what goes around

In a week or so I'll be back in Atlanta for Anime Weekend Atlanta, the Japanese anime convention I helped start and that has happened every year (with one exception) since 1995. This year's AWA is notable for a few reasons, first off being the date, which has moved all the way into December from its usual September, sometimes October, very occasionally November time slot. Another reason has something to do with the first reason, namely that the convention has relocated from its Cobb Galleria Center home for the past twenty odd years. AWA has moved to Building C of the World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta! Now I know technically the Cobb Galleria Center has an Atlanta mailing address, but let's face it, once you're on the Cobb County side of the Chattahoochee, well, is that really Atlanta?

All I know is thirty-nine years back the World Congress Center is where I was attending a thing called the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, an old-school nerd show full of comics and movies and vendors and cosplayers before they were called cosplayers. I wasn't old enough to drive, but myself and my friends, we convinced our parents to let us spend the weekend at the show in a scary downtown Atlanta that had yet to be cleaned up and made safe for tourists, just so we could wallow in comic books, model kits, and people dressed like Darth Vader, X-Men, and Elfquest elves.

But what affected me the most from that Atlanta Fantasy Fair wasn't a costumer or a comic book, it's what happened in an Omni hotel room. Some people attending the show from Florida happened to be members of something called the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization. They'd brought a VCR, some cables and a big pile of video tapes of what at the time was termed “Japanimation,” and their intent was... well I don't actually know what they had in mind. Maybe they didn’t know they’d wind up turning that hotel room into an impromptu Japanese cartoon theater, but that's how things turned out. Friends, friends of friends, and total strangers all found themselves camped out in this random hotel room for hours on end, watching Space Adventure Cobra and Dagger Of Kamui and Lupin III: Castle Of Cagliostro. This was the first place I'd seen these films, the brain-melting power of peak 1980s anime cinema imprinting itself upon my psyche.

Atlanta Fantasy Fair 1985 program book cover and map

Perhaps more important than the Rintaro or the Dezaki films, though, was how they came to me; we saw these films because some fans took it upon themselves to haul equipment across state lines and fiddle with the RF connectors around the back of a hotel TV and show foreign-language animated films to a room full of random nerds, just for the sheer pleasure of sharing these awesome things with people who might enjoy them too.

The Dagger Of Kamui

That's how I came to anime fandom. I saw people doing the work and making things happen, and I took this as my blueprint for action, as my guide moving forward. In a few months we'd have our own chapter of the C/FO in Atlanta, I'd be running the anime room at that very same Atlanta Fantasy Fair, we'd be having club meetings and publishing fanzines and screening movies in odd places and eventually we'd have our own anime conventions.

If those Floridians hadn’t had the generosity to share anime with strangers we might not be here today, and by "here" I mean "The World Congress Center", a half-mile as the crow flies from that 1985 Omni suite where we watched Jiro battle ninjas and Cobra romance triplets. Of course, these days Japanese animation isn’t hard to find. We don’t have to rely on strangers showing up from out of state with VHS tapes. We can go to the movies or turn on our streaming services or throw on a Blu-Ray disc and there it is. But that impulse to share, to present, to drop something amazing on some unsuspecting crowds, that's still with us. That's why I'm still finding myself on that institutional hotel carpeting, still telling people about some amazing piece of Japanese animation they need to see.

And what will I be doing at the 2024 Anime Weekend Atlanta? Well, Thursday afternoon I'll be holding down a table in the Super Happy Fun Sell, AWA's garage sale, swap meet, flea market, yard sale event where the previously loved anime and manga merch finds new homes. Bring cash!

Thursday at 8 Neil Nadelman brings back Totally Lame Anime from its lead-lined containment facility, where decades of embarrassingly bad animation and poorly conceived concepts rise up to bring shame upon their ancestors.

Then at 10pm Thursday it's time again for Anime Hell, the whiz-bang, anything-goes kook-clip-fest where confusion, amusement and amazement battle for control of your eyeballs!

Saturday morning at 10:15 Neil and I will take you on a journey to the beginnings of anime localization in America as we look at the pioneers who saw vast opportunity in bringing Japanese animation to America, with only slight assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency.

On Saturday afternoon we'll explore the wonderful adventures of Candy Candy, perhaps America's pluckiest orphan, as she lassos ne'er-do-wells and breaks hearts across two continents in manga and anime that you aren't allowed to see in America!

Sunday we blast off to Iscandar and parts unknown with the Space Battleship Yamato on a fifty year voyage to repeatedly save the Earth, defy any number of space dictators, and move lots of merchandise through a series of originals, sequels, reboots, and reimaginings!

It's been thirty years since we started Anime Weekend Atlanta, and the closest the show has been to downtown since that first year at the ill-fated Castlegate hotel. What was once a whimsical lark for a handful of devoted anime nerds in a few cities has become a nationwide phenomenon, locking down the largest convention centers in America's major metropolitan areas for gigantic, perhaps intimidatingly crowded festivals that make the early days of anime conventions look like a quiet Sunday school picnic. What will the future hold for this phenomenon? I don't know, but I'm exhausted just thinking about it. See you at AWA!

