedding was taking place), "the wind" swept through. This "wind" caused everyone to forget everything. This isn't sitcom amnesia where people forget their identities but remember everything else; this is total amnesia where everyone was reduced mentally to that of infants, barely able to remember how to walk or clothe themselves. No one was immune and the effects were immediate. There were many disasters and fires as people flying planes or driving vehicles (like fuel trucks) literally forgot how to drive midway, and crashed immediately. Parents forgot children and families forgot each other; all skills and memories were gone. People immediately started acting out their base instincts; seeking food and shelter, and responding to many threats with a "fight or flight" reaction. The small and elderly were pushed aside or killed in the mad dash for food, even if it was plentiful. Normal human civilization was over in an eyeblink.
Wataru had been one of them, clad in a tattered suit and simply wandering around in search of food and shelter. At one point he tries to eat some white roses, and gets sick. He breaks into a house, which has the dead bodies of two adults and their toddlers each trying to share sausage links from a fridge. The teen stole it from them out of ignorance, and was freaked out by their crying, along with a reflection of himself that he saw in a full length mirror. No amount of science fiction can explain why anyone would have a full length mirror in the kitchen. He runs in a panic and finds himself stumbling onto the ruins of a military facility somewhere in Montana. He finds a fairly typical scene for early 90s OAV's; a sullen teenager with platinum blond hair in a wheelchair in some kind of conflict with a "psychic cyborg" who uses telekinesis to levitate a large hunk of rock over his head. The story already has killer robots, why not psychic cyborgs, right? For reasons he can't explain, Watarus chose to try to help the weaker of the two, and throws rocks at the cyborg. The telekinetic madman dispatches the intruder easily, but the wheelchair bound young man is able to draw a pistol and shoot the cyborg in the head, killing him. The young man's name is Johnny, and he quickly decides to take in his rescuer and help him evolve as much as possible.
Johnny explains that they're in a top secret U.S. military facility designed to create living weapons. "The wind" blew in shortly after it was set up, and some of the "patients" like the psychic cyborg were able to run amok. Johnny's bionic implant is in his brain and allows for unlimited data capacity, as well as protecting him from "the wind." He names Wataru (after the Japanese word for "Traveller") and uses a machine to "amplify" Wataru's mind so that he has the mental capacity of a 5 year old. At this level he can speak in complete sentences and more importantly, take to lessons much swifter. Johnny teaches Wataru useful survival skills like how to forage, drive a jeep and shoot guns, but also about the wonders of the world and a curiosity to explore. It's implied that Johnny is terminally ill and knows he doesn't have long to live, but he keeps this from Wataru, Wataru acts as Johnny's caretaker, primarily responsible for going into a local town for supplies in between lessons. By the next summer, Wataru is about 18-19 and has long hair, and one last zap by "the brain machine" has gotten him roughly to the level of a ten year old (which is about the average maturity for a teenager). Johnny dies in his sleep during one supply trip, and after burying him, Wataru decides to honor him by taking on the mission that he'd been trained for. Johnny wanted Wataru to explore both the country and the world if need be to see if the rest of humanity was effected by "the wind," and if so, to do his best to reteach them all of the ancient lessons and skills they'd forgotten to survive. Johnny had three theories about "the wind:" that it was either a military weapon, an experiment gone wrong, or aliens (in that order). Wataru seems to have clung to the alien theory, which Sophia runs with. One of the lines which stuck with me even from my original viewing is Sophia stating that simply because aliens from space may have had superior abilities to humanity didn't mean they were any wiser.
Sophia essentially replaces Johnny in Wataru's life; someone who can deliver long monologues of exposition when needed. She has undefined psychic powers that are convenient to the plot, especially in a world where hardly anyone can talk beyond a grunt. Johnny claimed that there were other "psychic experiments" in the military facility besides him and the cyborg who'd escaped, but that's really a red herring amid all of the "alien" talk. Sophia wants a ride to New York City, which is all the way across the coast from California. Wataru agrees to take her, but only if they can stop at major cities along the way so he can see how people are faring and honor Johnny's wishes. Sophia agrees and seems to be more interested in this journey than her final destination, although she makes a "bet" with Wataru that despite his quest, he won't pick up anyone who will want to follow him. Now, this easily provides fodder for various "episodes" where the two come upon a place and have an adventure. It easily could have filled a series. But at 80 minutes, they really only have time for adventures in two cities before the climax. Sophia, by this point, knows far more about everything than even Johnny did, even if she never reveals more than Wataru needs to know at any given moment. The Guardian was another military weapon designed for "peacekeeping" duties, but with a fully automated system it was able to endure beyond the death of it's original pilot (who likely suffocated or died of starvation or dehydration after "the wind" hit). Even worse, the robot has a self-repair mode, even capable of cannibalizing parts from other machines to rebuild itself. It now sees Wataru as it's primary target and will stalk him relentlessly across the coast.
The pair's first "episode" is in Los Angeles. They once again find two people being accosted by a pack of savage men, only it is more dangerous because one of the savages has a pistol and has learned how to shoot it (at least from close range). Wataru saves them and Sophia gives him the psychic tutorial. One is a teenage girl about Wataru's age named Sue and her protector is a large, burly man named Little John (because all large, burly men in fiction have to have ironic names like Tiny or Micro or so on). Unlike most of the people effected by the wind, Little John has some memory of who he was thanks to a photograph he was able to find. In a prior life, Little John had been a sheriff, and Sue is his daughter, so he is devoted to protecting her. Sophia explains that Sue had been chosen as the human sacrifice to the "god" who rules over L.A. now. It's considered a "wedding" but their "god" is bloodthirsty and she is not expected to survive the "marriage." Ever a living Wikipedia, Sophia explains that religions revolving around ritual sacrifice were very common on Earth historically, and with all of "civilization" ended it isn't surprising that some groups have returned to it. Sophia asks if Wataru is willing to waltz into a new community as a stranger and judge their entire social structure. Wataru finds human sacrifice horrifying and feels that Sue has a right to live her own life.
Now, AWNA has two extended sequences involving female nudity and as I have often criticized in a lot of my OAV rewatches, almost all of them feel gratuitous at best: that was how the term "fan service" appeared. As someone who watched tons of OAV's from the 80s and 90s where they could get away with more things than a TV show, you really have no idea how many sequences I have watched in anime where "female nudity" involved some kind of assault. Even stuff I watched recently like GOKU: MIDNIGHT EYE or HURRICANE POLYMAR: HOLY BLOOD had tons of that. Well, while AWNA has two such sequences, the unique thing about it as an OAV from 1990 is they're both depicted as...positive. Wataru and Sophie decide to take Little John and Sue to the beach, in part because Johnny taught Wataru that rediscovering how to have fun and enjoy things sometimes was as vital to humanity as driving cars. Sue (who seems to have a crush on Wataru although nothing comes of it) is delighted and there's a long sequence where she strips to her panties and runs along the beach, and plays in the surf. It is gratuitous, sure, but it's not an assault or an attack or anything. If anything, the scene is upbeat and happy.
By nightfall, Wataru leaves the group to collect supplies; by the time he comes back, the only supplies he seems to have found are bottles of booze. Just what did he and Johnny DO at night in that military facility? Their new friends are gone, and Sophia didn't stop them; she acts as an observer providing exposition for this trip, unless Wataru is about to die. Sophia explains that Sue knew that if she'd fled from L.A., their "god" would have just chosen another "bride," so she's decided to fulfill her destiny with Little John in tow. Her playful romp on the beach was intended as her last day of life, and she'd wanted to make the most of it. Wataru races off to try to rescue her. Of course, the "god" is anything but. It's a massive hi-tech construction machine that a "Shaman" has figured out how to use, and like most men who get a little bit of power, he's acting like a deranged, violent tyrant about it. When Sue is a little late for the "ceremony," the Shaman goes on a rampage, killing people randomly with the machine. Even after Sue arrives, and Little John is dogpiled by "followers," the Shaman never stops his rampage, and one of the lasers from his machine kills Sue instantly. Wataru takes aim from a distance which might impress Golgo 13 or Jigen and shoots the Shaman dead in the cockpit with one round. The guy must've fallen on the controls because his machine careens to the side and explodes, Hollywood style. Well, it WAS L.A. At any rate, Little John is heartbroken, but Wataru gives him a crash course on some of the lessons Johnny taught him. He teaches the big man how to use a rifle, a can opener, and more importantly, to wear his badge on his chest again and protect others. Much like Captain Kirk, Wataru has totally ruined a society, but replaced it with something more progressive as Little John takes over as a kinder leader.
Wataru and Sophia next head to Nevada, and specifically to Las Vegas. Many of the old hotels are still standing, such as the Flamingo. The Guardian catches up to them again, and Wataru tries to destroy it by lobbing a grenade into it's cockpit. Their jeep crashes and Wataru is stunned to wake up in a modern looking hospital tended to by an elderly doctor. He's even more confused to be met by a teenage nurse, and then a few moments later the doctor is dressed as a patient who seems to have dementia. He's downright puzzled when he sees the pair dress up like random strangers meeting at a park outside. The old man is Mr. Simpson (who is balding) and the teenager is Lisa (who is even blonde), and yes, we are having a reference to "THE SIMPSONS" in a serious Japanese OAV made in 1990. Then again, the original novel was written in 1983, so could this have predated "THE SIMPSONS"!? At any rate, things come to a head when Lisa next dresses as the mayor and invites Sophia and Wataru to dinner. Used to canned food, foraged plants, and scraps, Wataru can barely comprehend a fully cooked meal prepared by robots. He's caught on that Lisa and Mr. Simpsons are playacting roles of everyone in the town, and Sophia explains that everything within this city is run by machines controlled by a computer. This "Eternal City" was completed just before "the wind" happened and although it's computer was programmed to see to everyone's welfare, it got confused when all the people in the city started acting like wild savages. It's drones slaughtered thousands of them to "maintain order" and the rest fled or died...aside for Mr. Simpson and Lisa. In exchange for seeing to it that the pair are well cared for and retain their normal human memories, the pair must "act out" the rest of the town's citizens forever, until they die. The computer speaks through Lisa and offers to allow Sophia and Wataru to stay within the Eternal City in comfort and luxury. Wataru just sees it as a cage despite the comforts, and Sophia disables the security drones. She comments that the computer may talk a big game about being fair and reasonable, but isn't much different than the Shaman in using force in the end. Sophia demands that the computer release Mr. Simpson and Lisa so that they may choose for themselves whether they want to remain. Lisa is eager to explore the outside world, but Mr. Simpson is scared and wants to remain. The three of them take off in Wataru's jeep for a full dozen yards until Lisa realizes that Mr. Simpson will be all alone without her, and she's grown attached to him as a father. At the last minute, Lisa jumps from the jeep and returns to the city. Wataru is dejected, but Sophia claims that he technically won their bet, since Lisa did technically agree to travel with them. She'd never specified for how long, and seems pleased that Lisa made the decision to remain for herself, without being directly controlled by the computer.
Not long after this, Sophia admits what has become "obvious." The "wind" which gave everyone amnesia was indeed caused by aliens, and Sophia is one of them. She claims her people had watched Earth forever, but became concerned when humanity started making rudimentary attempts to travel to space without changing their aggressive ways. Secondly, her people also believed that erasing the collective memories of Earth civilization would allow humanity a "clean break" and a second chance at the "happiness" they claim to want. Apparently it never occurred to them just how many deaths that would cause or that humanity would likely spend generations in barbarism. However, having travelled with Wataru on what was a recon mission, she's begun to see her people's choice as "a little harsh." Sophia expects Wataru to hate her, but aside from being aloof for a little while, he takes it in stride. He's more curious about her alien race and abstract things about sunsets on her planet. It also probably helps that she's a hot woman, and doesn't look like a Klingon. Wataru becomes concerned that he's enjoying traveling with Sophia so much that he's losing sight of the mission Johnny planned for him. They visit Washington, D.C. and sit on the steps of the Lincoln Monument, which is when another symbol of America, the Guardian, catches up to them again with another hodgepodge form and extra missiles. The robot chases them across the interstate from Philadelphia to, finally, New York City. Wataru tries using gasoline and a spark to light it ablaze, but this only buys them a few minutes or hours head start on the Guardian.
