With the release of the 1981 TV special Bremen 4, Orphan and M74 have completed their high-definition survey of Tezuka Osamu's feature length anime movies for NTV's annual telethon. The eight Tezuka Production specials were:
1978: Hyakumannen Chikyuu no Tabi: Bander Book
1979: Kaitei Choutokkyuu Marine Express
1980: Fumoon
1981: Bremen 4
1983: Time Slip Ichimannen Prime Rose
1984: Daishizen no Majuu Bagi
1986: Ginga Tansa 2100-nen: Border Planet
1989: Tezuka Osamu Monogatari: Boku wa Songoku
The 1985 special, Akuma Shima no Prince – Mitsume ga Touru, was based on a Tezuka Osamu character but was produced by Toei Animation. It has not been released in high-definition. Maybe someday...
Bremen 4 seems to have an official subtitle, Angels in Hell, although that does not appear in the anime itself. It tells the story of four animals - a cat named Coda, a donkey named Largo, a dog named Allegro, and a chicken named Minuet.
(That's either a very big cat or a really small donkey.) The four are stranded or abandoned when their peaceful country is conquered by ruthless, Nazi-like invaders. Wandering the countryside, the animals save the life of a visiting alien, Rondo. In return, she gives them devices that transform them into humans. In this form, they become musicians, bringing some joy to their war-ravaged land. Eventually, they come to the attention of the invader's commander, Karl Presto. He falls in love with Coda in her human form, but she and her friends reject his overtures and, returning to animal form, help the resistance to fight the invaders. Eventually, the villains are defeated and peace returns.
Bremen 4 was the last of the TV specials that made heavy use of Tezuka's Star System, although the stars made cameo appearances in the later specials. The villainous, Wagner-loving commander, Karl Presto, is Rock Holmes, returning to his usual role as a heavy. Presto's father, an even more heinous warmonger, is Lamp, the guy with the candle on his head. Duke Red plays Count Lento, the hapless (and soon posthumous) leader of the invaded country. Ban Shunsaku is Adagio, the manager of a puppet theater who also leads the resistance. Black Jack is a mysterious figure who cares for the orphans of war. Astro Boy appears in a musical sequence, Don Dracula is an announcer at a concert, and Unico and Leo have cameos in the final triumphant march of the animals.
Okamoto Mari (Coda the Cat) played the female leads in Fumoon, Prime Rose, and The Wizard of Oz movie. The incomparable and now sadly deceased Tomiyama Kei (Largo the Donkey) stole the show as the wicked witch in Grim Douwa: Kin no Tori, an Orphan release. Kyouda Hisako (Minuet the chicken) has had a long career, with some unusual roles, such as the father in Shouwa Monogatari. Ishimaru Hiroya gave a bravura performance as the "interpreter" dog Allegro, speaking Donkey, Chicken, or Cat as required. He also played as Rodimus Prime in the various Transformer TV shows. Tomita Kousei and Nozawa Nachi reprised their roles as Ban Shunsaku and Black Jack, respectively, from Marine Express.
The eight specials exemplify Tezuka Osamu's style - the wandering plots, the use of anachronisms for humor, the obvious fanservice (in Bremen 4, Rondo's cleavage defies gravity). I think the later specials were better, with tighter plots and less overt preaching, but they're all very watchable. (Ginga Tansa 2100-nen: Border Planet remains my favorite.) They also make me more forgiving of Tezuka's earlier Mushi Production movies, the so-called adult cartoons Cleopatra and Sen'ya Ichiya Monogatari. There's a lot of continuity between the Animerama releases and the later specials; the former just have a lot more fanservice. While Tezuka Osamu could work in a much more serious vein (Hidamari no Ki, Hi no Tori), he reveled in the possibilities that his lighter works allowed.
This subtitles for this release were professionally translated. Yogicat transcribed them, and M74 timed them. I edited and typeset (not much). Nemesis and Calyrica did QC. M74 encoded from a BDMV provided by Beatrice Raws. I'm truly grateful to them for sharing their source material. The source material has a a variety of video mistakes. In one scene, the background disappears; in another, the foreground characters. Transitions are rough, and mouth movements are sometimes poorly animated. Still, this is the best source out there.
