Shin Takarajima

It's no secret that practically every staff member in Orphan is mad for Tezuka Osamu. The team has done more shows by the God of Manga that by any other anime auteur: two Animerama movies, eight Love Will Save the World TV specials, six Lion Book OVAs, the Hidamari no Ki TV series, and so on. Accordingly, it's a special pleasure to release the first English language version of Tezuka Osamu's early TV special, Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island). So, Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 1965, and let's dive in.

Back then, I had just started college, and Tezuka's Mushi Productions was still in its early days. Its shows were in black-and-white. Tetsuwan Atom, started in 1963, had proved to be a tremendous hit, and the studio was trying to break new ground. Shin Takarajima was intended as the first of a series of anime specials entitled Mushi Pro Land, but the series never materialized. It was the only episode to be aired, the first 60-minute anime broadcast on Japanese TV.

Shin Takarajima doesn't really follow the story line of Tezuka Osamu's 1947 manga of the same name. Instead, it hews more closely to the plot of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure novel, Treasure Island, but with animal characters. The good guys are mostly herbivores: Jim Hawkins is a rabbit, Dr. Livesey a deer, Squire Trelawney a pig, Captain Smollet a bear. The pirates are all carnivores: John Silver is a wolf, Bill Bones a mountain dog, Pew a wildcat, Ben Gunn a lion, and so on.

The plot of Treasure Island is so well known as to need no summary from me. As is the case in many adaptations of the novel, Silver is the most interesting character: charming, agreeable, apparently a bit indolent, but utterly ruthless when he needs to be. The other characters are straight out of the novel. Livesey is noble and upright, Smollett is decisive in action, Trelawney is a ditherer and a bit of a buffoon, and Jim is plucky and resourceful. One interesting conceit is that if a character gets too enamored of treasure, he loses his humanity and becomes an animal again, walking on all-fours and, if he's a carnivore, with claws out. That certainly makes life difficult and scary for a tasty morsel like Jim.

The show embodies a lot of Tezuka's trademarks: good action sequences, great slapstick gags, and the occasional anachronism. For example, when Jim find himself in the pirates' longboat, heading for shore, he looks so grim that Silver compares his face to "George Chakiris." This reference may be incomprehensible to a modern anime audience; Chakiris had won an Oscar in 1961 for his intense, unsmiling portrayal of the gang-leader Bernardo in West Side Story. On the other hand, the continuity of the animation is hit-or-miss. In some scenes, mouth movements aren't even animated.

The voice actors are from an earlier era:

• Tagame Kazue (Jim) played Atom in the original Tetsuwan Atom and Kum Kum in Manga Wanpaku Oomukashi Kum Kum.
• Fujioka Takuya (Squire Trelawney) played Mujaki in the second Urusei Yatsura movie, Beautiful Dreamer.
• Kato Takeshi (John Silver) appeared in Odin: Starlight Mutiny and Tamala 2010.
• Kitahara Takashi (Dr. Livesey, a deer) has no other voice credits.
• Katou Seizou (Billy Bones, a mountain dog) played Ii Naosuke in Hidamari no Ki, Abraham in Tezuka Osamu's Tales from the Old Testament, Norbert in Apfelland Monogatari, Hatsutori Juuzou in Kage, Admiral Putyatin in Bakumatsu no Spasibo, and Jeigan in Fire Emblem, all Orphan release. He had many featured roles in the span of a 50 year career.
• Kumakura Kazuo (Pew, a wildcat) appeared in both the 1963 and 1980 versions of Astro Boy. He played Papa Panda in Panda Gopanda, Oz in The Wizard of Oz movie, Thomas R. Manx Cat in Manxmouse, Sima Hui in Sangokushi, and Inspector Unmei in Akuma Tou no Prince: Mitsume ga Tooru. The last three are Orphan releases.
• Wakayama Genzou (Captain Smollett, a bear) played Long John Silver in the Treasure Island TV series. He appeared in Don Quijote, Pro Golfer Saru, and Wanpaku Tanteidan.

The show was directed by the master himself, Tezuka Osamu. The animation director was Sugii Gisaburou. Neither needs further introduction.

Iri translated the show, and kokujin-kun kindly filled in a few lines that were difficult to hear. ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. The raw is from R-Raws and is a webstream. Nemesis pointed out that a black-and-white anime should not have subtitles with colored outlines, so Orphan's usual color scheme for overlapping and song lines has been changed to gray-scale. Uchuu supplied some interesting notes:

• "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest..." Billy Bones' song is straight out of Stevenson's book. Stevenson only included the chorus; later authors filled out the rest of it.
• "You may lay to that." This is Silver's catchphrase in the book. It uses a secondary meaning of "lay", meaning "bet" or "wager".
• At 15:30, when the mice are loading the ship for departure, they carry aboard a case labeled "RAM" instead of "RUM". For all the PCs on board, I guess.
  
• "Hard to larboard!" The book uses "larboard" instead of "port" for the left side of a ship (as you face forward).

I really liked Shin Takarajima. Admittedly, I'm a fan of all things Tezuka Osamu, but I liked how the show played it fairly straight with Stevenson's plot (until the ending), while allowing Tezuka his distinctive touches and laugh-out-loud gags. This is the earliest anime Orphan has ever subbed, and its first black-and-white release. You can get the show from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.