"...I Promise Never To Lower The Standard Of The Galactic Patrol."

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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”.

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.

tales of a fourth grade Lensman

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.” 

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(?!!).

MoriBi Murano's Lensman manga

Mitsuru Miura's Lensman manga. And HAUSU

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 21^st 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 20^th century writer envisioning all of macro-cosmic space, while still being paid by the word. 

Clear ether, Patrolmen!

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 Org world, please consider joining our Patreon!

show me your space

The theme song asks us to show it our space, a mighty jungle call echoes as a hero swings from vine to vine, and a beautiful space traveler escapes evil robots! Is it Tarzan or Star Wars - or both? This is Tatsunoko’s 1984 series OKAWARI-BOY Starzan S, a goofy romp through two continents’ worth of pop culture, delivering comedy, action, and romance. Mostly comedy. Fondly remembered by viewers who were too few to keep this series alive, the show was cancelled early and vanished utterly. What is the mystery of Starzan S?

Somewhere in the galaxy the planet Kirakira is troubled. The Senobi tribe wants to be left alone in their forests, but the Robot tribe of, naturally, robots, are desperate for natural resources to fuel their robot lifestyle. Only one thing protects the Senobi- our hero, the OKAWARI-BOY Starzan S who defeats the schemes of Robot leader Darth Bellow and his mechanical monsters with equal doses of Tarzan vine-swinging, Magnus Robot Fighter robot punching, and various transforming mechanical devices that coincidentally make great toys.

Starzan Yell, Starzan Kick

Into this quaint pop culture remix crash-lands Jun Yagami. Armed only with some blurry photos, a mini-skirt, and a collapsible ray-gun, this beautiful teenage space traveler is searching for her missing father, who vanished while tracking down a legendary space utopia named “Paratopia.”

Hot on Jun’s space-booted heels come the Maneko clan in their garish candelabra of a starship. Mama Maneko, convinced Paratopia holds the secret to eternal youth, is the matriarch of a toilet-paper dynasty. Her daughter Leeds is a haughty would-be beauty, and Leeds’ henpecked husband Hachiro takes abuse from them both. Meanwhile, their son Ebirusu, a comedy version of Vegas-era Elvis Presley, has only one goal in mind, the hand of the lovely Jun. Disabled in a great cosmic storm, both parties crash-land on Kirakira. Sides are quickly chosen; the Manekos wind up with the Robots while Jun is rescued by the God Of The Jungle, Starzan!

the Maneko family album

Yes, Starzan, who oscillates between being a dashing warrior or a short goof, who can defeat robots with his mighty blows yet occasionally trip over his own feet, and whose first glimpse of Jun begins a teenage space romance that will shake the very foundations of Kirakira, and perhaps the galaxy itself! 

OKAWARI-BOY Starzan S aired in Urashiman’s old Fuji-TV timeslot, Saturdays at 6:30pm, from January to August 1984. Starzan underperformed in the ratings and the show was replaced by an even more obscure Tatsunoko series, the auto-mechanic adventure Yoroshiku Mechadoc. But for 34 weeks viewers would thrill to Starzan, his little Ewokish buddy Mutan, and the friendly Senobi tribe’s struggle to protect Jun from the rampaging Robots and whatever nutty scheme Ma Maneko and her dopey clan were pushing. The theme song “Show Me Your Space” was sung by Poplar, aka Sumiko Fukuda, who’d later sing tunes for Dream Warrior Wingman and Disney’s Beauty And The Beast. Yoshitaka Amano is credited as Starzan S character designer, but the rounded, soft features betray the hand of Takayuki Goto, who'd work on other Tatsunoko projects like Zillion and features as varied as the chicken comedy Gu Gu Ganmo and the cyborg non-comedy Appleseed.  The animation is fluid, the music is great, the characters and colors are bouncy and 80s, and Jun takes a lot of baths and shows a lot of her space. To be fair, so does Starzan; equal opportunity fanservice in action.

