Twenty Five Years Fights Kenshiro! The All About Man Punishes Old Typewriting!

"Yeah. I'm looking at you."

My Twenty-Five Year Love Affair with Kenshiro (or does this headline make me look gay?)

It all started in Ben Dunn's living room, sometime during the winter of 1985.  A bunch of us would gather there a few times a month to play Champions or just hang out and watch third or fourth generation anime vids Ben had managed to gather from here there and everywhere.  In between the giant robots slugging it out and Dr. Slump potty jokes, the first episode of a peculiar anime came on. Something the likes of which I'd certainly never seen before among the anime shows Ben had introduced us to.  It was slowly paced, with the requisite too cute by half little girl (complete with puppy), a boy who yakked way too much and a bunch of escapees from the latest Mad Max movie riding around on motorcycles.  About halfway through this mishmash of B-movie tropes, something even more peculiar happened:  one of the brutish thugs' head blew clean off.  Being a Cronenberg fanatic, my first thought was, of course, that in addition to The Road Warrior and Bruce Lee flicks, the folks who were responsible for this one must've been huge fans of "Scanners."  But the whole thing was about to get even more bizarre.  By the time Kenshiro let out that first "Atatatat...etc." and unloaded his thousand fists at Zeed, we were all laughing too hard to listen to the village elder explain the finer points of Hokuto Shinken to the audience.  Not that we'd have understood anyway, since none of us spoke a word of Japanese.  The general consensus of the show was that it was curious and good for a couple of laughs, but that lasted a whole minute or two and we fast-forwarded the tape to the next episode of Aura Battler Dunbine or whatever.

Still, there was something about it that stuck with me after I'd left to go home later that night.  That animation was no great shakes and I wasn't at all interested in martial arts films, and after all the goofy fists were unleashed on the thugs with the Zs on their heads, all thoughts of this guy being a scanner who spent all his time at the post-apocalyptic gym went right out the window.  Still, the show was...different.  Yeah, it was a mash-up of the familiar, plot-wise, but...then it hit me.  It was the character designs and the artwork.  I would be told over and over and over again during my early days in anime fandom that the artwork on Hokuto no Ken is "ugly" and that prevented a lot of people from getting into it, as if it didn't really fit into the "anime" style, whatever the hell that was.  As someone who grew up with Neal Adams, Steranko, and Jack Kirby, it seemed an odd objection, but since much of the appeal of anime and manga on this side of the Pacific is in the artistic differences between American and Japanese sensibilities, I guess it might be explained that way.  In any case, there was enough there to pique my curiousity as to exactly what would get such a "different" show made in the first place.  And that thought stayed in the back of my brain.

"Who are you calling 'ugly'?"

Anyway, we were so clueless that we didn't even have an idea what the bloody thing was called.  Something with "Fist" in the title.  It wasn't until a few weeks later when I was going through a C/FO publication of one kind or another where I noticed the LA chapter was showing something called "Fist of the North Star" in their meetings, that I figured my mystery show had a name, so I wouldn't embarrass myself when asking around for more episodes.  Assuming, of course, that there were more episodes.  I seriously had no way of knowing, even the most basic of information being extremely difficult to come by back in those days.  Enter Mary Kennard.

Mary is one of those under-the radar angels for whom American anime fandom owes a great debt - the rare early anime/manga fan with contacts, enthusiasm, a bit of understanding of the Japanese language and, most importantly, the willingness to use them all to help others without asking for an arm and a leg in return.  Plus, she had a killer tape collection.  And, amazingly enough, she LOVED Hokuto no Ken.  I can't remember where I originally got her phone number from, but she helped the C/FO-San Antonio tape collection get started and, more importantly for myself, personally, shaped the way I deal with others in the fandom.  She'd answer my questions to the best of her abilities and knowledge and absolutely loved doing so.  If it weren't for Mary Kennard, you wouldn't be reading this. 

Anyway, it turned out she had most of the HnK episodes up to that point and patiently explained to me about Shin, Toki, Mamiya, and especially Rei.  Turns out she was a huge Kaneto Shiozawa fan. It was...interesting to hear her go on about Japanese voice actors while talking to a guy who didn't know shit about much of anything.  I guess that's part of the definition of a true fan.  Anyway, she sent me the later Rei episodes, right up to that fatal showdown with Raoh, which was just a month or so behind the anime episodes airing in Japan.  Between her explanations and actually seeing those episodes, I was hooked. 

"My, that's a big...horse you have."

About that time, C/FO-San Antonio got in the thick of things in North American fandom and I was trading tapes like crazy.  I had contacted Mitsuyoshi in Japan and he'd agreed to tape TV anime for us, which meant we sometimes got episodes of stuff before any of my other contacts, which meant even MORE tape trading. The first batch of tapes I got from him included the great Rei death episode and the beginning of the Shuu/Souther arc, which just totally blew me away.  I mean, I was REALLY heavy into this thing now.  Unfortunately, even armed with my sparkling personality and first generation episodes of what I had come to believe was a real phenom here, I just could not get anyone else interested in this show. It just wasn't happening.  "Real" anime fans were into mecha and Dirty Pair and Urusei Yatsura, not mystical martial artist who made heads explode.  With "ugly" artwork.  Saint Seiya was all the rage.

On this side of the Pacific, anyway.  Basically, near as I could tell, Hokuto no Ken fandom consisted of Mary, Jeff Blend, Tim Eldred, Laurine White, Steven Barnes. And me. 

The C/FO had a listing for "favorite anime" in the membership directory and out of the total membership, fewer than 10 people listed Hokuto no Ken among their favorites.  It was a really tough time to be a manly man among men.