Sophia prepares to separate with Wataru, since this is where the aliens are supposed to pick her up. Wataru has decided that as the last intelligent representative of America, it's his responsibility to destroy the Guardian before it continues to wantonly attack people as a ghost of the military industrial complex. He prepares for a final battle against it, but it initially doesn't go very well. He drops a grenade from his sack by accident, and some machine gun fire from the robot detonates it, blasting Wataru through a wall. Wataru's injured and seems to have broken or fractured his arm, but he shrugs it off pretty quickly. He leads the machine to the top of a skyscraper, while the Guardian hacks into the building's still functional security cameras to determine where it's target is going. Proving to be smarter than ED-209, the Guardian takes an elevator to the roof instead of trying to navigate the stairs. Wataru rigs the rest of his grenades to a simple wire trap involving much of the nearby structure, and although the blast sends him flying (and the Guardian shoots him in the torso), the robot is finally blown apart by the blast and impaled on a series of girders. Wataru is rescued from the fall and recovers from his injuries via "sexual healing" from Sophia. I am not kidding; the alien woman once again saves him and decides she'd like to sleep with him before beaming off to space. This is the second major extended nude scene and it's another rarity for OAV's at the time: a mutually consensual sex scene. Wataru's shy at first but gets into it, and is actually pretty tender about it. Usually the only anime scenes close to this which go on for anywhere near as long involve GOLGO 13, who has a habit of bringing prostitutes to screaming orgasms despite barely moving at all.
The OAV ends with the alien spaceship lowering into New York airspace, and it's in the form of a metallic city-size orb. Sophia explains that it isn't up to her whether or not the aliens will give humanity their memories back. Her job was just to make a report and give information about the situation to higher ups, who'll make the final decision. The sight of the spaceship seems to captivate many of the primitive people in New York, as Wataru remembers a lesson Johnny taught him: how to fold a leaf and make it into a crude whistle to hum a tune with. Although Sophia hopes that her people conclude that their treatment of humanity was unfair, Wataru is bolstered by their meeting and more determined than ever to continue Johnny's mission. A few people in the background seem to take notice of Wataru's whistling, almost as if he is the Piped Piper.
It's quite a trip. The animation quality is very good for an OAV; near or at theatrical grade. It was dubbed by Manga Entertainment in the UK and Australia and Central Park Media in the U.S. (which used Manga's dub). Adam Henderson stars as Wataru and he's a British actor who seems to bounce between the UK and Canada, and his resume shows that. He's had supporting parts in a slew of random TV shows like HIGHLANDER, COLD SQUAD, DARK ANGEL, FRINGE, ARROW, and SECOND CHANCE, along with some anime and cartoons like X: THE MOVIE, A.D. POLICE FILES, MAD BULL 34, NEW DOMINION TANK POLICE, MASTER KEATON, SHERLOCK HOLMES IN THE 22ND CENTURY, and INU YASHA. Any actor who has been in Canada for five minutes, by law, MUST have a role in either INU YASHA or STARGATE: SG-1. He does a good job with Wataru, playing up his youthful curiosity and optimism about things despite being in some dire situations. Denica Fairman co-stars as Sophia and she's been in another hodgepodge of projects, but some anime geeks may know her best as B-Ko from the original PROJECT: A-KO. An uncredited Bob Sessions voices the Guardian, and I know him best as the star of VIOLENCE JACK, but he also voices various tough guys in anime like CRYING FREEMAN and ANGEL COP, as well as the villain Rebi Ra from one of my faves, DEMON CITY: SHINJUKU. Mr. Simpson was voiced by Peter Marinker, who's also done a ton of stuff but may be most infamous for dubbing over Sam J. Jones' voice for 1980's "FLASH GORDON." Director Mike Hodges for whatever reason didn't like Jones' voice in the movie as Flash so in post production he insisted on him being dubbed over for all but one or two lines.
I've seen some reviews online and on YouTube which tear this OAV a new one. I'll admit it has some problems. The biggest is the uneven pace. There are some fast paced and exciting moments amid many extended sequences of narration and voiceover monologues. I wouldn't say it drags but there are many moments where some character is explaining things because it would take too long to try to do it without an "infodump." I suppose Sophia is pretty casual about her revelation at the end and Wataru doesn't hold her to any account, but considering she's not even a middle manager, it seems fair to me. And some people don't like "post-apocalyptic" anime unless it involves biker gangs or skinless, cannibalistic giants. Actually, for a post-apocalypse tale, almost everything takes place in daylight. I enjoyed it as a sci-fi story more than an action yarn and it is at least a unique way to go about a post-apocalypse. And if viewers want to go there, there is definitely some "Ho Yay" between Wataru and Johnny, though it never reaches the level of Ryu and Ken from STREET FIGHTER II V (where the "best friends" swim naked in a pool together). The Simpsons stuff may or may not be intentional, and it is a little awkward to only have a handful of named characters and that two of them are named John. That is some NEWHART level awkwardness ("This is my brother Darryl, and my other brother Darryl"). That said, it's less confusing than a lot of sci fi anime out there and it's incredibly rare for any nude scenes in post-apocalyptic anime to not be violent assaults. I'd definitely recommend a viewing for an anime fan who wants to test out a lessor known sci fi movie. It isn't perfect but it definitely has it's moments.
Just so long as you're fine with a story which includes psychics, cyborgs, killer robots, and aliens which isn't a shounen TV series.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Mon Apr 24, 2023 5:45 pm
My latest adventure into anime took me off the path of previously viewed titles that I'd owned on VHS in high school or college. In fact, it was a short anime series I'd never seen before, that actually came out in the mid-to-late 2000s. It is also the first anime I've watched in many years that was based on a video game, and perhaps the first not based on a fighting game. I am speaking of "UTAWARERUMONO," at least the first 26 episode series from 2006. It is based on a popular "adult tactical visual novel" game developed by Leaf in Japan. In addition to this 26 episode TV series, there was a 3 episode OAV series from 2009-2010 and a second 25 episode series from 2015-2016 (to coincide with a new game). The game is obviously popular in Japan, but I doubt how hot the series is in the U.S. The 3 episode OAV are untold "episodes" from the 2006 original series (stories from the game that didn't get into the TV show), with the sequel series in 2015 basically being a relaunch. I saw a DVD box set of this on sale, and did my usual online research and determined that out of the three versions of an UTAWARERUMONO anime, this original one was "the good one." I like owning "the good one," so I gave it a try.
AD Vision (ADV) spent over $109,000 to secure the license rights to this anime in 2006; we know because after ADV crumbled a few years later, some of their financial records came out. They dubbed and released the series in 2007, but by 2008 the company was already in the red and selling off licenses, and that was when FUNimation obtained it, along with quite a few other former ADV licenses. They re-released in as a S.A.V.E. box set around 2009-ish and that's the set still in print.
Now, as someone who never played the game, I can't tell what if anything was changed between mediums. I also can't tell what an "adult tactical vision novel" is. What I can tell you is the anime is a mixture of a fantasy RPG battle tactics simulator with a good dose of "harem syndrome," and a pinch of borderline incest. My instinct says it is actually tamer with the romance/nudity angle than the games are, but I could be wrong. At any case, the anime does feel very much like a few fantasy RPG's I've played (or watched friends play) where the hero encounters various other characters, occasionally former bosses, and unites them all for each further campaign with the storyline getting more complicated and bat-crap insane by the end. And hoo boy, does this one have some insanity. As well as some very difficult names to spell. It also features a since scandalized voice actor in the English dub, which I'll comment on below.
Aside for the creepy borderline incest stuff which I am staggered was featured in an anime after the 1990s, I enjoyed this just a smidge more than I expected to. It is a unique fantasy piece with some interesting characters, some riveting battles and some solid dialogue. The animation is pretty good for a TV series from 2006, with some early cell-shaded CGI which actually doesn't look like trash (and looks no worse than some of the same stuff from TIGER & BUNNY, which came a half decade later).
UTAWARERUMONO was dubbed by ADV's main dubbing studio of the time, Amusement Park Media (which is now Sentai Studios). As such, the voice cast is full of ADV veterans. John Gremillion is one of them and he'd been voicing anime for them since the late 90s, and he has bit parts or additional voices credits in dozens of anime titles. I do wonder if he made Hakuoro sound a little older than he's supposed to be, since a few characters call him "kid" or don't seem shocked that teenage girls want to romance him. Then again, in Japan, the age of consent is 16. It is quite a reunion of voice actors from RahXephon like Kira Vincent-Davis as Eruru and Chris Patton as Oboro; I'll always know him as Sho Fukamachi in the 2005 era GUYVER series. I'll give a shout out to Luci Christian's Kuuya, as I haven't heard her voice too many characters so morally ambiguous.
And now the problematic one. Benawi was voiced by Vic Mignogna, and this is the first time I've stumbled across an anime with him in the regular cast since "the incident." I assume everyone reading these knows what I am talking about, but I may as well recap. Vic Mignogna had been dubbing anime since 1999 and achieved fame as Edward Elric from the FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST anime and to a lessor degree Broly in DBZ movies, but he's had roles in virtually every big anime of the 2000s and 2010s such as BLEACH, NARUTO, JO JO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE, D.N. ANGEL, FULL METAL PANIC, and some DIGIMON productions (among many others). I think he also sang the opening song to DRAGON BALL KAI. In 2019, after Mignogna achieved more attention by reprising the role of Broly in DRAGON BALL SUPER: BROLY, folks on Twitter started accusing him of sexually harassing them at conventions and other places, with some testimonials going all the way back to 1989 and involving underage girls. Voice actresses Jamie Marchi and Monica Rial encouraged and confirmed such testimonials, saying he'd sexually harassed them, too. Tammi Denbow, high ranking HR administrator at Sony Pictures (FUNimation's parent company) opened an internal investigation. They fired him a week later and terminated all contracts with him, and ROOSTER TEETH followed suit, which included his start of the dub of THE MOROSE MONONOKEAN. Various anime and comic conventions also terminated his appearances there. Mignogna denied all of this and rallied fans online to donate over a quarter of a million dollars for legal fees so he could sue everyone. He filed a million dollar lawsuit not only at FUNimation, but at Rial, Marchi, and other people who accused him. Also drug into this was Migogna's ex wife, Michele Spect, and allegations he also sexually harassed Japanese singer and voice actress Mari Iijima (best known as Lin Minmay in various MACROSS projects). FUNimation's defence also included affidavits from all of the associated parties as well as the fans who'd made the testimonials on Twitter. To date, all of Mignogna's lawsuits have been dismissed, all of his appeals have failed, and he's been ordered to pay for the legal fees of those he accused. By judges in Texas, a place hardly known for defending women from blond haired, blue eyed 60 year old white men.
