it's may so it must be time for

Hey, why no Let's Anime posts lately? Well, it's not because I don't have goofy stuff to write about. Nope, I've been working on getting things ready for the upcoming Anime North, which is this weekend. If you're in town you should come on by! It's a great show full of events, guests, dealers, costumes, dances - check the website for full details - and I'm doing some panels and things. Three-day passes have already sold out but you can still get one-day tickets for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 

So what am I up to at AN this year? Friday at 7pm Shain and I will be holding down the Mr Kitty table at the NOMINOICHI, Anime North's garage sale swap meet event. It takes place in the Convention Center, hall F. We're giving our closets one final cleaning and that means YOU get to take home our old anime VHS, anime posters, books, manga, and anything else we can get rid of. 

Of course Friday at 10pm in the Plaza Ballroom in the Doubletree is... ANIME HELL.

 

This two-hour freeform clip show event has been a mild amusement to Canadian audiences for more than six years, and this year's show promises to be just as confusing and laff-packed as previous installments. Followed at midnight by our feature film presentation, 2010's SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO.

  

 This screening features special custom subtitles unavailable anywhere else! 

Saturday at 1pm join Helen McCarthy and I as we take a look at the animation of the god of comics, Osamu Tezuka's animation legacy. It's happening in International B in the Doubletree and will be packed with clips from the thirty-plus years Tezuka created animation to go along with his voluminous manga output.

  

And yeah, some of it gets kind of peculiar. 

At 3pm on Saturday in the same room Mister Kitty brings you Stupid Comics - LIVE! Shain and I are bringing our popular web feature to real life as we highlight some of the lowlights of our investigation into the world of bad comics. It's guaranteed to shock and amuse, especially when we get to the bad wanna-be manga.

 And on Sunday at 1pm, again in International B I'll be taking a look at Spooky Classic Anime, the kind of cartoons your parents wouldn't let you watch in the 60s and 70s, except if you had been able to watch these cartoons in the 60s and 70s you'd be Japanese and it would be OK.

  

Don't be afraid! See you at the show!

Advice From The Beast

Back when Let’s Anime was a print fanzine read by dozens, we’d print darn near anything. One popular feature was an advice column written by an abusive, possibly psychotic individual known only as “The Beast”. Throughout the mid 1990s this so-called “expert” dispensed wisdom to every single fake question that the editors wrote for him. No one knows where he came from or what happened to him afterwards, but let’s remember him the way he’d want to be remembered – hurling insults at strangers.

THE BEAST 

By: The Beast (Let’s Anime #3, Spring 1993) 

Well here I am again to dispense my pearls of wisdom to you, my breathless audience. So shut up and pay attention. First off, here are some letters.

 Dear Beast: The other people in the anime club I attend all say that Ranma ½ is unrealistic and repetitive. What should I do? 
Yours, 
Chris Jorgensen 

Dear Chris;

 Show up at the next meeting in a dress, and beat the crap out of all the Ranma detractors. Repeat 115 times, changing genders as necessary.

  

Dear Beast; 
My pal Amuro says that Mobile Suit Gundam is just too complicated and has too many characters and mobile suits to keep track of. Is there any way I can explain Gundam simply to him?

Yours truly, 
Char 

Dear Char; 

Well, if your friend would only realize the inherent political ramifications in the Axis’ alliance with Neo-Jion, he would understand that the Titans meant to force a confrontation with Side 13 against the AEUG, which means that the Crossbone Vanguard would need to utilize the Zabi clan’s intentions to see the Abowaku/Luna 2 defense pact with Shangri-La dissolved in favor of a renewed hard-line policy of dropping space colonies and big rocks on Earth. There, that was easy, wasn’t it.

  

Dear Beast: 
I’m very unpopular with some people that I would like to impress a lot. I try harder and harder each time, but I always end up annoying them even more. What can I do to make these people like me? 

Sincerely, 
Carl Macek 

Dear Carl, 

You know, there are some people in this world that simply will never be satisfied, that will complain and complain no matter what you give them. It’s best to ignore these “nattering nabobs of negativity”, as Spiro Agnew described them, and go on about your business with calm self-assurance.