Then, in 1986, three things happened, creating the perfect storm for this particular fanboy.  The feature film was released in Japan. I got in touch with Tomoaki Okuzumi, a Japanese native (and Hokuto no Ken fan) living in California.  And the Shonen Jump "All About the Man" book was released by Shueisha. 

The Rosetta Stone

I'm going to get into the HnK movie in another blog post.  In a strange turn of events, Tomoaki got in touch with me, instead of the other way around.  I guess he found my name in one of the C/FO publications, I don't know if I ever asked him where or how he found me. But he did.  I guess the stars were all lined up just right. Without him, none of those early Hokuto no Ken translations would have gotten done.  He'd call me up on the phone and we'd sometimes talk for more than an hour at a time about either what had come before or what was currently happening in the weekly Shonen Jump, which he got from relatives in Japan. I guess he either had a really good job or just really loved talking Kenshiro.  For whatever his reasons, his efforts were greatly appreciated.  When I had questions about this or that, he'd occasionally send me actual Jump pages from the weeklies when a new character was introducted along with written translations of song lyrics and such. 

And then one day, out of the blue, an extremely large package came in the mail, and it wasn't from Mitsuyoshi, but from Tomoaki.  Inside was, quite simply, the most important part of the puzzle that was Hokuto no Ken yet released, aside from the actual running manga.  And quite a bargain at 390 yen, I might add.

Everything you ever wanted to know about kumo no Juuza, except maybe the size of his package.

Now, I've sure there have been more colorfull and more detailed Hokuto no Ken books released over the subsequent 20+ years, but not many would prove more useful.  It had inverviews with Tetsuo Hara and Buronson, color-pullouts of paintings which would later become the covers of HnK books both in Japan and elsewhere around the globe, detailed character pics and discriptions of martial arts styles, a nifty reprinting of the original Ken story from Fresh Jump, facts and figures about the man himself and so much other Hokuto heavenliness that when I first opened it, I'm sure they felt the fanboy orgasm all the way to Kansas.

Want to know how long he can hold his breath? There's an app for that!

Now I understand that the All About the Man Special has been reprinted a few times in Japan since the original release in  '86 and I'm sure more detailed books have come out since then (this one only covers up to Raoh's death), but a recent scan of ebay shows this puppy is still getting bids of forty bucks or so, which isn't bad for a cover price of 390 yen!  "What a bargain!"  Anyway, I still think it's fairly required to have this puppy in your collection if you're a completist, but the rarity and price thing can certainly be a hindrance, especially to those who came into the series because of the new animation a few years back.  For whatever reason, Shueisha and Toei didn't release a whole lot of supplemental material for the manga and anime during their first runs, compared to the products of other companies, but I'm certainly glad if there had to be an exception, it was an important one.

Dunno why Raoh has a weapon here, seems just a tad redundant.

A welcome side-effect of the All About the Man book, at least for us would-be HnK evangelists, was it collected a lot of the needed reference material from the manga in one place.  No longer would you have to scan back over the manga volumes or anime episodes to find the name of, say, Rei's Nanto art (nanto sui cho ken), because it was right there on his page, along with his governing star (gi sei). In addition, it cleared up the whole Shin thing, since neither the name of his actual art nor his governing star were given in his original manga arc - just one of the many things they added as they went along. But, thanks to the good folk at Shueisha, all of that was now cleared up, assuming you had someone who could translate it all, of course.

Which is where Tomoaki came in.  Being a fan of HnK as well as fluent in Japanese, he was genuinely interested in helping me impart hokuto knowledge to the unwashed masses over here, whether they wanted it or not.  Back in the wild west of anime fandom (1986 or so) the rule wasn't "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."  It was more like "If you want something done AT ALL, you have to do it yourself."  Basically, the only translations being done were personal pet projects for APAs, the occasional translation guides for conventions like Baycon, small movie or episode synopses for anime club newsletters, and Toren Smith's Urusei Yatsura manga projects with Miyako Graham. People with the skills to translate (and materials to translate from) were working on stuff they liked personally, and not much else.  Of course, since there wasn't really any money in it, that was to be expected. Anime and manga fandom was still a very small market, even after Robotech issued in a new wave of fans.  Personal computers were still incredibly expensive, word processors weren't a whole lot cheaper, and most work was still being done either by hand or by typewriter.  Al Gore had yet to invent the internet as we now know it and even Usenet was still in its infancy.  Even communication by telephone could be incredibly expensive, depending on what time of the day or night you were talking.  "Snail mail" was the rule, rather than the exception. 

But, hey, you do what you can, with what you have.  Which is what we did. Armed with the manga, the All About the Man Special, telephones, communication via the US Postal Service, and using my trusty antique manual typewriter and illos by Mike Cogliandro (who wasn't really a HnK fan, but a good sport nontheless), Tomoaki and I managed to assemble and distribute what I'm pretty sure was the first Hokuto no Ken guide of any note in English.  

"Hokuto no Ken: An Initiate's Guide," circa 1986.

The fanboy hype just oozes out of my typewriter, doesn't it?  Oh, to be young and in love.

Looking at this shit now, I'm amazed anyone could do freakin' ANYTHING back then.  First I had to take the illos, find a photocopy machine that could reduce them to manageable size, cut and paste them on a blank sheet of paper (and by cutting and pasting, I'm talking scissors and glue stick here), insert them into the manual typewriter, type AROUND the illos, then photocopy the pages again, which is why everything is so faint. Then you have to find a public copy machine that makes good copies, because you have to do one side at a time in order to make double-sided copies.  Then you reduce the pages yet again so two pages can fit side by side on a larger sized paper and fit together as a booklet. It's all rather...complicated.

I don't even have any original copies of this thing anymore, what's pictured here are the reprints of a reprint that the C/FO distributed through its newsletter in '87.  You can even see Randall Stukey's hand-written page numbers on the bottom of the pages.  Or maybe you can't. Sigh.  Hey, it this was 1986, okay. 

