1975: Anime Goes Around The World

 
A little while ago we looked at 1965 - now we're going to skip forward ten years and look back thirty years at a selection of 1975's outstanding achievements in the field of Japanese animation. And there's no better place to start than with a cartoon about a bee.
 

The 1970s were a decade in which Japanese animation cemented its international reputation as a reliable supplier of children's entertainment, and part of that was due to a series of high profile international coproductions, like this one, Maya The Bee. Raised to be a good bee, Maya's adventurous spirit leads her to defy her bee overlords and leave the hive to explore the world, meeting a wide variety of small creatures with which she learns important life lessons. Based on a German children's book from 1912, subsequent adaptations thankfully toned down the nationalist militarism of the original, and the 1975 Zuiyo Eizo / Nippon Animation series went so far as to introduce Willy, Maya's lazy bee boyfriend. This 52 episode series aired around the world in various languages, and in Saban's English dub on YTV and Nickelodeon. Since then Maya has appeared in several new animated adaptations, video games, stage plays, amusement parks, you name it, the world is buzzing for Maya.

 

Gamba no Bouken, or as we call it The Adventures Of Gamba, is one of those anime series that had a big impact in Japan but barely made a ripple in the English language market. Our hero Gamba is an adventurous mouse, and he and his friends defend the island of Yumemishima and defy the white ferret Noroi. The TMS series only ran for 26 episodes, but had enough staying power to inspire a 1984 theatrical release, another film in 1991, and a CG version in 2015 that was dubbed into English and given the mystifying title "Air Bound." The absolutely melodramatic 1975 adventure of Gamba was directed by the master of melodramatic adventure, Osamu Dezaki, and had a tremendous impact on Japanese kids, some of whom would grow up to become anime professionals. In 2006 a poll of Japanese celebrities selected their top 100 anime titles, and the winner, beating out One Piece, Naruto, Dragonball, Evangelion, and Fullmetal Alchemist, was Gamba.

Kum-Kum Wanpaku Omukashi, or "Naughty Ancient Kum Kum," is a show from the studio that would become Nippon Sunrise and is all about misbehaving prehistoric children romping through the dawn of prehistory. The series was created by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, whom you know from Mobile Suit Gundam, and directed by Rintaro, whom you know from Captain Harlock and the Galaxy Express movies. Don't expect scientific accuracy from this show, which has has dinosaurs in it as supporting characters, but the series is a lot of charming fun and the English dub was from Paramount TV and aired on television around the world, including, as I'm reliably informed, Canada.
 

As we saw last time, Tatsunoko Animation started in 1965 with Space Ace and spent the next decade producing world wide hits like Mach Go Go Go and Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. In 1975 the studio would score another SF hit with the comedy Time Bokan, a 61 episode Fuji-TV show which would go on to inspire nine subsequent companion series. The story? Top time scientist Dr. Kieta vanishes after building a time machine, and his lab assistant Tanpei and his granddaughter Junko set off through time and space to rescue him, followed closely by the evil Majo and her henchmen Grocky and Warusa, who were the inspiration for Pokémon's Team Rocket. Another tremendous Japanese hit that was successful everywhere except the US, two Time Bokan compilations were dubbed by Jim Terry (Timefighters In The Land Of Fantasy) and Harmony Gold (Time Patrol).

 

Timefighters In The Land Of Time Patrol

 

Speaking of science fiction and Tatsunoko, Space Knight Tekkaman blasted the muscular hero action of their Gatchaman, Casshan and Hurricane Polymar adventures right into outer space. In the 21st century, Professor Amachi creates the invulnerable "tekka" metal and with it, builds the robot "Pegas," equipped with the "Teksetter" system which transforms space pilot Joji Minami into the powerful Tekkaman to battle the Waldarian space invaders. With character designs by Yoshitaka Amano, Tekkaman would run twenty-six episodes and find a limited American audience via thirteen English-dubbed episodes that were briefly broadcast on UHF television and sold via home video cassette. The 1991 reboot/sequel Tekkaman Blade was a popular show that appeared on UPN as "Teknoman."

 

When Akira shouts "fade in," Raideen emerges to battle the evil Fossil Beasts for the fate of mankind! Nippon Sunrise/Tohokushinsha's super robot anime Brave Raideen was the first transforming giant robot anime TV show, and also the first transforming giant robot TV show to be broadcast on American television, helping to start North American anime fandom as we know it today. Created by a top notch team of anime talent that included Yoshiyuki Tomino, Tadao Nagahama, and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Raideen ran for fifty episodes and has never had a proper English release.