  

Dear Beast; 

You suck. You don’t know anything about music or advice. All the anime you like stinks. You’ve never had a girlfriend and you drive a badly-made automobile. Please die soon. 

Yours, 
I.M. Pseudonym 

EDITORS NOTE: Please remember to include your full name and address when writing The Beast. Thank you.

Dear Beast; 

My dad told me to ask you if that was your face, or were you just wearing a mask with the features of an abnormally stupid and ugly person who dunked his head into a vat of highly potent sulphuric acid and then tried to make up for it with enrollment in the Hair Club For Men? Huh? 

Your Pal, 
Crusher Ed 

1600 Whitebase Way 

Side Three 

Dear Crusher Ed; 

Thanks for including your full name and address. Hope you enjoy your new life in the orphanage.  

THE RETURN OF THE BEAST 

(Let’s Anime #4, Fall 1993) 

Well, howdy, and welcome back to my font of perpetual knowledge concerning personality problems and bands. I sure hope that those of you who have serious difficulties managing the anime-fan lifestyle will write in and ask for my help. And if you don’t get help here, get help somewhere… and now for our first letter.

   

Dear Beast; 

My pal says that ODIN is a science-fiction film, while I maintain that it is a space-fantasy. Which one of us is correct? 

Yours truly, 
Matt Black 

Dear Matt; 

You both are wrong. ODIN is neither a SF film nor a space fantasy. It is a sleeping aid. Use only as directed.  

Dear Beast, 

Why don’t they make a movie where the Knight Sabers from Bubblegum Crisis and Space Cobra team up with ‘Thundersub’ and Hurricane Polymar to defeat Marvel Comics’ Dr. Doom? 

Sincerely, 
Jim Shortz 

Dear Jim,
Because that would be stupid.

   

Dear Beast; 

If Carl Macek and Sandy Frank had a fight on live TV with sledgehammers and other blunt instruments, who would win? 

Ben Dover 

Dear Ben, 

I don’t know, but it’s nice to think about, isn’t it?

  

Dear Mr. Beast; 

I am currently working on my graduate thesis, which consists of an in-depth analysis of incidences of cultural significance in modern Japanese television animation. I would appreciate your opinion on the following: in your experience, do you feel that the zeitgeist of the common Japanese proletariat’s existence has been enriched by a common Jungian exposure to iconic symbolism through popular cultural media, or, conversely, is there to be seen a resurgence in classical autonomic materialization of total neo-judgmental theory? 

Yours truly, 

Billy (age 5) 

Dear Billy, 

Yes. 

ONCE AGAIN TERROR STALKS THE EARTH… THE BEAST LIVES 

Advice For The Hopeless By: The Beast 

(Let’s Anime #5, Spring 1994) 

Yes, it’s me again. They let me out of the institution just to painfully cobble this column together with crayon and brown paper (no sharp objects allowed) so I’m gonna try and make it a good one. First from my mailbag…  

Dear Beast: 

Why does all Japanese animation look like "Speed Racer"? 

Confusedly, 
Al Coholic 

Dear Al, 

Because you suck.

  

Dear Mr. Beast, 

Why do most of the characters featured in the majority of Japanese cartoons fail to resemble actual Japanese citizens in the least? 

Yours, 

Phil Irrup 

Dear Phil, 

Because your mother wears combat boots.

  

Dear Beast: 

Why does Ultraman always wait until the last possible minute before using his Spacium Beam and destroying the monster? Why doesn’t he use it at the beginning of the fight and kill the monster right off, saving countless lives and untold millions in property damage? 

Yours, 

Eiji Tsubaraya 

Dear Eiji; 

If the big silver guy used his big gun right at the beginning of the fight, it’d be over in a second! Where’s the fun in that, smart guy? Plus, it’s a little known fact that he owns controlling interests in several large Tokyo construction companies.  

Dear Beast, 

Whenever I use cheap, no-name brand videotape in my VCR, the copies always come out lousy and the shedding tape ruins my video heads, causing expensive repairs. 