Manual typewriters don't have spell checkers, obviously.

I'll put the rest of the pages at the end of this in case anyone reading this hasn't abused their eyes enough with these.  If you read the whole thing, you'll see references to an Initiate's Guide, Part 2.  Yes, we did that one too, covering the Nanto Go Sha Sei arc, Yuria, and the end of the first series, along with some assorted bits and pieces like martial arts stuff and more song translations.  I actually liked it a bit better than the first one, mostly because we learned from our mistakes, but, sadly, I don't have any copies at all of it among the crap I've managed to dig out of boxes, so it may be forever lost to the dustbin of fandom history.  Which might not actually be such a bad thing...

Among my other HnK fannish activities during that maniac period of 1984-89 was a round-robin project that worked fairly well for the first round or so before everyone just lost interest.  For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of a round-robin, it was kind of a poor man's APA, usefull for smaller groups of fans who don't publish tons of material.  Instead of everyone making a bunch of copies of their "trib" and sending them to a specific collator for mass mailing, there's just one package that gets mailed from one participant to the next participant, who then copies whatever he or she wants from the whole, includes his or her contribution to the package, then mails the whole thing to the next person on the list, who does the same, until the package makes it back to the person who started the whole thing, who re-starts the process after replacing his or her original contribution with a new one.  This way, everyone only has to make one copy of their material and everyone saves on postage and only have to spring for the copies of stuff they want to keep.  Of course the downside is that if the one person who has the package gets lazy...

And, of course, I don't have much material from that either, which is kind of a shame.  I remember some fun stuff from that, including a strip from Tim Eldred about Kenshiro and Rei going to McDonalds...

Of course the translation/information game hit its stride in the '90s and never looked back.  Hokuto no Ken was no exception in this regard, though the fandom remained smaller than many comparable anime/manga from the time period.  When the net exploded during roughly the same time period, web sites like Evan Jacobson's most excellent Hokuto Renkitoza popped up, making amateurs like me superflous (well, okay, I always wanted to be super at something).

I have to admit to feeling a slight depression when I walked by all those arcades with all those kids playing Street Fighter 4 or Mortal Kombat 21 or whatever during the past two decades and thinking to myself "Do these people even know about Hokuto no Ken?"  But that  pales in comparison to the joy I feel now when I surf the web and realize just how LARGE the fanbase has grown compared to the small handfull of us who eagerly waited for the manga chapters or anime episodes to come out during that original run in the '80s. It just goes to show that quality wins out, whether it takes two months or twenty-five years.

I'm just happy I lived long enough to finally see it.

How to make the bad guys blow up REAL GOOD!

Hey, at least we didn't forget Jagi existed!

I know this probably still sounds lame, but I plead not guilty on account that it was fucking 1986.

Notice the "Sauzer" spelling.  We did that waaay back in '86 just to piss off Daryl Surat, who was probably all of 10 years old at the time.

Hell, we even did lame song translations!

Credit where credit is due. In this case, to Dudley Do-All, Mister Jeff Blend. The second biggest HnK fan I knew back then.

Next up: The Movie and the comics. Or, how Kenshiro found America a LOT tougher to conquer than Asura.

Godzilland Attacks Cool Stuff! Say Hellow to Comic Saurs Story!!!

Okay, before I get started I want to introduce everybody to someone.

He ought to be here any moment now. Yeah, I hear him, breathing fire and smoke as he passes the bathroom. The carpet is getting warm. 

The sofa is shaking.  Excuse me while I grab my drink off the computer hutch before it spills.  He's a little worse for wear, but I'm always glad to see him, even if he's a bit pissed at me for leaving him buried in that big box for so long. Years, in fact.  Almost a decade.  I hear him behind me.  And I turn around slowly with my camera...it's...it's him. Yes, directly from the monsters' paradise itself...it's everyone's favorite walking yellow bag o' fun...the "king of monster," measuring in at 450mm X 430 mm...

Godzilland!

And, kids, you know what this means, right? 

Another episode of extremely cool and unnecessarily little dumb anime things from the "Comic Saurs Story!" Yaaaaaaay!!!!

So, Mr. Godzilland, sir, what do you have for us today? 

Oh, really.  Sorry to hear that.  Seems he's a bit winded from swimming over from the "happy islet!"  At his age, that's expected. Heck, I carried him from one convention to another for ten whole years before sticking him in that box.  His corners are all torn up and will probably need a bit of first aid in the way of packing tape if he's gonna last a whole lot longer.  Gee, it's been a while.  In fact, it's been so long that I really don't know what treasures are hidden inside.  So this is going to be a bit of a treat for me too as we discover together some stupid lost anime crap from 1986 or '87. 

Lessee, what's first?  Oh, yeah, this'll do.

Looks like a Zeta Gundam postcard book, with Shah or Chaa or Char or Shaa (or whatever the spelling is this week) looking up at us through those cool shades.  Poor guy is the last of his kind, here, as I actually sent all his buddies away through the mail some 15 years ago.  If you look really closely, you can see one of the ZGundam mechs reflected in his shades.  Or maybe that's just the lousy cameraman who's too cheap to buy a proper scanner...

Hmm, what's next.  Oh...lookie...

It's a Touch stationary kit, just the thing you need to write a goofy love letter to the baseball player in your life.  It even comes with a little button, hearts and stickers so you can personalize to your heart's content.  Then you can stick it in the envelope and mail it off so he'll get it just in time for the playoffs!  This show was a huge hit back when I was heavy into anime fandom, though I only met five or six people over here who claimed to be fans. 

Hmm, what's this?