the course of outer space teenage romance never runs smooth

An SF comedy, Starzan S has plenty of monsters, aliens, spaceships, dimensional warps, and other genre staples. Starzan’s main mecha, the transforming gorilla-bird-plesiosaur-buffalo Mecha Starzan S, provides much of the show’s required 1980s anime show transforming-mecha footage. But Starzan S unabashedly ditches the sci-fi for comedy, never hesitating to abandon its lead in favor of whatever crazy scheme or sad character defect of the Manekos is driving that week’s script (any resemblance to Tatsunoko’s earlier bad-guy focused Time Bokan series is purely intentional).

Hachiro in an unusual mood, Leeds and Maneko are not impressed

Grandma Maneko’s character was based on singer, arts patron, and industrialist Masako “Pink Billionairess” Ohya, who reportedly owned 3600 pink dresses and six golf courses. Rumor has it her daughter Leeds was based on screen legend Elizabeth Taylor. Leeds in turn dominates her diminutive, frilly-collared husband Hachiro (modeled on boxer-turned comedian Octopus Hachiro), and everybody indulges Ebirusu in what is described as his “illicit love” for Jun Yagami, herself a take on the real-life singer Junko Yagami, who recorded songs for Final Yamato, a pile of hit singles and albums, and now lives in the United States. 

obligatory Mojo Nixon reference

The heavy lifting in these harebrained Maneko stratagems is usually carried out by hapless Robot tribesbots. The Robots are led by Darth Bellow, a diminutive Darth Vader (voiced by Darth Vader’s Japanese voice actor Toru “Dr. Nambu” Ohira), but their ultimate ruler is a maniacal Barbie doll named “Mother” who resides in a giant rice cooker, and their battle leader is Tetsujin Ultra Z, a dopey cross between Tetsujin-28 and Ultraman. In peaceful contrast, the diminutive Senobi people live an idyllic existence under the gentle guidance of their leader, the kindly… wait for it… Obi-Wan Senobi.

Darth Bellow, Tetsujin Ultra Z in super pose

The pieces of Starzan S fall into place early and the show settles into its Jun-capturing, Starzan-rescuing, Paratopia-questing groove. Starzan’s face gets stuck in goofy mode and he becomes a masked tokusatsu hero. An amnesia-causing tidal wave isolates Jun and Ebirusu – is this his big chance for love?  Starzan shows Jun his secret jungle home, an upside-down wrecked spaceship now home to weird nightclubbing aliens, complete with a Sex Pistols needle drop. Ma Maneko has the Robots construct a giant angry Buddha Maneko statue robot; what could go wrong? There’s a visit Mutan’s home planet, a dead ringer for the Ewok-infested moon of Endor, and we learn how he and Starzan met. Jun and Starzan and the rest of the cast travel to Earth where the mystery of Starzan’s heritage is revealed, and the bankrupt Maneko family’s possessions are traumatically auctioned off. On their return to Kirakira, the evidence all points to one conclusion – that the show is almost over and they’d better wrap things up! Paratopia’s secret is revealed partly through the viewing of hundreds of Beta videotapes, the dark mystery behind Darth Bellow is solved, the Robot and Senobi tribes bury the robot hatchet, and peace finally returns to the beautiful planet Kirakira, where the triumphant jungle yell of Starzan still echoes through the forest.

Starzan S records, books, toys

So the big question is, what the heck does “Okawari Boy” mean, anyway?  Well, “okawari” is a Japanese expression  used when requesting a second helping of food or another drink, the “kawari” meaning “instead of something” or “replacement”. So in the context of Starzan being a replacement for Tarzan, it makes sense. I guess. Sure. Why not.  The other big question is, what happened to Starzan S?