Yours, 

Al Jalikakik 

 

Dear Al, 

Good.

  

UNTERKALTEN MIT DER AUFGEKOMMEN POKERT!! 

DAS BEAST 

(Let’s Anime #7, Fall 1994) 

Welcome back to the column that tells it like it is, when it was, and how it will be. Got a problem? The Beast has the answer! Let’s dip right into that mailbag and see what we come up with.  

Dear Beast: 

I’m confused. I could swear that the term for video-only animated releases is “original video animation”, or OVA. However, my pal Freddy claims that the real title is “original animation video”, or OAV. Our silly feud has escalated to the point where I am afraid to go outdoors or use power tools. Please end our dispute once and for all. 

Timidly yours, 

Matt Finisch 

Dear Matt, 

Obviously you’re the kind of guy who likes to spend hours arguing over incredibly stupid trivia that nobody else on the entire planet cares about. So here’s your answer: the real term used everywhere is “cartoon.” Deal with it.

 Dear Beast: 

I recently heard that, instead of renting anime at Blockbuster Video or buying it at the local comic book store, some fans are actually getting anime by trading videotapes with pen pals through the mail! What’s more, apparently they are getting anime that hasn’t even been released in America! Yours, 

Moe Ron 

Dear Moe; 

No shit.  

Dear Beast; 

The Lion King is a completely original film and is in no way a total ripoff of Tezuka’s JUNGLE EMPEROR. Really! 

Yours, 

Michael Eisner  

Dear Mike: 

Yeah, right. And Garuman/Gamilon space submarines might hyperwarp out of my butt. Heh heh. 

HE KNOWS EVERYTHING THE BEAST: ADVICE FOR MORONS 

(Let’s Anime #8, summer 1995) 

Greetings, puny mortals. It is I, The Beast, back to dispense my indispensable jewels of knowledge to the undeserving, ungrateful masses that teem around me, like a teeming mass of teeming things. Or something. Well, on to our first letter.  

Dear Beast; 

I really wanted to catch the next solar eclipse, but all my friends say I’ll go blind if I stare at it. I say they’re full of you-know-what. But what if they’re right and the blazing photosphere of the sun burns my retina like a surgical laser at full power? What then? 

Yours, 

Anita Drink  

Dear Anita; 

What then? Then you’ll be blind, stupid.

  

Dear Beast, 

My cousin Eddie says that Robotech was originally five American TV shows that the Japanese took and edited into three. Is he wrong, or am I correct in saying that Robotech was animated in Japan from a script written in Sri Lanka by Tamil rebels and then translated by UNESCO as part of an abortive peacekeeping effort in the Middle East? 

Sincerely, 

Ivan A. Beer 

Dear Ivan; 

You’re both wrong. Robotech was originally conceived in the tenth circle of Hell as punishment for the earthly misdeeds of certain members of Studio Nue. As it turned out, we all wound up suffering, but so the heck what.

Dear Beast; 

I’m hosting a little get-together for some close friends during which we will screen some examples of animation from the nation of Japan. I’m wondering if it’s permissible to serve wine, cheese, and other minor comestibles during the screening proper, or should one wait for an appropriate “halt in the action,” as it were? 

Snidely yours, 

Asfrum Holein Ground 

Dear Asfrum; 

When to hand out the munchies is a serious question facing those of us who entertain with Japanese cartoons. Thoughtfully, most animation producers have provided us with an “eyecatch”, a short intermission in the middle of the original animated video that is perfectly suited to a small interruption, and this includes the serving of refreshments. Of course, if the evening’s entertainment is a feature-length film, no such “eyecatch” will be present, in which case I suggest you use the goddamn pause button.

  

Dear Comrade Beast; 

Is it not true that the vigorous continuation of the class struggle results in the unequalization of People’s Justice as it applies to roundly condemning those who seek to undermine the revolution of the masses? Or what?
Yours,
No Wei

  

Dear No; 

A vigorous examination of the principles involved shows that normalization, though approaching at an increased rate, is still not within the realms of a classless society. I suggest you rededicate yourself to the eradication of anti-collectivism. Either that, or go fishing.