You can get Bremen 4, and all the other Orphan (or M74) HD releases of the Tezuka Production TV specials, from the usual torrent sources or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.
If you track Erik's laserdisc releases, you'll know that he ripped the Dallos special. I wanted to subtitle the special, but that required revisiting the original Dallos OVA scripts and piecing them together, with excisions, to fit the special's reduced running time. Rather than just go over the existing scripts, I thought it might be more entertaining to move them onto HQR's high-definition (720p) raws, which were taken from a KIDS TV broadcast. So that's been done, and this release is the result.
In my original blog on Dallos five years ago, I was rather harsh on the show. Back then, I was viewing it in the context of all the recent anime I had seen, and it seemed very derivative. In fact, the reverse is true. Dallos came first, and it has been imitated numerous times since. If I use a historical perspective on what anime was in 1983, Dallos is far more interesting and original than I had thought.
Dallos is set in the 21st century - our own! The backdrop is an Earth ruined by overuse of resources. In desperation, the Earth government creates a colony on the Moon to exploit the resources there. After sixty years, the gamble has paid off, and Earth is prospering again. However, there is a high cost: the colonists on the Moon are treated as little better than slave labor. While the older generations of settlers, who still remember Earth, are resigned to their fate, the third generation - born and raised on the Moon - see only the merciless oppression and lack of opportunity. They organize a guerilla resistance movement to fight back. The colonial government responds with even greater repression, which in turn creates more resistance. (Does this sound familiar?)
As the story opens, Shun Nonomura is an apolitical teenager more interested in "fiddling with machines" than in flirting with his girlfriend Rachel. Shun inadvertently shows Dog McCoy, the leader of the guerillas, how the Moon's mining equipment can be converted into effective weapons. Dog and his followers kidnap visiting Earthling Melinda Hearst, who is the fiance of the head of lunar Security, Alex Riger. Alex uses the incident as a pretext for intensive operations against the guerillas. Shun and Rachel are swept up in the conflict, which escalates into outright war involving the civilian population of the Moon.
Brooding over these proceedings is a giant machine called Dallos, which looks rather like a mechanical facemask. The early settlers discovered Dallos and worshiped it as a god, but both Alex Riger and the guerillas regard it as a relic. However, when the conflict spills into Dallos itself, it proves to be a true deus ex machine, coming to life and taking out its wrath on both sides. This brings about an uneasy truce. It's clear, though, that the conflict will resume, and Shun and Rachel must decide where they stand. Unfortunately, that's where the story ends.
Dallos is often called the first OVA (anime released directly to consumer video media), but that was an afterthought, not the original intent. Dallos was intended to be a long TV series, of at least 26 episodes (and probably more). The four episodes we have were intended as prologue. This is evident from the numerous plot threads that are planted and left unresolved, such as the story of Shun's older brother Tatsuo, and the political machinations within the Moon government. We'll never know how the story was supposed to unfold; no plot synopsis or summary has been published.
Sasaki Hideki (Shun) played the lead role in Gauche the Cellist; otherwise, his resume is very short. Ikeda Shuichi (Riger) played Char in Mobile Suit Gundam, Gilbert Durandal in Gundam Seed, Ulrich Kessler in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and Azuma in Starship Troopers, an Orphan release. The deep-voiced Genda Tesshou (Dog McCoy) played Colonel Muto in Joker Game, Moloch in Yondemasu Azazel-san, Rei in the Urusei Yatsura franchise, Moguro Fukuzou in New Laughing Salesman, "Oyaji" in this year's Mitsuboshi Colors, and the loyal lieutenant Galbreath in Next Senki Ehrgeiz, an Orphan release. Sakakibara Yoshiko (Melinda) played Sir Integral Hellsing in both versions of Hellsing, as well as Paula in Condition Green, an Orphan release. The director, Mamoru Oshii, would go on to direct many famous anime works, including Ghost in the Shell, Gosenzosama Banbanzai, and Sky Crawlers.
This version of Dallos has been little altered from the original release in 2013. Some lines have been tightened, and more line breaks have been inserted for readability. The original translation was done by laalg and has not been revisited. In particular, it does not reflect the recent R1 DVD release. I edited both versions and did a little typesetting for this one. CP and Saji QCed the original release; Calyrica did a release check on this version. The raws were encoded by HQR from a KIDS high-definition TV broadcast and are probably the best we'll see unless Dallos gets a Blu-ray release.
