Anime Hell 80s Night II: The Return

It's summertime and that means just one thing: I take over the screening room at one of North America's last remaining video stores and drop a few hours of ANIME HELL upon an audience of scenesters and cineastes. This Saturday night I'll be in the back of Eyesore Cinema here in Toronto showing three 80s anime classics, some of which were anime-fan must-haves, others virtually-unseen cult classics, and still others modern-day icons of outrageousness. 

Fight! Iczer One, the thrilling saga of lushly-illustrated space lesbians battling for the fate of Earth itself, was released in October 1985. Written, directed and character designed by 80s anime MVP Toshiki Hirano, Iczer One tells the story of an Earth under attack by alien invaders called "Cthulhu" who infiltrate and replace humans with parasites known as "Vedims". Mysterious fighter Iczer One must find a human with whom she can "synchronize" and control the Izcer Robo to defeat the aliens! Iczer One is based on the original manga that appeared in the magazine "Lemon People," portions of which are probably illegal in Canada. 

Flying Warped Boy Ranpou aired for 21 episodes in 1984, produced by the animation division of an ad agency and broadcast opposite major league baseball, not a great programming decision on somebody's part. Ranpou was a normal high school kid who was kidnapped by a flying saucer and returned to earth shorter and goofier and with a talking mouse companion who is also a genius inventor. When he's not harassing Coach Hiroshi or Miss Iwasaki, his teachers, he's harassing his girlfriend Mutsumi. This zany gag comedy series is based on a manga that ran for nearly ten years in Shonen Champion, and has never been released on any kind of home video anywhere. Without 80s anime nerds swapping VHS tapes through the mail we'd never be able to see this show. You're welcome!

Mad Bull 34 the anime was released in December 1990, which completely defeats my 1980s theme, but hey, it's based on the 1980s manga drawn by Noriyoshi Inoue and written by Kazuo Koike, who also gave us Lone Wolf And Cub and who passed away recently. So relax. This is the story of Daizaburo Ban, a New York City cop assigned to the tough 34th Precinct, where his partner is John "Sleepy" Estes, a giant monster of a policeman who is WAY OUTTA LINE, YOU'RE THROUGH, TURN IN YOUR BADGE! This ridiculously hardboiled piece of attempted grindhouse mixes cartoony slapstick with ultra-violence and is one of those "not for kids" Japanimations you're always hearing about. 

If you're in town, come on over Saturday! Doors open at 7:30, show starts at 8! That's Eyesore Cinema, 1176 Bloor West, Toronto Ontario Canada!

 

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FLYING WARPED BOY

“Did I just see that?” It’s a question that used to be heard a lot more among anime fans, before Japan figured out they could sell these things to America and started tailoring their cartoons to the desires of a small but impulse-control poor community. No, used to be you’d throw in a VHS tape of something you vaguely comprehended, like Captain Harlock or Nausicaa, and stuck on the end of it would be an episode of some absolutely insane gag cartoon that you honestly didn’t believe you were seeing. Thank goodness for the pause and rewind buttons.

I’m speaking, of course, of RANPOU, or “Warped Boy Rampoo” as you may have seen it scrawled in marker on the label of your Fuji T-120. This 1984 series, a mere 21 episodes worth, was like all the wacky parts of the wackiest URUSEI YATSURA episodes, only with all the extraneous, non-comedy stuff left on the side of the road.

Ranpou meets Godzilla and Ultraman, rides a hoverbike, cuts one.

Yeah, I know, Japanese animation is serious adult science fiction drama for mature viewers like you. Only it isn’t and never was; “anime” also contains plenty of Warner Brothers style sight gags and inexplicable pop culture references. For every deathly serious blood-splattered action adventure, there’s a gag comedy full of Scooby-Doo style chases, hammers that strike with a fun “BONG!” and mischievous animal sidekicks that are always there to cause more trouble.

That’s the story with RANPOU. Produced by NAS (Nihon Ad Systems), the television anime first aired in April of 1984 and lasted all the way to September of that same year. Abandoned by a fickle public, or victim of the same sponsor-bankruptcy fate that struck many other anime series in the latter half of ’84? Certainly not because of laughs, because that’s all this show is. Our title character used to be a dreamy, handsome, fairly normal junior high kid – and then he got a little close to a flying saucer, which kidnapped him and turned him into a squat, blonde troublemaker. Or is this really some kind of alien plot?

Ranpou before his tragic UFO accident.

Teachers, classmates, monsters, office buildings, other planets – all bow before Ranpou, whose little mouse friend Chutaro invents crazy inventions and whose farts – yes, fart jokes – are classified as weapons of mass destruction. This gleefully anarchic program can’t go thirty seconds without somebody’s skirt getting lifted, somebody shooting a laser pistol at a giant cockroach, or somebody getting hit repeatedly in the nuts to the accompaniment of a cheerfully painful GONG BONG GONG.

Hiroshi-sensei, Mutsumi, Iwasaki-sensei & Ranpou catch a train

Everybody’s favorite is the episode that presages virtual reality by a few years, in which Ranpou becomes Captain Harlock, girlfriend Mutsumi cosplays Nausicaa, and long-suffering schoolteacher Hiroshi is forced to portray FUTURE BOY CONAN’s Lepka in a hodge-podge mish-mash of MACROSS references and Miss Iwasaki bowling alley sight gags involving the theft of a giant gemstone.

Copyright infringement is your best entertainment value.

Masatoshi Uchizaki’s original RANPOU manga ran for nearly ten years in Weekly Boys Champion, racking up an impressive 37 volumes of collected tankubon. However, print success doesn’t always translate to cartoon longevity.

Manga Ranpou from '78

RANPOU the TV anime suffered because of a later time slot that went up against baseball games in some markets, never a good idea. The last episode didn’t even air in some markets. RANPOU has never been released on any kind of home video, another crime left unpunished – so if you wanna see it you better know somebody. And that’s a shame, because RANPOU is exactly the kind of irresponsible fun that people watch cartoons for in the first place.

-Dave Merrill

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all this time...

All this time I'd been thinking the name of this show was "Rampoo", but a more accurate translation is "Ranpou".

This image of the Ranpou OP 45 single comes from Snow Records Japan.

Ranpou is a show about Ranpou, a crazy kid who invents things along with his pet mouse and they cause trouble at school. I mean wacky 80s anime crazy, which means laser guns that cut down office buildings, giant cockroaches harassing teachers, and entire episodes that lampoon Captain Harlock, Nausicaa, Future Boy Conan, and Macross, all in 15 minutes. People ask me what kind of anime I'm looking for, this is it, all I have is crappy copies of 2 episodes, somebody buy me the DVDs for Xmas, okay? If there ARE DVDs, which I doubt. (2021 says otherwise - there ARE Ranpou DVDs!)

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