Dear Beast: 

You are so full of shit! I saw you at the con trying to impress the chicks with your so-called “knowledge” of Gundam and SPT Layzner. However, I happen to know that Amuro Ray’s father’s ambitions did not include political office or animal husbandry as those back issues of C/FO Magazine would have us believe! And Eiji’s fits of rage are certainly not irritability caused by caffeine withdrawal, as you slyly intimated in between shots of cheap bourbon – any idiot would realize that his enraged behavior stems from his home environment, and not from any questionable chemical factors! And what’s more, maybe next time you can take criticism in a slightly more mature fashion, instead of beating me savagely across the head and shoulders with a length of hard plastic pipe! Painfully yours, 

I Mista Buss 

Dear Mista: 

What the hell are you talking about?

======

Sadly, The Beast’s advice column never appeared again. The whereabouts of this helpful if abusive sage are unknown, and even though Let’s Anime enjoys a new life on the internets, he has not stepped forward to claim his place in its renaissance. And that’s probably OK.
 
original subscription form for the print Let's Anime. That will be $10 please

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT AND TEZUKA

Condemned to endless book reports, American kids in the Baby Boom years (Sept. 1, 1946 to 12:29pm Nov. 22, 1963) found solace in the pages of Classics Illustrated, an entire line of dulled-down comic book condensations of the Important Books that your English teacher wants you to read instead of Mickey Spillane novels or Mad paperbacks. 

Osamu Tezuka’s version of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, however, isn’t your father’s Classics Illustrated, which are now safely residing in plastic bags in antique malls across America. Tezuka’s 1953 manga was first published by Osaka publisher Tokodo, the outfit behind other early Tezuka works like NEW TREASURE ISLAND, ANGEL GUNFIGHTER and his versions of PINOCCHIO and FAUST.  Perhaps recalling acting in his school’s stage production of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Tezuka extracts the key elements of Dostoyevsky’s tale of murder, morals, and class struggle, delivering a blessedly streamlined version that gives us both the crime and the punishment.  

 

This English-language version was published in 1990 by the Japan Times, with translation by the sure hand of veteran Frederik L. “Manga Manga” Schodt. It’s a narrow softcover book with a colorful dust jacket that gives anti-hero Raskolnikov a curious blonde ‘do. The dialog and captions are in friendly hand-lettered type with translations in Japanese at the bottom of each page, lending credence to the suspicion that this is meant as an English teaching tool.

What’s the crime in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT? If you’ve ever seen Hitchcock’s ROPE you know what I’m talking about when I talk about smarty-pants intellectuals who convince themselves, after a few too many readings of Carlyle’s Great Man Theory, that they too are Special Snowflakes for whom normal rules of behavior don’t apply.  CRIME AND PUNISHMENT’s Raskolnikov is one of these troublemakers, and after a particularly sad bout of poverty-enhanced over-intellectualizing, he grabs an axe and murders the local pawnbroker. 

 

 

Tezuka keeps the murder off-screen (this is a manga for kids, after all) and in a subtle use of his cinematic manga skills, keeps the camera still and lets the closed door tell the story of both the murder and the oblivious painters goofing off downstairs.

 

Is Raskolnikov inhuman enough to commit cold-blooded murder, and sociopathic enough to rationalize it as being for the greater good? Will his sister Avdotya be forced to marry someone she can’t stand? What will become of the family of Marmeladov, who’s been killed in a hit-and-run carriage accident? And will Inspector Porfiry use his detective’s instinct to track down the real murderer?

 

Schodt’s translation keeps pace with Tezuka’s goofier digressions, giving us dialect, slang, and friendly nicknames for all those difficult, gigantic Russian names – Raskolnikov becomes “Roddy”, for example. Sure, this might be not quite what Dostoyevsky had in mind, but Tezuka knows that comics should be comic, a philosophy that would leaven his work even as it later went to places as dark as anything Dostoyevsky ever contemplated. 