Catseye notepaper.  I had Mitsuyoshi send me lots and lots of notepaper 'cause I wrote lots and lots of notes back in the '80s. I mean, sometimes two or three letters per day.  After a while, that really adds up.  It got so bad that I started running out of Japanese notepaper and had to resort to getting artists over here to create stationary for me.  Sad thing was, they were happy to do it.  That's how much mail I sent back and forth during the heyday of fandom tape trading and such.  These things generally came with anywhere from 20-40 double-sided pages each and sometimes I still ran out.

Lessee, what's next...

front

Oh, yeah, what good is Catseye notepaper without a Catseye backing board to write on.  At least, I think that's what these things are. I had several from different shows at one time - thin illustrated flexible plastic boards.  Pics on front and back.  I've always assumed they were for use in combination with the note paper, but who knows?  They just look purty.

back

Oh, here's something for the Robotech: The Movie fans on your Christmas list:

Megazone 23 stationary. I hope you can read the story, 'cause I think that's the best part.  I mean, they make it so you don't have to even watch the movie.  Considerate, no?

A set of City Hunter audio cassette labels. Back in the stone age, before I-pods and mp3 players, we had things called cassette tape players. If you're ever forced to ride in your hippie grandpa's Volkswagon bug or granny's old Caddy, you might actually see one of them. Otherwise, forget it.  Come to think of it, no one writes letters or mails postcards anymore either, so that explains why I still have this stuff lying around.

Speaking of postcards, here are two more from the original Macross. How these managed to survive the mail is beyond me.  I didn't like Macross nearly so much as a lot of hardcore fans I knew, and I usually managed to send out most of the stuff connected to shows I didn't care a whole lot for to truefans who would stick the shit on their walls and so forth. I've always been strange that way. Why have crap in your closet that someone else might enjoy?

Speaking of which, here's a Minky Momo note book with about three pages left in it. I could never find anyone who wanted it, so I used the paper to send notes to the people I didn't especially care for.  You know, the people who wanted five hundred episodes of two hundred different shows on VHS six-hour speed by TOMORROW!  Nothing says "fuck you, but here's Dave Merrill's address" quite like Princess of Magic Minky Momo.

Here's something you don't see just everyday.

A Hokuto no Ken "Posicco Card."  How special. I dunno how obvious it is owing to the piss-poor kung fu photo ability of the moron who took this pic, but that's an actual film piece in the upper right corner. In this case, it's a pic of Ken carrying Shin's body. The card assures me that the film is "only for you" and I should "feel free to use it!!" along with a picture of a pair of scissors and a dotted line to cut on.  Of course, if you cut it out, it leaves a huge honkin' square hole in the middle of the postcard which makes it rather difficult to mail. I guess that means you're supposed to mail it first.  Yeah, right.  This one's going back in the bag...

Huh?  What's that you say, Mr. Zilla, sir?  You're getting tired of me reaching my hand into you?  No?  What then?  Everyone has gotten tired of looking at old shit and has headed over to Carl Li's site?  Okay, whatever you say.  But I can't let you leave without showing them your egg-shaped letter set and have you tell them your story, can I?  Of course not. That would be rude.

So, kids, be sure to wave goodbye to Godzilla as he swims back across the sea to his happy islet.  I'm sure he'll be back very soon with more goodies to show everyone!

Queen Eve Blows Up Love Robot and Goofy Guy! Juuza Twists Cel Contest!

Anime stuff, circa 1986

Fun N' Games

Okay, after that last mammoth post (remind me not to do anything like that for a while, please), it's time for a change. Of some kind.  I'm gonna start off with something I call...

Cross-cultural Hilarity Simularities, or RWG's seein' things a wee bit strangely today.

All together now:  "Awwwwwwww."

Doing the whole Matsumoto groove last post, I got to thinking about the whole Tochiro/Emeraldas thing and damned if it didn't remind me of something I'd seen just a couple years back.  Of course, I could've just been having flashbacks of the other fifteen other Leijiverse versions of the same damn relationship...but, no that wasn't it.  The scruffy little guy with the big heart.  The aloof, powerful, gorgeous gal with the big ship.  Hmm, where have I seen this recently?  Yeah.

Ohhh, yeah.

Love isn't blind, it's deaf and mute too.

Tell me I'm wrong. I dare ya. Now, I'm not sayin' that Andrew Stanton and the Pixar guys are drooling Matsumoto fanboys like me and the Corn Pone flicks crew, but only that some things are just universal: no matter where you go in space and time, there's always gonna be at least one awesome example of womanhood who is willing to go slumming when the right shlub flies through deadly radiation to fix her ship or plants a shrub in an old shoe and holds an umbrella over her head in a thunderstorm.

Well, okay, I'll be honest. It helps if the Tochiros and the Wall-Es are writing and directing the things.  Just sayin'.  But aside from the wish-fullfilment, fairy-tale aspect, there's a nugget of truth in this, isn't there?  Isn't there?

Hmm, okay, just for grins and giggles...

Name: Tochiro Oyama

Physical Characteristics: Short. Big Glasses. Bo legs.

Hangouts:  Dead worlds, Big ships with lots of skulls and crossbones.

Hobbies:  Fixing things,  Collecting scraps to build spaceships.

Hangs with:  Guy who is incredibly difficult to kill.
Ideal mate:  Obsessively driven woman with a big gun

Name: Wall-E

Physical Characteristics:  Short. Big Eyes. No legs.

Hangouts:  Dead worlds.  Big ships with numbskulls and lazybones.

Hobbies:  Making squares.  Collecting scraps.

Hangs with:  Bug who is impossible to kill.

Ideal mate: Obsessively driven bot with a big gun arm.

Name:  Emeraldas

Characteristics:  Quiet, with a nasty temper.

Hangouts:  Big ship with lots of robots.

Symbol: Red rose in a vase

Hobbies:  Blowing up spaceships.

Name:  Eve

Characteristics:  Quiet, with an incredibly nasty temper.

