anime and manga bloggers for japan

As I hope you're aware, Japan is reeling in the aftermath of the worst earthquake since they started keeping records on earthquakes. Whether you call it the "Great Tohoku Earthquake" or the "Great Sendai Earthquake", what you need to do is to haul out the cash you fritter away on the sort of goofy junk I usually write about here, and send it to any one of these relief agencies. Hell, send them ALL some money.
Doctors Without Borders You know, Medecins Sans Frontieres, risking life and limb to help people around the world.
The Red Cross is in on this action, of course, as they always are. In America you can text REDCROSS to 90999, which will donate $10 that's added to your cell phone bill (seriously, how easy is that?) or call 1-800 RED CROSS. In Canada you can text REDCROSS to 30333 to donate, or call 1-800-418-1111.
Shelterbox is fascinating, they send premade emergency kits to disasters. "Each box supplies an extended family of up to 10 people with a tent and lifesaving equipment to use while they are displaced or homeless."

You can join the Humanitarian Coalition - that's CARE, Oxfam Quebec, Oxfam Canada, and Save The Children. And there are a dozen, a hundred different other places to donate time & money. Get busy.

This post is thanks to all about manga, whose "Anime & Manga Bloggers For Japan" post inspired me to quit watching disaster footage on TV and actually do something. If you ever enjoyed reading Let's Anime or any other anime & manga blog, or enjoy cartoons or comics from Japan; well, the time to say 'thank you' is now. Right now, this minute, go.

Tomo Book No. 47

Depending on who you ask, the “golden age” of American comics starts somewhere in the late 1930s and ends anywhere from the Korean War to the Kennedy inauguration. Straitjacketed by this America-centric comic book collectors mindset, it’s tough to categorize Japanese comics from the same period. Is there a Golden Age of manga? Is there a Bob Overstreet-san categorizing faded Shonen Magazines and dusty stacks of tankubon, grading each according to condition and scarcity and injury-to-the-eye-motif
covers? God I hope not.

It’s this lack of raw data – raw data in a language I can read, anyways – that makes uncovering this kind of mid-Showa period manga (hah, here I am, categorizing away) so thrilling. What is this? Where did it come from, who was tracing Tezuka characters when they drew it, and what was it doing in an estate sale in Marietta GA in the mid 1980s? That’s where I found it, casually placed on an antique dresser next to a O.E.S. New Testament.

Number 47 in the “Tomo Book” series, this particular volume is titled “THE VANISHING WORLD” (forgive my rough translation) and features 4 stories of rockets, robots, Martian flying saucers, atom bomb tests, jet pilots romancing jungle girls, and general science fictional adventure; the Japanese equivalent of the Tom Swift sci-fi juveniles that American ten year olds were devouring at the time.

The artwork is generally pretty crude. You can get away with faking the cartoony Tezuka style once or twice but eventually the lack of structure or perspective, the weak crosshatching, the general ineptitude of the artwork (inside front cover signed “Yasuhiro Kozako”) shows through. And this is 1955: Tezuka was right in the middle of one of his most productive periods, Ishinomori was just getting into his Shonen Magazine groove, Tatsumi was moving beyond current styles and percolating the ideas that would, in a couple of years, emerge as "gekiga". Our Tomo Book No. 47 is an anachronism, even for 1955. Still, the breakneck pacing manages to brute-force the stories right through the weaknesses of the illustration, and the blue ink gives the entire production a reassuring elementary-school handout atmosphere.

Sometimes you meet robots on Mars;

And then sometimes the robots turn out to be beautiful girls. Life's like that.

Budding manga geniuses aside, most comic books everywhere are pretty much like “The Vanishing World” here – crude lowest-common-denominator distractions for children barely able to read. Impulse purchases for those who are barely old enough to have enough pocket money to learn what an impulse purchase is. Fifty years on, its value as a cultural artifact may outweigh its utility as an adventure story for children. But that’s OK. Rest easy, Tomo Book No. 47.

Magnos The Robot, I Suppose

This review originally appeared at the Anime Jump website in 2004.

Many people think of Japanese animation as high-tech, sophisticated entertainment for adults; animation that breaks the boundaries of animated entertainment and stuns audiences with originality and innovation.

