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.