Magma Taishi, Batch

So here's Orphan's last word on Magma Taishi (Ambassador Magma), the 13-episode 1993 sci-fi OVA based (very loosely) on Tezuka Osamu's 1960's manga and tokustatsu TV series. The batch includes fixes to the first four episodes for a typo in the ED that wasn't noticed until episode five. Patches are available here. The fixes are very minor; you won't miss anything if you skip the updated episodes.

I've already expounded on my issues with Magma Taishi, particularly the way it ended. It should have hewed more closely to Tezuka Osamu's core strengths as an entertainer: strong plotting, good action sequences, and slapstick humor. Instead, it tried to be both a shounen adventure and and an environmental cautionary tale, succeeding at neither. Still, the show has its strong points. It's fast-paced and never stalls out. Even seeming diversions, like Mamoru's interaction with the Imai family, quickly move into action sequences. It has a terrific voice cast. Oohira Tooru's sneering performance as Goa is not to be missed, and Kikuchi Masami makes a suitably emo Mamoru (he is a teenager, after all). And it has a late example of the Star System, with Umemura Sayaka, girl reporter, modeled on Princess Sapphire. Do its virtues outweigh its defects? That's for you, the viewer, to decide.

For dub watchers, the English audio track is basically the same as the US dub release, with one significant exception: the US dub release includes the Japanese lyrics for the OP and ED. In the R2J DVDs, the OP and ED are instrumentals. The US dub also has English language credits and episode titles, rather than Japanese.

I'd like to thank the small team of people who made the show possible:

• Translation and initial timing: Yume
• Fine timing: ImAWasteOfHair 
• Editing and typesetting: yours truly
• QC: Uchuu, ImAWasteOfHair (ep 1-4), Paul Geromini (ep 5-13)
• Encoding: anonymous

I enjoyed working with them on the show to the very end.

I'll close with an image of  Magma at his most imposing:

(Gotta love the hair.) Thanks for watching.

P.S. The 1960s tokustatsu TV show is available on Blu-ray in Japan.

 

 

 

Magma Taishi (Ep 11-13)

With its final three episodes, Magma Taishi (Ambassador Magma) winds itself up, runs at a furious pace, takes a gigantic flying left turn, and jumps over a Megalodon-sized shark. Tezuka Osamu's shounen hero versus big baddie becomes an environmental fairy tale that ends with a whimper, rather than a bang. I'm no fan of the shounen genre, but the concluding episode left me baffled and more than a bit annoyed.

When we last left the good guys, they had been whisked off somewhere unknown. That turns out to be a "pocket dimension" set in some much earlier era, complete with dinosaurs. 

After killing a therapod that was about to devour Mamoru's father, they are confronted by an angry Earth-the-spirit, who asks why they would kill a creature they didn't intend to eat. (Um, self-defense, sir?) He asks what mankind's purpose is, strongly implying they don't have one and are therefore surplus to requirements. After some further Magma versus Udo action, they escape back to Earth-the-planet, only to find that Goa has launched a general offensive. 

Earth's defense forces are helpless against Goa's monsters. Magma and Udo also return.

As they grapple, Goa shoots them both with his "beam ray," inflicting fatal damage. Udo is gone, but so is Magma, and nothing seems to stand between Goa and his goal of obliterating humanity.

After some heartfelt (i.e., emo) interactions, Mamoru and Gam decide to make one last attempt at defeating Goa. With help from Mol, they break into Goa's ship, but there they are stymied by his power. Earth-the-spirit teleports in and tells Goa to back down.

Contrary to what Goa believes, Mother Earth created humans; they are necessary for her purposes. When Goa scoffs, Earth tells Mamoru to summon Magma. Mother Earth not only revived Magma but wipes out all of Goa's monsters.

Goa is enraged and decides to rip Magma into little tiny pieces. Mother Earth, realizing that Goa will never relent, now decides to destroy Earth-the-planet and all living creatures by reverting to the planet's primordial state billions of years ago. When Goa sees he won't be able to have his Big Blue Marble, he gets all huffy and decides to go home. After a few more environmental warnings from Earth-the-spirit, the good guys are left to ponder the destruction of civilization, and the anime ends.

There is only one possible reaction to this: WTF? Admittedly, thirty years had passed since Tezuka Osamu's manga (much of which he didn't write) and this show; and in those thirty years, Tezuka's Buddhist reverence for life and his environmentalism had grown much stronger. But the complete lack of payoff for all the travails and perils that Mamoru and crew had been put through is just laughable. Mamoru was irrelevant; Magma was irrelevant; even Earth-the-spirit was irrelevant. Mother Earth was capable of chasing off the bad guys all by her lonesome. The rest was filler.

Now, this show is not, in fact, the Master's work; it's posthumous. Without strong source material, post-Osamu Tezuka Productions had a tendency to lapse into preachiness. But Tezuka himself, even in his most discursive material like some of the Love Will Save the Earth specials, never failed to give the story a conclusion directly related to the protagonists. The ending of Magma Taishi feels like the scriptwriter failed to grasp the fundamentals of storytelling and the audience's need for closure. Enough.