These people are of course completely wrong.

As evidence to the contrary, I present the only possible argument; a rebuttal that is smashing in its impact and draws one to an inexorable conclusion that brutally shatters paradigms, even as it opens up new worlds of possibility.

The argument? MAGNOS THE ROBOT aka MAGNETIC ROBO GAKEEN, a mid-1970s Toei giant robot show that combines all the classic elements of Japanese anime: hackneyed plot, clichéd characters, outlandish and impractical mechanical design, and bizarre, incomprehensible villains and monsters. Combined with deadpan American dubbing, the end product can only be described as kitsch. Released on DVD in the US by "Liberty International Publishing", MAGNOS is a simple, tape-glitches-and-all transfer of an earlier VHS release that once graced the kiddie section of America's video rental stores and thrift shops.

No grand vision went into making MAGNOS. Driven by market forces, the creators simply threw together whatever elements they could rip off from other, more successful anime shows. Giant super robots, fantastic ultra-scientific secret bases, grotesque evil creatures – they’ve all been done before, and done better. However, the producers of MAGNOS took the bizarre visuals and childish storylines of your typical robot drama and cranked everything up to eleven – and as with all kitsch, their efforts had the opposite effect. Instead of appearing fantastical and awesome, MAGNOS THE ROBOT simply looks outlandish, impractical, and faintly ridiculous.

Earth is in big trouble; horrific creatures from the depths of the earth, actually ancient astronauts from outer space, have declared war on the surface world. Even though national monuments are being blasted into pieces, the United Nations refuses to listen to Sir Miles Nevers, the only one with any sort of idea who’s attacking us. Apparently the UN believes that sometimes things just explode for no reason. Is Sir Nevers a scientist, a naval officer, a industrialist? MAGNOS never tells us. Nevers has a gigantic nuclear powered flying battleship, a combat unit of helicopters and antiaircraft cannon, and a complicated combining-robot fighting system. However, all this equipment is completely useless, because what Nevers DOESN’T have is a hairy, disgruntled, denim-clad, kung-fu-fighting 70s style antihero to pilot his robot and save the world.

Enter Janus, who is a disgruntled karate champion with bad hair and a wardrobe straight out of the Levis department of your local Sears. Anybody who’s ever seen any 70s giant robot show can tick off the subsequent plot elements: Janus is asked to pilot the robot. Janus refuses because he’s the 70s style antihero and they never volunteer for nothin'. The horrific monsters attack! Janus, shocked at the fighting ineptitude of Nevers’ gang, is compelled to show these amateurs exactly how he did it in the karate ring. He changes into a tacky jumpsuit and is tossed into the robot cockpit, where his fighting spirit and cocky, never-say-die attitude succeed where skill and training fail.



But wait! What about the girl? There’s ALWAYS a girl in these shows, and it’s ALWAYS the professor’s daughter, and her and the hero NEVER get along, for at least three episodes. Well, MAGNOS is no exception. In fact, Nevers’ daughter Ester is absolutely vital to the plot. You see, Nevers built his Magnos robot in two parts, and one part is piloted by his daughter, and another part has to be piloted by a tough karate champion guy. I know some parents go to extreme lengths to hook their children up, but this is ridiculous. Actually the male-female thing fits in with the whole “magnetic” theme of the show – with a positive and a negative, MAGNOS evokes both your Electrical Engineering 101 syllabus AND your Tantric Sex manuals.

You see children when a man robot pilot and a woman robot pilot love each other very much...