The show never even had the courtesy of a home video release; all that survive are home-taped TV broadcasts. Tatsunoko shamelessly mines its own back catalog for concepts and characters, yet no reboot for Starzan S. Why no revival? Some theories: perhaps a show starring characters based on real people (Maneko, Ebirusu, Jun) and thinly disguised parodies of extant, copyrighted fictional characters (Darth Bellow, Starzan) is bound to attract the attention of somebody’s legal department somewhere, attention the notoriously lawsuit-averse Japanese are loath to attract. Add Starzan’s weak TV reception to the mix, and it’s safe to assume Tatsunoko was/is reluctant to throw good money after bad.

Starzan S, Mutan, and Ebiten, Ojinbo, and Kakasan of the Senobi

Starzan S was heavy on the cultural Japanese gags so it’s unsurprising that international markets were also slow to warm to the series, though Starzan S did make it to Spain and Korea and two reported VHS releases in Poland. Without any sort of (non-Polish) home video release, Starzan S vanished, and like other obscure Tatsunoko series "Animentary Ketsudan" and "Meiyo no Sukouto", the series was only able to make a dent among Western anime fans through international tape-trading; an already tenuous link dependent upon a select, obsessive-compulsive group of Japanese fans.

Still, let’s not be too maudlin. The viewing public’s gestalt mind probably made the right call; OKAWARI-BOY Starzan S is manifestly a 1984 artifact, a product of that final pop of the anime boom, a cute 34 episode SF comedy. Wackier than Urashiman, not as wacky as Ippatsuman, smart (or lucky) enough to not overstay its welcome, leaving behind nothing more than some toys, some fond memories, a giant wrecked Buddha Maneko robot, and the echoing call of the God Of The Jungle.  Will we ever find our own Paratopia of a Starzan S re-release on DVD or BD or streaming or some new, heretofore unheard of technology? Will we, once again, be able to show OKAWARI-BOY Starzan S all our spaces?

EDITED TO ADD: in 2017 Starzan S got a Blu-Ray release, proving once again all it takes is a Let's Anime column to shift the cosmic forces towards the axis of righteousness. I promise to always use this power for the betterment of mankind. 

-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!

air quotes required; the story of "Japanimation" the magazine

The exciting thing about the independent comic boom of the 1980s is that pretty much anybody with 32 pages of content and a line of credit at a printer could be a comic book publisher, right up there with Stan Lee and Jenette Khan and the Goldwaters over at Archie. Alternatively, the depressing thing about the independent comic boom of the 80s is, again, pretty much anybody could be a comic book publisher, which led to comic shops being flooded with subliterate, non-returnable junk, which then inevitably led to the independent comic bust of the late 1980s.

Of course, for our purposes the 80s meant Robotech and a big new wave of anime fans bursting forth in an explosion of fan activity. The networks of clubs, newsletters and fanzines, of murky comic con video rooms and disreputable comic con dealers, of standing around the comic shop waiting for the next issue of Robotech Masters and for something called "Viz" to release something called "Area 88"  - all this interest congealed in a few professional, comic-shop distributed publications devoted to Japanese animation.  Protoculture Addicts, Animag, and Anime-Zine all vied for the late 1980s reader, but today we look at a singular example of the genre, simply titled "Japanimation". This portmanteau, once the hip, with-it term used by those "in the know"when describing Japanese animation, may very well have been coined by superfan and Desslok cosplayer Rob Fenelon, but its time in the sun was cut mercifully short; fandom soon settled on the sportier soubriquet "anime" and “Japanimation” was left as a newbie shibboleth.

  

From Detroit's Eclectic Press and edited by future independent filmmaker Joseph Doughrity, "Japanimation" is right out of a 1987 time capsule. There's the charmingly confusing katakana in the title, some muscular off-model Yamato fan art, and ads for Ninja High School and Comico’s Robotech comics. Setting type with a dot-matrix printer? Why not, it’s the 80s.

Robotech producer Harmony Gold’s litigious reputation shines brightly here in "Japanimation"'s editorial page, which explains how their previous issue's Robotech coverage offended HG's tender sensibilities. Hence this issue's focus on Star Blazers, a latchkey kid of a property its American corporate masters barely remembered they owned, let alone cared about.  Readers will also be happy to learn that "the cute boom" of Outlanders, Wanna-Bes, and something called "Dragonball" was then currently detonating over Japan. Better catch it while you can! Who knows how long a show like Dragonball will last?