The staff remains unchanged for this final group of episodes. Yume translated. ninjacloud timed. I edited and typeset. Paul Geromini and Uchuu QCed. The encoder wishes to remain anonymous. As before, these episodes are dual audio, with a signs-only subtitle track for the dub viewer. I've also included the non-credit OP and ED, just in case you haven't heard those songs enough. I have.

Magma Taishi, like the curate's egg, is good in parts; not just these parts. Still, I'm glad that it's finally subbed. You can get this last set of episodes from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.

There will be a batch torrent in a few days. It will include some changes, so please don't torrent the episodes released to date as an "informal batch." 

Magma Taishi (Ep 8-10)

In this next set of Magma Taishi (Ambassador Magma) episodes, things look increasingly bleak for the good guys. Goa's monsters continue to hunt for Murakami Mamoru, and only Magma and Gam can save his bacon from increasingly difficult predicaments. Goa goes from strength to strength. He is fully recovered, and his minion, the oni Udo, has as well. While some of the agents in National Agency have wised up about Goa's intentions, the higher-ups persist in their delusions of negotiating, even when Goa's warships are in the sky all over the world.

And then, Mamoru makes a heart-breaking discovery. Our heroes have truly entered the Slough of Despond™.

The arc opens with Mamoru and his mother Tomoko once again pursued by a super-powerful pseudo-human. 

Rescued by chance, they end up at the home of Imai Kazuo, a typical family man with a wife, Yuki, and a daughter, Midori. But something is off. Midori is actually a pseudo-human, who took the real Midori's place when the latter died of illness. (Who arranged this? Goa was still a disembodied spirit back then.) Pseudo-Midori immediately recognizes what the viewer has suspected for some time: that Tomoko is also a pseudo-human, real name Altemira. Both have developed feelings for their human families, compromising their missions. 

And when Hilda, the blonde pseudo-human that bamboozled the Intelligence Agency back in episode 5, shows up to kill or capture Mamoru, those compromised loyalties are tested to the breaking point.

Meanwhile, Murakami Atsushi, his family, his sidekick Junya, and girl reporter Umemura return to investigate the restricted area around Mount Onitono.

In a long flashback to "ancient" times, an oni called Udo is shown terrorizing local villages until he is defeated by the first Asuka Miki. (Udo presents as female normally but as male in battle mode.) 

In modern times, Udo reawakens just as the gang, and the Intelligence agents under Kunisaki, discover its lair. They all barely escape with their lives when Goa teleports Udo to his spaceship. Udo has only one request: to settle the score with Magma before Goa conquers the planet.

But to get to Magma, Udo needs the flute (whistle) that Mamoru uses to summon Magma. The craven higher-ups at the Intelligence Agency have the same idea. Both sides are willing to kill Mamoru to get what they want. 

Artemila rescues her "son" from a threatening Intelligence agent, but at the cost of revealing her true identity.

Then Udo tries to get the flute by torturing Atsushi and his cohorts. In the ensuing struggle, Artemila is killed, and Gam is knocked out of action. Mamoru summons Magma, but then suddenly the whole group, and the land they stand on, is transported into some sort of gateway or black hole. Now what?

New seiyuu play the Kazuo family:

• Hikita Yumi (Imae Yuki) played Mirei in Condition Green, Android 1026 in Oz, and appeared in Zetsuai: 1989, all Orphan releases.
• Mitsuishi Kotono (Imai Midori) played the title roles in Excel Saga, Birdy the Mighty, and the Maze TV and OVAs, Mink in Dragon Half, Katsuragi Misato in the Evangelion properties, Rosalia in the Angelique franchise, Kagura in the original Fruits Basket, Eri in Love Get Chu, and of course, Sailor Moon in the Sailor Moon franchise. She played the leads in Mother: Saigo no Shoujo Eve and Oshare Kozou wa Hanamaru, as well as  Watanabe Yumi in Tsuyoshi Shikkari Shinasai: Tsuyoshi no Time Machine de Shikkari Shinasai, Oshina in Hidamari no Ki, and appeared in Gakkou no Yuurei volume 1, Blazing Transfer Student, Nagasarete Airantou, and Yamato 2520, all Orphan releases.
• Tsuji Tsutomu (Imai Kazuo) appeared in Next Senki Ehrgeiz, an Orphan release.

The voice actors who play Hilda, female Udo, and male Udo, are not identified. This is odd, because the show is normally quite scrupulous about identifying even small roles ("man", "alien"). 

The staff is unchanged. Yume translated. ImAWasteOfHair timed. I edited and typeset. Paul Geromini and Uchuu QCed. The encoder was an anonymous friend. As before, this is a dual-audio release, with a signs-only subtitle track to go with the English dub. Please note that I've put essentially no effort into the signs-only track, except to cut out the song lyrics and dialog. Accordingly, it shows the translated versions of episode titles, rather than the versions spoken in the English dub track.

Magma Taishi is now past the three-quarters mark, and the endgame is less clear than ever. Goa seems to hold all the cards. The forces of good are totally outclassed. Can they emerge victorious? You'll have to continue watching to find out. Meanwhile, you can get this set of episodes from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net