The 1970s were known as the decade of the ridiculously elaborate pilot-entering-his-giant-robot scene, and MAGNOS upholds the tradition magnificently. First our heroes don stupid-looking jumpsuits. They get into rocket-propelled elevators and make special arm movements, which magnetically change their jumpsuits into even stupider-looking jumpsuits. Once inside little flying cars, they’re shot out of the nuclear battleship, along with the parts of their robots. The flying cars dock with the robots, and Janus and Ester wind up fighting evil inside some of the most inept looking machinery ever designed for a Japanese cartoon. Seriously, these two robots – “Magnon” and “Magnetta”- resemble gingerbread men more than they do combat equipment. Naturally they’re useless against the monsters of Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, so they must combine into Magnos. This requires the following sequence: Janus and Ester leap out of their robots in mid-air and whirl around each other face to face, while the pieces of Magnos are shot out of the nuclear battleship. All this whirling somehow turns both Janus and Ester into some sort of rectangular yellow box, and as the pieces of Magnos come together in the sky, this rectangular yellow box becomes Magnos’ belt buckle. Magnos itself is another terrible robot design – think of Go Nagai’s STEEL JEEG and then exaggerate the less plausible, more outlandish features. Magnos has pumped-up steel muscles, a head that doesn’t turn, blades that pop out of the hands, and tiny wrists and ankles (this becomes a plot point later, believe it or not).

Meanwhile, of course, the enemies of mankind have been chilling out and watching this entire transformation take place. Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada is far away in another galaxy, so he’s forced to rely upon his minions to conquer Earth. Led by Brain, a grotesquely ugly green fellow with a giant brain that resembles an afro, they include a robot guy, a woman made out of fish parts, and some kind of lion person. They’re all full of great plans for defeating Magnos and conquering the Earth. Most of these plans involve gigantic monsters made from combining Earth animals – resulting in LSD-inspired combinations like Batroacher and Octo-Crabus X-3. Yes, it’s monster design via Conan O’Brien’s “If They Mated”.

The Brain, Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, and the majestic Octocrabus X-3

The dubbing is terrible. The mix is awful, resulting in incidental music drowning out nearly every important line of dialog. The actors read their lines competently enough, but the script can’t decide if it wants to be silly and self-referential or deadly serious. Of course, when the bad guy is named Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada and most of Brain’s lines consist of “What treachery is THIS?” it’s hard to maintain a serious tone. At least SOMEBODY was having fun with MAGNOS.

It’s hard to say how seriously this was taken in Japan, anyway. After all, this IS a show where a giant bat-cockroach attacks an oil refinery, where our karate hero Janus is shown karate-chopping a BULL in a flashback. The show is just wild enough, just kitschsy enough to make me think that everybody was in on the joke. At least I HOPE nobody was taking this seriously. The animation isn’t as lame as the storyline; perfectly competent Toei TV show animation, much as you’d see in any TV anime of the day. Some of the fighting scenes are actually fairly well done. “Well done” – never thought I’d use that phrase in connection with MAGNOS.

KARATE BULLFIGHTER!!

Curiously, the Spanish track on the DVD has a better audio mix than the English track. MAGNOS was a big hit in Italy under its original GAKEEN title, and it would have been nice to see the Italian opening credits, maybe some Italian dialog. But this is a bargain basement DVD release, and anyway, special features would destroy the low-rent atmosphere MAGNOS works so hard to maintain.

Grace Jones - actress, model, musician, Bond Girl, otaku?? This is a REAL Grace Jones LP.

Yes, I said DVD – MAGNOS THE ROBOT makes a fine addition to anybody’s DVD collection, as a counterpoint to all those expensive box sets full of anime designed for the hip, artsy, with-it, modern aficionado of the animated art. MAGNOS takes us directly back to the time when the term “Japanese cartoon” meant cheap, lurid, violent children’s entertainment. If you’re concerned about the image of Japanese animation as a mature art form for intelligent adults, avoid MAGNOS, because it will make you cry. However, if you’re in the mood for outlandish junk-food cartoons about clumsy-looking giant robots battling the monsters of Xerxes Tire-Iron Dada, then MAGNOS is the one to watch.

-Dave Merrill

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!!

tezuka parade of values

Our unplanned Osamu Tezuka January jag continues! Let's take a look at some offbeat merchandise from Tezuka-inspired anime series; particularly JUNGLE EMPEROR, which you know as KIMBA THE WHITE LION unless you know it as LEO THE LION. Which isn't actually the same show, but a sequel. The 1965 KIMBA series was the first color cartoon made expressly for Japanese television, and served as the inspiration for many tributes, imitations, and products, including this lovely Leo light.

No, seriously, that's what it was marketed as, the "Lovely Leo Light".

At some point in the mid 1980s my brother went out to L.A. He picked this lamp up at the fabled "Pony Toy-Go-Round". And yes, it still works!

