Anime, Pat Robertson, Mazinger Z, and... YOU!

Cable TV in the 80s was kinda strange. Lots of national channels + not a lot of programming = strangeness. USA Network was running the bizarro hippy punker clip-show extravaganza Night Flight, Discovery Channel would occasionally show entire days worth of Russian television, and everything was liable to be interrupted by local ads shoehorned in by your mom & pop cable TV service. And of course everywhere there was Japanese animation! If you weren’t watching 90 minute compilations of Force Five episodes or Thunderbirds 2086 episodes on Showtime, you were catching Belle & Sebastian or Mysterious Cities Of Gold in between Tomorrow People marathons on Nickelodeon. And if you were particularly hard core you would watch Superbook and Flying House - the Japanese anime Bible cartoons – on Pat “700 Club” Robertson’s CBN network.

To be honest, CBN got a lot of mileage out of anime. Screening the two Christian cartoons is a natural, but they also ran the compilation films for Voltes V and Starbirds (the English dub of Fighting General Daimos), as well as direct-to-TV animated films like the Tatsunoko adaptation of the literary classic "Daddy Longlegs. 

let's volt in

kung-fu fighting giant robot that turns into a truck and romances the space ladies

I wonder who her mysterious benefactor will turn out to be

And if you were alert or un-hung-over enough to be watching TV at noon on Sunday, you might catch two of my favorites – Honey Honey and Leo The Lion.

Both dubbed by some Florida outfit called “Sonic International”, they seem to be odd choices to run on cable in the 80s – a shojo comedy set in 1910 and a violent talking-animal cartoon from the late 60s? – but trying to figure out the actions of television executives is a fruitless task. The important thing is that Honey Honey, based on the manga by shojo manga-ka pioneer Hideko Mizuno (who would later go on to pen the groundbreaking rock’n’roll manga FIRE) is a charming and frequently wacky series that is a minor gem. The original 1966 manga by Hideko Mizuno was published in RIBON (“Princess”) MAGAZINE, but the anime series would not air until 1981. What’s up with that?

Young teenage orphan Honey Honey, making ends meet in Austria in the early part of the last century, befriends a small white cat named Lily. As a result of this friendship Honey Honey finds herself pursued literally around the world by Princess Flora of Austria, Flora's four ethnic-stereotype suitors, and the mysterious thief Phoenix. And Phoenix’s cat.

Turns out Lily swallowed the famous gem the Star Of The Amazon, the possession thereof being the one condition pursuant to marrying Princess Flora. Over the next 25 episodes we see auto chases, UFOs, sultans, samurai, Viking warriors, spies, crooks, Robin Hood, circuses, storms at sea, ninjas, King Kong, you name it. It’s a whirlwind of a show that mixes slapstick with romance, and the English dub is amateurish but spirited. The animation by Kokusei Eiga varies from mediocre to amazing – there’s one episode that rivals anything else on TV at the time - but mostly the show is typical television quality.

Six episodes of the show were released on home video by Sony in various formats including Beta and 8mm. VHS copies occasionally show up on eBay and local video stores, so keep your eyes open. Honey Honey’s rights are currently owned by Enoki Films – one of our farsighted American outfits should contact them, release the show on DVD, and make us all happy. More information about Honey Honey can be found on this very blog! 

the nefarious Princess Flora, Herr Gustav, Geronimo, King Pika-Pika, and Sheik Oil Dollar

CBN’s other Sunday anime powerhouse is Leo The Lion, which of course is Tezuka’s sequel to Jungle Emperor/Kimba The White Lion, based on Tezuka’s classic manga series from the late 1950s. After he produced the first 1965 series (Japan’s first color TV cartoon!) under NBC’s guidelines, Tezuka went on to produce Leo (original title “Susume Leo”) staying closer to his original manga. This means continuing storylines, darker themes, and lots of animal-on-animal action complete with defenestrations, impalings, contusions, beheadings, shotgunnings, etc.

Leo (you may remember this white lion under his childhood name of “Kimba”) and his wife Leia (“Kitty”) defend the jungle and raise their two children Runi and Ruki . There are the occasional episodes of whimsical comedy – the James Bond spoof episode in particular – but for the most part this series is a lot darker and less “fun” than Kimba. It’s not surprising NBC would take a pass on this one, I can’t see it getting past the watchdog moms of 60s America. Of course 20 years later CBN either has no problem with it, or what’s more likely, has no idea they’re running a cartoon show in which a blind Masai warrior has his arm ripped off by a tribe of evil leopards.

Leo has been released on cheap public-domain home video several times, mostly in shoddy EP VHS tapes that contain edited versions of the episodes. Buyer beware! This is another series that deserves a decent DVD set as a companion to Right Stuf’s Kimba release.