And since anime is well known for franchises led by women or starring mostly women, naturally all of fandom was deeply troubled by this shocking exploitation of the women within their communities or the medium and rose to inspire open mindedness and concern for--
HAH, fooled you! Venture into almost any YouTube video featuring Mignogna or his work and you'll read mouth foaming defences of him as if he is Richard Kimble on the run from the One-Armed Man. They may be a vocal minority, but it became a smaller version of the Gamergate or Johnny Depp trial where "those fans" have rallied around a problematic actor for exactly the reasons you think. And much like those geek scandals, believing the "accused's" side of things means believing things which really make no sense. Namely, that Sony, FUNimation, two voice actresses, and a few fans and ex-employees formed a conspiracy to destroy the career of Vic Mignogna because...just because. Maybe he knows Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone, or is the lost Lindbergh baby, or was behind the Sony hack, or some reason mere mortals cannot fathom. That FUNimation, a company (like many) who exploits the business rules of Texas to pay voice dubbers almost nothing while raking in millions for their work, would choose to fire one of their biggest names and risk losing revenue just because they, I don't know, didn't like him (and not because it is against the law to cover up for a sexual harasser and they'd learned enough to know they'd be liable if they didn't take immediate action). It's absurd. But it was tough to see his name on the cast list and not think about all this.
The irony is that if Vic Mignogna did a genuine apology and tried to actually own up and improve, he may have already been "forgiven" by some studio and been working again now, 4 years later. Instead he's the one keeping this scandal fresh with all of his useless lawsuits. Monica Rial and Jamie Marchi even started a podcast to talk about this case which just won't go away (the last rejected appeal was in December 2022). My inner cynic is surprised he hasn't become an announcer for Fox News or Alex Jones by now.
So, UTAWARERUMONO; a surprisingly interesting, yet weird, anime fantasy based on a game. If you skip the English dub you ignore the memories of the scandal.
AD Vision (ADV) spent over $109,000 to secure the license rights to this anime in 2006; we know because after ADV crumbled a few years later, some of their financial records came out. They dubbed and released the series in 2007, but by 2008 the company was already in the red and selling off licenses, and that was when FUNimation obtained it, along with quite a few other former ADV licenses. They re-released in as a S.A.V.E. box set around 2009-ish and that's the set still in print.
Now, as someone who never played the game, I can't tell what if anything was changed between mediums. I also can't tell what an "adult tactical vision novel" is. What I can tell you is the anime is a mixture of a fantasy RPG battle tactics simulator with a good dose of "harem syndrome," and a pinch of borderline incest. My instinct says it is actually tamer with the romance/nudity angle than the games are, but I could be wrong. At any case, the anime does feel very much like a few fantasy RPG's I've played (or watched friends play) where the hero encounters various other characters, occasionally former bosses, and unites them all for each further campaign with the storyline getting more complicated and bat-crap insane by the end. And hoo boy, does this one have some insanity. As well as some very difficult names to spell. It also features a since scandalized voice actor in the English dub, which I'll comment on below.
- Spoiler:
- The male lead in the series is Hakuoro, but that isn't even his real name. He was found in the middle of a forest in a strange land where everyone is an animal-person with ears and tails of various animals (usually dogs, foxes, cats, and rabbits), aside for a class of angelic like winged people who are seen later. Not only does he have no memories of his past, he has a gnarly mask over his face that he cannot remove. Usually this happens after Saturday night at a comic con if you use too much spirit gum on a cosplay suit. He is found by a young woman named Erurū, an apprentice healer to her grandmother Tusukuru and kid sister Arurū. For reasons which remain puzzling at the end, Tusukuru gives the stranger not only the clothes and weapon of her deceased son, but his name. Aruru is about six and quickly adopts Hakuoro as her new father, but Eruru is less convinced at first and has a bit of a crush on him. As usual for these kinds of settings, Hakuoro has found himself in the middle of drama. The village's local emperor is a tyrant, demanding excessive tributes from the villagers with Eruru's former friend, Nuwagi eventually acting as a middle manager. The area is also "protected" by a giant Siberian tiger, Mutikapa, who goes berserk once her shrine is destroyed by Nuwagi (in a fit over Hakuoro daring to defend Eruru and catch one of his punches) and starts randomly murdering and devouring people. Mutikapa's fur is immune to all weaponry, but Hakuoro figures out that water makes this useless, and the beast can be killed once drenched. He teams with the axe carrying local Teoro, who is known for his mustache and calling everyone "kid." Aruru winds up adopting and raising the kitten of Mutikapa and names it Mukkuru. It quickly quadruples in size with enough feedings, and Aruru rides on him bareback. You'd think a massive tiger immune to all metal weapons would be very useful in a fantasy warefare story, but Mukkuru is used very sparingly.
Things come to a head when Hakuoro meets Oboro, an arrogant and brash young swordsman with two twin archers for guardians and a terminally ill little sister, Yuzuha, who is also blind. Tusukuru helps tend to the sick child, using a very rare and expensive medicine to do so. Despite being ill, Yuzuha is a sweet little girl who takes to Hakuoro instantly and often has to calm down her aggressive big brother. It is Oboro who arguably sets the main events of the series in motion, or at least speeds things along. He decides to try to steal this medicine from the emperor's castle, since he controls the supply of it. Oboro fails, but in retaliation the emperor sends Nuwagi to bully the villagers into surrendering the thief. This eventually devolves into a near riot, which Nuwagi slashing Tusukuru with his sword. It proves to be a fatal wound and the beloved old healer dies. Oboro demands revenge, but gets his stupid butt captured by the emperor's generals, Benawi and Kuro. Hakuoro and Teoro stage a rescue, and then later decide to lead a rebellion against the emperor himself after he starts demolishing villages in retaliation to scare everyone into line. Hakuoro uses a steel fan in battle and becomes the only male anime character I have ever seen who uses a steel fan and isn't stereotypically effeminate. The fan is kind of a crappy weapon, as most of the time Hakuoro hits people with it folded and while it can block swords and arrows when open, it's about as wide as a dinner plate. He'd be better off with a nightstick. At any rate, Hakuoro eventually kills the emperor himself, and takes over his territory. Benawi and Kuro wind up joining Hakuoro, as they respect his code of honor. They won't be the last.
For the rest of the series, Oboro and Benawi will act as Hakuoro's military advisors. They have a "Goofus & Gallant" dynamic (to those who remember HIGHLIGHTS Magazine), as Oboro will always advise to rush headfirst into any attack and Benawi will usually call for a more reasonable response, and Hakuoro will go with the latter 95% of the time. As time goes on, Hakuoro will defend his kingdom from the emperors of other territories who come after him for varying reasons (such as one being the brother of the one Hakuoro killed). Like most "fantasy battle simulators," any named character can easily slaughter 3-10 nameless soldiers at once in any battle, but usually are only challenged by other named characters (who either are beaten or eventually absorbed into "the troupe"). There even is a reoccurring merchant character who shows up to sell them plot convenient weapons, herbs, and so on. The cast extends to include the angelic "diplomat" Ulthury and her more vampiric sister Camyu, super-strong and alcoholic ex-gladiator Karulau (whose weapon is basically a sword as heavy as a tree) and Touka, a devoted swordswoman who is initially manipulated into fighting Hakuoro, only to seek to avenge her honor by becoming his bodyguard (much to his chagrin). Lurking in the shadows is Dii, another winged man who manipulates most of the villains in the series against Hakuoro.
Most of the cast are women and they all fawn for Hakuoro to varying degrees. A part of me imagines the game works like how many "incels" think dating works; the player character can woo all of the women just by investing enough interaction points. That doesn't happen in the anime as Hakuoro fends off all their advances and there is relatively little nudity (aside for some brief side boob by Karulau and a blink and miss hot springs scene with Yuzuha, Camyu, and Aruru which is kind of gross since two of them aren't even teenagers). There is plenty of violence, though, mostly inflicted on nameless soldiers or "boss" villains.
Things get a bit more interesting when a man named Orikakan shows up and claims to be the brother-in-law to Hakuoro's wife, who he murdered in addition to his children. Since Hakuoro has amnesia, he has no way of knowing if the man's accusations and vows of vengeance are legitimate, but Eruru is convinced that Hakuoro isn't that kind of person and shouldn't give up on himself. It turns out Eruru was right, as Orikakan was brainwashed by Dii into thinking Hakuoro was someone else. Next up is Suonkasu, who is an stereotypically effeminate responsible for capturing Karulau back when she was a more dainty princess and forcing her into slavery; Hakuoro helps her and her brother Derihourai avenge themselves and take him down. By this point in the series it has been alluded that Hakuoro is a bit like the Hulk in that he can transform into a monster, but has no control or memories of this form. Niwe shows up, also manipulated by Dii, with the master plan of being so horrendous as a warlord that he provokes Hakuoro into transforming so he can...get torn to shreds. Honestly, Niwe didn't think through that part of his plan. "Step One: Locate Monster Man. Step Two: Provoke Monster Man into Transforming in Justifiable Rage. Step Three: Die. Wait what!?"
The last of the "rival emperor antagonists" is Kuuya, who is a young girl who is the emperress for...reasons. She tries to befriend Hakuoro via her mentor Genjimaru and assistant Sakuya as go-betweens. They have a few philosophical conversations, which include Kuuya wanting to get Hakuoro hitched. Unfortunately, Kuuya is stuck between two advisors: Hien (a warmonger) and Hauenkua (a complete psychopath). Dii has outfitted them with weaponry which allows them to easily overpower rivals: giant mecha-suits that bleed (kind of like Evangelions). The pair manipulate Kuuya into invading other territories under the ruse of "uniting everyone" after some of their border towns face invasions. A psychopath in a giant mech suit is a bad combination, as Hauenkua goes into a frenzy every time he pilots one and can slaughter entire towns by himself. Once this begins, Kuuya cannot stop even as she quickly realizes she's on a dark path. When Aruru is nearly stomped to death in one of their battles, Hakuoro finally gets pissed enough to transform into his giant monster form (which reminded me of some Digimon honestly) and tear everything apart. Along the way, Hakuoro starts to gradually remember more about his past, and none of it gets any less complicated.
SUPRISE! Much like in THUNDERCATS, this fantastic land full of animal people is in fact the far future of Earth. What is left of humanity was living in underground labs, performing various experiments to create "demihumans" who could survive on the surface. Hakuoro had been one of two scientists who discovered the fossil of an ancient god...or demon. The front of it's skull fused with the scientist's face, and his partner got envious of the power and shot him. The "mask" made the scientist immortal, and he was cryogenically frozen for years before being revived to aid in the experiments. Now dubbed "Iceman," he becomes fond of one test subject who looks like Eruru, who "Iceman" names Mikoto (as before this, all test subjects were referred to by number). Eventually the main scientist seeing to "Iceman" feels guilty about all his experiments, and releases them all to allow them to live free lives (presumably causing the planet to be populated by animal-people). Iceman and Mikoto live an idyllic life in the forest for a while, even producing a child (who is given a lab key which Eruru wears as a hair decoration). Eventually, human soldiers from the lab track them down and capture them. That rival scientist brags about making a duplicate mask, and dissecting Mikoto since her ability to give natural birth was an anomaly to them. No smarter than Niwe, all this does is provoke Iceman into assuming monster form and killing everyone in the lab (or transforming them into Red Slimes). A satellite weapon is activated to kill the monster (Uitsalnemetia), but all it does is split it into two forms. The good half was Hakuoro, who suffers amnesia due to his inability to comprehend the power within him. The evil half is Dii, who eventually kidnaps Camyu and activates some evil persona within her as well. Dii manipulated everything that happened because he wants to remerge with his other half. So eventually we get a giant Digimon fight, and Hakuoro prevails. Submerging Dii within himself takes considerable effort, and he has to go to sleep "for a while" afterward. He makes Oboro emperor in his stead, because otherwise the kingdom would be too peaceful. And despite the story alluding that Hakuoro may be Eruru's father, grandfather, great-great grandfather or some other distant ancestral relative, she makes out with him before he hibernates. Ew. Also, the end.