"Japanimation" keeps us up to date on the latest news gleaned from other, more professional periodicals - Viz Comics will be publishing Area 88 and Mai The Psychic Girl, while Now Comics has the Speed Racer license and also hedges their Japanese cartoon bets with the home-grown "Dai Kamikaze", a really terrible all-American take on the giant robot.

"Japanimation" fans will be pleased to learn also that hobby kit importer Twentieth Century Imports will be releasing all of Votoms on VHS tape in the United States, news courtesy the Somebody Making Stuff Up News Network. This combination of press releases and wishful thinking was emblematic of anime-club newsletter writing of the period.

Meanwhile, Manga American Style delivers up to the minute reviews of the stuff on the racks down at Bob's Elf Dungeon & Comics World that the owner only carries because you and your two weird pals constantly bug him about it. Is this perhaps the earliest American Golgo 13 fan art?

But now it's on to the meat of "Japanimation" - their feature story on Space Cruiser Yamato, the Japanese SF anime hit that was yesterday's news in Japan but still garnering fan interest in America courtesy syndicated Star Blazers reruns.  Four pages synopsizing Yamato’s voyages may seem a bit much, but remember, many American fans might not even know half these Yamato adventures existed. In 1987, seeing Yamato films on home video in the States meant quasi-legally swapping fuzzy VHS tapes with strangers. Who’s got time for that?

If necessary, the enterprising anime magazine editor can also fill eight or nine pages with a Yamato character guide and a complete synopsis of every episode of the first Star Blazers series, simultaneously padding out their magazine and saving the Earth!

And if you still have two pages to kill, why not just print out the lyrics to the Star Blazers theme song? Why not indeed? Actually there are many, many good reasons as to why not. But let’s move on.

When you're all done be sure to list your sources - meaning, the Roman Albums you photocopied artwork from, and the Ardith Carlton and Fred Schodt articles that were the only available English-language resources at the time, unless you’re counting fan art of Derek Wildstar fighting Bruce Lee or the Star Blazers cast drawn as horses.

Rounding out this issue of "Japanimation" is a humorous fan cartoon from an uncredited Paul Sudlow (okay, he’s credited on the title page, just not here) and what would have been a fine advertisement for model kit outfit TCI, if "Japanimation" had remembered to actually place TCI's name on their ad. Oops. Anyway, it makes a great back cover illustration, and probably inspired years worth of conjecture among readers as to what exactly a "Galvion" was.

"Japanimation" would last one more issue under this title, would change to "Anime Journal" with issue #4, and then vanished into 25-cent longboxes in the back rooms of North American comic shops. Was this just one more semi-pro anime magazine? Or was its very name emblematic of the thrilled, slightly confused era of anime fandom from which it sprang? Is “Japanimation” evidence of the influence American comic book culture had on anime fandom’s development? And will the term “Japanimation” ever make a non-ironic comeback? (Yes, yes, yes, and hopefully not.)

thanks to Eclectic Press, Andrew Popp, Steve Harrison, Paul Sudlow, and the comic shops of America for making this article possible

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!

at the movies

Movies! Everybody loves 'em.  And if you're reading this blog, chances are the kind of movies you like come from Japan and are animated! And chances are also that if you were a kid in the 60s or even the 70s or the 80s, you might have had the chance to see a Japanese animated film in your local drive-in or at a kiddy matinee, long before Akira and Totoro would tag-team the arthouse cinemas of North America and turn "cartoons" into "animation.” We’re talking back in the day here, long before Japanese animation was seen as a viable entertainment medium, way before anyone realized that “Annie May” was anything other than maybe the name of the big-haired lady selling tickets in the box office.