If you’re looking for a painfully accurate graphic novel version of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT -which you aren’t, but let’s just say you are for the sake of argument -- if you are, then keep looking, because this is definitely not it.  Tezuka’s chopped and channeled manga brings it home in less than 150 pages, and while major plot elements are jettisoned, he still gives us the meat of the story, delivered in his friendly, fluid mid-50s style, full of ruthless revolutionaries, the predatory rich, drunks, beggars, and what may be the earliest literary appearance of the prostitute with a heart of gold. 

 

Wracked with guilt and horror, Raskolnikov’s personal tempest goes unnoticed in the storm of history as a revolution breaks out around him in a cinematic, non-canon touch Tezuka throws in almost casually. Maybe his editor told him to wrap it up.  The Japan Times edition wasn’t meant for sale outside Japan – the price is only in yen – but perhaps an enterprising manga localizer can uncover the negatives and put this classic back in print for an English-reading audience.  And hurry, some of us have book reports due!

MEGAZONE 23 PART 2

this review originally appeared in 2005 at Anime Jump. Like Part 1, the DVD is currently available at bargain prices and you should totally get it.

It’s tough for me to review this film objectively. It’s an integral part of my late teenage psyche. I wasn’t a particularly introspective 18-year old, but there were two things I was sure of – I liked punk music and I liked Japanese cartoons, and MEGAZONE 23 PART 2 combined them both in a package convenient enough to stick in the pocket of your trenchcoat and impress your fellow late-80s teens with at any gathering.

And why not? It’s a Japanese cartoon starring punk rock kids on motorcycles who defy the police with machine guns and super robots in a battle to expose the massive fraud that underlies their very society. The film obsesses over details like beer cans and cigarette packaging and stars doppelgangers of the “Like A Prayer” Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and female pro wrestlers, and instead of the bug-eyed, melon-headed look that segregates most anime to the back of the visual arts bus, MEGAZONE 23 PART 2 stars recognizable human beings with nostrils and scars and sex lives. It’s about as far as you can get from SPEED RACER and still be a Japanese cartoon.

I think I went to high school with these guys

I can’t say PART 1 interested me overmuch; the Mikimoto character designs seemed like stale MACROSS, the Garland motorcycle-robot was entirely too functional, and on the whole I was more interested in watching VAMPIRE HUNTER D or DIRTY PAIR. PART 2, on the other hand, was a completely different story, and I mean that sincerely. It didn’t look, act, sound, or smell anything like the first MEGAZONE. In fact it didn’t look like anything we’d ever seen, at all. You could tell right away – via Yasuomi Umetsu’s no-nonsense character designs - that this wasn’t some kids’ TV cartoon tarted up for a direct-to-video release. Hell, in the first two minutes there are about six misdemeanors and eighteen felonies contained in a scene of mayhem and property destruction as wild if not wilder than anything Hollywood or Hong Kong would offer that year (1985!!) And this isn’t outer-space flying saucer nonsense – these are real life Tokyo neighborhoods being overrun by 80’s punker bosuzoku.

Except they’re not: this Tokyo is a fake, a prop, a stand-in. The real Earth’s been destroyed and the human race is inside the Megazone, a giant space ship big enough to hold entire cities and millions of people, some of whom know they’re living out one of science fiction’s hoariest cliches and others who never wonder why no one they know has ever actually been, you know, outside the city.

The unbelievable truth

Our hero Shogo Yahagi would still be one of these brainwashed proles if he hadn’t had the good sense to get involved in the hot motorcycle business. Turns out his stolen bike was a top-secret transforming giant combat robot designed to fight aliens in outer space, and that his entire life has been spent inside a giant space station, whose main computer systems are controlled by an artificial intelligence who moonlights as an idol singer known as EVE. While investigating this mystery- well, okay, he was committing grand theft super transforming robot motorcycle, all right? -Shogo winds up accused of murder and on the run, and that’s where PART 2 starts.