-Dave Merrill

Space Shark Versus Fire Bird: The Movie

Early in 1984 I was a teenage nerd at something called the Atlanta Comics Festival, a show hosted by a local comics distributor so that 80s Marvel junkies could witness a panel of X-men inkers roasting editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. I'm pretty sure the hotel was a Howard Johnson's, I can definitely recall attending a presentation about Marvel's upcoming "Transformers" license, and I know I spent a few hours digging through long boxes in the dealer's room. But what I mostly remember about this event is a dark function room the size of a large closet, occupied by a giant top-loading VCR and a big old-fashioned console television.

 

Sure, the memory cheats sometimes, but it seems I can recall walking past that doorway and seeing a glimpse of the TV inside and saying to myself, holy cow, that's Phoenix 2772, Cosmozone Of Love. It's a film I knew about because people like Fred Patten, Jim Wheelock (seen here) and Ardith Carlton had been writing about Japanese animation in magazines like Comics Scene and Fangoria and Starlog.

Writing about Japanese animation for the wider market in the early 1980s means starting with the big guns, and back then the big gun was Osamu Tezuka, the God Of Manga, the guy behind a lot of the Japanese cartoons those readers would have seen in the 1960s and 1970s, and you have to lead with what Tezuka had been up to lately, besides 18-hour manga-drawing days, navigating bankruptcy and producing anime about insect people and instant puberty pills. And what Tezuka had been up to lately was Phoenix 2772.

So I knew what this movie was and who made it. What I didn't know was if I'd ever get to, you know, actually see it. At that time, Japanese animation was afternoon TV half-hours interrupted by ads for Fruit Roll-Ups and Hot Wheels. The prospect of watching a Japanese animated film that wasn't a Sunday afternoon rain-delay broadcast of an old edited-for TV Toei fairy tale, well, that was something I never thought would happen, and having that particular belief shattered was a fundamental experience.

Four decades, two VHS copies, and one DVD rip later, Phoenix 2772 sticks with me. I can still hear echoes of the flat “International” dub actors working their way through the script, still get a kick out of that rotoscoped boxing match, still marvel at how a movie can blast us with dystopian technofascism, psycho-robo-sexual hangups, and eight kinds of hallucinogenic effects as a Space Shark battles an eternal Space Firebird, and yet remain an awkward watch, unable to get out of its own way enough to really come together as a singular piece of cinema. Like the Phoenix itself, it’s a mystery.

Legendary in myths across Asia and Central Europe, the Phoenix dies in fire and returns to life, its blood delivering eternal life and its legend inspiring seekers and philosophers eager to either find immortality or to tell us how bad immortality would be, because we mere humans lack the wisdom to endure a forever existence. Japan’s manga legend Osamu Tezuka used the legend as fodder for a metaphysical and metahistorical story cycle beginning in the 1960s and continuing until the end of his life. Tezuka first serialized Phoenix - that’s Hi no Tori in Japanese - in Gakudosha's venerable Manga Shonen, and later in Shoujo Club, Tezuka's own COM, Asahi Sonorama's Manga Shonen, and Kadokawa's Yasei Jidai (Wild Age). An English version of Phoenix published by VIZ Media now commands impressive secondary-market prices.

There would be a live-action Hi no Tori film in 1978. Based on the "Dawn" chapter, the film was directed by Kon "Tokyo Olympiad" Ichikawa and starred Tomisaburo "Itto Ogami" Wakayama as Sarutahaiko, Mieko Takamine as Queen Himiko, and, uh,  Astro Boy as Astro Boy.

Kon later said that as a fan of Tezuka’s original work and challenged by the idea of mixing live action and animation, he’d been eager to work on the project. But the film’s technical difficulties were perhaps too difficult, and as Kon said, he might have been too in love with Tezuka’s original. At any rate, the film is a dusty, prehistorical affair shot largely in quarries and forests and in spite of Wakayama’s lively, prosthetic-nose portrayal of Sarutahiko, the movie wasn’t a success.

Tezuka mostly spent the 1970s concentrating on manga, completing gekiga-style serials Ode To Kirihito, Alabaster, and Ayako, Unico for the kiddies and superstar surgeon Black Jack for Shonen Champion, while also continuing his Phoenix saga. Additionally he was also navigating his way around the consequences of a decade’s worth of financial difficulties.

In Tezuka animation terms, the 70s meant mediocrity and misfires. Melmo’s TV anime metamorphosed away after 26 episodes and Umi no Triton swam out of Tezuka’s hands and into compilation films. Tezuka produced none of the experimental shorts he’d enjoyed making in the 1960s (and would create again in the 1980s), while Toei-produced Tezuka projects like 1973’s Microid S and the 1977 ersatz Astro Boy Jetter Mars failed to grab an audience.

However, in 1978 Tezuka would get a decently-budgeted opportunity to shine thanks to NTV and their “Love Saves The Earth” telethon. One Million Year Trip: Bander’s Book was the first of nine Tezuka specials for NTV’s annual telethon. 1979’s special would be the all-Tezuka-star murder mystery/time travel mashup Marine Express, and the internationally successful 1980 Astro Boy series would debut on NTV in October.