これがUFOだ!空飛ぶ円盤 aka "It's A UFO! A Flying Saucer" aka "Get That Flying Saucer" is a real space oddity that could only have come from the 1970s. If you weren't there at the time, well, believe me when I tell you that the 70s were the high water mark for all kinds of far-out fantastic nonsense. Bigfoot, ancient astronauts, ESP, Atlantis, the Loch Ness Monster, and UFOs all appeared in pop culture presented as fiction, as fact, and as something in between. Japan was not immune to paranormal fever and perhaps the purest expression of Japan's singular UFO fascination is this film, a sixteen minute featurette screened in March of 1975 as a concentrated distillation of postwar flying saucer fever.

 

We see anime Kenneth Arnold spot UFOs from his Call Air model A-2, anime Captain Mantell's tragic encounter with an unidentified object, and Toei's versions of Barney and Betty Hill and their famous "missing time" close encounter on the lonely roads of Vermont. Before you ask, no, they don't cover the so-called "Roswell incident" because that was not really part of the mythos before the 80s turned it into a thing. After the testimonials, "It's A UFO" switches gears and ventures into theorizing what the inside of a UFO might look like and why these space aliens might be observing the Earth and what this means for the future of mankind. Heady stuff for a Manga Matsuri short! But it's all in the service of laying the groundwork for their next featurette.

 

Uchuu (space) Enban (saucer) Daisenso (large battle), or The Great Flying Saucer Battle, was included in Toei's July Manga Matsuri festival. Combining the UFO craze with the super robot fad, this film was a Dynamic Pro vehicle that served as a pilot film for October's UFO Robo Grendizer series, and while the characters and vehicles are different, you can see the Grendizer framework clearly, as outer space refugee Duke Fleed arrives on Earth incognito with his saucer-based Gattiger robot in tow, pursued by an evil alien repo-armada who is intent upon recovering said saucer-based Gattiger robot.

I mentioned earlier that the 1970s was the decade where Japanese animation cemented its place in worldwide entertainment. Well, UFO Robo Grendizer, the Go Nagai/Dynamic Pro super robot series from Toei that was given a trial run with Uchuu Enban Daisenso, began airing in 1975. Grendizer ran 74 episodes and was a massive hit in Italy and France and the French-speaking world, cementing Japanese animation as the go-to entertainment for Romance-language speaking children for years to come. The story of Grendizer is a mix of royal intrigue, UFO hysteria, and super robot mecha-violence that begins as the evil Vegans destroy the planet Fleed and all its people save the prince Duke Fleed, who escapes in the super robot flying saucer Grendizer. Arriving on Earth, he goes undercover as a simple farmhand, but when the Vegans threaten, he and Grendizer battle them alongside guest star Koji Kabuto from Mazinger Z.
 

By the end of the series Duke and Koji are joined by Fleed's sister Maria and local horse girl Hikaru who each pilot their own super mecha that combine to make Grendizer even more awesome. Grendizer aired in the US as part of the "Force Five" series, and the 2024 reimagining Grendizer U was partially financed by another nation full of Grendizer fans, Saudi Arabia.

The 1970s in general weren't a big time for anime feature films. Apart from festival shorts, The Little Mermaid was the only theatrical-length anime release in 1975. Toei's adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's fish-girl story is a widescreen film directed by Tomoharu Katsumata that arguably is closer to the original fairy tale than the later Disney version. This release was dubbed into English and made its way to American television and the home video market and was later released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Discotek Media, and also given a comedy commentary track by the former MST3K comedians of Rifftrax. The Little Mermaid remains a fairy tale, but Katsumata frames the film like a widescreen super robot epic, complete with giant monsters.

catch The Little Mermaid Sunday on the Superstation

Economic factors, market forces, changing demographics, flying saucer sightings; they all worked to shape Japanese animation in 1975. With hindsight it's easy to see how the field was shifting towards original properties and international licensing and how the potential for massive toy sales drove anime studios into the arms of various super robots. Speaking for myself, when I look at 1975 I see favorites I grew up watching like Grendizer, I see favorites that became hits among the next generation like Maya The Bee, and favorites that never took off in the West but remain vital cornerstones of anime in Japan, like Gamba and Raideen. The groundwork of 1965 was paying off ten years later, with Japanese animation solidly in place as global entertainment, even if the globe didn't quite realize it yet. Next: 1985!


-Dave Merrill

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America's First Manga: UFO Commander 7?

