contest is over!

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



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

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



cartoons by Meg Evans

Prince Planet Is Back!!

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


Prince Planet Pastels!

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

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


Prince Planet art by Meg Evans

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


Prince Planet art by John Gaydos

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


The t-shirt looks like this!

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

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


More Meg Evans Prince Planet fan art

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


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

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


flyer for Prince Planet Foundation

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


Meg Evans cartoon from the Prince Planet Foundation fanzine

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



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


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

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

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

Jack And The Early Morning Witch

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

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

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

Honey Honey's Wonderful Adventures

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

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



Honey Honey and Phoenix share a manga moment; Flora fumes

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


Honey Honey children's book based on episode 6

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



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


Furious Flora, Herr Gustav


Geronimo, Oil Dollar, Pika Pika

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


Phoenix breaks the fourth wall

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


The evil Slag

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


I Dream Of Honey

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


I don't think anybody saw this coming.

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


Western-style Flora and Slag menace Honey in the manga

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


The Great Honey Honey Dynamite Chase

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


episode 22 Honey

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


Yes, it's sharp.

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


As a matter of fact I do own this cel.

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



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

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

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

Under The Western Influence

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



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



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



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





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



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



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

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



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




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



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

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

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



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

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



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

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


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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

what I did on my vacation

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



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

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



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

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

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



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

2009 is Showa 41 - listen along with CYBORG 009

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



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



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



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



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