 
Phoenix 2772: Cosmozone Of Love was a big part of Tezuka’s animation renaissance. Budgeted at 800 million yen (about four million USD at the time), 2772 was the most expensive Japanese animated feature to date, with individual animators assigned to each character, extensive rotoscoping, composited live images, “scanimation” barrier-grid animation and slit-scan special effects. Tezuka would write and direct along with Taki Sugiyama, while mechanical designs would be by Satomi "Nora" Mikuriya. Yasuo Higuchi would orchestrate the soundtrack. Animation direction would be by Kazuko "the most beautiful animator at Toei Animation" Nakamura and anime-industry MVP Noboru Ishiguro. The end result would be like no other anime film before or since.

You know how an Italian Star Wars ripoff still feels Italian, still has those Cinecittà Hercules-movie sets, too much eye makeup, and the inevitable cavemen? How a Japanese Star Wars ripoff still manages to put Sonny Chiba in there kung-fuing the hell out of hapless goons?  Well, when Tezuka made his own Star Wars - and don't tell me Phoenix 2772 isn't in part a response to Star Wars, because come on, we're not blind - it wound up 100% Tezuka, the Tezuka who loved animation and loved hurling budgets and schedules into its maw. The film didn’t simply adapt the “Future” chapter of Phoenix (COM, Dec. 1967-Sept. 1968), but used “Future” to springboard an entirely new story, a story that winds up being more 2001: A Space Odyssey than Star Wars, but again, that’s Tezuka. He does it his way.

Speaking of Kubrick, Phoenix 2772 begins with an overture of 2001-style colorscapes set to lush Higuchi orchestral movements as our titular, very cartoony, very Tezuka Space Firebird glides past the camera, giving viewers fair warning they’re about to watch a film about the personification of a universe-encompassing life force that resembles nothing so much as a breakfast cereal mascot. Don’t get me wrong, I think Phoenix is a masterpiece and all, but sometimes the title character fails, to my eyes at least, to inspire the requisite awe and wonder necessary to sell its larger concepts. Maybe it’s me.

The overture ends with a minimalist title sequence, and Phoenix 2772 for-real begins with a shot right in the computerized test-tube baby-maker of the future, following our zygote hero Godoh through his decanting, infancy, childhood, adolescence and finally manhood, raised in a techno-crib by a crew of servo-robots, view-screens, holograms, and what turns out to be the film’s breakout star Olga, the transforming robot nanny that sings the body electric while turning into jet planes or power sleds.

 
Olga may be the final expression of Tezuka’s lifelong fascination with transformation, of humans who turn into animals, robots that turn into humans, girlboys and boygirls, children that become adults and back again, aliens that turn into humans or animals, of the whole parade of Zero-men and Ningen Mokodi and robot-rocket boys that march through his work in all their various malleable forms. The transmogrifying blonde Olga spends 2772 rescuing Godoh and asking after his well-being in her little-girl voice, provided by veteran seiyuu Katsue “Miki Rando From Acrobunch, also Unico” Miwa, a voice that’s slightly jarring to hear every time it comes out of this doll-faced fetish-gear mom-robot. Actualizing the feelings both have for each other becomes the pivot around which revolves the fate of the world, and of this movie.

But first we have to get Godoh out of that future-crib. This happens courtesy of a 45-second, transcendentally masterful hand-animated sequence, shifting perspectives, zooming and panning through the future-city as Godoh and Olga travel to Space Fighters Training School, where Godoh learns he’ll be trained along with the rest of his cohort of genetically selected star pilots. This sequence is also where, at eleven minutes in, we get our first spoken dialog when the sadistic drill instructor Borukan sneers “we don’t serve their kind here” at Olga.

Godoh is selected by Science Minister Rock to fly the super starship Space Shark and seek out Cosmozone 2772, a mysterious creature somewhere in the galaxy that has the power to revive the dying Earth, or maybe just grant immortality to the elite. This is due in part to Godoh’s top-notch space piloting, and in part because Rock and Godoh are clone-brothers, each genetically crafted to suit a different role in the world of the future. Success means he can have the freedom he desires, completely at odds with what awaits Godoh if he screws up - a life sentence in Iceland working on Rock’s pet project, a Berg Katse-style scheme to drill down to the Earth’s mantle and harness the geothermal energy that is Earth’s last energy resource.

During Space Shark training Godoh happens to meet Lena, an elite-class beauty who not only is the daughter of a big shot official, but is the betrothed of Rock. Doesn’t matter, it’s love at first sight for Godoh, on account of this is the first actual girl he’s ever met. Soon they’re meeting secretly in the Elite’s nature reserve park while Olga’s jealousy circuits spark and Lena’s alien companion Pincho obsessively sweeps and cleans. Sadly Lena and Godoh’s star-crossed romance ends with a literal squadron of makeout cops interrupting their date night. Godoh is headed for Iceland, where as the English dub assures us, the labor camps are “all Hell!”

 

Breaking rocks and dodging cave-ins at the work camp, Godoh’s unusual regard for human life comes to the attention of camp physician Dr. Saruta, last seen as Sarutahito from the “Dawn” chapter of the Phoenix manga. Saruta has an escape plan and also seeks the Phoenix, but he lacked only a pilot for the conveniently parked Space Shark helpfully located at the Iceland Space Shark Depot. Meanwhile an irate Pincho and Olga interrupt the Rock/Lena nuptials, where they learn Godoh is in Iceland.