On this round, Dallos impressed me a lot more than it did back in 2013. The space scenes look great, although the character animation can get rather funky. The story is interesting, and the god-machine Dallos no longer seems like an arbitrary plot contrivance. You can get his release from the usual torrent sites as well as from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.
One final note. If you like Dallos as much as I do, I'd urge you to buy the R1 DVD, as I did. It's not expensive, it has a fascinating interview with Mamoru Oshii and others involved in the production, and it includes the context-setting "pilot film" not included in other releases.
Here is the next installment of Hidamari no Ki: episodes 14 through 19. We're in the third quarter now, and the pace picks up accordingly. From natural catastrophes like a great cholera epidemic, to man-made disasters like the Ansei Purge, momentous events overtake Manjirou, Ryouan, and many others, threatening to sweep them away.
By the late 1850s, the struggle between the relentless expansionism of the Western powers on one side, and the feudal isolationism of the Emperor and the Sonnou Joui movement on the other, was pulling the Tokugawa Shogunate apart. The Shogunate tacked back and forth, trying to avoid either a foreign war or a civil war. First, it opposed the Western initiatives for open trade. Then, overmatched militarily, it signed trade treaties with the Western powers and began importing Western technology. When internal opponents took up Sonnou Joui as a rallying cry, the Shogunate tried first compromise and then brutal repression (the Ansei Purge). Neither worked, and the chaos inside the country only increased.
Although Ryouan is a doctor, and Manjirou is studiously apolitical, both are caught up in the press of events. Manjirou is arrested, tortured, and nearly executed simply for talking to the wrong people.
Ryouan must again use his devious skills - demonstrated during the Shogun's meeting with American envoy - to rescue Manjirou from a dangerous situation. Ryouan also confronts, treats, and outsmarts a group of wounded ronin assassins, garnering favorable attention from the Shogunate.
By the end of this batch of episodes, both men have experienced deep personal losses, and both have become involved (in Ryouan's case, reluctantly) with the Shogunate's efforts to reform itself before it's too late. Never has the future looked more uncertain. Kind of like current times, huh?
Some notes:
- Ep 14. The great cholera epidemic of 1859 killed an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Japanese. It was part of a world-wide cholera pandemic that impacted Russia and much of southeast Asia.
- Ep 18. The marching song sung by the peasant soldiers is フジの白雪ャノーエ, from Shizuoka prefecture. While the song is famous, its meaning is obscure. In the episode, it is translated to fit the rhythm of the Japanese syllables.
- Ep 19. The Roushigumi was the first of numerous squads of ronin formed by the Shogunate and its opponents to further their aims by violence. It was founded by Kiyokawa Hachirou, a swordsman and dedicated opponent of the Shogunate. Although the ostensible purpose of the Roushigumi was to protect the Shogun, Kiyokawa in fact offered its services to the Imperial court. Two years after the events shown in the episode, Kiyokawa was killed by a Shogunate assassin.
The staff for the show remains pretty much the same. Sunachan translated the dialog, songs, and signs. Eternal_Blizzard did fine timing on episode 14; starting with episode 15, Yogicat took over all the timing. I edited and typeset. banandoyouwanna, Nemesis, and VigorousJammer did QC. Skr encoded the workraws, and M74 the final raws. As a bonus, this set of episodes also includes the DVD booklets for all nine volumes. They were provided by the anonymous benefactor who purchased the DVDs.
You can get the third installment of Hidamari no Ki from the usual torrent sites (although nyaa.si is down temporarily; use nyaa.at instead) or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. What are you waiting for? Go download it and watch it now!
One of my favorite projects at Yoroshiku Fansubs was the six-part sci-fi OVA, Starship Troopers (Uchuu no Senshi, literally Space Soldiers), released by Sunrise in 1988. It was based on Robert A. Heinlein's famous 1959 novel about interstellar combat, which predicted the development and use of powered battle suits and thus, arguably, gave rise to the whole mecha genre. Yoroshiku had a difficult time locating video source material and ultimately used a fan's DVD transcription of a VCD transcription of the original laserdiscs. Needless to say, the source material had suffered some degradation from the multiple transfers; for example, the preview at the end of episode 4 was missing.