Hangouts:  Big ship with lots of robots.

Symbol:  Green plant in a shoe.

Hobbies:  Blowing up ships.

See. Incontrovertable truth:  No matter what language you speak, English, Japanese or robot, incredibly goofy guys CAN win the love lottery, provided they have the writers on their side.  With Valentine's Day coming up, I was tempted to leave this one 'till next month, but...

Okay, so much for the FUN (well, okay, I had fun). 

On to the GAMES.

I hope to make this a regular feature, or at least as regular as I can before my anime cel collection runs out.  As you may have noticed, I really like being smart ass with my captions.  I figure I'm not alone.  So, with that in mind, I proudly introduce the "Smart-ass Caption Contest!"  It's just like every other caption contest ever run, except that I'm gonna use animation cels from my collection instead of pics from the 'net.  Some are pretty boring, but since most are from Hokuto no Ken, you can figure a lot of them by nature lend themselves to the absurd.  But in an incredibly MANLY kind of way. 

Well, most of them, anyway...some are just...well...I'll start out with an incredibly easy one.

"If you can't snark on this one, you don't deserve to live!!!!"

I have a couple of extra SPT Layzner cells lying around, along with a few generic cels to shows I don't know.  Whoever comes up with the best caption, gets one or two of 'em and I'll even pay the postage.  Assuming anyone is actually reading this stuff and wants to put themselves out there, leave it in the comments section below.  The blog's only been around for a couple of weeks, so I'm giving this one another month or so before I figure no one cares.

"So, when did this skull all-hell-breaks-loose button get installed, anyway?"

Music Video Praises Pirate Queen! Obsession Drinks to Zero!

Steve Harrison bait.

You say pot-a-to head, I say pot-ah-to head

As I mentioned a couple blog posts ago, one of the more interesting things about being dead to anime for fifteen years is that even the old stuff is new again.  What with all the newly translated anime released in various formats, it's almost like being totally re-introduced to series I watched in raw form way back then.  Unfortunately, that's not always a happy process.  The anime hasn't really changed, but I most certainly have.  My tastes have been - refined - for lack of a better term. This is especially true when it comes to anime that has been dubbed into English because, well, let's face it, the approach that American voice actors and directors bring to the product is not exactly the same as the Japanese sensibilities.  Not only do I have to fight "the pre-conceived notions versus reality" battle that I touched upon in that earlier blog, but I also have to start wondering exactly how accurate the translation is and what kind of effort the American crew put forth. It's tough to decide how much of your bile or applause should be directed at the source material or at the American biz that put together the finished product.  It's one of the reasons I've always preferred my anime subtitled.  It's just much less distracting not to have to worry about that extra level between you and what the original folks put into the production. 

I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the anime I've bothered to watch in the last ten years or so.  Most of  it was, as those who know me can probably guess, Hokuto no Ken related.  A friend of mine in San Antonio manages a comic book store that kept up with a lot of the American releases, so I was lucky in that regard.   I saw the ADV dub of the Cursed City trilogy (though I could've sworn it wasn't in English, probably JAMM again), three of the Legend of the True Savior videos on youtube, the two Queen Emeraldas ADV episodes, and the Maetel Legend release.  Yeah, okay, I love me some Emeraldas too.

Yeah, yeah, don't they always say the book was better?

Bottom line, with all the stuff out there now, I really didn't watch a whole lot.  Part of that was because I was using dial-up until a year ago so I couldn't watch video online even if I wanted to (hell, I didn't even have television for nearly a decade, how perverse is that?), but mostly it was out of pure disinterest.  I'd go into Bob's shop and make a point of checking out the new DVD releases, but nothing really caught my eye.  So, now everything is new.  Even if it's old. A target rich environment.  So...where to start?

The numerous anime blogs that have sprung up here there and everywhere haven't been a whole lot of help.  They mostly seem to me to be written in a different language. And, to be honest, they probably are. Being an older nerd, I'm not up on the newer nerd tongue, so I'm slowly working on the whole translation business. I've already mentioned the whole "moe" thing - hell the word "otaku" wasn't even in our lexicon back in '85 or so.  As soon as I get the whole "moe" thing down, I'm gonna try and tackle "fanservice," though I'm not even sure if everyone agrees on "otaku" after 20 freakin' years, so I dunno how long I'll have to wait to get a consensus on the newer slang.  I remember when name translation fights were all the rage, now we've graduated to more important things like whether or not underaged lolis with WW2 wings on their legs instead of pants is suitable stuff for general consumption.  WhooHoo! Progress! Yeah, I'm just waiting for Bill O'Reilly to get ahold of an episode of that.  Or Chuck Yeager's relatives.  Meh, it's rough getting older.  I start thinking about shit that never would've entered my mind thirty years back...

Anyway, I just didn't feel like jumping right into the newer stuff, so I did what I usually do when searching around for something to watch.  Youtube.  By that time, I'd already seen the rest of the Hokuto no Ken Legend OVAs (for the record,  I seem to have enjoyed them more than many HnK fans I correspond with), done my two or three passes down memory lane by hitting the opening and closing credits '80's style thing (man, Dunbine, L-Gaim, Giant Gorg, and Xabungle STILL rock after almost thirty years), and even sampled couple of music videos.

Same Gorg time, Same Gorg channel!

One thing led to another to another to another, until I finally came across this one which I really liked. Yeah, I'm an old softie. Even after twenty years or so, I managed to place most of the Tochiro and Emeraldas cuts, but there were a few I'd obviously missed out on. Luckily for me, the person who put together this one was kind enough to list the credits at the end of the vid. After another half hour or so of googling, I set aside half a day or so to commit to something I'd actually heard about, but never even seen more than a a few seconds of.