Olga shifts into jet plane mode and literally vanishes from sight as she blasts off just in time to rescue Godoh from one of the molten rock magma explosions that really should be expected when trying to tap the Earth’s core. It’s almost time for this film to blast off in the Space Shark and seek the Phoenix, but first Godoh has to duke it out with the labor camp commandant, none other than Black Jack. Look out Godoh, he’s got knives in that cloak and he knows how to use them!

Joe Of Many More Tomorrows

 

Even after Space Shark liftoff there’s a gauntlet of security planes to dodge. Olga flies interference against the police fighters, mainly by, uh, jamming her robot butt up against the windshield, enabling our heroes to achieve escape velocity and the film to reach that full Heavy Metal vibe of  wild spaceships, weird aliens, and sexy robots. All that’s lacking is ads for rolling papers.

First stop is Antares, a planet filled with zany creatures and managed by Tezuka stalwart Shunsaku “Mr. Mustachio” Ban. It’s on Antares that the blob alien Pook and the dice alien Crack promise to lead our heroes to the Firebird, and also where the movie pauses for slapstick comedy alien fun as Tezuka again turns the dial abruptly from ‘adventure’ to ‘kooky.’  

En route to the Phoenix, Godoh tries to explain to Olga that he needs a real human girl to love, and her robot heartbreak can only be soothed by the second of the film’s two, count ‘em, two comedy space alien musical numbers. We learn the hideous fate of Borukan in a destroyed Space Shark, and things only get worse when they finally find the Phoenix on its planet of live-action smoke effects, a full hour and ten minutes into the film.

 

This isn’t your cutesy big-eyed manga Phoenix, but a rampaging space-monster, smashing everything, setting everything on fire, and then changing into a wide variety of shapes and sizes as the Space Shark gives chase.

 
In the cosmic struggle that ensues, Pincho is swallowed by the Firebird, Olga is contaminated by some sort of fried-egg mind-control space parasite, and the cinematographer forgets everything he ever knew about not breaking the 360 degree rule. At the end of the battle the Space Shark is crippled, Saruta’s dead, Olga’s flash-fried, Pook and Crack are eaten, and the Phoenix has been destroyed. Or has it?

 
As a heartbroken Godoh attempts to master Olga Repair, he finally admits that he’s been in love with his robot nursemaid all this time, and whether this is honest emotional attachment, or that he’s merely psychologically imprinted on something he’s known since childhood, well, the film refuses to say. The heart wants what the heart wants, okay? The classic manga-style Phoenix returns, intrigued by Godoh and the fundamental power of his robot love.

 
Fascinated by this unlikely bond and what we can only assume is the prospect of getting to make out with Godoh, the Phoenix possesses Olga, restores her to “like new” condition and hands Godoh the keys to a brand new paradise planet where they can consummate whatever you want to call their relationship. Even Pook, Crack, and Pincho are there, having been spared by the Firebird.

 
But this new Eden isn’t enough for Godoh, who still thinks of a ruined Earth, and how he can help by loading the Space Shark up with fruits and vegetables and hauling it all back to feed mankind. However, he arrives on a planet shaken by vast tectonic upheavals. It turns out Rock’s “mantle project” is a terrible idea that is cracking the Earth and destroying all life. Thanks, Rock.

Trapped on a doomed planet, surrounded by dead friends and enemies, Godoh is forced to choose by the Phoenix; either live forever alone, or revive the Earth by sacrificing his own life. Since this is a movie made by a guy also making yearly TV films under the theme “Love Saves The Earth,” Godoh’s choice should not be a shock. The giant chasms close back up, the inner-Earth fumes dissipate, and the Earth revives as Godoh regresses to infanthood, to be once again raised by Olga, who is now a real human woman, who might miss those super robot powers when Godoh reaches the terrible twos. So long Phoenix 2772, you truly were a Love’s Cosmozone.

Blazing a trail followed by other overlong, overwrought 80s anime space epics, Phoenix 2772 is an ambitious film made by a peerless crew of talented animators. The movie is filled with beautifully-animated Space Sharks versus beautifully animated Phoenixes, flashing electrical halos as Olga short-circuits her runaway emotions, skilled rotoscoping as Godoh fistfights Black Jack, and world-class animation genius, like that early tracking shot zooming past and through the future city. And it’s a beautifully animated sequence, a master performance that took animator Junji Kobayashi an entire year and a physical mockup built in a Tezuka Productions hallway to complete, a factoid that’s first up whenever Phoenix 2772 is mentioned, inspiring awe as well as serious questions about the film’s staffing issues, production schedule, and editing decisions.

And that’s the problem with Phoenix 2772. Like so much of the rest of the film, this scene looks great, it’s impressive as hell, and yet it doesn’t advance the plot and tells us nothing about the characters. The cut is a superfluous drum solo killing time while the lead singer gets a drink and somebody hands the rhythm guitarist a new guitar. Ultimately it’s emblematic of why the film came and went, why the kids today don’t know about Space Sharks, Pooks, and labor camps in Iceland which are all hell. 2772 the film is all drum solos, lurching from one beauty shot to the next, ignoring anything that doesn’t involve expensive multi-camera special effects or some poor guy ruining his health making seven hundred cuts by himself.