I've wanted to redo Starship Troopers from a better source for years. Unfortunately, the laserdiscs of Starship Troopers were quite rare and highly prized by collectors. Then late last year, a set was offered on Yahoo Auctions in Japan, and Erik of Piyo Piyo Productions snapped them up despite the cost. He encoded the material, and now Orphan has mapped the Yoroshiku subtitles, with the usual updates and modifications, to those raws.
The 1988 OVAs were the first media adaptation of Heinlein's book, which has subsequently been adapted for a series of big-budget live-action and anime movies. It is also the most faithful. However, like all of the adaptations, it is in some ways unsatisfactory to fans of the novel. The OVAs only cover the first half of the story. The hero, described in the book as being of Filipino descent, becomes a blond, blue-eyed Caucasian; the arachnoid aliens become tentacle-lashing BEMs; and so on.
In defense of the OVAs, a faithful adaption of Starship Troopers is probably infeasible, because it's actually a treatise on political philosophy (militaristic political philosophy at that) masquerading as a science-fiction action yarn. As critics have noted, the classroom and training scenes in the book are longer and more vivid than the action sequences. An anime or movie that faithfully reflected the book would feel more like propaganda than sci-fi.
As it stands, the OVAs chronicle the training and first combat experiences of Juan Rico, familiarly known as Johnnie. He enlists in the military after high school, mostly because the girl he admires/lusts after, Carmencita, has joined the Space Navy. To his dismay, Johnnie is assigned to the Mobile Infantry instead and the tough-minded care of Sergeant Zim. Training is long and difficult; 80% of the recruits wash out. The core of the training regimen is learning and mastering the use of the powered battle suits. Eventually, Johnnie and his buddies "Kitten" Smith and Pat Leivy are assigned to an actual combat unit, Willy's Wildcats. The Wildcats take part in the invasion of the aliens' homeworld. Johnnie is wounded and sent to recover; end of the OVAs, more or less.
The visual side of Starship Troopers is fairly typical late-80s animation. The battle suits look more like rocket-powered armor than flexible exoskeletons. Even though the show is set in a future with faster-than-light interstellar travel, people still drive mid-20th-century cars with big fins and no seat belts, and they drink Budweiser from cans. The clothing is recognizably late 20th century, down to the Mobile Infantry's dress uniforms (with ties). It's 1960s America, plus spaceships.
The voice cast appeared in many 80s and 90s OVAs and series. Matsumoto Yasunori (Johnnie) has had a long career, playing Rin in Joker: Marginal City, Muto in Oz, and Suiguito in Dragon Fist, all Orphan releases, as well as the singing knight Dick Saucer in the classic comedy Dragon Half and the magician Ichidaji Tohru in Every Day Is Sunday. Kamiya Akira (Sergeant Zim) is best known for the title roles in the City Hunter properties and the Kinnikuman franchise. He also stole the show as the lecherous robot Chiraku in Hoshi Neko Full House, an Orphan release. Sakuma Rei (Carmencita) played Shampoo in the Ranma 1/2 franchise, as well as the lecherous pirate Belga in Cosmic Fantasy, an Orphan release. Inoue Kazuhiko (Kitten Smith) played Yamaoka Shirou in Oishinbo and Yuki Eiri in Gravitation, but I know and love him best as the irascible, sake-swilling Nyanko-sensei in the Natsume Yuujichou properties. The director, Amino Tetsuro, demonstrated his versatility in other projects such as Macross 7 and several Lupin III TV specials.
The music, by Nanba Hiroyuki (of Dallos fame), is mostly functional, but the songs - opening, closing, and insert - are all in English, sung by Japanese vocalists. This seems quite baffling to me, but English lyrics for anime songs were a Thing in the late 80s. The lyricist, Linda Hennrick, lived in Japan and had an active career writing and translating songs for anime. She returned to the US in 2010 and continues to be involved with the Japanese music scene, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The original subtitles by Yoroshiku have held up well and required only minor tweaking, mostly for line length (Aegisub didn't have cps tracking back then). Staff credits
Translation AngelEngine, laalg (Yoroshiku)
Sunachan (Orphan) - episode 4 preview
Timing Grv, Nanne (Yoroshiku)
Yogicat - shifting, ninjacloud - fine timing (Orphan)
Editing Collectr (both)
QC Nanne, Saji, redbat, Sirus (Yoroshiku)
Calyrica, VigorousJammer (Orphan)
Encoding Piyo Piyo Productions (Orphan)
The
laserdiscs themselves are just adequate, with jittery frames and a fair
amount of film burn. However, because of the tangled legal rights
around Starship Troopers, I rather doubt that the OVAs will ever see a digital release.