And the CBN anime story doesn’t end there! Before Honey Honey and Leo, CBN ran the weekly Japanese current affairs news program Beyond The Horizon. Occasionally overstepping the boundaries of traditionally defined “news”, Beyond The Horizon would fill up its airtime with 12-minute half-episodes of the 1972 Toei giant robot show Mazinger Z. This mysteriously-dubbed version of the super robot classic featured the infamous English-language theme songs sung phonetically by Isao Sasaki.

Luckily anime fan seneschal Steve Harrison taped the things with his top-loading mono wired-remote VHS deck, capturing this artifact for posterity. But why would a news program run a children’s robot cartoon? Cultural background? Entertainment industry context? Time-filler for slow news days? Only Pat Robertson knows, and he ain’t tellin’.

-Dave Merrill

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anime comics

Megazone 23 and Mospeada animation comics

Back before filesharing, before DVDs, even before cheap VHS tapes, anime fans had it tough. How could we experience Japanese cartoons beyond the once-weekly television schedule? The problem was solved in Japan by several different means - Roman Albums about Yamato or Harlock or Gundam, the five or six monthly magazines like Animage devoted to anime movies and TV shows, and of course comics and toys and stationery and t-shirts and menko cards and the rest of the gigantic merchandising industry that churned out colorful junk that we in the States could only wish for. They also had these things called "animation comics".

Cyborg 009 Legend Of The Super Galaxy animation comics

Captain Harlock animation comics

Anime Comics were squarebound paperback books with color pages and glossy dust covers. They were comic photo-novels with artwork shot directly from the cel art and dialog added later by underpaid Kodansha employees. For American fans without access to these TV shows or movies, this was almost as good as having the show on videotape.

Tetsujin-28 and Queen Millennia (TV) animation comics

For budding translators the simplified dialog (with "ruby" style kanji aids) was a godsend. Plus you could take them to school and mystify classmates because you had some kind of book that seemed to be full of pictures from that Cliff Hanger videogame from down at the arcade.

Lupin III Castle Of Cagliostro animation comics

Of course we never thought we'd see anything like this available in English. So when we saw this ad in the Comics Buyers Guide sometime in 1982, we were pretty excited.

Star Blazers animation comics?? Since the local UHF station was being remarkably unhelpful in re-running the show to allow those of us with VCRs to tape it, this was great news! Books Nippan, the LA outfit supplying anime product to a hungry North America, promoted the release with a full color flyer that featured typos corrected in ball point pen.

I recall a frustrating delay in the actual arrival of the books. Once they apppeared, they quickly became a staple item on the bookshelf of every anime fan. The artwork was right from the TV series, arranged manga-style with sound effects and dialog set in type.

 Extras included Yamato production artwork, diagrams, the big cutaway Yamato blueprint illustration... all the stuff we'd pored over in Roman Albums. The dialog was taken directly from the Star Blazers shooting script, odd for a book produced and printed in Japan, but then again West Cape always stood firmly behind their American version of Yamato. They may have not known exactly what to do with it, but behind it they were.

Nowadays of course with the advent of cheap home video, laserdiscs and especially DVD box sets, the need for photo-novel versions of cartoons has passed. However, back in 1982 these books were the high point of my Star Blazers fandom, at least until I came across a flyer advertising a Star Blazers fan club in Texas. But more about that later. 

-Dave Merrill

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you know the game of King Kong

A few years back when the Peter Jackson remake of the famous giant ape movie King Kong was released, anime fans got a little bonus in the shape of a DVD release of the 1966 King Kong cartoon. Why anime fans, you say? Because the 1966 King Kong cartoon was a co-production between Toei Animation Company (you know, Sailor Moon, Dragonball, Captain Harlock, Mazinger Z, etc) and Rankin/Bass(you know, the Hobbit, those stop-motion Christmas specials, etc). If you didn't catch the show on ABC in 1967, you might have seen it in syndication on your local UHF station in the afternoons, as I did, along with episodes of Mighty Heroes and Journey To The Center Of The Earth.

At the time of the discs' release I reviewed them for (the now defunct) Anime Jump. This review is now back online here at Let's Anime. What I DIDN'T have at the time was the King Kong board game. Yes, a Milton Bradley board game based on the 1966 cartoon, thanks to a 60s cartoon licensing boom that I missed out on having not yet been born. I'd sighted the game once years before in an antique mall in Georgia and it was stupidly overpriced, so I didn't buy it. Well, yesterday I saw it again and it was NOT stupidly overpriced, so buy it I did.

The board art features characters from the show - Professor Bond, his children Bobby and Susan, steamer skipper Captain Englehorn, and of course King Kong and that dinosaur he's always fighting. Not pictured is the series' nemesis, the evil Doctor Who. I love that jazzy King Kong logo that never seems to be in the same exact typeface twice. One might surmise it was created by someone for whom English was not their first language, but I'm guessing. But what about the game itself?

Well, you roll a die and move your Milton Bradley plastic marker around the board, avoiding dangers. Not exactly setting new standards in game play, no.