Holographic or not, the gals all love Shogo

Reunited with his biker pals, Shogo rekindles his romance with Yui and works out a plan to fool the authorities and find out once and for all what’s really going on. Meanwhile his opposite number in the government, the enigmatic B.D., can’t spend too much time searching for Shogo, because the hideous space aliens that attacked the Earth have found the Megazone, and are kicking ass on Earth spaceships with weapons that remind us uncomfortably of Roto-Rooter Gone Wild.

Naturally the key to everything is finding EVE. Aren’t most of life’s mysteries solved through communion with idol singers – especially computer-generated ones only slightly more artifical than the real thing? The incongruity of seeing total punk rockers going gaga over easy-listening top-40 pop music takes the edge from PART 2’s realism. On the other hand the punks of 1988 were going apeshit over the “swing revival” ten years later, so anything’s possible. When EVE isn’t singing, the Shirou Sagisu soundtrack ranges from moody 80s synth to some good honest speed metal guitar work.

typical anime club meeting circa 1985

After a running battle through “Tokyo” between the motorcycle punks and the cops and the all-out space assault by the sicko aliens, B.D. and Shogo achieve detente of sorts, though it’s academic at that point because EVE has activated A.D.A.M. and that means that the Megazone is destroyed in a total rotoscoped-from-atom-bomb-test-footage sequence that still looks pretty impressive. At this point you can either make some sort of fancy-pants biblical reference about Eve giving Adam knowledge which drives them out of Eden (Megazone), or you can make a joke about the Coleco Adam, possibly the worst home computer ever marketed to a confused American public. The choice is yours.

Not to give anything away (I think the spoiler warning has expired in a 20 year old film) but MEGAZONE 23 PART 2 ends its tired science fiction cliche of people living on a space ship so big they think they’re on Earth with another tired science fiction cliche of a small group of survivors left to repopulate a new planet. But that’s OK; you kind of want a familiar ending after the A-bomb test footage. Besides, if you’re watching MEGAZONE 23 PART 2 and aren’t focused on the visuals, you’re missing out, because the darn thing looks great. There’s a lot of rotoscoping and serious attention is paid to light and shadow and color and hair and clothes. There’s none of the fakey shorthand stuff so often seen in TV anime. Not that there aren’t outer-space giant robot laser gun battles in this film – there are, and plenty of ‘em – but there’s a real attempt to convince us that the high-tech and the low-brow exist in the same world. The animation’s reach sometimes exceeds its grasp, but even the less competent scenes have a punky charm.

eat hot lead, fascist pig transforming robot!

The dub pedigree of MZ23 2 is iffy; an English track by Intersound (the Robotech people) was included on a Japanese LD, but it never got a proper US release. I didn’t get my bootleg video pirate copy until 1988! ADV’s new dub ditches many of the earlier version’s more colorful moments; no longer do machine-gun toting punk chicks shout “EAT HOT LEAD FASCIST PIG!” while lighting up a police helicopter. However, the ADV script does actually acknowledge the existence of a PART 1, something the 80s version glossed over entirely, and dodges some of the production pitfalls of the earlier incarnation (hint: when a character complains about noise, it helps to actually have noises in the background). The voice work is smooth – almost too smooth at times for the characters, who, after all, are unemployed squatters with bad personal hygiene – but overall ADV’s version is professional and entertaining all the way.

Ultimately, in the face of the film’s climax, the valiant stand of the motorcycle teens against the adult world of authority winds up being pretty meaningless. Just like real life. Still, as director Ichirou Itano says in the accompanying interview, the real message of the film is the you should take defeat gracefully and move on to the next challenge with no regrets, because you did your best and it’s not your fault the world is filled with phonies, Holden Caulfield.

BD bulks up, gets fashion sense, punches Shogo's lights out

The interview is part of one of the disc’s extras, a fold-out poster. Itano, the inventor of the now-ubiquitous “missiles flying everywhere” visuals used in most SF anime, was given carte blanche to follow his bliss with MZ23 2, and the result is an anti-authoritarian epic with a heart and sharp as hell looks.

best use of multiplane camera rack-focus zoom ever.