Aside for the creepy borderline incest stuff which I am staggered was featured in an anime after the 1990s, I enjoyed this just a smidge more than I expected to. It is a unique fantasy piece with some interesting characters, some riveting battles and some solid dialogue. The animation is pretty good for a TV series from 2006, with some early cell-shaded CGI which actually doesn't look like trash (and looks no worse than some of the same stuff from TIGER & BUNNY, which came a half decade later).
UTAWARERUMONO was dubbed by ADV's main dubbing studio of the time, Amusement Park Media (which is now Sentai Studios). As such, the voice cast is full of ADV veterans. John Gremillion is one of them and he'd been voicing anime for them since the late 90s, and he has bit parts or additional voices credits in dozens of anime titles. I do wonder if he made Hakuoro sound a little older than he's supposed to be, since a few characters call him "kid" or don't seem shocked that teenage girls want to romance him. Then again, in Japan, the age of consent is 16. It is quite a reunion of voice actors from RahXephon like Kira Vincent-Davis as Eruru and Chris Patton as Oboro; I'll always know him as Sho Fukamachi in the 2005 era GUYVER series. I'll give a shout out to Luci Christian's Kuuya, as I haven't heard her voice too many characters so morally ambiguous.
And now the problematic one. Benawi was voiced by Vic Mignogna, and this is the first time I've stumbled across an anime with him in the regular cast since "the incident." I assume everyone reading these knows what I am talking about, but I may as well recap. Vic Mignogna had been dubbing anime since 1999 and achieved fame as Edward Elric from the FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST anime and to a lessor degree Broly in DBZ movies, but he's had roles in virtually every big anime of the 2000s and 2010s such as BLEACH, NARUTO, JO JO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE, D.N. ANGEL, FULL METAL PANIC, and some DIGIMON productions (among many others). I think he also sang the opening song to DRAGON BALL KAI. In 2019, after Mignogna achieved more attention by reprising the role of Broly in DRAGON BALL SUPER: BROLY, folks on Twitter started accusing him of sexually harassing them at conventions and other places, with some testimonials going all the way back to 1989 and involving underage girls. Voice actresses Jamie Marchi and Monica Rial encouraged and confirmed such testimonials, saying he'd sexually harassed them, too. Tammi Denbow, high ranking HR administrator at Sony Pictures (FUNimation's parent company) opened an internal investigation. They fired him a week later and terminated all contracts with him, and ROOSTER TEETH followed suit, which included his start of the dub of THE MOROSE MONONOKEAN. Various anime and comic conventions also terminated his appearances there. Mignogna denied all of this and rallied fans online to donate over a quarter of a million dollars for legal fees so he could sue everyone. He filed a million dollar lawsuit not only at FUNimation, but at Rial, Marchi, and other people who accused him. Also drug into this was Migogna's ex wife, Michele Spect, and allegations he also sexually harassed Japanese singer and voice actress Mari Iijima (best known as Lin Minmay in various MACROSS projects). FUNimation's defence also included affidavits from all of the associated parties as well as the fans who'd made the testimonials on Twitter. To date, all of Mignogna's lawsuits have been dismissed, all of his appeals have failed, and he's been ordered to pay for the legal fees of those he accused. By judges in Texas, a place hardly known for defending women from blond haired, blue eyed 60 year old white men.
And since anime is well known for franchises led by women or starring mostly women, naturally all of fandom was deeply troubled by this shocking exploitation of the women within their communities or the medium and rose to inspire open mindedness and concern for--
HAH, fooled you! Venture into almost any YouTube video featuring Mignogna or his work and you'll read mouth foaming defences of him as if he is Richard Kimble on the run from the One-Armed Man. They may be a vocal minority, but it became a smaller version of the Gamergate or Johnny Depp trial where "those fans" have rallied around a problematic actor for exactly the reasons you think. And much like those geek scandals, believing the "accused's" side of things means believing things which really make no sense. Namely, that Sony, FUNimation, two voice actresses, and a few fans and ex-employees formed a conspiracy to destroy the career of Vic Mignogna because...just because. Maybe he knows Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone, or is the lost Lindbergh baby, or was behind the Sony hack, or some reason mere mortals cannot fathom. That FUNimation, a company (like many) who exploits the business rules of Texas to pay voice dubbers almost nothing while raking in millions for their work, would choose to fire one of their biggest names and risk losing revenue just because they, I don't know, didn't like him (and not because it is against the law to cover up for a sexual harasser and they'd learned enough to know they'd be liable if they didn't take immediate action). It's absurd. But it was tough to see his name on the cast list and not think about all this.
The irony is that if Vic Mignogna did a genuine apology and tried to actually own up and improve, he may have already been "forgiven" by some studio and been working again now, 4 years later. Instead he's the one keeping this scandal fresh with all of his useless lawsuits. Monica Rial and Jamie Marchi even started a podcast to talk about this case which just won't go away (the last rejected appeal was in December 2022). My inner cynic is surprised he hasn't become an announcer for Fox News or Alex Jones by now.
So, UTAWARERUMONO; a surprisingly interesting, yet weird, anime fantasy based on a game. If you skip the English dub you ignore the memories of the scandal.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Hielario Sat Apr 29, 2023 1:08 pm
Datelessman wrote:I am not saying that I want to return to an era where I am unable to research a title I was interested in before buying it so I don't waste money on trash. But what I am saying is that former era felt a little more adventurous and sometimes I admit that was part of the charm. It helped anime feel more edgy and cultish, and not the multi-billion dollar industry overseen by titans like Sony or Warner Brothers that is is now. Today if I hear about an anime called TYPHOON APOXY Z, I Google up some reviews, get a consensus and then decide yay or nay, order it cheap on Amazon and go fetch it from a box in a chain pharmacy run by dead-eyed, wage slave teenagers. But back in the 90s or 2000-2002 ish, it came down to that box art, the blurb on the back and what the warning labels were. At the time I was a gore hound so anything that said, "for extreme violence" was on my radar. Sometimes I got a winner and sometimes I wasted $20-$80 on a dud.
Yeah, I know what you mean, I feel similar about cruising video rental places; everything was less spoon-fed to you, there wasn't so much prioritizing of the latest titles, so you could discover the randomest stuff on your own. It's one of the few downsides to our current era, I guess? There is lots of fascinating stuff in streaming's back catalogues, but most of the big ones are getting more and more focused on shoving the newest stuff in your face.
Anyway, that sounds like a great movie. Kiiinda reminds me of how 80s european boom comics focused more on tragedy and weirdness than action when they did post-apocalyptic stories.
Datelessman wrote:I also can't tell what an "adult tactical vision novel" is. What I can tell you is the anime is a mixture of a fantasy RPG battle tactics simulator with a good dose of "harem syndrome," and a pinch of borderline incest.
OK, so a lot of this is second-hand info since I don't play that kind of games, but I've read some stuff about them, including a rewiew of the original Utawarerumono game. In this case, it means a combination of erotic visual novel and strategy RPG (think Fire Emblem). It's not uncommon for visual novels, erotic or not, to incorporate elements from other game genres like puzzles or fights; In Utawarerumono's case, this meant Strategy RPG gameplay - and quite a solid one, from what they say. The harem syndrome, of course, comes from the erotic visual novel part, since it's standard procedure for romantic/erotic VNs to throw a group of attractive people at the player's avatar so the player can choose to focus on one and pursue their individual narrative routes by focusing on them or making certain story/dialogue choices, with erotic result, as my people say
. My instinct says it is actually tamer with the romance/nudity angle than the games are, but I could be wrong. At any case, the anime does feel very much like a few fantasy RPG's I've played (or watched friends play) where the hero encounters various other characters, occasionally former bosses, and unites them all for each further campaign with the storyline getting more complicated and bat-crap insane by the end. And hoo boy, does this one have some insanity.
Yes, that's usually the case. Anime adaptations are common for VNs, and they tone down the sexiness, if there's any, out of necessity (or because it was an addon to make the game more marketable). But the same can be said of the batcrap insanity of the story, since VNs often have absolutely NUTS writing, and they have to wrangle it down into something that fits a standard anime season and doesn't scare bigger audiences away. So this one either had some very dedicated writers, or an absolutely bananas original work. I remember enjoying 11Eyes, finding out there was a visual novel and...turns out the reason the adorable childhood friend practically disappears for a chunk of the story and sounds kinda dumb is that they excised the parts of the original narrative/s where she becomes a jealous psychotic bitch
.- Wanna hear something funny?:
That's pretty much how my female university acquintances used to describe how they met/got together with their boyfriends when I asked.Datelessman wrote:Most of the cast are women and they all fawn for Hakuoro to varying degrees. A part of me imagines the game works like how many "incels" think dating works; the player character can woo all of the women just by investing enough interaction points.
Hielario- Posts : 312
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Mon May 01, 2023 2:54 pm
Hielario wrote:Yeah, I know what you mean, I feel similar about cruising video rental places; everything was less spoon-fed to you, there wasn't so much prioritizing of the latest titles, so you could discover the randomest stuff on your own. It's one of the few downsides to our current era, I guess? There is lots of fascinating stuff in streaming's back catalogues, but most of the big ones are getting more and more focused on shoving the newest stuff in your face.
Anyway, that sounds like a great movie. Kiiinda reminds me of how 80s european boom comics focused more on tragedy and weirdness than action when they did post-apocalyptic stories.
I miss "mom and pop" video rental places too, for that same reason. Even with chain rental places like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, back in the VHS era at least no two had the same backstock. If you were in the mood for "good crap" as James Rolfe/AVGN sometimes calls it, you couldn't beat the random factor of it.
Lots of things have become more curated and "a la carte." People get nostalgic about Saturday morning cartoons not just for the day of the week, but because it was a weekly ritual where we had no control over the content. Today you can watch anything you want on Netflix or another streaming or even grab a DVD like I do, but it does take some of the mystery out of it, in an area where "mystery" and a loss of control was pretty benign.
Nowadays we live in a country where you can have 100% control over what movies you watch or news you absorb, but have almost none about your own body, or your job, or financial security. That's progress?
Hielario wrote:
OK, so a lot of this is second-hand info since I don't play that kind of games, but I've read some stuff about them, including a rewiew of the original Utawarerumono game. In this case, it means a combination of erotic visual novel and strategy RPG (think Fire Emblem). It's not uncommon for visual novels, erotic or not, to incorporate elements from other game genres like puzzles or fights; In Utawarerumono's case, this meant Strategy RPG gameplay - and quite a solid one, from what they say. The harem syndrome, of course, comes from the erotic visual novel part, since it's standard procedure for romantic/erotic VNs to throw a group of attractive people at the player's avatar so the player can choose to focus on one and pursue their individual narrative routes by focusing on them or making certain story/dialogue choices, with erotic result, as my people say
Yes, that's usually the case. Anime adaptations are common for VNs, and they tone down the sexiness, if there's any, out of necessity (or because it was an addon to make the game more marketable). But the same can be said of the batcrap insanity of the story, since VNs often have absolutely NUTS writing, and they have to wrangle it down into something that fits a standard anime season and doesn't scare bigger audiences away. So this one either had some very dedicated writers, or an absolutely bananas original work. I remember enjoying 11Eyes, finding out there was a visual novel and...turns out the reason the adorable childhood friend practically disappears for a chunk of the story and sounds kinda dumb is that they excised the parts of the original narrative/s where she becomes a jealous psychotic bitch
Thanks for the information about those kind of games and their anime adaptations. I had no idea how commonly they got adopted. I stopped noticing how frequent that got after the 25th ".hack" anime.
I've never heard of 11Eyes. I do own 3X3 EYES so maybe if they teamed up, they'd have 20 Eyes.
- Wanna hear something funny?:
That's pretty much how my female university acquintances used to describe how they met/got together with their boyfriends when I asked.
