SF NEW CENTURY LENSMAN
dazzled with state of the 1984 art techniques and a heroic pulp-fiction
pedigree, but left behind only VHS tape and a few well-designed toys. In its
wake Western SF readers were nonplussed with the film’s changes and Japanese
animation fans looked at contemporaneous anime movies like Nausicaa and Macross: Do You Remember Love and found Lensman lacking. Six years later Lensman received
a North American release and audiences found its computer animation dated, its
quasi-Star Wars story thin, and compared with Akira, Ninja Scroll, or god help
us, Legend Of The Overfiend, it was dismissed.
But can we just toss SF New Century Lensman onto the cartoon
junkpile? Sure, it’s a wannabe Lucasfilm sprinkled with car-ad CG that freely
adapts nickel-a-word pulp written back when “a computer” was a guy with an
adding machine and a green eyeshade. But when the film’s allowed to give us a
galaxy of minutely-detailed space-hoppers zipping around gorgeously detailed
alien worlds, when Worsel, the dragon Velantian Lensman, blasts Kim Kinnison
and Van Buskirk out of the terrible grip of the hideous Catlats, when Kim’s
DeLameter ray-pistol flares with the scintillating force characteristic of the Galactic
Patrol’s most powerful hand-weapon, when the Kawajiri direction overwhelms the plot
holes or the big chunks of empty space left in the film for somebody in New
York to finish via ‘computer animation’ – well, friends, it’s to Civilization’s
benefit that the parts of Lensman that are good are very good indeed.
When Edward Elmer “Doc” Smith, PhD, introduced the Lensmen
in “Galactic Patrol” as a six-part serial starting in September ‘37’s
Astounding, he moved space opera beyond the interstellar stage of his previous “Skylark
Of Space” and into realms galactic and eventually inter-galactic. Space drives,
force fields, anti-matter spheres and thought-screens became brushstrokes on
Smith’s canvas, using the Lensman stories to illuminate a sprawling,
eons-spanning saga of two diametrically opposed cultures using entire
civilizations as weapons. Smith’s epic continued through the serialized novels
“Gray Lensman” (1939), “Second Stage Lensman” (1941) and climaxed in 1947’s “Children
Of The Lens”, while a 1934 work, “Triplanetary” would be retrofitted into the
Lensman continuity in ‘48 and 1950’s “First Lensman” would fill the gap between
it and “Galactic Patrol”. His work would be in print for decades, and after his
death several authors would continue the Lensman universe in companion novels
of varying quality.
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| Japanese edition Lensman novels with wonderful cover art by Hiroshi Manabe |
Lensman first
appeared in Japan in 1969 with Kaiseisha’s “Masterpiece
Animated Picture Story” series adaptation of Galactic Patrol. Subsequently, the
full Lensman series would be published by in turn by Shueisha, Akane Shobo,
Poplar, and Kodansha. As the 80s anime boom echoed across Asia, Kodansha/Toho/Towa
might have seen adapting American SF had worked well for Toei’s Captain Future (originally by Edmond Hamilton) and in live-action for Tsubaraya with
Hamilton’s Starwolf. It’s clear somebody in Japan was into the Lensman; apart from its
extensive Japanese publishing history, the Lensman world had just been used as
the basis for one of my all-time arcade favorites, Namco’s 1981 space-shooting
video game Bosconian.
SF 新世紀 レンズマン SF New Century Lensman – or “SF New
Wave Lensman” according to the toy boxes - was released by Toho-Towa in July of
1984. Produced by MK/Madhouse for Kodansha, the film was directed by future
Ninja Scroll auteur Kawajiri and SSX/Baldios helmer Kazuyuki Hirokawa, and
would be inescapable for the next few months in theaters, bookstores, toy
stores, and TV screens as a stylish, shiny, computer driven media juggernaut
that became, almost instantly, an artifact of 1980s aesthetics. How does this
animated film stack up against its pulp-fictional ancestor, itself emblematic
of its own era?
E.E. Smith wastes no time world building in 1937’s Galactic
Patrol. Hell, he doesn’t even tell us what year it is. We’re dropped right into
Galactic Patrol Graduation, as the best and brightest of the best and the
brightest become unstoppable outer-space military policemen, known across the
stars by their symbol of truth and justice, the Lens. As top of his class, our
hero Kimball Kinnison is automatically volunteered for a dangerous mission; take
the GP’s new supership Britannia and capture a space warship of the enemy, the
piratical Boskone.
Meanwhile in the 1984 anime version, Kim Kinnison is Luke
Skywalkering it as a young farm boy on a backwards planet, enjoying a bucolic
lifestyle with his dad and robot pal “Soll”, as his dad’s old friend, the
bullish, bearded Van Buskirk, arrives in his junky spaceship to give him a lift
to Space Academy (Saturdays on CBS).