And if reading by the light of the Lovely Leo Light makes you hungry for candy, you can always have some Jungle Emperor Ju-C-Double candy, delivered right from Leo's neck.

I picked this up at a now-defunct Japanese grocery store in Doraville GA and yes, I ate all the candy. As an imitation Pez, the Ju-C delivery system sports softer plastic construction and a less robust candy-feed mechanism than its European counterpart. However, it features the angry head of Leo, in the face of which all objections vanish.

When you're done with the candy, Leo's head can be mounted trophy-style atop your favorite pencil at school.

Remember moms, this candy is approved by Osamu Tezuka himself - and he's a doctor!

Once your Tezuka themed shopping expedition is complete, your purchases will fit neatly inside your Astro Boy plastic bag.

This one was picked up in the mid 80s at the Philadelphia retailer "Heaven", which featured a full line of Astro Boy T-shirts and Space Giants and Godzilla monster toys, alongside thousands of magnets, toy robots, and other wonderful kitschy goodness. A more aptly-named retail establishment would be hard to find.

-Dave Merrill

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!

Rintaro + Otomo + Tezuka = Metropolis

Note: a version of this review originally appeared in 2002 on the website Anime Jump.

METROPOLIS is an animated version of a manga by Osamu Tezuka, with a script by Katsuhiro Otomo, directed by Rintaro. If those names don’t mean much to you, then this review won’t either. Oh, sure, you’ll enjoy this movie- which is a visually stunning, brilliantly directed animation spectacular with an engaging storyline, strong characterization, and refreshingly retro character design - you just won’t enjoy it as much as I did.

Back in the 1930s, Japanese manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka saw some stills from the 1926 Fritz Lang film METROPOLIS. Inspired (as so many were) by the haunting images of the gigantic city and the struggle of its inhabitants, Tezuka wrote his own story around Lang’s film and in the first flush of his success as a manga author, published his own METROPOLIS, which, along with LOST WORLD and NEXT WORLD, made up his original science fiction trilogy.

Set against the background of the fantastic techno-wonderland Metropolis, this film portrays the power struggles between the city-state’s various factions. Not only is the city’s disgruntled underclass about to revolt - obviously they’ve seen the silent film - but the city’s mysterious millionaire Duke Red is plotting against the government. Duke Red’s own Marduk political faction is constantly at war with the intelligent but subservient robots. Marduk’s commander, Duke’s adopted son Rock, struggles for his father’s attention, but is ignored in favor of Duke’s scientific fantasy, the center of which is the immensely powerful, lifelike girl-robot Tima.

Kenichi, Shunsaku Ban, and robot detective Pero

In the midst of this three-and-four way struggle, Shunsaku Ban and his nephew Kenichi arrive. Ban is a detective on the trail of the missing scientist Dr. Lawton. Is Lawton involved in Duke Red’s mysterious plan? Can they get to the bottom of the mystery, even as Metropolis crumbles around them?

I know this is a cliché bored reviewers trot out for every new anime film, but I’ll say it again. METROPOLIS is visually stunning. Rintaro’s direction has never been stronger, and I say that as someone who owns four different versions of his GALAXY EXPRESS film and who watched all of DAGGER OF KAMUI without subtitles, twice. All his hallmarks are there- dramatic rays of light penetrating the darkness, gigantic buildings delicately shaded and colored, choreographed slo-mo scenes of vast destruction. At times he’s even taking cues from himself - the whimsical robots he pioneered in ROBOT CARNIVAL are back, and there is one scene lifted wholesale from BATTLE ANGEL ALITA. Rintaro’s well-animated (by ace studio MADHOUSE) characters inhabit a fully-realized world that we see from every angle, from the top of Duke Red’s menacing Ziggurat to the lowest of Metropolis’ deepest levels. Sometimes all in the same shot.

Tima and Kenichi

Since this is a Katsuhiro Otomo version of an Osamu Tezuka story based on the Fritz Lang movie, one has to look for Otomo’s hand in the script, and it’s definitely there - political corruption, personal betrayal, technology that goes too far and assumes a life of its own. The struggle between the natural and the artificial is not a new theme for Japanese animation, but I know of no other film that lays the battle lines out so clearly, and demolishes them so utterly. I was particularly impressed to learn that many story elements were added to the original by Otomo - his storylines are seamlessly integrated and really have that Tezuka atmosphere.