Maybe you’re just looking for some 1980s revival anime, or if you always wanted to see the anime take on the Sid Vicious look, or if your jones for severe realism via Japanese cartoon character design wasn’t satisfied by AKIRA or JIN-ROH. If you want anime with colorful and unique characters, cosmic storylines, and plenty of property damage and beer, then MEGAZONE 23 PART II is where you need to be.

Next: probably not reviewing "Megazone 23 Part 3 Part 1", because that would involve me, you know, having to watch it.

MEGAZONE 23 PART ONE

Guest reviewer Shaindle Minuk gives us this review of MEGAZONE 23 PART ONE, which originally appeared in 2004 on the Anime Jump website, back when this DVD was new. You can now find it for as little as $3; definitely worth picking up.

Originally planned as a full television series, Megazone 23, released in 1985, wound up being a pioneer in the then-fledgling Original Video Animation market. It shares much of its creative staff with 1984's Macross: Do You Remember Love, in particular character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto (aka "Hal"), though in this case his design is limited to one character: pop idol Eve Tokimatsuri. Although the rest of the cast is designed by Toshitaka Hirano, Hirano's style is close enough to the Mikimoto school of design that there is plenty of visual consistency, while still ensuring that Eve has a slightly different look that makes her stand out from the rest of the characters. This is important, because Eve is most definitely not like other girls.



Megazone 23 Part 1 has actually been dubbed twice before into English, first as a semi-aborted attempt at a Robotech movie called Robotech: The Untold Story. New scenes were animated for this, and the dialogue strongly re-worked in order to link up the storylines to the Robotech TV series, but the movie only saw release for a handful of test screenings. It's just as well. A few years after this aborted franken-sequel, Carl Macek's Streamline Pictures released a reasonably straight dubbed adaptation to video, later ported to a bare-bones DVD release from Image. This new DVD version is, of course, a direct translation and of no relation whatsoever to Robotech or Macek's old Megazone 23 dub.

I don't want to describe too much of Megazone 23's plot, because there are a few interesting twists in the script-- and while it's not like they're going to BLOW YOUR MIND or anything (this isn't The Manchurian Candidate I'm talking about here) they were fairly innovative at the time and provided inspiration for subsequent popular entertainment on both sides of the Pacific. Suffice it to say that Shogo Yahagi is a fun-loving 18 year old who loves motorcycles and girls and supports these interests by working at McDonald's (an amazingly realistic touch for a science-fiction/fantasy anime hero). His existence becomes decidely less carefree the night his buddy Shinji shows him a weird-looking motorcycle enscribed with the word "Bahamoud." This bike is some sort of top-secret experimental weapon and Shinji quickly pays with his life for letting this little secret out of the bag when he and Shogo are surprised by duplicitous, mysterious government agent BD and his henchmen. Shogo makes off with the special bike and in short order finds himself way over his head-- no small feat when you consider the sheer enormity of his 80s hairdo.



And make no mistake, this anime is very much a product of the 80s. HOO BOY, is it a product of the 80s. The interesting thing about this is that there are very good reasons for the specificity of details, above and beyond the mere fact that it was actually produced in the 1980s. The setting, Tokyo in the mid 80s, is very deliberate and lovingly detailed. Street and neighbourhood names are rattled off by the characters, who spend their time in landmarks easily identifiable for anyone who's ever spent any time in that city. This versimillitude-- well, if you can suspend your disbelief for the presence of "video phones" and punkers who rock out to J-pop idol singers-- is necessary for the full impact of the revelations made in later scenes. Metaphorically, the story (like a lot of anime, really) could be described as a dramatization of the point where youthfulness collides with mature reality, the loss of innocence that occurs when you realize how creepy and corrupt and dangerous all the adults surrounding you are. Not unlike Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield, the teenagers in Megazone 23 discover that the world is full of "phoneys".



English captions give your Japanese art books class

Of course, unlike Holden's New York City, the world of Megazone 23 is full of actual, literal phoneys. This again works well for the setting, because the 80s, especially Tokyo in the 80s, was an amazingly artificial time and place. The music is, fittingly, high-adrenaline mid-80s synth-pop without a single "live" instrument in the whole ding-dang score, and the three songs sung by Eve (seiyuu: Kumi Miyasato) are catchy and quite good, if you happen to like 80s-era J-pop (which I do). The first one, "Sentimental Behind My Back," notably contains what is probably J-pop's only reference to Jewish folk painter Marc Chagall, so what's not to like?