 
The pacing isn’t the only uneven thing about the film. 2772’s tone swerves drunkenly between comedy and tragedy at whiplash-inducing speeds, and I’m not just saying this because it’s jarring for Western audiences who haven’t been seeing Tezuka’s star-system characters in all sorts of situations for decades, even though it is. You can feel the gears grind as one minute we’re looking at silly aliens and their silly alien a-fussin’ and a-feudin’, and the next minute someone’s screaming in flame-engulfed agony. Slapstick comedy, sight gags, and cuddly space creatures slam up against heartbreak, horror, and existential devastation? Pick a mood and stick with it, movie.

 
When Phoenix 2772 finds a lane and stays in it, the film connects. The detailed character animation delivers subtle movement not often seen in anime, and once the film gets to outer space we’re treated to swift, dramatic action set against a cosmos deep with color and texture. The Space Shark itself is a marvel, a perfect bit of SF design that looks great on the screen, particularly when all the hatches and missile ports open and all the lasers and beams and everything starts blasting out. This spaceship, which ought to be an expensive diecast toy for me to spend too much money on, was the brainchild of Phoenix 2772’s mechanical designer Satomi Mikuriya, whose own manga version of 2772 would be serialized in monthly Manga Shonen.

 
Along with Mikuriya’s manga, the film’s marketing tie-ins would be limited to a few books, some film comics, a couple of soundtrack LPs, a novelization, and maybe an Olga resin kit or two. Even the home video releases were paltry. A 94-minute edited version would air on Japanese TV in 1983; this same cut would appear on VHS and LD a few years later. Japan wouldn’t get an uncut home video release of Phoenix 2772 until Toho’s 2003 DVD. The UK’s Mountain Films would market a 116 minute VHS of the film in the mid ‘80s, and France saw 2772 as "Les Vengeurs de l'Espace.”

Apart from a NYC screening in 1982, America wouldn’t see the film until Peregrine Films marketed a 102-minute English dub of 2772 as “Space Firebird” in their 1987 Dynamagic package of anime titles, with an uncut Best Film & Video release to follow.

 

It’s stated frequently online that Phoenix 2772 won the Inkpot Award at the 1980 San Diego Comic Con. However, a quick glance shows that the Inkpot Award is handed out to people, not films. Tezuka was a guest at the SDCC that year and did receive the award, and Phoenix 2772 is one of his works, so sure, why not. Reportedly, the film also won Best Animated Feature at the first Las Vegas Film Festival, a film festival about which absolutely nothing else is known. Perhaps its only purpose was to grant awards to Phoenix 2772? Sure, why not.

Okay, so Phoenix 2772 whiffed at the box office, failed to catch an international art-house audience, and spent two decades a stranger in its own home town. But there’s a reason people still talk about this film, a reason I keep remembering that now-demolished Holiday Inn and that console TV and that fuzzy VHS, and it’s because there isn’t another movie that dares to take us to the Cosmozone Of Love. Tezuka could have played it safe; he could have made a simplistic space opera where the good guys team up with friendly alien robots to defeat evil in the galaxy. Instead he threw deep, he delivered a long, experimental, special-effected, weirdly horny karma-bomb straight past the goalposts, out of the stadium, and right into a philosophy department window, tackling big questions alongside his doomed dystopias, musical aliens, and transforming robot mom/girlfriends.

Phoenix 2772 is one of the few films that puts the confusion and the transgression of human-human and human-cyborg relations right on the screen, with characters tortured by wanting something they know isn’t right, but can’t live without. Maybe wrangling this and all these other disparate concepts into a successful two hours is an impossible task. But that Tezuka, he couldn’t not try, he didn’t know how to not go full-throttle towards the technically challenging and the tonally confusing. Isn’t that what we really need? The occasional unsettling misstep, maybe a little too revealing, unfamiliar, pretentious, something where people really did spend a year animating one scene that would be promptly cut right out of the movie’s first American release? That’s why on that afternoon in 1984 I took a path away from super-friends and licensed toys, towards a fuzzy VHS copy of something unlike anything I’d seen.

actual screen cap of that 1984 VHS

Right now we’re seeing a lot of vintage anime classics find new life in boutique North American releases, and the question is always, when will Phoenix 2772 see a fiery rebirth? Other Hi No Tori stories were adapted after the film, starting with three late 1980s OVAs, a 2004 TV series and film, and releases in 2019 and 2023 of varying degrees of availability in the West. But 2772 remains a dusty VHS staple in America, even as the “Love Saves The Earth” films get European Blu-Rays. The top elite scientists all agree the only thing that can save our world is the Space Firebird. Let’s get Godoh and Olga into that North American blu-ray Space Shark already, somebody. There are vast new audiences waiting to be confused, amazed, and maybe even a little turned on.

Special thanks to Bill Ritch, who screened that 2772 VHS at that Atlanta comic show so many years ago. Thanks again, Bill!