The score is an unexpected pleasure. METROPOLIS has a wonderful jazz soundtrack that contrasts brilliantly with all the high-tech scenery. Instead of the typical bombastic orchestra, or heaven forbid, the dreaded all-electronic soundtrack, the lively, fun METROPOLIS score ranges from bebop to Dixieland and keeps the film’s humanity in the foreground. These aren’t old classics dug out of the public domain vault, either; apart from one very prominent Ray Charles tune, this is original work by Toshiyuki Honda, and that’s Rintaro on sax, can you dig it?

Rock menaces Professor Lawton

To be certain, the long-time anime fan will get a kick out of this film However, that’s not to say METROPOLIS won’t be entertaining for the general public, especially now that the general public has been acclimated to the idea of Japanese animation being potential art-house material. This film has all the techno-spectacle of AKIRA, but instead of that movie’s bleak tone and no-future worldview, METROPOLIS has old-fashioned scientific romance appeal. I don’t think it’s too far off to characterize this film as a big, sloppy love letter from Rintaro to the memory of Osamu Tezuka. All of Tezuka’s classic stock characters make an appearance and the homages and references are constant. Much is made of the computer animation in this film, and while there’s a real attempt to keep it in line with the traditional animation, it is still too smooth, too shiny, and too controlled. The gulf between paint and pixel is still too wide, and the film’s attempt to bridge the gap is earnest but unsuccessful. Still, as Rintaro points out, Tezuka himself was always trying new things and new techniques. Both his commercial productions and his experimental works were rife with well-meant attempts at expanding the medium. If anything, a pure Tezuka version of METROPOLIS might have had even more CG, perhaps less of the juxtaposition of old and new, less of the struggle between gleaming future machine and old school cartoon that gives this METROPOLIS its power.

The readily available, early 2000’s edition DVD is just as classy as the film. Columbia-TriStar produced a comprehensive gatefold package, with the film in English, Japanese, and French, subtitled in two different English versions as well as French, Spanish, Portugese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai, and of course it’s widescreen. The extra materials? You get character sketches and a step-by-step visual guide to the special effects and CG animation. A 20 minute special details the original comic and features interviews with Rintaro, Otomo, the major voice talent, the animation studio Madhouse, and the composer Toshiyuki Honda. There are additional interviews with Rintaro and Otomo, there’s a Rintaro filmography and a short bio of Tezuka’s career. Seeing Otomo and Rintaro both agree that Tezuka wouldn’t have let them make this film while he was alive, or watching Taro explain his efforts to drag digital animation into the analog world; it’s gold. Lacking is a primer on the Tezuka references - there can’t be too many Americans versed in Tezuka’s visual motifs. Perfect for the Blu-Ray, fellas!

The inevitable conclusion

Not to diminish Tezuka’s legacy, but he was known as kind of a control freak. I have doubts he would have let Otomo and Rintaro have their way with METROPOLIS if he’d been alive, and that would have definitely resulted in a stodgier, less interesting film. What counts is the end result, and the end result of METROPOLIS is a fantastic, engaging film that shows the best of Tezuka’s story, Otomo’s screenwriting, and Rintaro’s direction. It’s rare for a film project to live up to its hype. It’s rarer still for a film to exceed all expectations. METROPOLIS, for me at least, is that film.

METROPOLIS screens Thursday January 6 and Sunday January 9 at the Toronto Underground Cinema.

See you there!

-Dave Merrill

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!

coolest thing ever, Tezuka edition

Custom hand-painted Russian nesting dolls sporting your favorite Osamu Tezuka characters? Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Painted by "hooverdam", whose handmade MLS banners have been seen in major league soccer events around the world.

Happy 2011!

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!

merry xmas and a happy 2011

My apologies to all; I fully intended to have another post up here before the Christmas holidays rolled around, and that just isn't gonna happen. In the meantime, however, I want to wish everybody a happy holiday season full of joy and good cheer.

See you in 2011!

-Dave