 

Magic Boy

And like all great journeys this one begins with a ninja. Magic Boy (Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke, 1959) would be the first Japanese animated film to get North American theatrical release, screening in June of ‘61 courtesy MGM. The ninja magic of Magic Boy was followed very closely by Globe Pictures’ American release of Toei’s Panda And The Magic Serpent (Hakujaden). This movie premiered in Japan a year before Magic Boy, making it the first color Japanese animated film. Panda, directed by Taiji “Jack & The Witch” Yabushita, at one point was widely available via poorly transferred public domain VHS. 60s America was filled with Japanese imports; not just transistor radios playing Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki", but anime feature films like Alakazam The Great, The Littlest Warrior,  Little Prince & The Eight Headed Dragon, and Gulliver's Travels Beyond The Moon would enthrall kids at matinees and in the playgrounds of drive-in theaters.

lobby cards, print ads, & LPs for Alakazam, Panda, and others

Once the 1970s got moving, Japan's hunger for big-budgeted children's animation features would be replaced by hunger for TV shows starring easily marketable toy robots, Ultramen, and Masked Riders. Fewer animated films were made in Japan, and consequently fewer made their way across the pond to entertain and mystify us.

poster and lobby cards for Nobody's Boy

One of these stragglers was Yugo Serikawa's Chibikko Remi to Meiken Kapi (Little Remi and Capi, The Famous Dog), the first anime adaptation of Hector "Perrine Story" Malot's novel Sans Famille. This 1970 Toei release affects a jarring, very dated 1960 visual style.  Under the title Nobody’s Boy, the film wouldn’t make it into American theaters until the early 1980s, courtesy "Malijack Productions" and an English dub starring Jim "Thurston Howell III" Backus. Nobody's Boy would later appear on cable TV and in the children's video sections of video rental stores in the US and UK.

The fairy tale Jack And The Beanstalk may be an old story, but when you put a director like Gisaburo Sugii in charge, things are bound to get surreal, and that’s exactly what happens in this 1974 feature. Nippon Herald’s Jack didn't have to wait a decade but made it to US cinemas in the year of its release via Columbia Pictures. Mixing European and Japanese animation styles, it sidesteps cliches and winds up a thoughtful, slightly eerie film, fully storybook-enabled for the kids, yet unearthly and visually dynamic enough to entertain adults.

newspaper ad from Seattle Times, June 1980

1980 would be an almost unheralded turning point in the world of anime localization; Roger Corman's New World Pictures would release Toei's 1979 Galaxy Express 999 film in theaters across America. For the first time,  a popular Japanese property would be brought to the States a few months after its Japanese release and marketed not as a children's picture but a science-fiction adventure on the level of Star Wars. This is the kind of simultaneous, professional, serious anime release we’ve come to take for granted here in the modern world, but in 1980 this approach simply hadn’t happened before.

Reviews are kinda harsh

Don't confuse "Galaxy Express" with
"Midnight Express." Trust me.

Of course the New World version of Galaxy Express would be problematic; edits for time would chop half an hour out of Tetsuro Hoshino’s journey to the Mechanized Planet, and celebrity impersonation voice acting made Captain Harlock's appearance less impressive than it might otherwise have been. It was 1980, people still didn't take Japanese animation very seriously. But, and this is the important part, they were taking it more seriously than they had been. Galaxy Express would screen across America, with trailers, radio spots, posters and TV ads advertising Leiji Matsumoto's Rin Taro-directed space fantasy to a nation just awakening to the potential of Japanese space cartoons. The film would appear post-cinema on cable TV and finish its life cycle in the shelves of home video stores with a VHS release, lodging deep in the memories of young viewers who would struggle years later to recall the name of "that cartoon with the train in space."

Five years later, in the midst of releasing gems like Space Raiders, Deathstalker, and C.H.U.D., New World snagged another prestigious Japanese anime release, Tokuma Shoten/Top Craft's Nausicaa, directed by some guy named Hayao Miyazaki. A singular science-fantasy vision of ecological destruction, the film was an instant classic and put Miyazaki on the map as Japan's top anime director. New World would waste no time in again cutting thirty minutes, dumbing down the dialogue, and creating new poster art that split the difference between Mad Max, Dune, and Star Trek. Still, we have to take the bad with the good, and Warriors would, like Galaxy Express before it, be seen on screens across the United States and Canada.