This charming family scene is interrupted as the GP battleship Brittania
(sp) crash lands in the middle of the soybean crop, straight out of the film’s
opening sequence, itself an eruption of hideous Boskonian brain-vessels and
shiny computer-generated Galactic Patrol ships.
Stumbling out of the Brittania is a Lensman, a character so
important the film doesn’t bother to give him a name. In this nameless,
mortally injured Lensman’s Lens is the secret to destroying the Boskone headquarters.
Who can assume the Lens and deliver this vital data to Galactic Patrol Prime
Base? Why, Kim Kinnison can. Kim’s given the Lens in a scene full of
scintillating energy rays and exquisitely detailed CG that has infuriated fans
of the literary Lensman ever since.
EVERYBODY, even the most brainless Zabriskan fontema, knows the Lens is
ONLY bestowed upon the most worthy of sentient beings after a thorough mental
investigation by Mentor of Arisia!
This sort of departure from the source material exasperated
“Doc” Smith fans and Smith’s family/executors, which didn’t have script
approval and weren’t and maybe still aren’t happy with the finished film. And
sure, they have a point. However, for many fans of a certain age (myself
included), the anime Lensman was their first exposure to the world; their
doorway to a lifetime of enjoying Smith’s works from Lensman through Skylark
and right on to his masterpiece, Spacehounds Of IPC.
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| Worsel, Clarrissa, Van Buskirk, Kim Kinnison (unattached) |
The two Lensman works aren’t fundamentally at odds; many story
beats from Galactic Patrol are given a workout in SF New Century Lensman. In
both versions our heroes escape the doomed Britannia in space lifeboats, both
feature Kim and Van Buskirk battling the horrifying tentacled Catlats and being
rescued by their new pal Worsel, the dragonish Velantian Lensman. Our heroes
face the snail-like and frankly disgusting Overlords Of Delgon in both iterations.
In each, Kim faces grotesque alien menaces, is soundly beaten, and is nursed
back to health by Clarrissa "Chris" MacDougall, top GP medico and inevitable Kinnison
love interest – I say inevitable because she is the only woman to get any
lines, in either the film or the book. 30s pulp fiction is kind of masculine,
to say the least.
Sure, much in Galactic Patrol gets shifted around or ditched
outright by the film. For instance thionite, the addictive drug sapping the
vital strength of Civilization, is mined on Radelix in the film, but in Smith’s
novel is harvested from plants grown in the bizarre environment of planet
Trenco. The anime Radelix is a frontier mining planet where our heroes Kim,
Chris, and Van Buskirk reunite after escaping the doomed Britannia. Radelix’s
only entertainment is a zany disco populated by disco-dancing aliens and DJ’d
by the diminutive, elderly, mohawked Wild Bill, dropped into the film without
explanation to help hide Kim and Chris in enemy territory. Radelix Base, the
narcotics linch-pin of Boskone’s vice campaign, is dealt a serious blow when
Kinnison and Van Buskirk go on a high speed scooter bike chase through the
planet’s thionite processing plants, leading to lots of the kinds of explosions
we’ve come to expect from Japanese animation. Certainly a livelier Radelix than
is seen in the novel.
Smith’s Galactic Patrol ignores Kim Kinnison's youth, home
town, quirks, preferences, or idiosyncrasies - he's merely Kinnison of the
Galactic Patrol, possessed of driving will and herculean strength, chain
lightning with his ray-pistols, parenthetically endowed with whatever martial
arts skill or science know-how required by any situation. SF New Century
Lensman’s Kinnison is a sharp departure from this in pretty much every aspect.
Inexperienced in the ways of outer space and The Lens, he is a fresh-faced hayseed
tricked out in what appears to be a space onesie, a callow youth fumbling his
way through traps and monsters a rougher, tougher literary Lensman would handle
easily. On the other hand, the animated Kinnison displays human emotions and
has a life beyond Galactic Patrolling, definitely something the textural
Lensman lacks.
The Lens itself is, if not a wholly different beast,
certainly introduced differently. In the novels the Lens is identifying badge
and mental communicator, giving top-notch Galactic Patrolmen a unique,
un-copyable symbol of office and allowing them to communicate instantly with
any being anywhere in the Universe. Potential Lensmen must voyage to the
mysterious planet Arisia, where the ancient, mentally omniscent Arisians bestow
individual Lenses upon the worthy. Those not measuring up are prohibited from even
approaching the planet. Use of the Lens allows Kinnison and other Lensmen to
read minds and, after Second Stage training, mentally control the will of
others, leading to an arms race of thought-screens and thought-screen-blockers
and thought-screen-blocker-piercers throughout the novels. In the film, however, the Lens is a vaguely explained ESP
amplifier/ USB drive capable of telepathy
with aliens, parrying mental beams of force, and delivering vital military
information to Galactic Patrol Headquarters. Not outside the boundaries of what
we see in the novels, but a Lens passing from one Lensman to another is
strictly contra regs, as Kinnison would say. One man, one Lens; that’s the
rule.