Still, the board has some great jazzy 60s graphics of ships and islands and birds and the Various Moods Of King Kong, which can't help but captivate the monster-infatuated youngsters of the 60s. Anyway, the important thing is that I have the game now, and one more example of obsessive-compulsive behavior can be safely put behind me. A double victory!

-Dave Merrill

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gigantor the space age robot

Here's a fun ad from an industry magazine circa 1966, courtesy D.T.!

Why not wreak havoc on YOUR competition with Gigantor?

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Unico in the Island of DVDs

editors note: this post has been completely revised as of March 2013 to reflect new information.

The cute little unicorn Unico first entered my world thanks to a giant poster for the Columbia videocassette release, prominently displayed in the window of the Record Bar at the local mall. VHS, Record Bar, you know we’re talking 1980s here. I was a mopey teen with a jones for Japanimation in any form and the big-eyed anime style was unmistakable, even across the crowded mall.

Upon closer examination I noticed the “Tezuka Productions” logo on the poster, which gave Unico an anime world pedigree of the finest caliber. The next week the poster was gone from the window, but a word with the manager and that same poster was mine to take home and haul around for the next few decades. 

Unico, of course, is a magical blue unicorn whose only desire is to make people happy. This leads to trouble with the powers-that-be, who happen to be gods. Their wrath sends Unico on a never-ending journey via the gentle spirit of the West Wind, and wherever Unico winds up there’s somebody needing to be made happy, so it all kind of works out.

First serialized in Sanrio’s magazine “Lyrica”, Osamu Tezuka’s original Unico manga is aimed solidly at children, though not without the occasional touch of a socially relevant or moralistic storyline. A later, even simpler version ran in Shogakkukan’s “First Grader”. 

 

Unico prepares to destroy industrial capitalism

 Sanrio, having animation experience with films like The Mouse And His Child and the Nietzschean survival saga Ringing Bell, co-produced a Unico pilot film in 1979 as the springboard for a possible TV series. The television show didn’t pan out, but a few years later Sanrio would team up with anime studio Madhouse to produce a Unico feature. Like their previous Ringing Bell, the Unico film is a well-animated and surprisingly dark fantasy, with cute characters and humor countered by ominous and at times threateningly dangerous situations, all lushly rendered and strikingly designed. The followup feature, 1983’s Unico In The Island Of Magic, features Moribi “Lensman” Murano’s angular character designs and the haunting threat of living puppets. 

box art for Unico pilot film

Both Unico features are fully realized motion pictures filled with interesting characters, some of whom are devils and others who turn into teenage girls and are seduced by mysterious barons. When things get scary and/or dangerous, Unico himself turns into a giant adult unicorn, perfectly capable of killing the bad guys. Perhaps Unico is, again, like Ringing Bell, maybe a bit intense for younger children.  Regardless, both films received a fairly well-promoted home video release in the United States back in 1984. As a staple of the children's video section, Unico and its Magic sequel did journeyman work as video babysitters for the youngsters who would later grow up, become anime fans, and start to remember this crazy thing they saw when they were kids about a little unicorn. 

Sadly, for years the only way to see Unico was to dig out your old VHS copy. Vaporware outfit “New Galaxy Anime” announced a DVD release but failed to generate anything but a website.  It took Discotek Media to finally return Unico to American audiences with a fine pair of DVDs that feature the Columbia English dubs and the original Japanese language track (with English subtitles). 

Bringing the story of Unico full circle, the original Tezuka manga was recently released in English by Digital Manga, after a successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign. Has America now reached full Unico saturation?  Nope; another short Unico anime film, “Saving Our Fragile Earth,” was produced for the Kyoto Osamu Tezuka World museum. The film is exclusive to the museum, making Kyoto the perfect vacation destination for Unico fans.  See you there!

-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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It's Big Marine Boy

Not as famous as Astro Boy or as automotive as Speed Racer, Marine Boy was a '60s Japanese cartoon (from Japan Tele-Cartoons aka TV Films) dubbed by the Peter Fernandez/Corinne Orr/Jack Grimes team. Apart from quick glimpses on hotel TVs while on vacation in other markets, I never got to see this show as a kid. Currently languishing in the vaults of Time Warner Turner Whoever, this show really ought to get a proper DVD release (and has, says 2013). Anyway, I bring it up to show you this clipping that D. Thompson found in a 1966 issue of a TV broadcasters magazine:

 
What's interesting about this article is how Frish's Big Boy Restaurants purchased Marine Boy in Ohio, Kentucky, and Florida markets. Was this a promotional tie-in? Did the Big Boy and Marine Boy ever meet in the pages of those free promo comics? Was there a "Marine Boy Surf And Turf" special on the menu? The mind boggles.

That's a pretty cool Marine Boy illustration up there with the article, pity it isn't in color. Hold on a minute...

 



And on the back...

signed by Marine Boy voice talent Corinne Orr and Peter Fernandez! 

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