Hey, kids, Harlock, Tochiro, Emeraldas and...some other guys.

Man, it does this manga oldtimer's heart good to know that, along with gratuitous panty shots, shower scenes, and other timeless tropes of anime, Matsumoto potato heads and machine men with pointless dials all over their bodies have somehow managed to survive into the new century.  All is right with the world. I felt like opening a bottle of fresh spring water to celebrate, but settled for a glass of red wine.  A tall glass.  I'm not usually one to watch anime with a buzz, but it's sort of become a tradition with the Matsumoto-inspired shows.  That way I feel like I'm really down with the characters.  If no one's popped a cork or poured a shot within the first two episodes or so, you know you're in the wrong anime. Plus, it helps get over the English dubbing.  Because the Harlock anime have had special problems with this in the past.  I can see some of you out there nodding.  Yep.  Somehow, I always hope the next one will be different in this regard, but I'm always disappointed.  Just comes with the territory.

I've always figured that the whole "voice acting" thing was probably more a problem for those of us who watched the raw material for years and years before the dubbed stuff was available.  The obvious exceptions being BoTP and Star Blazers, of course.  But speaking for myself, the standards were set early on. The exaggerated "drama" voices were an essential part of what made anime different for me.  Hearing Captain Harlock speaking with a "normal" tone in a "normal" register just doesn't do it for me.  In this particular case, I understand that Steven Blum is an accomplished voice actor.  Hell, I see he even voiced Wolverine for the latest X-Men toon, and I loved the hell out of that particular job.  But he's just not Captain Harlock here.  He's just another voice attached to an icon. But I understand the whole "dramatic reading" thing is just never going to fly here in America,  so I'll be pleased to be shutting up about it now.

Seriously, where do they find these voice actor people, anyway?

I'd never heard of these main characters having appeared in any other medium (unless there's a Matsumoto manga I'm unaware of), so I was left to assume that the source material was originally a special project of some kind.  The wiki article is unhelpful in this regard, the best I could come up with was yet another reference by Dave Merrill - hello, anyone ELSE out there doing articles on old school material?! - to a video game or somesuch.  But enough of that, I tracked down the series, and set out to watch it on its own terms, something which I'm really not used to doing because...well, because I still have memories of the raw versions of most of Matsumoto's shows and it's rare that something comes out that I'm totally unfamilar with in that regard.

So, as I sat down in front of the computer, I was quite prepared to either love it to death, or want to slit my wrists.  A couple hours later, I was actually kind of surprised that I came away somewhere in the mushy middle on this one.

To begin with, I wasn't prepared for the incredibly mellow opening. Luckily for me, I'd tanked up on caffeine beforehand, because I knew I had at least five or six more of these to get through between the actual episodes.  Evidently, the instrumental has an actual vocal version, which I suppose is available on the soundtrack.  I really wish they'd used that one here, because I've been conditioned to think that anime openings meant actual words being sung in a language I couldn't understand.  In the case of Mastumoto series, this meant guys with deep voices, singing manly songs.  Heck, when SSX came out, they released a whole album of manly man songs to go with it.  Even Queen 1000 had a guy with a deep voice singing the opening song and Harlock wasn't even IN that one.  But, what the hell, speaking of millenium, it's the new one, so I'll go with it.  So long as the main character isn't as wimpy as the theme song...

"You talkin' ta me?"

No worries there.  At least once we get past the first episode, anyway. After the opening five minutes or so of understandable angst over the way the machine people made Earth into a giant mud puddle in a war, and a good bit of "blame the guy who wasn't around" from the survivors, Warrius Zero is feeling like his parents had a precog flash of this very moment before they named him.  In addition, he's got this nifty family finder gadget that lets him (and the entire English-speaking audience) know in no uncertain terms that his wife and kid are "Lost." One quick cut later, we're left to wonder if it was all a dream, memory, or premonition because we skip to him sitting in his comfy chair on his space ship.  I'm going with memory, but I'd favor dream if only because the Earth survivors act like a bunch of wusses.  No wonder they lost. 

So Zero's evidently slumming, in charge of a ship on a training mission or something after being a high-fallootin' Admiral in a war that ended in a stalemate between the good guys and the machine people. Well, okay, it's not quite as simple as that, but it'll do for my purposes. He's so down that he's ready to quit the series before his chief knocks some sense into him (literally, in the best scene of the first episode), just in time to pick up an SOS from a bunch of ships under attack by Captain Harlock and Yattaran, who is still playing with toy airplanes after 30 years.  Again, it's a bit comforting to know that some things simply do not change.

Speaking of things that don't change, after a game of chicken that goes bad when the engines on Zero's ship fail, Harlock does that thing that he does by recognizing a worthy opponent; and destroys the transport ship Warrius and crew were guarding, then turns and leaves Zero to stew over living up to his name yet again.  About this time, I start scratching my head, trying to remember the first episode of the last anime I saw where the lead character was so totally ineffectual.  And, no, Urusei Yatsura does not count.  There probably were a few, but it's been a while...

Next thing we see, Zero is trying to negotiate a deal with his bosses to go back after Harlock, who is causing the machine people a great deal of trouble just by being himself.  Of course, Zero's bosses turn out to be part of the problem by having some kind of shady deal with the machine people that we're supposed to find out about as the series progresses.  Zero gets his old ship back with, well, the same bridge crew we saw earlier in the episode. With one major exception, who is introduced in one of the dumbest anime scenes I can recall.  That's probably because I've mercifully blanked the worst offenders from my memory over fifteen years, but even still, this one's a whole planet of stupid.

In fact, I dunno which part boggled me most - that the Analyzer clone in this one was the freakin' FIRST MATE on Zero's previous ship or that whoever designed the ship had the main elevator open directly into a shower stall.  Come to think of it, if Analyzer had anything to do with the design of the ship, maybe it's not so unbelievable after all.  Still might help explain why they got their ass handed to them by the machine people. I bet none of their ships had "fanservice" as part of the standard ship tours.  See, I'm slowly learning these newfangled terms.