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| the Overlords of Delgon, Wild Bill the Overlord of the Disco |
The film's lumpy, chitinous, segmented monster Boskonians
resemble the enemies seen in later Lensman novels; the Eich, the Ploorans, and
other extra-galactic races of poison-breathing
monsters ruled by brutal each-against-all law of the strongest, all the way up
to the Supreme All-Highest of the planet Eddore, whose mental powers are
matched only by the Arisians. The struggle between Civilization and Boskone is
just the latest in a series of proxy wars waged between Arisia and Eddore, each
manipulating races, planets, and cultures. Backstory of this dimension is hard
to cram into a film that clocks in under two hours and has a lot of computer
animation to show off, and SF New Century Lensman sidesteps the whole business
by never bothering to explain who Boskone is and why it's at war with Earth
and/or Civilization.
What the film lacks in scriptural fidelity, it makes up for
in visual spectacle and intricate, well-designed world building. Boskone’s alien
confederation of segmented monsters contort, glow, and deliver a well-designed
otherworldliness to the film. Worsel, the winged Lensman from planet Velantia,
is wonderfully alien yet expressive, and Van Buskirk fills the novel’s
requirements of a rough and ready Space Viking while also delivering needed
comic-sidekick relief. The Radelix thionite factory hosts a tremendously
destructive chase involving speeder bikes, bazookas, searchlights, hapless
guards, ray guns, pipes, railings, spaceships, and explosions; lots of
explosions. It's a viscerally satisfying sequence that overwhelms the remainder
of the film.
The movie climaxes with Kim wandering through a computer-animation
demo, rescuing Clarissa several times, and exchanging mental lightning blasts
with the Boskonian big cheese Helmuth. The fleshy architecture of the Boskonian
base melts away in Cronenbergian body-horror style and Galactic Patrol's space fleet
zaps at Boskonian brain-ships in a tedious counter-example to the Radelix
speeder-bike sequence. And that's a real missed opportunity; Smith's Lensman is
full of sequences where fleets of starships blast each other with immensely
powerful rays, defensive screens, zones of force, and penetrating helixes, all
described in flowery “Doc” Smith terms. Seeing these pulp-fiction star-battle
physics depicted on the big screen would be terrific - in spite of decades of
Star Wars and Star Trek films, no Hollywood movie has
approached it – but here Japan's
Lensman drops the ball.
To its credit, the film nails Smith's conception of the
command and control system necessary for fleet action on a cosmic scale -
"the tank", socially the “Directrix”, technically the Z9M9Z, a giant
visual real-time representation condensing the movements of countless units
into understandable representative icons. This conception was unique in SF of
the time, and would later be the basis for US Navy command-and-control systems
during World War II.
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| this is computer graphics in Lensman |
And yes, there is a lot of computer animation in this film and
no, it hasn’t aged very well. When delineating shiny, sleek GP warships
escaping Boskone’s ugly cruisers via hyperspatial tube, or for trippy mindscape
sequences illustrating the limitless potential of the Lens, the computer
animation offsets the traditional animation to good effect. If our eyes hadn’t
since been overwhelmed by decades of surrealistic computer animation inserted
wherever possible, Lensman’s computer effects might still impress. The film's
CG was by "Computer Graphics Laboratories, Inc", a pioneering
production company created by the New York Institute of Technology's Computer
Graphics Lab to produce purely commercial work for clients including
Volkswagen, Lincoln Center,
and Chevrolet. However, the shiny, slick, swooping-camera look of CG was
already becoming a cliché when Lensman was in production and certainly by the
time the film made it to America,
the fad inspired shrugs rather than awe. That’s the price early adopters
sometimes have to pay.
SF New Century Lensman’s music has held up nicely, however;
the film’s soundtrack perfectly matching the futuristic science-world of the
visuals. Fusion composer (and Pink Lady keyboardist) Kan Inoue’s instrumentals
are big, evocative and vibe-heavy, while folk-rock powerhouse The Alfee throws
down a big chunk of ethereal, harmonic space-rock with the film’s theme
“Starship”. My personal favorite piece
of Lensman music remains the TV show theme by Eri Kojima, “On The Wing”, which
asks us to “give peace a chance tonight”.