Like many amazing adventures, this one started in an antique mall. Always on the lookout for diecast Japanese robot toys, one day I found one I didn't recognize. And I don’t want to say I’m an expert or anything, but if there’s one thing that takes up too much of my brain, it’s diecast Japanese robot toys. So I bought the thing, this big-headed orange and green robot man, and found out it was “VALCAN-I” from the Shinsei Mini Power UFO Commander 7 Series, a collection of futuristic robots and vehicles sold in the mid 1970s. Shinsei was and maybe still is a toymaker, selling detailed toy replicas of cars, trucks, construction equipment and other items of interest to kids; the brand was acquired by an Indian corporation in 1985.  

The thing about diecast toys is they’re made of metal, and metal is strong. Dogs might chew on it, kids might bury it in the sandbox, they might get smacked around or thrown or dropped, they’ll lose accessories like fists or missiles, but that toy is going to last, a brightly colored artifact of somebody’s childhood that ends up with all the other childhood artifacts on a shelf with a price tag. Soon I was finding other UFO Commander 7 items in the display cases of other vintage toy stores and out of the way antique malls. That’s where I found my Jeek Tunnelins, which is not a rare skin condition, but another mecha-vehicle member of that UFO Commander armada. The Jeek Tunnelin is, as the name would suggest, a tunnelling vehicle. If your Jeek Tunnelin  works properly, pushing the vehicle forward on its caterpillar treads will engage a gear that turns the giant tunnel boring machine-style cutting head disc. It's pretty cool. 

Over the years I kept seeing various toys at various inflated price points in various antique malls, and then one day I saw something I hadn’t seen before in one of those antique mall display cabinets. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of a square little View-Master sized paper pamphlet with the UFO Commander 7 logo and what appeared to be manga-style artwork of the series robots and vehicles. "That," I said, "is coming with me."

My guess was that this would be a little toy instruction sheet, how to fit the missiles into your VALCAN-I or how to operate your BRAIN-III or whatever. You've seen these sorts of pamphlets nestled in among the styrofoam tray inside the diecast toy box, if you're lucky enough to find one that still has the box. Anyway, that was my assumption. And my assumption was wrong.

What this was instead was the legend of UFO Commander 7, the entire saga behind the toy line, the explanation of the UFO "Blue Silver" and how it escaped the destruction of its home planet along with VALCAN-I and BRAIN-III. How the Earth was threatened by the Dragols from outer space, and how three Earth youngsters and a dolphin were selected to join the UFO Commander 7 crew. This isn't an instruction sheet, this is a science fiction epic!  But it's the next page that really stunned me.

This is manga, UFO Commander 7 manga. Japanese manga in English from the 1970s, starring Dr. Purron, our friendly talking, bespectacled dolphin Edison, and three Earth youngsters sporting Cyborg 009 cosplay. 

This is English-language manga, years before Viz and Area 88, years before I Saw It and Gen Of Hiroshima. This is manga in three languages all about the heroes of UFO Commander 7 teaming up to battle the Dragols, and also some VALCAN-I and BRAIN-III comedy relief robo-bickering. 

Writing about classic Japanese animation involves a bit of research. As new information comes to light on old series, we're constantly revising our ideas of "firsts." There always seems to be an older anime series or an earlier anime convention or fanzine. So I'm not going to be the guy who says what we're looking at right here is the first Japanese manga to be published in English (and French and German). But maybe it is.

For one thing, this is a toy pamphlet, not a magazine or a book - buying a UFO Commander 7 toy was the only way to read this. Not unheard of in the toy world, but certainly a difficult way to get the work out to a wider audience. 

But let's face it. These are Japanese comics, in English, being distributed in North America in the 1970s. This is a pretty rare thing for America at the time. If you aren't flipping out about this at least slightly, you probably quit reading this blog a while back.

According to Japanese Showa-era toy research blogger Bakadesubakadesu, there was a UFO Commander 7 manga serial in Terebi-Kun magazine that ran from 1976-77. It's unknown who created the manga, and I have no idea if what we're seeing here is repurposed images from that manga, or if this was drawn specifically for the toy line. What I do know is that I'm digging this artwork, this is perfect adventure manga artwork from this period, the human characters have those gigantic Star Of The Giants eyebrows and the mechanical stuff is sharp and tight, the kind of terrific detail we love to see in our mecha illustrations. 

I don't know how many super robot narratives end with one super robot throwing another super robot at the enemy super robots, but it definitely happens at least once! Maybe this needs a little notation reminding children to not throw their BRAIN-IIIs across the room, those things are heavy and could do some damage. 