-Dave Merrill

 

Interview With A Volgar

 

Thirty years ago the voice cast of the 1979 Star Blazers series was a mystery to American Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato fandom. The credits for Star Blazers listed the Japanese title and a host of Japanese creatives, but failed to mention any of the American voice talent. Without a late 70s NYC telephone directory and a lot of money for long-distance cold calls to businesses that might not even still exist, research possibilities were limited.

That changed one day at a fandom event in Atlanta. A friend of mine was not only a popular local cosplayer but also an accomplished puppeteer, and in that capacity she was involved with Atlanta's Center For Puppetry Arts. It was there that she met another puppeteer named Michael Chechopolous. In the course of  conversation she learned Mr. Chechopolous was the voice of the character "Volgar" from the TV series, Star Blazers, to which she replied, oh, I have a friend who's really into that series. The next time I saw my friend at, oh, DragonCon or the Atlanta Fantasy Fair or some such fandom gathering, she mentioned this interesting detail.

Star Blazers' Volgar is, as we all know, the Gamilon general commanding planet Balan, strategically located halfway between Earth and Iscandar. Known as 'Geru" in Japan, we first see Volgar in episode 15 as he's suddenly demoted to assisting the new base commander, General Lysis. Volgar grumbles and backstabs his way through the next story arc until episode 22 in which both he and Lysis are (spoilers) defeated by the Star Force.

 

I lost no time in setting up an interview with Michael Chechopolous. The interview we conducted was published in the summer 1994 issue of the print version of Let's Anime, and in an edited version in the first issue of the Star Blazers comic from Argo Press in 1995. Here today at the 21st century blog version of Let's Anime is the original, unedited, un-revised interview; at least as original as it's going to get without transcribing the audio cassette the interview was originally recorded on. Thirty years later it remains a fascinating document, revealing some of the experience of being a working actor in NYC in the late 1970s, the 1990s ineptitude and exuberance of four young anime nerds whose enthusiasm far exceeded their journalistic skills, and the patient hospitality of Chechopolous, who allowed four complete strangers into his home to talk about cartoons. So here, without further interruption, is the mostly unredacted text of our interview with Michael Chechopolous.

Michael Chechopolous is a puppeteer and television producer here in Atlanta, working with the Center For Puppetry Arts and GPTV, the local PBS station. Back in the late '70s he worked with Westchester on their production of Star Blazers, as the voice of Volgar. Our thanks to him for graciously agreeing to this interview.

This interview took place on a September night in Michael's apartment in Atlanta GA. Present in the room were Michael (MC), the author (DM), Matt Murray (MM), Christian Smith (CB), and David G. Wilson III (DW). It got pretty noisy.

MC: OK, now, what can I tell you about Star Blazers?
DM: Well, start at the beginning, I guess. How did you get contacted, who did you contact at Westchester, just what happened?
MC: I, geez, let's see. That's been how long ago?
DM: That was what, seventy-
MM: About thirteen years.
MC: '78?
MM: I saw it (Star Blazers) in 1980.
DM: Yeah, I figure around '80, '81, '82...
MC: '82... New York City.
DM: The teeming metropolis.
MC: God...
DW: There are a million naked... cities in the...
(general laughter)
MC: Yes, and this is just one story. Uh, what was I doing, oh, I must have started working for Lord & Taylor, I was lighting design for the Fifth Avenue windows and I did... we used to set up at Christmas, the animation, you know, they have animated window figures which was always a big attraction, so I was doing things, you know, as I could there in the evening or whatever, let's see, how the hell did... 

MC: Oh, that's right, it was an agent, who was a friend of mine, who was a character actor gentleman, he had told me about that, so it was like networking, he heard that this, ah, he may have done some voice-overs for them too. I even forget the man's name now. So I was always talking to him, so he gave me the contact and I called them. They were auditioning, so they had me come in for a preliminary reading, look at sides (scripts) like you do for a film reading, they give you a fresh section of the script, and they give you a while to go through it, and they explain the character.

MC: When I talked on the phone to them, they said, can you do a, sort of a Russian - Bulgarian accent...
(laughter)
MC: So I started thinking of old Bullwinkle the moose, and Natasha and Boris, and then I started thinking of, oh, Count Dracula, and so there was a combination of Boris and Count Dracula.
(laughter)
MC: So that's what I was thinking when I was trying to get this character's voice. Then I went in and they showed me the script, and he said, this is sort of a crazed military commander. So, uh, I said, all right, crazed, if they want crazy, I'll give it to 'em! So I ran over it a couple of times and I just, you know, I was just (a) wild, raving maniac, and they said good, we like it, (laughter) you're hired! 

MC: So, uh, then they had a studio space in New York, a sound booth, and it was closed off with glass, and you had microphones, and on the other side of the sound booth were monitors, they would play the tape, right, and you had the script in front of you, they gave you the script before so you could read it, but you didn't have much time, and you had to try to memorize as much as you could, but you had it there to refer to. So they play the tape, and then you try to synchronize the dialogue to the action of the character as he was moving and talking...
DM: So you got to see the picture?
MC: You see the picture, you got to see it, and then they do takes, and many times you did or they'd stop and they'd say, from this point, go on.