Miyazaki’s Nausicaa was powerful enough to withstand any amount of shoddy localization. Theater patrons and later those who saw the film on cable television or rental VHS couldn’t help but be impressed by the film, even if the main character was now named "Zandra", and its clear refusal to be a "children's film" makes it a milestone on American movie screens.

Toronto Star movie listing and VHS box art for "Warriors"

But was it?  Were there earlier attempts at releasing Japanese anime films aimed at grownups in America? Well, there was one. Maybe two. Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Productions, responsible for internationally successful shows about robot boys and talking white lions, took a chance on feature animation for older audiences in the late 60s. Their 1969 "Animerama" feature A Thousand And One Nights, based on Sir Richard Burton's translation of the bawdy Arabic folk tales, is a who's who of anime talent like Osamu Dezaki and Eichi Yamamoto, resulting in a reasonably entertaining if meandering film. Purportedly an English-dubbed version received a very limited theatrical release in America, but the only surviving evidence is the dubbed trailer.

from the English trailer for "A Thousand And One Nights"

Mushi's next feature, 1970s Cleopatra, was an indulgent mess, a hodgepodge of sight gags, anachronisms, and Dame Oyaji and Sazae-San cameos crammed into the story of Antony, Cleopatra, and Caesar, all bookended by a bizarre live-action/cartoon-head science-fiction subplot. A massive flop in Japan, this film was a crippling blow to Mushi's finances; desperately they licensed the movie to an American distributor, who released it with a self-imposed X rating under the title "Cleopatra Queen Of Sex." Unlike A Thousand And One Nights, evidence of Cleopatra's American release does exist; at least one screening of a subtitled print took place at New York City's Bijou in April of 1972. Variety's review is not kind, referencing a "disconcerting clash of styles in the animation" and "an overabundance of bawdy blue grossness",  remarking "it is difficult to imagine anyone being aroused by the naked breasts of a cartoon character," a sentiment no doubt shocking to today's waifu-worshipping 2D love slaves.

"Cleopatra, Queen Of Sex"

The failure of Cleopatra and of its followup Belladonna Of Sadness (which after critical re-evaluation is getting a remastered theatrical release) would leave animated films for grownups in the hands of Ralph "Wizards" Bakshi and whatever Europeans were thinking when they made Tarzoon, Shame Of The Jungle. After Warriors Of The Wind blew away, there would be a long, dark movie-house anime interregnum; sure, the stitched-together Robotech The Movie would briefly appear, only to be hurriedly whisked away to a hazardous waste containment facility.  It would be late 1989 before Streamline Pictures delivered Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira to American cinemas, making Japanese animation a force to be reckoned with wherever on the Venn diagram film snobs and animation nerds meet. Nowadays new releases of films by Mamoru Oshii or Mamoru Hosoda, Isao Takahata or Hayao “Gone Fishing” Miyazaki are a safe bet to show up in towns with hip, with-it theaters.

However, the decline of  the neighborhood video rental, difficult times for movie theater owners,  the collapse of physical media, and the whimsical unreliability of streaming video all herald a new and unsatisfying era for the seeker of slightly nontraditional cinema.  Will the local theater once again become our window into the world of non-Disney animation for adults and kids and adults who think like kids? Can we ever return to the days of the double feature, the all-night shockathon, the kiddy matinee, the hunger of an industry desperate to fill its screens with darn near anything that will fit through the projector’s shining gate? Probably not.  Still, as long as popcorn pops in a lobby somewhere, as long as our feet still stick to the floors of our neighborhood movie house, we’ll always have hope.

let's all go to the lobby

Special thanks to Chris Hill and the Toronto Public Library for their assistance.