The token useless advice I always got was "be yourself." I can be myself just fine. I wanted to be myself with someone else's self. THAT was the problem.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Datelessman Thu May 11, 2023 5:37 pm
I know (or sense) that discussions about anime tend to be more popular here, but before my latest DVD binge fades down my memory hole I wanted to type about this latest "entertainment joy" just to see if anyone else liked this one.
Talk about table-top role playing game, and the images which come to life within the imagine tend to be centered around Dungeons & Dragons, TSR's original gaming franchise from 1974 (which has been owned by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, since 1997). While "war games" with maps and miniatures have been used by military strategists and some connected or limited individuals for centuries, D&D turned the concept of a table top role playing game into a relatively easily accessible franchise for the masses. Despite being based around fantasy and mythology (and especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien), D&D also gained a completely unearned reputation for being "demonic" or somehow cultish or "weird" for a very long time. Part of this, IMO, was just bad timing. The game hit when there was a lot of social unrest with Nixon's corruption, Vietnam winding down, women's liberation and other civil rights movements, and even more of a peek into police corruption for the first time since the 1920s. When Nixon resigned, some thought the Republican Party would die with him, and one way they survived was forming more official pacts with evangelicals and "soccer moms," and amplifying their hysteria. Then in 1980, a book named "Michelle Remembers," written by a pair of since discredited Canadian writers, falsely claimed that recent cases of child molestation and abuse were rooted in ancient Pagan or "Satantic" worship, which began the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s (which often was watered down into "stranger danger"). And since folks who played D&D tended to meet by themselves and read books that had some far-out, demonic looking monsters, the game got unfairly swept up on that. This wasn't just in newspapers or TV anchor broadcasts; plenty of TV shows and films exaggerated this, too. Off the top of my head, an episode of "THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO" even covered some creepy "D&D-Lite" folks involved in a plot. I know this summary seems like a tangent but it will make sense later.
I know the recent "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES" movie came and went into theaters lately, and I didn't see it (despite having some interest and having once seen the first D&D film with my pals in 2000). Instead, that got me in the mood to rewatch a series which I saw very little of when it originally ran, but last binged on YouTube around 2009-2010: the original 1983 "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS" animated series, produced by TSR and Marvel Productions. It aired on CBS for 27 episodes across three seasons from 1983-1985, pre-dating "TRANSFORMERS" but smack in the middle of He-Man mania. Considering the "reputation" that the D&D game had unfairly earned with the general public, it's amazing this cartoon even got made. Unfortunately, because of it's imagery and good writing (for the time), it also got swept up in some of that "panic." Even when I started going to high school in the mid-90s and this show was only sporadically airing in syndication on cable, more than a few pals and associates repeated untrue rumors about it.
The show's premise is summarized in the 68 second long intro, which is amazingly long by today's standards (i.e. "YOUNG JUSTICE's" intro eventually was worn down to barely 2-3 seconds). Six random kids, aged 9-15, are transported to "the realm of Dungeons & Dragons" (shortened to "the realm") while riding a licensed roller coaster at an amusement park. They're immediately attacked by the two most evil figures in the land; Tiamat, a five headed dragon, and Venger, a winged sorcerer who literally rides a Night-Mare. But, they're outfitted with magical weaponry by the enigmatic Dungeon Master, who assigns them appropriate clothing and "classes" for the realm. Much like in "QUANTUM LEAP," which aired 5 years later, the kids go on a series of quests or missions for their "DM," hoping that the latest will finally lead them back home. And much like Dr. Sam Beckett, they're never successful. Besides the writing, part of the charm is trying to learn more about the kids as the show goes along.
The voice actors were a mixture of young sitcom stars matched with professional voice actors. Two hailed from the then-recently-cancelled sitcom, "EIGHT IS ENOUGH;" William Aames and Adam Rich. Aames is best known as Buddy Lembeck from "CHARLES IN CHARGE" and then much later as BIBLEMAN for a series of zealously embarrassing Christian home videos, but he was doing this series before both began. Aames voiced "Hank the Ranger," the 15 year old leader of the troupe who carries a magical bow that shoots energy arrows. Out of the entire cast, he's the most boring and straightforward, as many leader-types tend to be. Since this is a 1980s show, his arrows can never hit anyone who isn't invulnerable; instead they act kind of like Green Lantern energy and respond to Hank's will by entangling or caging targets. Sometimes he can form them into solid projectiles for teammates to climb on, or propel someone by striking one of their weapons or clothing articles and having them get yanked by the arrow. His entire persona is "leader" and what little angst he feels revolves around whether or not he's doing a good job of it. There are moments he is obtuse and doesn't trust his teammates to figure things out on their own, and can at times get frustrated when he's challenged or overruled. He's like Cyclops, only without romantic subplots or the rough childhood. In fact, we probably learn the least about his home life (which is nothing). And no, he never moves to Arlen, Texas and sells propane and propane accessories, I tell you what.
Adam Rich voiced "Presto the Magician," a 14 year old wizard who is limited exclusively to casting spells from his "magic hat." Presto would ideally just be a nickname, but everyone calls him that and he never asks to be called another name; at least his given name isn't "Butthead." He's kind of awkward and virtually blind without his glasses (like Velma from "SCOOBY DOO"), and is hilariously bad at spellcasting. Most of his incantations are some variant of, "Abrakadabra, alakazam, oh c'mon DO SOMETHING" and most of the time he summons objects from "the real world" which are useless in "the realm," such as electronics that can't be plugged in, or stop signs. Other times his spells can be useful to move the plot around, like most fictional magicians. He once summoned termites which could eat magical doors, sucked in paralyzing gas, and most infamously, LITERALLY SUMMONED AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER. His hat can sometimes "catch" magical blasts without harm, if Presto times it right. He's eager for proper magical training, but never gets any.
The other young sitcom star at the time, and arguably the biggest, was Don Most as "Eric the Cavalier." In 1983, he was still occasionally appearing as a guest during the last season of "HAPPY DAYS," where he'd co-starred as Ralph Malph for 7 seasons (1974-1981). Also aged 15, Eric carries a magical "Griffon Shield" which can deflect anything, and occasionally summon a forcefield around a limited radius. Out of all of the kids, we arguably find out the most about his home life due to his extended dialogue. Most was typecast a bit as Eric, since he's the sarcastic, whiny, often cowardly character of the troupe -- who often played into the current trope of "the complainer is always wrong" that many 1980s cartoons enforced. Before entering "the realm," Eric was a spoiled rich kid who spoke of living in a mansion (or big house), dealing with butlers, and that his parents could seemingly buy anything (and his father, at least, was a bit distant). He's the only one of the kids who was able to bring any items from his world into "the realm," such as a literal wad of cash (which made sense for an amusement park) and a Spider-Man comic book. He's the one who wants to go home the most, yet also the one most likely to flee from a fight. While always obnoxious and verbally combative, he gradually develops more courage as the seasons ware on, despite himself. He also is the one who hates the Dungeon Master's riddles and endless exits the most. Despite all that, Eric wound up as one of my favorites of the cast (aside for Presto and Diana). Most is usually funny in the role and without Eric, the show would have been much duller. Arguably his best quality is that he's not as gullible as the rest, and sometimes this is crucial.
Tonia Gayle Smith, a newer voice actress who'd never done much before or since, voiced "Diana the Acrobat," who is gifted with a magical bo-staff which can alter its length and even reform if broken. Aside for Eric, she's the one we learn the most about, albeit in large chunks in 1-2 episodes instead of over time. At age 14, she was already a champion gymnast at school, earning two golden trophies for her athleticism. Her father is an astronomer and her brother may be interested in aviation. She acts as a voice of reason and kind of the glue which holds the team together; she is loyal to Hank but also willing to disagree with him, in a kinder way than Eric, if she thinks he's mistaken. Diana is always reliable in a fight, and as someone with actual athletic skill, is the most suited to "the realm" and the least helpless if disarmed (which happens a lot). I don't read or see many "think pieces" on Diana even though she may be one of the first heroines of color in the regular supporting cast of any American animated series of the time, in a role which is not stereotypical. True, she's the most scantly clad of the cast, but that is mostly due to the design choices of "the realm" (and is only wearing slightly less than Teela from "MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE").
The last two of the kids are siblings. Professional voice actress Katie Leigh voiced the 13 year old "Sheila the Thief," who relies on a "Cloak of Invisibility" to become invisible. Yet like most heroines with that power, it is greatly minimized by her habit of turning invisible directly in front of people, and then becoming visible only a few yards later. She is shy and introverted, and most afraid of being alone. When invisible she can sometimes become sassy and even taunting of enemies, though. Aside for her brother, she attaches to Hank the most, and may have a crush on him. Katie Leigh has voiced tons of roles for dozens of cartoons over the decades. Her biggest roles may be as Sunni Gummi on Disney's "THE ADVENTURES OF THE GUMMI-BEARS," Alex Clover for the first 2 seasons of "TOTALLY SPIES," and as Connie Kendall on the Christian-funded radio show "ADVENTURES IN ODYSSEY" (and is one of only two voice actors who has remained with that show since 1987). She's also the only member of the cast who reprised their role for a radio play version of an unproduced script which was included as an extra in a 2006 DVD set from BCI. Ted Field III (who also didn't do much before or since this cartoon) voiced her brother, "Bobby the Barbarian." At 9 years old, he's the youngest of the cast and often one of the most eager to fight. His magical weapon is a "Thunder-Club," yet despite clubs being common in cartoons for decades, he also hardly ever hits anyone and mostly just causes earthquakes by slamming it on the ground. While Sheila tries to protect him as his "big sister," Bobby is often the one more protective of her. What I like about the pair is that unlike most siblings in fiction, they get along very well. Their bickering is kept to a minimum and instead they often aid and comfort each other. Out of everyone, Bobby seems to like Eric the least, and they often bicker. Upon landing in "the realm," Bobby immediately befriended a baby unicorn named Uni, voiced by industry legend Frank Welker. While Uni is yet another role for Welker which requires animal noises (and in later seasons, occasional baby words), Welker usually makes up for it by voicing 2-3 other characters in every episode (including Tiamat). Virtually every animated cartoon from the 1980s had some kind of animal or "mascot" character and Uni was it for this show. She still mugs for the camera plenty, but is never as exasperating or annoying as Snarf, Slimer, or Deputy Fuzz (the "Axis of Annoyance" for those sorts of characters in my eyes). Uni can teleport once a day, like all unicorns in "the realm," but only uses this power twice. Instead Uni is usually there to give Bobby someone to care about and protect other than Sheila. This becomes a problem later on because as a magical creature, Uni won't survive outside "the realm" which means Bobby would have to leave her to go home, which he is at times unwilling to do.
Dungeon Master was voiced by Sidney Miller, a long-time actor, composer, and director of stage, screen, and TV since the 1930s. This cartoon came near the end of his career, as he'd retired by the late 1990s and died around 2004. The DM is a well known figure within "the realm," with a reputation of being both noble and enigmatic. He seems to know everything, yet is sparing and strategic about what he reveals, and usually speaks in riddles or other poetic terms. He's far from omnipotent but has many magical abilities, especially when it comes to traveling wherever he wants. He constantly alludes to being able to either take the kids home or direct them to a path which leads to it, but these often don't pan out or the kids have to sacrifice that chance for a greater good. Sort of like "Glinda the Good Witch" from "WIZARD OF OZ," he feels it is easier to manipulate lost kids into dealing with enemies and threats to "the realm" rather than just doing it himself, for reasons. He briefly shares his power with Eric in order to prove a point to the boy, which helps facilitate Eric's lessoning cowardice in later seasons. Deep down he does care about the kids, and many other innocents in "the realm," and in the season 3 episode, "The Dungeon At The Heart of Dawn," he nearly sacrifices himself trying to save the kids from "the Nameless One" who may as well be evil incarnate.