"First mate, Shower Scene, reporting for duty!"

Anyway, her name is actually Marina and she does eventually turn into a pretty good character, but man, it's hard to ignore that introduction. Yeah, it's a trope, tried and true, as it were, but it's still just dumb, dumb, dumb to INTRODUCE a serious character that way. Okay, maybe I'm getting too old for this stuff after all. Meh. And, of course, the first mate looks exactly like Zero's dead wife. Like I have absolutely no clue where that subplot's going. Oh, yeah, and it turns out the ship's engineer "ordered" for a new first mate because he didn't like getting bossed around by a robot. Gee, I wonder how such an outfit lost a war, huh?

Only in anime. Double Meh.  It's at this point you kind of hope that something was lost in translation, but you have a feeling deep down inside that you know 90% of the stupid is coming from the source. Luckily, you've been here dozens of times before and know it usually gets better.  Keep in mind, all of the above stupid is the super-concentrated kind, taking up less than two minutes worth of screentime, kind of a black hole of dumb, sucking most of the crap out of the other twenty-two minutes of the episode. Or, at least that's what you hope for.   Because you still have three minutes left to watch...

Not to worry, the remainder of the episode is the launching of the ship, the Karyu, and a great time is had by all.  Although there seem to be a scarcity of ships in this one, the designs are pretty standard for the later Matsumoto-inspired anime and I had no problems with them, though I understand that a few others do.  I like the way the lead character gives the teaser for the next episode - it reminds me of one of my favorite '80s mecha shows, Panzer World Galient in that regard.

"Hmm, this kool-aid tastes funny."

The first few episodes focus on the integration of the humans and the machine people on the ship and we learn again fairly quickly why the humans didn't fare better in the war.  They aren't quite the layabouts from the original Captain Harlock series, but they're definitely on the fast track.  The whole idea of machine people - "We aren't robots!" - is one of the Matsumoto ideas that remains fascinating to me, even if it's used mainly to explore the now-familar bigotry metaphor in this particular series.  Can't have too much of that,  I suppose.

The next few episodes have their share of stupid, but nothing so concentrated that it stood out.  It was kind of jarring to figure they only had a machine man doctor on the ship, but one doc per ship is a Matsumoto staple.  Marina gets shot in thwarting an attempted mutiny by the machine men, which is at least a plausible excuse for the next shower scene, and telegraphs an upcoming plot twist you ought to be able to see coming if you're at all familiar with prior Harlock/GE 999 material.  Aside from Zero himself, the chief engineer is my favorite character, which should come as no shock.  I dunno if it was there in the original material or the English folks had fun with the translation, but there was one reference to Marina having whips and chains in her closet that I thought was pretty funny.  Some "mysterious" third party sets up a test involving pirates that aren't really pirates, which struck me as a bit of a stretch considering the way the pirates were acting towards one another when no one else was monitoring, but that's pretty small stuff.  As part of a continuing subplot, the same "mysterious entity" takes control of the ship's main weapon - the latest version of the "wave motion cannon" trope. 

To tell the truth, by the time Zero added the "outlaw" Grenadier to the crew, I was more than ready for the good stuff.

Good stuff.

To be honest, I came into this series cold when it came to knowing what version of Harlock and crew I was gonna get here. But, considering the way Harlock was introduced in the first episode, the last thing I expected was Gun Frontier.  Hell, Yattaran wasn't even IN Gun Frontier.  Neither was Emeraldas and she's the reason I started with this one instead of GF in the first place.  So, when the fifth episode opened in the wild wild west, my first inclination was to go grab another bottle of wine.  Then I figured it WAS Gun Frontier, so I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels instead.  I'm telling you, watching this stuff with a buzz is the only way to go.  It also makes it so that you don't CARE whether or not you confuse Marina with Silviana.  What kind of show is this anyway, when they violate the most sacred rule of animating Matsumoto women - thou shalt NOT give two of them the same fucking hair color. EVER.  Even if one of them uses guns and the other doesn't.  It's just evil.  Bad animators. Bad.

Three.  Count 'em, THREE women with blue hair on this show.  Sadists.

That said, the booze level on this show had been tepid up to this point, so I figured something had to give pretty quickly.  Just a few generic "red liquid" in glasses swirling around Zero's quarters. But, hey, this is fucking Gun Frontier we're talking about.  Booziness is next to Godliness.  So I knew it was coming, just a matter of when.

Unfortunately, there was a whole lot of stupid before then, which made it difficult to wait for Harlock and company to show up before getting wasted.  I knew Gun Frontier was...eh...silly compared to what normally passed for Harlock mythos, but I really didn't expect his Warriusness to jump headfirst into the pool of goofiness, especially after all that talk about how dangerous the territory was.  So, of course, he sends the potato head and the kid along with Grenadier and the comedy relief machine man communications officer. Yeah, that'll work out just swell.

Aw, why bother. By the time I hear the "voice" they gave Tochiro,  two shots are down and the glass is in the sink.  I was just getting used to the voice acting, which (aside from Harlock) is pretty darned good.  But the "Marvin Lee" nym tells me all I need to know about how much they really cared.  Shame.  I guess I ought to be used to it by now, but I'm always hoping that someday...sad to think that the best American Tochiro voice job I can remember is that fucking Roger Corman Galaxy Express film from waaay back in 1980.  I'm sure there have been others I've not seen, but...eh, time to take another swig.  May as well make a drinking game out of it.

Here's to you, big guy.