MC: Of course, the less you goofed up, the more they liked it, because it took less time and they were able to move on and you know, less studio time and whatever. So as an actor, you wanted to not goof up, (you wanted) to try to get it on one or two takes, and do it, you know, and then you had other actors next to you, if there were two or three in a scene, so you had somebody to read off of, but you were concentrating on the monitor out there, trying to synchronize that. It was fun, I liked it. 

 
MC: So of course when I saw this character, this bald-headed, big figure, I immediately could get into it, and then, you transfer, of course, the voice into the character that you saw, so it's your, your creation became something different already. So I had from puppeteering, you know, that's sort of what happens with a puppet. So I had experience, as I create a puppet as an artist, I create one thing, but when you start performing with the puppet, it becomes something else from what it is, because you're adding a life to it, and it has its own life outside of just structural, physical characterization. So just like a cartoon drawing is one thing, when you add a voice to it, the combination becomes a creation. And so, uh, it was fun. That's how we did it, and it did pretty well. I got a couple of times... I think I had about eight sessions with Volgar, right, and that was it. I've always wanted to do more, but...

DM: Did they never call you back?
MC: Uh, no. I don't know what the hell happened with that.
DM: Neither do we.
MC: It was non-union... (cross talk prevented us hearing this)
MM: We don't know what happened to any of those voice actors. We've never heard them again.
DM: What happened with that show was that, the first release they did here of Star Blazers was two television seasons, and later in Japan they came out with a third television season, but that didn't get translated and brought over here until, five years later? It's like, really recently.
MM: They couldn't find the same voice actors to do the roles, and the new ones aren't nearly as good.
MC: Huh, they should have called me.
(laughter)
DM: You know, no one can figure it out, I mean, people just don't vanish.
MC: You know, the reason was, because it was non-union...
(everyone says "Ahhhh,")
MC: So they didn't want to keep records, because I was equity SAG (Screen Actors Guild), now...
DM: So they didn't keep records?
MC: Probably not. Outside of paying you.
DM: The smoking gun!
(laughter)
MC: They probably didn't want, uh, to know, or to keep track of people, because they use a lot of union people, OK? And of course I was making like, what did I make every time I went into the studio, 150, 200 bucks, you know, so, hey, I don't care if you're union or non-union, that was good money for three or four hours in the studio just playing around! So, you know.
MM: They didn't list any voice actors in the credits for Star Blazers. None of them are listed.
MC: And that's another reason why, so I'm not... I didn't credit for that... bastards!
(laughter)
MC: So...
MM: Yeah, and all these other shows like Robotech, when they list voice actors, they don't say who played who.
DM: Well, you will (get credit) now.
MC: Yeah and not only will we know, but when we show the clip on 8 (the PBS station) and you're being interviewed, you'll say, "...and the voice actor..."
(laughter)
MC: ..."who never got credit, the poor guy, he's a struggling person, who's also assistant producer of this show, I believe...
(laughter)
CB: By a strange coincidence...
(laughter)

(Chechopolous was working at Georgia Public Television at the time, and there had been some talk of producing some sort of TV program about Japanese animation fandom and anime in general. This did not wind up happening, but the project is mentioned a few more times in the interview.)

DM: So what was it like working with the other voice actors?
MC: It was great, you know, we were all pretty good, professional people.
DM: Were they all professional actors?
MC: Yeah, I'm sure they all were. New York, you know, eight million people, and you know, everybody is an actor!
DW: Couldn't throw a stone without hitting an actor.
MC: You know, yeah! From the cabdriver to the waitress, they're all in the business. So it wasn't hard for them to find talented people in that city, who were professional and willing to work, off scale.
CB: Did they track all of you at once? I mean, did they have each person miked, and you all read parts and put it down to tape at once, or did they take each person at a time, when they were recording a session?
MC: No, no, they could, they did both. They could run two together, they could go, but usually the tempo and the flow wasn't (like) that... so that usually when the next person started, they'd have to stop, and start with him. But if it happened, they would try to go for it, and if it hit, they would let it go, OK? But if you couldn't get it, they'd stop and say, OK, you start, and they'd let the next actor shoot. But sure, when we had a dialogue going between us, we would try to take it, the dialogue, and sometimes, you know, we'd get it, it worked.

DM: So, you know, they, uh, do you remember the last episode your character was in?
MC: No.
DM: Well, you...
MC: I died?
DM: Yeah! Well, see...
(laughter)
MC: I blew up, right?
DM: General Lysis planted a bomb underneath the, the Argo, the way the Japanese (episode) had it, he had the bomb, and they sat there and blew up, 'cause he was trying to blow up the bigger ship.
DW: The bomb was still in Lysis' ship while it was attached to the side...
DM: It was suicide. But the Americans took it, I guess Westchester took it and snipped it around a little, and redid a scene where Lysis and you, like, escape and got away.
MC: Ahhh...
DM: But you never see them again. So you're still alive!
MM: They just took the same footage and ran it backwards, to show the ship fly away.
DW: Which is more effort than anyone has ever done, in a similar situation.
MC: So they kept my character alive, in the American version?
MM: In the Japanese version they just, click, poof, you're gone... beause they figure they're going to show it to kids.
DM: They usually do that when it's a kid's show in America, they have... they take Japanese shows and just snip the violence out, any...
DW: Innuendo of any kind...
MC: Death, they don't want to see you die, yeah, you can get hurt but be all right.
DW: You can't even get hurt, really.
CB: Well, occasionally.
MC: Just sort of hurt.
CB: Like a strange virus or something.
MC: Yeah, like, what's that series on now, about the polluters, the toxic, uh, thing?
CB: Toxic Avengers... (Toxic Crusaders? Captain Planet? Who knows)
MC: Yeah, like that, you never see anybody get seriously hurt.