Not to worry! The diecast metal from Planet Marvellous is strong, and BRAIN-III has survived the impact with only minor and easily repaired damage.

You can tell the robots are functioning normally because they're bickering with each other like always. Now let's get back to building that underground base, and you, children at home, be careful with your VALCAN-I's space razor!

The immense success of the 1970s Japanese entertainment industry, swelling to a tidal wave of comics, cartoons, films, toys, model kits, and uncounted other pieces of ancillary merchandise, couldn't help but surge past Japan's borders and into the rest of the world. And sure, it's easy to sell merchandise from a property that kids have seen on TV or in the movies. But it speaks to the genius of their toy designers that something like UFO Commander 7 can grab the interest and the allowance money of legions of North American kids without benefit of a TV cartoon. Great toys sell themselves. 

Now get out there, collect all the UFO Commander 7 toys, and help VALCAN-I save the Earth from the Dragols!

Well, maybe it IS spelled "VULCAN" after all. 

-Dave Merrill

Special thanks to Antiques On 11, Severn Ontario!

Thanks for reading Let's Anime! If you enjoyed it and want to show your appreciation for what we do here as part of the Mister Kitty Dot Net world, please consider joining our Patreon!

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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With An "E"

Let me start with a personal note. I grew up in the US, but twenty years back I moved to Ontario to begin a new adventure north of the border. As a new Canadian, I lacked the cultural background that informed the upbringing of many of my new friends and coworkers. I didn't know Mr. Dressup or The Friendly Giant. I was sadly unaware The Littlest Hobo was, in fact, a dog. I'd never been to the Pop Shoppe, didn’t know who Tim Horton played hockey for, never watched Late Great Movies On Citytv. But there was one Canadian cultural giant that I and millions of others were aware of, one that predated SCTV, Celine Dion and the Kids In The Hall. Perhaps the biggest early Canadian pop culture export? An orphan girl named Anne. 

my Anne LDs

The story of a child finding a home and a life in turn of the century Prince Edward Island, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 novel Anne Of Green Gables has sold fifty million copies, been translated into 35 languages, and has been the subject of films, TV shows and stage plays. This red-headed heroine appears in a bewildering variety of media including dolls, toys, picture books, musicals, museums, costumes, even license plates for the fictional Anne’s very real province of PEI. L.M. Montgomery was from PEI herself and used her childhood as inspiration for what would eventually become a series of Green Gables novels, even as she moved to Ontario and what we’d now call the Greater Toronto Area.

drive carefully, Anne lives here

There's a part in Montgomery's novel where the fire in the Green Gables hearth on a November night is described as "the sunshine of a hundred summers being distilled from the maple cord-wood" and I'm reading this and asking myself, did that L.M. just get away with this? She did, didn't she. The prose of Anne Of Green Gables is filled with minute, evocative, almost-sentimental touches of descriptive poetry - certainly in keeping with the Gilded Age provenance of its origins - and it speaks to the determination of Anne and through her, Montgomery, to find the beauty and wonder in what at first glance might seem to be unexceptional places, humdrum tasks and the sometimes tragic moments that make up life, a tall order for an unwanted child in a world that has almost no sympathy or resources for anything other than itself. 

Anne begins with middle-aged siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert requesting a boy orphan to adopt to help out around their Avonlea farm, as if they were buying a draft horse or ordering a new plow. When Anne arrives instead, there’s some clinical calculus as the Cuthberts weigh their agricultural needs against the literal welfare of a child. At this time, Canada was seen as a convenient destination for the unwanted children of late-period British Empire; from 1869 right up until the late 1940s the UK sent something like a hundred thousand children to homes across Canada. Most would spend their remaining childhood as de facto indentured domestic servants or field hands. The reality is that most of these children weren’t actually orphaned; most had parents overcome by financial or personal disaster, forced by circumstances to break up their families. Anne’s orphan drama played out in real life for decades on train platforms across the country from Nova Scotia to British Columbia.

my Anne cel

We first see Anne as an awkward tween, sometimes overwhelmed as her overclocked imagination battles her desperate desire to belong.  She matures to become a self-disciplined young woman determined to make something of herself, along the way, pulling Marilla and Matthew out of their gruff, glum routine and into a more fulfilled, if less orderly life, while making friends and rivals alike at the local school. Anne's overworked sensitivity shows its negative side when she overreacts to minor things, exploding them into major life-altering events as only a too-dramatic teen - which is all of them - can blow ‘em up. 

that girl is trouble, and is IN trouble

 

Cheerful perseverance in the face of hardship and an ability to tease the fantastical out of the everyday spoke to audiences around the world, even early Taishō era Japan, which is when the novel was first published in Japanese. Though suppressed along with other Western literature during the Pacific War, during the Occupation Anne Of Green Gables was put on General MacArthur’s Recommended Children’s Literature list, along with another classic of rural kid-lit, Little House On The Prairie. Both series would inspire enduring fanbases and Nippon Animation anime series. And that’s where we here at Let’s Anime come in.