Last but not least is Venger, voiced by Peter Cullen (at least a year before his most famous role, Optimus Prime on "TRANSFORMERS"). The one-horned bat-winged sorcerer is one of the main sources of all evil in "the realm," commanding an army of orcs and frequently running enslavement operations or prisons (mostly of dwarves). His primary goals, besides general evilness, are claiming the children's "weapons of power" to make himself stronger, and ridding the realm of them for meddling in his schemes. Whenever people talk about the "coolest villains from 1980s cartoons," Venger almost never comes up, which is a shame. Unlike many villains, even Megatron or Mum-Ra, Venger is never played for laughs and never screws around. He does not joke, or suffer fools (or rivals), or make many idle boasts. His primary minion is the obviously named Shadow-Demon, voiced by veteran voice actor Bob Holt), who spies for Venger and is terrified of him. Venger genuinely tries to capture, imprison, or "destroy" the kids on many occasions. Some of his appearances get more rare after the first season, when he was in virtually every episode. The only force in "the realm" that he fears and cannot defeat is Tiamat. The link between he and Dungeon Master arises in the second and third seasons, that goes in tags below. I imagine a great deal of the "demonic footage" that so scared the soccer moms of the era came from him, and admittedly, much of it was more intense than other shows of the time.
As a Marvel Productions joint, it reuses a lot of the same sound effects and musical scores which were common in virtually all of their shows, going back to 1978's "FANTASTIC FOUR" or 1979's "SPIDER-WOMAN" (back when the company was known as DFE Films). These scores were extremely common in Marvel's cartoons from the 1980s so if you ever watched 1981's "SPIDER-MAN," 1982's "SPIDER-MAN & HIS AMAZING FRIENDS" or "INCREDIBLE HULK." you will be in familiar territory. Bob Holt's "Hulk yell" became one of their stock sound effects which they reused all the time, even in "TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE" for some of Unicron's yells. The show also shares some sound effects from "STAR WARS," and some references to them are made on occasion. "D&D" did have its own musical score, especially for the intro, outro, and for Venger's theme (because all cool villains need their own themes). But most of the time my ears were in Marvel-land I was expecting Iceman or Firestar to show up. Toei Animation in Japan animated the series and it holds up better than many shows of the time, likely because Marvel Productions' main competitor was Filmation. It also helped that at 27 episodes, the order numbers were low; season 1 was 13 episodes, season 2 was eight and season 3 had six (with one final episode which was written but never produced). It is a shame that CBS even ordered it in the first place yet shrank the episode orders every time. After the series ended, Marvel Productions would rerun it with their block of other shows for local syndication until 1991, and even after it popped up on cable stations sometimes.
Most of the episodes were written by Jeffrey Scott and the late Michael Reaves. Other writers who wrote some or multiple episodes included Paul Dini, Buzz Dixon, and the late Steve Gerber and Katherine Lawrence. While there are comedic moments, usually centered around Eric or Uni, the tone of the show is kept serious, with many elements of darkness. It is easy to see how the show may have freaked parents out compared to He-Man or My Little Pony. By 1985 (the last season), the National Coalition on Television Violence even demanded that the FTC run a warning during each broadcast, which is insane, since the violence is tame compared to "ADVENTURE TIME" nowadays.
Jeffrey Scott writes the vast majority of the episodes across all seasons; nine of them across seasons 1-2. Michael Reaves is second at 7 episodes across seasons 2-3, including all of the best or most "controversial" ones. He was still years away from writing for "BATMAN: TAS" or "GARGOYLES" but it was already obvious here that his scripting was on another level for the medium. I could tell the difference in quality even without seeing the credits. As for other odds and ends, it may not surprise anyone that Steve Gerber, the co-creator of Marvel's Man-Thing, wrote an episode which ALSO featured a tragic, near mindless swamp monster. Some writers just have a theme.
Not only did this "D&D" cartoon have negative attention from censors and soccer moms over "content," but it also was the subject of no end of "dark theories" or "rumors" or "folk memory" from fans. One of the most constant, which one of my best friends in high school once claimed and that Michael Reaves, on his own website, had to debunk, was the "theory" that the kids died in the roller coaster and "the realm" was either Hell or the underworld. Reaves stated that that was never their intention, and even if it was, CBS would have nixed it and demanded a rewrite. This was a show, despite how serious it often was, which still used the word "destroy" instead of "kill" or "die" or "murder."
The 28th episode, written by Reaves and titled "REQUIEM," was unproduced when CBS decided to cancel the show rather than renew it for a fourth season. The show was never released on video until 2006, when BCI digitally remastered it and even went thru the expense of recording a "radio play" version of "Requiem" as a feature on the set. The play not only featured Katie Leigh reprising the role of Sheila (and voicing Bobby), but other voice actors in the roles including Wally Wingert as Hank, Daniel Roebuck as Eric, and Neil Kaplan (from DIGIMON) as Venger. Frank Welker was credited again as Uni, but I think they just reused his audio tracks. This box set went out of print when BCI went out of business. The series was rereleased on DVD, without any features and with syndication versions of many episodes, by Mill Creek Entertainment in 2009 before it, too, went out of print. That was the version I got, for what I'd say was a reasonable price for an out of print DVD set from a third party seller on Amazon. $40 for something like that is fair; in contrast, I have seen used sets for stuff like CAPTAIN N: THE GAME MASTER or SONIC (SATURDAY MORNINGS) for $200-plus. The PDF for "Requiem" was available on Reaves' old website and can be easily found online; even Wikipedia offers a link.
However, if you want to see a fan-animated version of the episode, it can be found here:
I definitely enjoyed the rewatch, and for my money the show holds up way better than many others from the 1980s. The series was streamed on Twitch two years ago but I don't know if it is available there still. The kids, supposedly, have a quick cameo in the last D&D film. IDW Publishing is also releasing a 4 issue mini series told within the same show's universe, albeit by different writers so whether or not it is "canon" is up to the reader. Hank's way more of jerk in it, while Sheila is bolder and Diana got a redesign so she isn't just in boots and a fur bikini. Home video or streaming rights may be more complicated now that D&D is owned by Hasbro but the cartoon is technically owned by Marvel/Disney. It may still be on YouTube for all I know, but either way, if you haven't seen it and are in the mood for a cool 1980s fantasy cartoon which isn't terribly long, "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: TAS" may scratch that itch.
Talk about table-top role playing game, and the images which come to life within the imagine tend to be centered around Dungeons & Dragons, TSR's original gaming franchise from 1974 (which has been owned by Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, since 1997). While "war games" with maps and miniatures have been used by military strategists and some connected or limited individuals for centuries, D&D turned the concept of a table top role playing game into a relatively easily accessible franchise for the masses. Despite being based around fantasy and mythology (and especially the works of J.R.R. Tolkien), D&D also gained a completely unearned reputation for being "demonic" or somehow cultish or "weird" for a very long time. Part of this, IMO, was just bad timing. The game hit when there was a lot of social unrest with Nixon's corruption, Vietnam winding down, women's liberation and other civil rights movements, and even more of a peek into police corruption for the first time since the 1920s. When Nixon resigned, some thought the Republican Party would die with him, and one way they survived was forming more official pacts with evangelicals and "soccer moms," and amplifying their hysteria. Then in 1980, a book named "Michelle Remembers," written by a pair of since discredited Canadian writers, falsely claimed that recent cases of child molestation and abuse were rooted in ancient Pagan or "Satantic" worship, which began the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s (which often was watered down into "stranger danger"). And since folks who played D&D tended to meet by themselves and read books that had some far-out, demonic looking monsters, the game got unfairly swept up on that. This wasn't just in newspapers or TV anchor broadcasts; plenty of TV shows and films exaggerated this, too. Off the top of my head, an episode of "THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO" even covered some creepy "D&D-Lite" folks involved in a plot. I know this summary seems like a tangent but it will make sense later.
I know the recent "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES" movie came and went into theaters lately, and I didn't see it (despite having some interest and having once seen the first D&D film with my pals in 2000). Instead, that got me in the mood to rewatch a series which I saw very little of when it originally ran, but last binged on YouTube around 2009-2010: the original 1983 "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS" animated series, produced by TSR and Marvel Productions. It aired on CBS for 27 episodes across three seasons from 1983-1985, pre-dating "TRANSFORMERS" but smack in the middle of He-Man mania. Considering the "reputation" that the D&D game had unfairly earned with the general public, it's amazing this cartoon even got made. Unfortunately, because of it's imagery and good writing (for the time), it also got swept up in some of that "panic." Even when I started going to high school in the mid-90s and this show was only sporadically airing in syndication on cable, more than a few pals and associates repeated untrue rumors about it.
The show's premise is summarized in the 68 second long intro, which is amazingly long by today's standards (i.e. "YOUNG JUSTICE's" intro eventually was worn down to barely 2-3 seconds). Six random kids, aged 9-15, are transported to "the realm of Dungeons & Dragons" (shortened to "the realm") while riding a licensed roller coaster at an amusement park. They're immediately attacked by the two most evil figures in the land; Tiamat, a five headed dragon, and Venger, a winged sorcerer who literally rides a Night-Mare. But, they're outfitted with magical weaponry by the enigmatic Dungeon Master, who assigns them appropriate clothing and "classes" for the realm. Much like in "QUANTUM LEAP," which aired 5 years later, the kids go on a series of quests or missions for their "DM," hoping that the latest will finally lead them back home. And much like Dr. Sam Beckett, they're never successful. Besides the writing, part of the charm is trying to learn more about the kids as the show goes along.
The voice actors were a mixture of young sitcom stars matched with professional voice actors. Two hailed from the then-recently-cancelled sitcom, "EIGHT IS ENOUGH;" William Aames and Adam Rich. Aames is best known as Buddy Lembeck from "CHARLES IN CHARGE" and then much later as BIBLEMAN for a series of zealously embarrassing Christian home videos, but he was doing this series before both began. Aames voiced "Hank the Ranger," the 15 year old leader of the troupe who carries a magical bow that shoots energy arrows. Out of the entire cast, he's the most boring and straightforward, as many leader-types tend to be. Since this is a 1980s show, his arrows can never hit anyone who isn't invulnerable; instead they act kind of like Green Lantern energy and respond to Hank's will by entangling or caging targets. Sometimes he can form them into solid projectiles for teammates to climb on, or propel someone by striking one of their weapons or clothing articles and having them get yanked by the arrow. His entire persona is "leader" and what little angst he feels revolves around whether or not he's doing a good job of it. There are moments he is obtuse and doesn't trust his teammates to figure things out on their own, and can at times get frustrated when he's challenged or overruled. He's like Cyclops, only without romantic subplots or the rough childhood. In fact, we probably learn the least about his home life (which is nothing). And no, he never moves to Arlen, Texas and sells propane and propane accessories, I tell you what.
Adam Rich voiced "Presto the Magician," a 14 year old wizard who is limited exclusively to casting spells from his "magic hat." Presto would ideally just be a nickname, but everyone calls him that and he never asks to be called another name; at least his given name isn't "Butthead." He's kind of awkward and virtually blind without his glasses (like Velma from "SCOOBY DOO"), and is hilariously bad at spellcasting. Most of his incantations are some variant of, "Abrakadabra, alakazam, oh c'mon DO SOMETHING" and most of the time he summons objects from "the real world" which are useless in "the realm," such as electronics that can't be plugged in, or stop signs. Other times his spells can be useful to move the plot around, like most fictional magicians. He once summoned termites which could eat magical doors, sucked in paralyzing gas, and most infamously, LITERALLY SUMMONED AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER. His hat can sometimes "catch" magical blasts without harm, if Presto times it right. He's eager for proper magical training, but never gets any.