So blast off into the "future," big-finned cars and all, with Starship Troopers. You can get it from the usual torrent sites or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.
When Orphan released Cathexis last year, it was supposed to be the first release in an ambitious project to redo early BL OVAs with modern encodes and softsubs. The original Lupin Gang scripts were available, as were laserdiscs or DVDs of all the shows. The plan was to create new encodes, translation check the existing scripts, and publish the shows in rapid succession. Then reality set in, and the project has been delayed significantly. Here, after a delay of nine months, is the next offering, the 1992 sci-fi OVA Ai no Kusabi.
Based on a novel by Yoshihara Rieko, Ai no Kusabi is a contemporary of Zetsuai 1989 and shares with the latter the same over-the-top emotional palette and tragic outlook that characterizes BL shows of that time. The plot is a fujoshi's fever-dream take on traditional science-fiction themes. An all-knowing supercomputer named Jupiter has constructed an artificial world with a caste structure based on hair color: blondes at the top (I guess blondes do have more fun), silvers-hairs next, and so on, down to the black-haired "mongrels" at the bottom. For some reason, the denizens of this universe are mostly men, although women do exist. Sex slavery - the creation of human "Pets" - is an integral part of the structure; in fact, it seems to be the primary business of the blonde elite. For more information on the Ai no Kusabi world, see the Wikipedia article.
The main characters are a Blondie named Iason, who runs the illegal Pet trade from the elite city of Tanagura, and Riki, a black-haired mongrel from the slum city of Ceres. Iason rescues Riki from a tight situation and makes Riki his Pet. Blondies are allowed to have Pets for observational purposes, for no more than a year. Instead, Iason falls in love with Riki, has sex with him, and keeps him for three years, in violation of "the rules." Riki pines for freedom, and eventually, Iason sets him free for a while to return to his old life, his old gang (Bison), and his old lover (Guy). However, Iason plans to reclaim Riki by a devious plot. This sets in motion the chain of events that leads to the story's inevitably tragic outcome. It feels like a strange grand opera, although there's no fat lady to sing at the end.
Seki
Toshihiko (Riki) should be a familiar
name to readers of this blog, having appeared as the hero Seitarou in Hoshi Neko Full House, Miroku in Yuukan Club, Chuuta in Satsujin Kippu wa Heart-iro, and the fighter Nagase Jun in Akai Hayate, all Orphan releases. He also played Sanzo in all the Saiyuuki TV series and the title roles in Alexander (Reign the Conqueror) and Kaiketsu Zorro. Shiozawa Kaneto (Iason) played Rock Holmes in Fumoon, Shiina in Chameleon (both Orphan releases), the egotistic comic relief Shin in Hiatari Ryouko, and numerous other roles before his untimely death in 2000. Tsujitani Kouji (Guy) played the title role in the Captain Tylor franchise and the lead role in the 3x3 Eyes OVAs. He also played Shou in Condition Green and Seishirou in Yuukan Club, both Orphan releases. His most recent role was in Kokkoku, which just finished.
The original script was from Lupin Gang Anime and was pretty good. Sunachan checked the translation and corrected a few of the more baffling lines, like the reference to "an Achilles" in the second episode. (The Japanese phrase actually means "an Achilles' heel.") M74 timed and encoded, I edited and typeset, and Calyrica and Yogicat did QC. This is a joint Orphan-M74 release.
When it was released, Ai no Kusabi
was considered quite daring and trailblazing. Nowadays, it would
scarcely raise an eyebrow. The sex scenes are discrete and indirect.
Nothing is censored or needs to be. It is BL, of course, so if that's
not your cup of tea, you shouldn't download it. You can get Ai no Kusabi from the usual torrent sites or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.