The design aesthetic of the anime is, as stated earlier, very good at providing a realistic setting for a fairly fantastic story. The character and mecha designs match up well in their balance between cartooniness and realism. The actions scenes are pretty well-animated, but the character animation is sort of lackluster. OVAs of this era tended not to have big budgets (the big bucks were reserved for feature films) and it shows here. It's not terrible, but it's pretty stiff and there's a lot of inconsistency, especially in scenes where character and mecha are shown together.



Just beat it

The DVD is of good quality and as is usually the case with DVD releases of old anime, the dust and brush strokes on the cels are clearly visible. Otherwise, it's a very good, clean print of the film. It's got some ads at the beginning but you can skip past them. The extras consist mainly of lots of pre-production artwork and a commentary track by the people in charge of the dub, anchored by one Matt Greenfield, which is interesting if you are into the early days of anime fandom in North America-- these folks are certainly qualified! There is also an insert with a lovely "Hal" painting of Eve on one side and a very interesting history of the development of the Megazone 23 storyline and characters on the reverse.



The psuedo-Shinjuku of MEGAZONE 23

I had one problem coming into this dub, which is that PEOPLE IN THE 1980'S DID NOT SAY "MY BAD" ARGH ARGH ARGH. Anachronistic slang really pisses me off. It's particularly odd given that the rest of the dub is almost self-conscious about the fact that the setting is firmly planted in the mid-80s, even going to the trouble of adding references to A Flock of Seagulls and whatnot in order to remain true to the era. The voices, by and large, are fine, not exactly the same as the Japanese voices (well, except the singing of course). Shogo seems less carefree and more, well, wussy in the dub, though, which didn't really work for me. Maybe they were trying to mitigate the scene in which he slaps romantic interest Yui during an argument by making him come off as harmless, I don't know. Speaking of which, that is really the most dated part of the whole video, big hair and idol singers aside. Back in the 1980s, it was actually considered acceptable for an anime hero to give his girl a slap if the occasion called for it. Of course here in North America we know better (DON'T WE?!) but Japan is obviously a different culture and aside from the somewhat slower rate that women's rights have gained ground over there, there's a certain precedence in Japanese culture for "slapping some sense" into people. So what seems really distasteful and inappropriate to us would probably just seem like par for the course to the Japanese. Nevertheless, if nothing else has improved about anime in the past 20 years, it is extremely gratifying to see that good-natured anime heroes don't go around slapping heroines anymore. (If anything, the pendulum may've swung too far in the other direction, but that's neither here nor there.)



Shogo and Eve at their day jobs

Aside from that, there are certain things that don't quite make sense when translated into English-- small talk about blood types, for example-- but otherwise it works out okay. There are changes to details of the dialogue, most of them presumably for either clarity or timing, and I can't figure out why everyone in it answers the phone by saying "Yes???" but otherwise it seems pretty close to the subtitled version. It's no Robotech: The Untold Story, anyhow, thank God.


All in all, I highly recommend this DVD for anyone with fond memories of this production's initial release, as well as anyone who likes a good urban science-fiction story. It's got motorcycles that transform into robots, bad guys who may actually be good guys, brainwashing, violence, romance, some tasteful sex scenes, some rather distasteful sex scenes, catchy J-pop, and references to the obscure 80s film Streets of Fire. I ask again, what's not to like?

next: Dave reviews MEGAZONE 23 PART TWO

Prince Planet Flashback 2012 23: part II

The next eight pages of our exciting Yusei Shonen Papii story, translated by Rick Zerrano, all for you! Remember to read from right to left for maximum comprehensibility.


















Sorry it ends on a cliffhanger - be sure to pick up next week's SHONEN and find out what happens to Prince Planet! Next week being, of course, sometime in 1965.