The other young sitcom star at the time, and arguably the biggest, was Don Most as "Eric the Cavalier." In 1983, he was still occasionally appearing as a guest during the last season of "HAPPY DAYS," where he'd co-starred as Ralph Malph for 7 seasons (1974-1981). Also aged 15, Eric carries a magical "Griffon Shield" which can deflect anything, and occasionally summon a forcefield around a limited radius. Out of all of the kids, we arguably find out the most about his home life due to his extended dialogue. Most was typecast a bit as Eric, since he's the sarcastic, whiny, often cowardly character of the troupe -- who often played into the current trope of "the complainer is always wrong" that many 1980s cartoons enforced. Before entering "the realm," Eric was a spoiled rich kid who spoke of living in a mansion (or big house), dealing with butlers, and that his parents could seemingly buy anything (and his father, at least, was a bit distant). He's the only one of the kids who was able to bring any items from his world into "the realm," such as a literal wad of cash (which made sense for an amusement park) and a Spider-Man comic book. He's the one who wants to go home the most, yet also the one most likely to flee from a fight. While always obnoxious and verbally combative, he gradually develops more courage as the seasons ware on, despite himself. He also is the one who hates the Dungeon Master's riddles and endless exits the most. Despite all that, Eric wound up as one of my favorites of the cast (aside for Presto and Diana). Most is usually funny in the role and without Eric, the show would have been much duller. Arguably his best quality is that he's not as gullible as the rest, and sometimes this is crucial.
Tonia Gayle Smith, a newer voice actress who'd never done much before or since, voiced "Diana the Acrobat," who is gifted with a magical bo-staff which can alter its length and even reform if broken. Aside for Eric, she's the one we learn the most about, albeit in large chunks in 1-2 episodes instead of over time. At age 14, she was already a champion gymnast at school, earning two golden trophies for her athleticism. Her father is an astronomer and her brother may be interested in aviation. She acts as a voice of reason and kind of the glue which holds the team together; she is loyal to Hank but also willing to disagree with him, in a kinder way than Eric, if she thinks he's mistaken. Diana is always reliable in a fight, and as someone with actual athletic skill, is the most suited to "the realm" and the least helpless if disarmed (which happens a lot). I don't read or see many "think pieces" on Diana even though she may be one of the first heroines of color in the regular supporting cast of any American animated series of the time, in a role which is not stereotypical. True, she's the most scantly clad of the cast, but that is mostly due to the design choices of "the realm" (and is only wearing slightly less than Teela from "MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE").
The last two of the kids are siblings. Professional voice actress Katie Leigh voiced the 13 year old "Sheila the Thief," who relies on a "Cloak of Invisibility" to become invisible. Yet like most heroines with that power, it is greatly minimized by her habit of turning invisible directly in front of people, and then becoming visible only a few yards later. She is shy and introverted, and most afraid of being alone. When invisible she can sometimes become sassy and even taunting of enemies, though. Aside for her brother, she attaches to Hank the most, and may have a crush on him. Katie Leigh has voiced tons of roles for dozens of cartoons over the decades. Her biggest roles may be as Sunni Gummi on Disney's "THE ADVENTURES OF THE GUMMI-BEARS," Alex Clover for the first 2 seasons of "TOTALLY SPIES," and as Connie Kendall on the Christian-funded radio show "ADVENTURES IN ODYSSEY" (and is one of only two voice actors who has remained with that show since 1987). She's also the only member of the cast who reprised their role for a radio play version of an unproduced script which was included as an extra in a 2006 DVD set from BCI. Ted Field III (who also didn't do much before or since this cartoon) voiced her brother, "Bobby the Barbarian." At 9 years old, he's the youngest of the cast and often one of the most eager to fight. His magical weapon is a "Thunder-Club," yet despite clubs being common in cartoons for decades, he also hardly ever hits anyone and mostly just causes earthquakes by slamming it on the ground. While Sheila tries to protect him as his "big sister," Bobby is often the one more protective of her. What I like about the pair is that unlike most siblings in fiction, they get along very well. Their bickering is kept to a minimum and instead they often aid and comfort each other. Out of everyone, Bobby seems to like Eric the least, and they often bicker. Upon landing in "the realm," Bobby immediately befriended a baby unicorn named Uni, voiced by industry legend Frank Welker. While Uni is yet another role for Welker which requires animal noises (and in later seasons, occasional baby words), Welker usually makes up for it by voicing 2-3 other characters in every episode (including Tiamat). Virtually every animated cartoon from the 1980s had some kind of animal or "mascot" character and Uni was it for this show. She still mugs for the camera plenty, but is never as exasperating or annoying as Snarf, Slimer, or Deputy Fuzz (the "Axis of Annoyance" for those sorts of characters in my eyes). Uni can teleport once a day, like all unicorns in "the realm," but only uses this power twice. Instead Uni is usually there to give Bobby someone to care about and protect other than Sheila. This becomes a problem later on because as a magical creature, Uni won't survive outside "the realm" which means Bobby would have to leave her to go home, which he is at times unwilling to do.
Dungeon Master was voiced by Sidney Miller, a long-time actor, composer, and director of stage, screen, and TV since the 1930s. This cartoon came near the end of his career, as he'd retired by the late 1990s and died around 2004. The DM is a well known figure within "the realm," with a reputation of being both noble and enigmatic. He seems to know everything, yet is sparing and strategic about what he reveals, and usually speaks in riddles or other poetic terms. He's far from omnipotent but has many magical abilities, especially when it comes to traveling wherever he wants. He constantly alludes to being able to either take the kids home or direct them to a path which leads to it, but these often don't pan out or the kids have to sacrifice that chance for a greater good. Sort of like "Glinda the Good Witch" from "WIZARD OF OZ," he feels it is easier to manipulate lost kids into dealing with enemies and threats to "the realm" rather than just doing it himself, for reasons. He briefly shares his power with Eric in order to prove a point to the boy, which helps facilitate Eric's lessoning cowardice in later seasons. Deep down he does care about the kids, and many other innocents in "the realm," and in the season 3 episode, "The Dungeon At The Heart of Dawn," he nearly sacrifices himself trying to save the kids from "the Nameless One" who may as well be evil incarnate.
Last but not least is Venger, voiced by Peter Cullen (at least a year before his most famous role, Optimus Prime on "TRANSFORMERS"). The one-horned bat-winged sorcerer is one of the main sources of all evil in "the realm," commanding an army of orcs and frequently running enslavement operations or prisons (mostly of dwarves). His primary goals, besides general evilness, are claiming the children's "weapons of power" to make himself stronger, and ridding the realm of them for meddling in his schemes. Whenever people talk about the "coolest villains from 1980s cartoons," Venger almost never comes up, which is a shame. Unlike many villains, even Megatron or Mum-Ra, Venger is never played for laughs and never screws around. He does not joke, or suffer fools (or rivals), or make many idle boasts. His primary minion is the obviously named Shadow-Demon, voiced by veteran voice actor Bob Holt), who spies for Venger and is terrified of him. Venger genuinely tries to capture, imprison, or "destroy" the kids on many occasions. Some of his appearances get more rare after the first season, when he was in virtually every episode. The only force in "the realm" that he fears and cannot defeat is Tiamat. The link between he and Dungeon Master arises in the second and third seasons, that goes in tags below. I imagine a great deal of the "demonic footage" that so scared the soccer moms of the era came from him, and admittedly, much of it was more intense than other shows of the time.
As a Marvel Productions joint, it reuses a lot of the same sound effects and musical scores which were common in virtually all of their shows, going back to 1978's "FANTASTIC FOUR" or 1979's "SPIDER-WOMAN" (back when the company was known as DFE Films). These scores were extremely common in Marvel's cartoons from the 1980s so if you ever watched 1981's "SPIDER-MAN," 1982's "SPIDER-MAN & HIS AMAZING FRIENDS" or "INCREDIBLE HULK." you will be in familiar territory. Bob Holt's "Hulk yell" became one of their stock sound effects which they reused all the time, even in "TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE" for some of Unicron's yells. The show also shares some sound effects from "STAR WARS," and some references to them are made on occasion. "D&D" did have its own musical score, especially for the intro, outro, and for Venger's theme (because all cool villains need their own themes). But most of the time my ears were in Marvel-land I was expecting Iceman or Firestar to show up. Toei Animation in Japan animated the series and it holds up better than many shows of the time, likely because Marvel Productions' main competitor was Filmation. It also helped that at 27 episodes, the order numbers were low; season 1 was 13 episodes, season 2 was eight and season 3 had six (with one final episode which was written but never produced). It is a shame that CBS even ordered it in the first place yet shrank the episode orders every time. After the series ended, Marvel Productions would rerun it with their block of other shows for local syndication until 1991, and even after it popped up on cable stations sometimes.
Most of the episodes were written by Jeffrey Scott and the late Michael Reaves. Other writers who wrote some or multiple episodes included Paul Dini, Buzz Dixon, and the late Steve Gerber and Katherine Lawrence. While there are comedic moments, usually centered around Eric or Uni, the tone of the show is kept serious, with many elements of darkness. It is easy to see how the show may have freaked parents out compared to He-Man or My Little Pony. By 1985 (the last season), the National Coalition on Television Violence even demanded that the FTC run a warning during each broadcast, which is insane, since the violence is tame compared to "ADVENTURE TIME" nowadays.
- Spoiler:
- That said, the series did have some "infamous" episodes. In 1983's 9th episode, "Quest of the Skeleton Warrior," Venger nearly transforms Hank into one such warrior and for 1-3 seconds you can actually see his face melt off on screen (he gets better).
Perhaps the most infamous is episode 20 (from season two), "The Dragon's Graveyard," which was almost banned by CBS for its controversial subject matter. In it, after Venger thwarts yet another attempt to go home and reduces even Bobby to tears, Hank gets pissed off enough to declare war on Venger, intent on "destroying" (or killing) him once and for all. It was one of the first TV cartoons for kids of the time which seriously flirted with the idea of either really killing someone or someone actually dying. Some people attribute this to a He-Man episode, "THE PRICE OF POWER," which is very good but aired a month later. It is one of the show's best episodes. Dungeon Master is disappointed in Hank's quest but gives his usual enigmatic aid, suggesting they ask Tiamat for help. By the time they find Tiamat in the titular location, he tells them that since that dimension is where their weapons were found, they're more powerful there and can take care of Venger on their own. The rest of the kids go along with Hank but are pretty partisan about actually killing Venger, aside for Bobby. At one point Venger injures Uni and even Bobby declares his hatred of him, which shocks Hank since he thinks a 9 year old "shouldn't hate anyone that much." The land has plenty of skeletons of dead warriors and more magical weapons, and Venger gets smart by animating those against the kids, but eventually Presto pins him to a pillar and Hank has a kill-shot. At the last moment, Hank refuses, unwilling to cross that line. This is also the episode which reveals (or at least confirms) one of the series' biggest spoilers, that Venger is actually Dungeon Master's corrupted son.
Contrary to popular belief (or my above statement), the kids do technically get home on two occasions; circumstance just force them back to "the realm" almost immediately. The first is pretty early into the series, episode 6, "Beauty and the Bogbeast." Via a magical waterfall which flows backwards, the kids wind up returning to a large lake which ran alongside the amusement park. The only problem is that Eric has been transformed into a Bogbeast (kind of a frog-like monster) and the amulet which can cure him won't work outside "the realm." Since the waterfall only has that teleporting power for 60 seconds, Eric has to go back in order to be cured, and the rest of the kids are unwilling to abandon him despite how much of a jerk he usually is. The second is also from the first season, episode 11, "The Box." The plot involves a box which is able to transport people to different dimensions based on where it is placed in "the realm," kind of like how the cap in "MIGHTY MAX" worked. One location, atop a crumbling land-bridge, successfully takes the kids home to the amusement park. Unfortunately, Venger follows them and despite the fact that Uni would die in "the real world" and their weapons have no power there, Venger has all of his powers outside "the realm" and does a good job of blasting up the amusement park. He even blasts a payphone that Eric was trying to use to call the cops (which didn't work since he didn't have a dime on him). After a few minutes of ducking blasts, the kids decide to go back through the roller coaster and lead Venger back to "the realm" so he doesn't conquer their world, which works. The land-bridge collapses, of course, and no one thinks of just trying to suspend the box from that exact spot. Admittedly, it had to be exactly precise; even an inch off would lead to another dimension.