Fifty episodes of Nippon Animation's Akage no Anne (“akage” means “redhead”) would air on Fuji-TV from January to December of 1979.  Anne was the first series under the banner of World Masterpiece Theater, a showcase that started as Calpis Comic Theater, then became Calpis Children's Theater and then 1978’s Perrine Story saw the title remixed to Calpis Family Theater, and then next year somehow changed again to World Masterpiece Theater for Anne. In 1986 the banner changed yet again to House Foods World Masterpiece Theater. Stay tuned, who knows what they’ll call it next? Anne of Green Gables would join Nippon Animation’s roster of exports, airing in Korea, Spain, Germany, Portugal, the Arabic world, the Philippines, Italy, France, and French-speaking Canada. A South African English dub would broadcast in Taiwan and South Africa. 

Marilla, Matthew, Anne, and PEI's Strategic Potato Reserve

Directed overall by anime legend Isao “Horus Prince Of The Sun” Takahata, Anne’s character designs were by animation director and fellow anime legend Yoshifumi “Future Boy Conan” Kondo. Reference for the wonderful backgrounds, art-directed by Masahiro Ioka, was provided by a July ‘78 research trip to Prince Edward Island by Kondo, Takahata and Nippon Animation producers Junzô Nakajima and Shigeo Endô. You’ll swear you hear Joe Hisashi in the soundtrack but that’s all Akira Miyoshi there, bringing Anne's fantastical imagination to musical life in a beautiful Hayao Miyazaki-animated OP. 

sure, just put some airplanes in there, Hayao

Miyazaki did layouts for the first 15 episodes of Anne, perhaps repaying Takahata for the help Takahata gave on the recently completed Future Boy Conan. But Takahata’s realistic, textural vision for Anne was at odds with Miyazaki’s desire to expand upon the source material, as he did with Conan. Soon Hayao would leave the show and Nippon Animation entirely. Watching the series with 2024 eyes, we see what legions of internet memelords would later call “the Ghibli aesthetic” are all present in ‘79; the cozy fires, the tempting food, the homey overstuffed sofas and Victorian comfort of the giant overcoats and pinafores and moustaches, far enough in the past to be hazy and nostalgic but not so far in the past that we can’t enjoy ice cream or trains. 

the aesthetic in full force

This nostalgia helps the show - and the novel -  breeze past some of the more brutal realities of the era, the first of which is how orphans were treated like one more exploitable natural resource. Pay attention to how Anne talks about her life before Green Gables, it’s a life of constant toil, either caring for somebody else’s children or cleaning somebody else’s house or trying to keep somebody else from dying from some Victorian illness. It’s no wonder the girl would spend as much time as possible conjuring up fanciful stories about trees and rocks and streams - 19th century reality is harsh. Like the Little House series, Anne seems to work as a subtle hint to modern readers that no matter how awful their own childhood may be, at least they weren’t stuck doing farm chores or battling cholera in a time before Hot Wheels and Barbies. 

before Green Gables, things were a little grim

On television as in the novel, we see a hopeful Anne arrive at the train station en route to surprising everyone at the home she’ll soon name Green Gables. Anne makes a friend in Diana Barry from the next farm over, and a fierce rival in dashing local boy Gilbert Blythe. She meets her own personal Nellie Olesons in the spiteful Pye sisters, charms the various busybodies and old biddies of Avonlea, wins an academic scholarship to Queen’s Academy in Charlottetown, and from there wins another scholarship to a mainland university, forcing her to consider leaving Green Gables behind forever. 