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| just spell "Britannia" however you feel like spelling it, guys |
Another outstanding element of the Japanese Lensman is the
excellent mechanical design, which sponsor Tomy faithfully rendered into an
engaging line of great toys. The Britannia II toy is especially prized; twelve
inches of high-tech plastic with gun ports that flip open and fire missiles, a
landing craft that itself launches smaller landing craft, and a Q-Gun that pops
out of a secret hatch and fires a ball that rolls really, really far before you
lose it. Remember to take your AA batteries out after playing with your
Britannia II, or some terminal corrosion may occur. Tomy’s Lensman line
included spaceships, model kits, blow-up Boskonians, and a toy Lens that fits
on your wrist just like the real Lens that you don’t even have to go to Arisia
for.
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| tales of a fourth grade Lensman |
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| Lensman TV show OP |
The SF New Century Lensman film was followed by a television
series titled “Lensman: Galactic Patrol.” It begins, as most Lensman novels do,
by describing the collision of galaxies that led to Arisia and Eddore. In many
ways the TV show is closer to the novels; characters like the Rigellian Lensman
Tregonsee, Commandant Hohendorff, Surgeon-General Lacey, and Arisia’s Mentor
are seen for the first time. On the other hand, the show diverges from canon at
will, giving Kim’s robot pal Soll a major sidekick role and portraying Kim as
the first-ever Lensman. However, the series wins serious old-school credibility
early on by throwing us a future-prediction plot point right out of the novel
First Lensman.
The 1984 film received a limited American theatrical and
home video release via Streamline Pictures in the early 90s. Galactic
Patrol Lensman ran on TV from October ’84 until August of ’85, and an episode
compilation was dubbed by Harmony Gold for home video. HG’s global reach put Lensman
video in markets around the world. The film’s visibility in America
led to Eternity licensing the rights to publish its own Lensman comic book
series, which did well enough for two further series. However, the Smith estate
would only allow use of material seen in the animated film; Lensman elements
that only appeared in the novels were out of bounds. As Eternity Lensman artist
Tim Eldred said, “In
other words, we couldn't do anything to make the comics more like the novels
than the anime.”
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| Eternity Lensman comic original art |
Japan’s
comic book Lensman adventures were a different, less constrained story. Prolific manga artist and animator MoriBi
Murano, whose work includes Unico, puppy
adventure “Hoero Bun Bun” and designing characters for Dagger Of Kamui , worked
his sketchy, demonstrative pen line in a Lensman film-adaptation manga that was
published in three volumes. Murano was
born in Manchuria when it was still Manchuko, was
disabled in a childhood accident, and sadly passed away in 2011, leaving a
legacy of hundreds of manga works. Subsequently the TV series received its own Weekly
Shonen comic adaptation. Mitsuru Miura’s Lensman was based roughly on the
television series but sparkled with Miura’s own wide-eyed charm. You may
remember Miura from his popular romantic comedy The Pumpkin Wine, or his manga
adaptation of the crazed 1977 horror-comedy Hausu(?!!).
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| MoriBi Murano's Lensman manga |
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| Mitsuru Miura's Lensman manga. And HAUSU |
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| Samurai Lensman (?!!) |
In Japan
the feature film and some of the TV series was released on VHS. The feature
film appeared on LaserDisc. And then SF New Century Lensman was over. What
happened? Was Kim Kinnison not as appealing as other anime ESPer prettyboys
like Justy or Locke The Superman? Did the anime boom fizzle out at just the
wrong moment? Were anime space-opera fans merely biding their time until the
release of Legend Of Galactic Heroes? Was it merely one more summer anime movie
meant to divert audiences and sell toys and be forgotten? Lensman settled into comfortable retirement on
the shelves of used bookstores everywhere, until 2008 when Ron “Opie” Howard’s
Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures optioned Lensman for a feature
film, with J. Michael “Babylon 5” Straczynski
reportedly attached to write. However, in
2014 Straczynski said Imagine/Universal had passed on the project and the
rights had been allowed to revert to the Smith estate. Meanwhile in Japan, author Hideyuki Furuhashi continues
the Smith tradition with his novel “Samurai Lensman”, the story of a
sword-wielding Gray Lensman battling the rebirth of Boskone.
We may never
see another filmic adaptation of Lensman. But the one we have remains a film
that entertains, whether you’re upholding the standard of the Galactic Patrol
or whether you’re just looking for well-designed spaceships blasting the heck
out of Radeligian thionite factories while The Alfee harmonizes and the mental
waves of Second Stage Lensmen echo throughout the galaxy. It’s a film that
deserves a 21st century high-definition rescue, not only for its own
cinematic sake, but also for the universe of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s pulp-fiction adventure that this film drives readers towards, as inexorably as a full
battery of cosmic-energy-powered tractor beams, as unstoppably as two
inertialess planets smashed directly into the Boskonian base of Jarvenon, and
with all the overwrought linguistic energy of a early 20th century
writer envisioning all of macro-cosmic space, while still being paid by the word.
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Clear ether, Patrolmen!
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