I'd argue one of the most controversial episodes which 100% could never be written or animated today is one of the last, episode 23 ("Time Lost") from the third and last season. The plot involves Venger using a giant magical crystal to pluck random warriors (and their weapons) from the kids' timeline in the hopes of altering their history enough that they'll never be born (and thus can't interfere anymore). After accidentally plucking a Viking and a samurai from their past (and a fighter pilot from, presumably, the near future of the 90s or 2000s), Venger gets the soldier he wanted: a Nazi soldier from WWII. Now, neither the word "Nazi," or their symbol, or the name of Hitler is spoken or written, but it is very obvious to anyone who'd had a second or third grade history class that this is what he is doing. Venger winds up zapping a Luftwaffe pilot from "your second world war" named Yosef Mueller, who has a German accent and speaks broken English. His plan is to send him back to WWII with the "near future" jet which will allow him to single handedly win the war for Germany.
Only, SURPRISE, Yosef is one of the rare "good" Nazis. Yosef hated being in the war as well as "that tyrant who started it." It's implied, but never stated, that Yosef was conscripted into the German army and was not a party loyalist. While Yosef is confused by "the realm" and the kids stating that his aircraft is at least 30 years outdated, he's quickly relieved that he's out of the war and doesn't want to go home. When Diana catches him tearing off his armband and throwing it in a river, Yosef swears he is not a loyalist and means the kids no harm. Yosef seems to bond with Diana the most, which is wild considering as a black teenage girl, she wouldn't have been too popular with most American soldiers in WWII. After Venger kidnaps Yosef and explains his plot to him, it seems as if Yosef was lying to the kids all along and acting to type. SURPRISE, Yosef was only playing along with Venger until he could get the "future jet" (Eric compared it to something "out of Buck Rogers," which was a show based in the 21st century) as well as the magical knowledge of how to pilot it. In no rush to return to WWII, Yosef uses the jet to destroy the crystal. However, when his parachute starts to drop Yosef back into the shrinking portal, he vows that the kids' bravery has inspired him not to run from the war, but to turn against Germany instead. The Dungeon Master confirms that Venger did kind of get what he wanted; Yosef did become a war hero, but for the Allies after betraying Germany, and their timeline is safe. Like I said, there is absolutely, positively, no way any American cartoon would dare produce an episode that involved a "good" Nazi. Now, in total fairness, while German soldiers who turned on Hitler and even saved Jews were rare, but they did exist; Hitler even had at least 3 arrested and executed for treason. I'd argue that was "more ballsy" than melting faces.
The show gradually reveals that many of the citizens of "the realm" are visitors like the kids are. In "The Lost Children" from season 1, the kids encounter a few furry, long lived space aliens (a cross between Wookies and ThunderCats) who are only there because their spaceship crashed, and the kids have to reclaim it from Venger (along with "the elder" of the aliens). The second season premiere, "The Girl Who Dreamed Tomorrow," reveals that not even Venger trashing the amusement park (nor a rich white boy getting lost within a ride) got it shut down, as a girl around Bobby's age named Terri, along with her dog, also were zapped to "the realm" via the same roller coaster. The kids save her, and Bobby gets very close to her. She has clairvoyant dreams, including one which predicts that one day Bobby will surprise her at school and return her locket. The best part of the episode is the end, where near the end of yet another plot to return home being thwarted by Venger, Bobby is the first to acknowledge that this is a one-way trip for Terri; they can't return home with her. But, Terri tosses her locket to Bobby, so her dream can come true. Two episodes later, "The City At The Edge of Midnight" reveals a figure called the Nightwalker who kidnaps children from across dimensions at the stroke of midnight and forces them to work as slaves within a giant clock which powers all this. Bobby runs into one child that he knows from school, and when they foil the plot, they beg the kid to contact their parents to at least let them know that they're okay. The brat thinks they're kidding because they'd all gone to the amusement park earlier that evening, which suggests some kind of time difference between "the realm" and the kids' world.
Jeffrey Scott writes the vast majority of the episodes across all seasons; nine of them across seasons 1-2. Michael Reaves is second at 7 episodes across seasons 2-3, including all of the best or most "controversial" ones. He was still years away from writing for "BATMAN: TAS" or "GARGOYLES" but it was already obvious here that his scripting was on another level for the medium. I could tell the difference in quality even without seeing the credits. As for other odds and ends, it may not surprise anyone that Steve Gerber, the co-creator of Marvel's Man-Thing, wrote an episode which ALSO featured a tragic, near mindless swamp monster. Some writers just have a theme.
Not only did this "D&D" cartoon have negative attention from censors and soccer moms over "content," but it also was the subject of no end of "dark theories" or "rumors" or "folk memory" from fans. One of the most constant, which one of my best friends in high school once claimed and that Michael Reaves, on his own website, had to debunk, was the "theory" that the kids died in the roller coaster and "the realm" was either Hell or the underworld. Reaves stated that that was never their intention, and even if it was, CBS would have nixed it and demanded a rewrite. This was a show, despite how serious it often was, which still used the word "destroy" instead of "kill" or "die" or "murder."
The 28th episode, written by Reaves and titled "REQUIEM," was unproduced when CBS decided to cancel the show rather than renew it for a fourth season. The show was never released on video until 2006, when BCI digitally remastered it and even went thru the expense of recording a "radio play" version of "Requiem" as a feature on the set. The play not only featured Katie Leigh reprising the role of Sheila (and voicing Bobby), but other voice actors in the roles including Wally Wingert as Hank, Daniel Roebuck as Eric, and Neil Kaplan (from DIGIMON) as Venger. Frank Welker was credited again as Uni, but I think they just reused his audio tracks. This box set went out of print when BCI went out of business. The series was rereleased on DVD, without any features and with syndication versions of many episodes, by Mill Creek Entertainment in 2009 before it, too, went out of print. That was the version I got, for what I'd say was a reasonable price for an out of print DVD set from a third party seller on Amazon. $40 for something like that is fair; in contrast, I have seen used sets for stuff like CAPTAIN N: THE GAME MASTER or SONIC (SATURDAY MORNINGS) for $200-plus. The PDF for "Requiem" was available on Reaves' old website and can be easily found online; even Wikipedia offers a link.
However, if you want to see a fan-animated version of the episode, it can be found here:
- Spoiler:
By "fan animated," I mean the fans mostly use prior animated footage and edit it together into an episode. Most of that footage is from D&D, but some are from other cartoons (i.e. some dragons that show up I believe are from the 2002 reboot of He-Man). That said, it is a very cool work and because Michael Reaves wrote the script, it can be counted as canon.
The plot involves Venger and Dungeon Master having a debate about the kids, with Venger claiming they'd never be so brave or noble without the "protection" or guidance of DM. Dungeon Master decides to test this theory, which causes Venger to throw into motion his ultimate plot. After refusing to aid the kids during an attack by a dragon, they prepare for the idea of navigating "the realm" and going home on their own. Venger immediately capitalizes by offering to send them home in exchange for traveling to a castle at the edge of "the realm," finding a key, and then throwing it into an endless void. Venger claims he is willing to send them home in exchange for being rid of them. The team, already frayed, splits on what to do. Eric, who considers the entire realm like a prison, leaves to follow Venger's request with Sheila and Presto. Hank, who refuses to trust Venger, sides with Diana and Bobby (and Uni). Eric, Sheila, and Presto make a beeline to the castle/tower, encountering danger along the way and eventually traveling via a flying ship (which Presto made levitate). Hank, Diana, and Bobby decide to follow them in order to prevent them from fulfilling Venger's wishes, via a dragon which Diana manages to tame as a steed. Their paths cross while flying over a volcano, with Hank willing to shoot them down with an arrow, and Eric deflecting it into the volcano. This results in a massive eruption which splits the team further, and gets Hank and Eric to both be guilt ridden about seeming to have killed the others. Both groups get to the tower, which is protected with some animated slime which smothers everything. Everyone reunites at the top floor, where Eric finds a key hidden within a coffin as well as both a locked door, and a hole in the wall to an endless abyss. With the slime emerging, as well as Venger deciding to meddle, the situation gets very tense with Hank and Eric continuing to argue. Eric accuses Hank of being so controlling that he doesn't want them to go home, whereas Hank at least admits that Eric was right about the realm being a prison. He changes his mind about finding the key (conveniently since Eric already has it), but insists that following Venger's orders to the letter won't do them any good. After Hank falls into the abyss, Eric has the choice of throwing in the key like Venger wanted, or unlocking the door. He chooses to trust Hank and does the latter, and Venger is transformed. Behind the door is where Venger literally hid all of the "goodness" within him when he turned to evil. Opening it also reveals that many groups of humans, gnomes, and other beings were also travellers like the kids from other times or realms, and they, also, get to go home.
The Dungeon Master explains that their entire quest within the realm was to prepare them for the challenge of redeeming Venger. Despite all his power, the one thing DM could not do by himself was open the door and redeem his own son. The endless abyss, by sheer circumstance, had a random crevice within it for Hank to have grabbed, so he can be saved. He offers the kids the chance to go home, for really real this time, or to remain in the realm and continue having adventures, since Venger was hardly the only villain there. Presto states that he wants to remain behind to lean how to become a proper magician, perhaps in no rush to return to parents who chose to name him "Presto." Bobby, at least, wants to go home and is content that Dungeon Master and the reformed Venger will take care of Uni. In the original script, the choice of the rest is kept more ambiguous, since it was intended as a season premiere. In this fan work, admitted by the crafters to provide more "closure," the rest finally go home to the amusement park.
I definitely enjoyed the rewatch, and for my money the show holds up way better than many others from the 1980s. The series was streamed on Twitch two years ago but I don't know if it is available there still. The kids, supposedly, have a quick cameo in the last D&D film. IDW Publishing is also releasing a 4 issue mini series told within the same show's universe, albeit by different writers so whether or not it is "canon" is up to the reader. Hank's way more of jerk in it, while Sheila is bolder and Diana got a redesign so she isn't just in boots and a fur bikini. Home video or streaming rights may be more complicated now that D&D is owned by Hasbro but the cartoon is technically owned by Marvel/Disney. It may still be on YouTube for all I know, but either way, if you haven't seen it and are in the mood for a cool 1980s fantasy cartoon which isn't terribly long, "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: TAS" may scratch that itch.
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Re: Entertainment Joys
by Werel Fri May 19, 2023 8:16 pm
Guys... season 3 of Picard was... uh... good? As in, I think I unironically enjoyed the whole thing, and it felt like it was written by people who'd actually watched TNG and understood the characters? It was kinda heavy on the fanservice and nostalgia, but in an actually nice way, like the best TNG movie that never got made.
Anyway, it was... actually good? What a stunning and pleasant surprise.
(I never watched seasons 1-2 of Picard and enjoyed 3 just fine - it seems almost entirely unrelated to the first 2 seasons, which is probably a good thing.)
Anyway, it was... actually good? What a stunning and pleasant surprise.
(I never watched seasons 1-2 of Picard and enjoyed 3 just fine - it seems almost entirely unrelated to the first 2 seasons, which is probably a good thing.)
Werel- DOCTOR(!)
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