So, hijinks ensue, milk is spilled, swords are drawn, whiskey is ruined (in no small part because they kept it in barrels in the street because there are obviously no thieves or drunks around); town folk get all riled up, and we have several Scooby-Doo chase scenes, except with ray guns, bazookas, and giant cows instead of goofy grown-ups in fake monster costumes.  Exactly what I expected when the series started five episodes back with Zero getting all angsty and kids crying and ships being blown up in outer space.  Oh, wait. 

Aw, fuck it, it's Harlock. All is well with the world.

The four stooges are back at their shuttle and the machine man explains that he let Tochiro chop his arm off because machine man arms are easier to replace than human arms.  And he's right, 'cause by the next episode, it's as good as new.  Silviana loses her clothes again, resulting in a change to my drinking game.  Marina finally browbeats Zero into rescuing the four stooges.  The riled-up townsfolk string Tochiro up AND point guns at him, which is Harlock's signal to finally show up.  Or maybe it was because the episode hit the twenty-two minute mark.  Just to make sure the riled-up townsfolk don't give him backtalk, he brings the Deathshadow with him.  We know it's the Deathshadow and not the Arcadia 'cause it doesn't burst up out of the ground.  I guess the situation wasn't dire enough...or the budget wasn't big enough.  I'm getting antsy.  No booze AND no Emeraldas in that episode.  Seriously beginning to think there's something wrong with this series...

I love, love, LOVE, this piece of fan art.

Well, okay, that was more like it. For the most part. Seems Harlock brought his ship all that way just to look impressive. I really don't get what they were trying to do with Silviana. One minute she's pointing her gun down the barrell of the Deathshadow's 16-inchers, the next she's talking about how she can't fight 'cause her makeup is running. Dude, for all the talk in this series about mechanized men and bigotry and shit, they really still have these huge blinders on when it comes to women. It really makes this stuff hard to take at all seriously, even silly/serious. You almost have to believe that's in the source material, but I dunno. I kind of feel for the woman responsible for having to say that crap and put her name on it.

Luckily, there's still Emeraldas.

And booze.

"You're lucky Harlock didn't kill ya."

"But who cares? If'n there ain't no booze ta drink, there just ain't no point."

Preach it, brother! I bet they had fun in the voice booth during that particular exchange.  In any case, the riled-up townsfolk explain to Harlock exactly why they were stringin' Tochiro up, Harlock opens up the bar on the Deathshadow and the power of hard liquor conquers all.

Well, almost all.  The four stooges are still on Harlock's trail (despite direct orders from Zero) and throw Tochiro in a cave and start whoopin' on him.  When that doesn't work, one of them gets the bright idea to come up with voice activated bomb that's set to go off when Tochiro opens his yap - they stick Tochiro BACK in the noose and wait for Harlock to show up in the hopes that Harlock will get close enough for an ambush.  I guess four against one would've been cheating so they needed an ambush. Or something.  Of course Harlock shows up and Tochiro yells anyway because that's just the kind of guy he is.  Turns out the bomb was a trick.

Yeah, we know who the real stars of this show are, huh?

Zero shows up just as everyone starts firing at each other and stops the fight.  He slugs one of the stooges because it would look silly for him to slug himself for sending the four dweebs down there in the first damned place.  Then he gives them the manly lecture about how Tochiro was prepared to sacrifice himself for Harlock and they all look appropriately shamed.  Tochiro wonders what they were hoping to accomplish with the voice-activated dud bomb. 

"We wanted to shut you up."

Yeah, "Marvin Lee," I know the feeling.  God, that voice is fucking irritating.  By this time, the bottle of Jack is a quarter empty...

Speaking of drinking, the power of the bottle is on display yet again as Harlock invites Zero and crew to the booze party back in town.  Dunno why I noticed, but Zero is actually about an inch taller than Harlock.  I wonder if that's 'cause it's technically his show.  Just sayin'...

 Back at the saloon, evidently the Deathshadow had so much booze onboard that the bartender could fully stock his bar.  Seriously, all the shelves are full. Harlock and Zero debate the whole pirate vs machine man lackey thing, which puts Tochiro to sleep.  Lucky, Emeraldas' comfy lap is there to catch his little potato head.  Emeraldas looks a bit annoyed.  I'm just happy he's finally shut the hell up.  I actually like the Emeraldas voice here, though it's not quite up to the "Who fired on my ship?!" line from that Roger Corman 999 film.  Geez, it sounds like I'm pimping for that crappy thing today.  To be fair, the poor woman here only had like three lines the entire episode. Hard to show your talent with three lines. Even if one of them was really good.

"Let her get you down from there."

And with that, I ran out of patience, though not out of booze.  I suppose I'll end up watching the rest of the series one day.  Aside from the similarity between the Marina/Silviana designs, I couldn't find a whole lot of fault with the character art here.  I did notice that at least one male character actually sported the "eyelashes outside of the hairline" thing that characterizes the standard Matsumoto female designs.  I dunno if I've ever noticed that in any prior "Leijiverse" anime before.  On humans, anyway.

The music was inobtrusive, if lackluster.  There really weren't a whole lot of really dramatic scenes in space to show off the music to, I expect they'll be more later in the series.  Most of the Heavy Meldar/Gun Frontier scenes were played for laughs.

The animation itself...eh.  Seemed pretty typical for the old OVA series we used to get back in the '80s to me.  The colors were nice and crisp. But much of that may have just been me remembering the hell of having to watch the washed up stuff that resulted from multiple generation tape copies. 

Just because you can't get enough Emeraldas.

Damn, this turned out to be a lot longer than I planned. I'm going to have to learn to break these things up in the future. As for the pic at the top of the blog, it's a plate Mitsuyoshi sent me back in the day. I dunno if it's a particular Matsumoto character that I've just not seen before, or just a generic design. If anyone has any idea, I'd love to know.

The signature is dated "1979" (I think)