Anne's Style Adventures

Anneheads and Gable-otaku, rest assured all your favorite story beats are in the show, whether it’s the part where Anne dyes her hair green or the part where Anne defies death by walking across the ridgepole of the Barry’s roof. We indeed see Anne conjure up a rich fantasy life as the tragic, raven-haired beauty Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald, which leads to the tragic loss(?) of Marilla’s emerald brooch. Anne gets Diana drunk, Anne bakes the cough-syrup cake, and then Anne gets trapped on the pond, only to be rescued by the last person on Earth she’d ever want to rescue her.

they grow up so fast

 

Seemingly overnight, Anne transforms from a gawky tween into a Young Lady as the rest of her body catches up with her once oversized skull. The last quarter of the series is a show about an adult (teenagers hadn’t been invented yet) dealing with isolation, aging parents, career choices, tragedy, and the kind of exam anxiety staring Japanese viewers right in the face. Also anxious was the Nippon Animation team producing the show. Whatever slack they’d had early in the production was gone thirty weeks in as the crew dealt with an exodus of talent pulled away to work on Galaxy Expresses, Lupins, and Bannertails, not to mention subcontractor issues and staff downtime due to illness. However, the Anne anime remains entertaining even as the animation quality suffers, due to its firm foundation of gorgeous background illustration and solid character design.

will the princess be forced to marry someone she can't stand?

Given free rein with Anne, Hayao Miyazaki probably would have placed more emphasis on fantasy segments conjured out of Anne’s more whimsical notions. But Takahata - whose own daughter was Anne’s age -  put his foot down, keeping the show firmly rooted in PEI’s famous red soil, perhaps hastening Miyazaki’s exit towards TMS and the direction of a popular Lupin III film. Akage no Anne shares the same sensibility as the rest of the World Masterpiece Cinematic Universe; action and spectacle are underplayed in favor of characters and feelings, set against well-researched architecture and lush watercolored backgrounds. Takahata’s quieter, grounded Anne has an emotional weight it might lose if set amidst Miyazaki’s trademark contrabulous fabtraptions and death-defying action sequences. Anne would also be Takahata’s swan song at Nippon Animation; next for him would be Chie The Brat for TMS.

Anne merchandise includes this bicycle (bicycle does not fly)

45 years later Akage no Anne still entertains. There’s a double hit of nostalgia, both for the original property and for its 1979 version, which gleams with those wonderful Masahiro Ioka landscapes and Kondo’s characters. At the time it was up against shoujo opposition like Candy Candy, Lun Lun the Flower Angel, Rose Of Versailles, and Haikara-san ga Tōru, and sequels to Space Battleship Yamato, Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, Cyborg 009, and Star Of The Giants. And there was something called Mobile Suit Gundam that came out that year. But even without a tacked-on animal companion, New Type powers or cybernetic augmentation, Green Gables welcomes and rewards repeat visits.

keep your dreams in your Anne Dream Can

Everyone, that is, but the North American viewing audience, which has seen Anne as the star of silent films, musicals, the Megan Follows CBC show and a Canadian cartoon, but so far hasn’t been permitted to see this anime version. The absence of Nippon Animation’s Anne is a loss for us all, whether we’re students facing book report deadlines, executors of the L.M. Montgomery estate, or the hardworking staff of the PEI Ministry Of Fisheries, Tourism, Sport, and Culture, who’d probably appreciate an extra bit of attention come vacation booking season.

visit PEI this summer!

Nope, Americans can’t watch Anne Of Green Gables. Well, okay, you can, the show is up on YouTube with the English-accented English dub, and with subtitles  But there isn’t a legit Blu-Ray set, no official release, it’s not real here in the way the GKids Future Boy Conan is. Absent the anime show or a trip to PEI, maybe all we can do is spend a fall afternoon in the Ontario countryside, visiting L.M. Montgomery’s 1911-1926 Leaskdale Manse home or maybe the park near where she later lived on Riverside Drive in Toronto. On the way you can stop in anywhere that sells books and pick up the copy of Anne Of Green Gables you’ll find there. 

Leaskdale, just north of Uxbridge, L.M. says "have a seat"

An inescapable layer of Canadian cultural bedrock, Anne is so much a part of the landscape here that one could almost believe she was a real person. If we ever needed someone to remind us what it’s like to dream big dreams once in a while, Anne of Green Gables is the person to do it, real or not, whether live-action or animated, whether in prose or radio or film or TV or whatever medium you choose. Can we dream big enough to see Akage no Anne finally return home? 

-Dave Merrill

I am tremendously indebted to Animétudes and their amazingly well-researched and comprehensive look at the production of Akage no Anne.

Thanks for reading Let's Anime! If you enjoyed it and want to show your appreciation for what we do here as part of the Mister Kitty Dot Net world, please consider joining our Patreon!