 
DM: Well, the Japanese... this shows... well, Star Blazers was originally Space Cruiser Yamato, and the Yamato was, you know, their super battleship during World War Two.
DW: The biggest and the best ship they ever had.
DM: The whole point behind Space Cruiser Yamato was that they revived the Yamato as a space battleship, to save Earth, and the Americans, they, you know, they said, yeah, it's the Yamato, but they called it the Argo, and it lost all the militaristic Japanese impressions, but to Japan the show is very much a political, patriotic...
MC: Ahhh.
MM: It's like Japan saving the Earth.
DW: It's as if the Enterprise (from Star Trek) was like an American, uh, spaceship.
CB: Which it pretty much is.
DW: Well, I mean if it had...
CB: The American flag painted on it...
DW: It would be that kind of thing.
MM: It's like, the planet they're trying to reach in the ship (in Star Blazers), it has one land mass on it, which looks suspiciously like Japan...
(laughter)
MM: It's very obvious.
DM: It's a very interesting show, both, you know, as far as, we like animation and it's neat, but looking at in a wider, in a sort of...
MC: How much did it play? I mean, where... I would like to know, what exposure did it get?
DM: Space Cruiser Yamato... what, in America? It's been shown all over the world.
MM: There are whole fan clubs devoted to the thing.
MC: Yeah? I could be a celebrity and I don't know it?
(laughter)
DM: There are people out there, that say, "Well, this is neat!"
MM: Mostly in Texas.
DM: They're in... well, there's these two guys! (gestures to people in room)
(laughter)
MM: There's a fan club in Texas that's named after the Earth Defense Command from Star Blazers, yeah, their primary interest is that show...
DM: Well, it used to be.
MM: Well, yeah.
MC: That would be interesting for (Channel) 8 to mention all this...
DM: There was a Star Blazers Fan Club that ran for many years in New England...
MC: Can you get connections to that?
CB: Oh yeah.
MC: So when we get on that 8 thing, and we show them, and we we talk about that, (we need to) bring as much material to support the...
DM: How many boxes?
(laughter)
MC: Well, I mean, as much...
DM: We've been into this stuff for so long...
DW: We'll have to bring a pick-up truck.
CB: We'll just come in like this (spreads arms wide)
MC: That's it! My producer will go crazy!
(laughter)
DW: It's like, how many hours can we devote to this one subject.
MM: We could show side-by-side in comparison. Here's the American version, here's the Japanese version (laughter); we have Japanese episodes too.
MC: OK, so where... it played all over America, how long did it play?
CB: About a year and a half ago, they played it weekly for a while. It was originally a daily show, they started running it on Sunday mornings only.
MM: Like, in '85 was the last time they showed it that way.
MC: You know, I should have got residuals, if it was union, I would be getting residuals, but because it was a payoff, non-union, we all got, you know...
DM: Well, you took the money then...
MC: I was a starving actor! Still am!
(laughter)
DM: But Star Blazers, or here, it was called Star Blazers, I'm not sure what it was called in Europe, it was Space Cruiser Yamato in Japan...
MC: And it played in Europe?
MM: I think it was just Space Cruiser, in Europe. (the 1977 Yamato film was released in the UK with the Space Cruiser title. The series had different titles in other European markets.)
DM: Yeah, Space Cruiser in Europe... in Japan they had three TV series and five different movies, that are all new... um, merchandise out the butt..
MM: Oh yeah.
DM: Toys, models, books...
MC: Do they have any of Volgar, do you think, (of his) character?
MM: I've seen just two figures and those were just the main characters.
DM: I don't even know if they have a Lysis.
MM: Well, unless you count IQ-9, that makes three.
DM: I think he was a main character.
DW: You've got the IQ-9, I've got, um, a...
DM: You know, the wind-up, you know the robot? I've got a little wind-up IQ-9... they've got little action figures...
MC: Yeah! Bring 'em!
(laughter)

MC: He's going to go wild.
DM: We could do a whole show on Space Cruiser Yamato.
MM: Yeah, why not?
DW: Alone!
CB: That'd be good to do.
DM: I think in Mexico it was called Space Cruiser Champion...(it was not.)
DW: I didn't know there was a Mexican series.
DM: You see, Japanese stuff is really popular all over the world. There are Japanese cartoons right now that are popular in Canada and Europe.
DW: Japanese cartoons are really, uh, growing in interest (here) too...
CB: Unfortunately it's the wrong ones...
(laughter)

(At this point the interview concluded. and we moved to another room with a TV and a VCR so that Mr. Chechopolous could enjoy his performance as Volgar for the first time in years.)

Thank you for coming with us down memory lane, and thanks to Mr. Chechopolous for inviting us into his home and giving us the details on his Star Blazers voice acting.

-Dave Merrill

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