Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou

Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou (Gulliver's Space Travels) was Toei's eighth feature-length cartoon, released in 1965. It was dubbed in English and released in the US as Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon in 1966. Like all its predecessors, it was not financially successfu. Because of that, it was the last Japanese animated feature to be released in the United States for almost five year, according to Wikipedia. It's easy to see why. Despite its European setting and sci-fi trappings, Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou still adheres to Toei's faux Disney model..

Ted is a street urchin in an unnamed European city sometime in the 20th century. (They have talking pictures, in color.) Sneaking into a movie theater to watch Gulliver's Travels, he is discovered by the usher and unceremoniously kicked out. 

Wandering depressed and aimless, he is hit by a truck and knocked unconscious. When he "wakes up", he meets a discarded toy soldier, the Colonel, and a stray dog, Mack, both of whom can talk. 

The dog suggests a trip to an amusement park that is closed for the night. Discovered by the guards, the trio escape on a fireworks rocket and crash-land in a forest. 

They're near the house of the now-elderly Gulliver, a professor who is building a rocket ship to reach the Green Planet of Hope.

Ted convinces the professor to take them all, plus the professor's pet crow Kuro, on the planned space trip.

After "rigorous" training, the quintet board the rocket and launch into space.

They travel the Milky Way, encountering various adventures, including the "Reverse Time Nebula" (a black hole) that makes the crew become younger. 

Saved by a mysterious spaceship, they are eventually forced to land on the Purple Planet. It is run by gentle, if perplexed, robots, who serve a robot king and princess.

However, this idyllic existence is menaced by giant, aggressive robots. 

Gulliver, Ted, and his friends fight the menace and defeat it, only to discover that the robots of the Purple Planet are actually the people of the Green Planet, forced to be machines by the giant robots they had originally built to serve them. 

With the natural order restored, Ted et al fly off to return to Earth... where Ted wakes up on the street, having dreamed the whole thing. He meets the now wordless Colonel and Mack and, with his optimism restored, sets off on new adventures.

Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou has its moments, but it is overstuffed with songs and set pieces. A few, like the training sequence, are amusing,

but others, like Ted's dream and the Song of Earth, feel like padding. A young Hayao Miyazaki was an animator on the film, but he wasn't fond of it. According to Wikipedia, he was not satisfied with the original ending, in which the robots remained inhuman. He proposed the idea that the robots were actually human, and it was adopted. Miyazaki created the original drawings for the scene in which the princess wakes up. He also worked on the scenes in which the robots go on a rampage. He said later that children found the movie boring and ran around the theater. I sympathize.

Gulliver's failure in the US illustrated the diminishing returns of Toei's formula, just as Disney itself was experiencing lackluster returns on its animated movies like The Sword and the Stone. Toei's response was evident in its next two releases, Cyborg 009 and Shounen Jack to Mahou Tsukai. I've already noted that Shounen Jack introduced a more "cartoonish" art style and sensibility. I'll say more about the Cyborg 009 movies when we get to them.

Some translation notes about discrepancies with official sources (e.g., English Wikipedia):

• The spaceship's destination is the Green Planet, because it is clearly green. But official sources call it the Blue Planet. The Japanese word aoi can mean either color.
• Gulliver's faithful crow is Kuro, because it's a common Japanese pet name. But official sources call the bird Crow. The Japanese word kuro normally means black, but it can also mean crow, although the preferred word for crow is karasu.

The voice cast is from an earlier era.

• Sakamoto Kyuu (Ted) was an actor and singer. He had no other voice acting credits.
• Miyaguchi Seiji (Lemuel Gulliver) was an actor from Tokyo. He had no other voice acting credits.
• Hori Junko (Mack the Stray Dog)  was best known as the voice of the protagonists in three Fujiko Fujio works, Obake no Q-tarou, Ninja Hattori-kun, and Chinpui. She played the title role in Cat-Eyed Boy and also appeared in Wan Wan Chuushingura, Taiyou no Ouji: Horus no Daibouken, Rain Boy, and Makoto-chan, all Orphan release), as well as Moomin, Akage no Anne, Cinderella Boy, and Unico.
• Itou Makiko (Kuro) played the title role in Fight Da!! Pyuto, recently completed by Inka, and appeared in Shounen Jack to Mahou Shoujo and Wan Wan Chuushingura, both Orphan releases.
• Ozawa Shouichi (Colonel) was an actor, poet, singer, and researcher. He narrated Band of Ninja but had no other voice acting credits
• Ooizumi Akira (King of the Purple Planet) played Terayama Daikichi in Asatte Dance, Ichiji in Mellow, and Mama-rin in Okama Hakusho, and he appeared in Korogashi Ryota, all Orphan releases.
• Honma Chiyoko (Princess of the Purple Planet) was an actress and singer. She appeared in Wan Wan Chuushingura, an Orphan release.
• Iida Danny (Scientist of the Purple Planet) had no other voice acting credits.
• Imanishi Masao (Boss Robot) played Skipper in Giant Gorg, Franken in Kaibutsu-kun, Antares in Ginga Tetsudou 999, Kyoushi in Miyuki, Fefebvre in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and Kanpei Fuumi in Ipponbouchou Mantarou, an Orphan release.
• Okada Yukiko (Cupid in Ted's dream) played Kunashida-hime in Wanpaku Ouji and Ruriko in Flying Phantom Ship.

The film was directed by Kuroda Yoshio, also directed many other anime movies and series, including Flander no Inu movie and TV, Peter Pan no Bouken, Pygmalio, and many Hello Kitty OVAs.

The original script was from neo1024. Perevodildo translation checked and timed it for the new raw. I edited and typeset. imatu and Uchuu QCed. The raw was encoded from an HDTV broadcast of the remastered film. As with Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke, the broadcast was too bit starved to support full HD, so it's standard HD, H.265 with 4:4:4 colorspace. If you didn't like that for Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke, you won't like it here either.

Gulliver no Uchuu Ryokou was not the end of the "Toei formula." It would surface again, for example, in The World of Hans Christian Andersen. But after this, Toei began to diversify its offerings, and rising young animators like Miyazaki made their impact felt. Better movies (for example, Shounen Jack) lay ahead. Meanwhile, you can get this one from the usual torrent site.

 

Jigokudou Reikai Tsuushin

I'm not sure how we got interested in Jigokudou Reikai Tsuushin (Hell Hall Spirit World Connection), a 1996 one-shot OVA. I had the R2J ISO in pile of raws and mentioned it to Perevodildo. He thought it looked interesting, particularly the artwork, and agreed it would make a good project. I sent the ISO to an encoder and got back a great-looking raw. This release is the result.

Jigokudou Reikai Tsuushin is based on a long-running supernatural novel series by Kouzuki Hinawa. The OVA recounts two adventures of three elementary school terrors - Kanamori Tetsuji, the hot-headed ringleader; Niijima Ryoji, soft-hearted but a fast runner; and Shiina Yusuke, the brains of the group.

Collectively, they are known as The Three Great Troublemakers, or just The Brats. They fight off older boys who try to shake down elementary school kids and explore all the forbidden areas around their town. They are guided, and sometimes helped, by the spooky pharmacist of run-down Gokurakudo (known to all as Jigokudo or Hell Hall), who keeps an equally spooky black cat as a familiar.

In the first part, their guide points them at a tree in the forest, where a body is supposedly buried. After several misfires, the boys indeed find a corpse and get more than they bargained for.

In the second part, their guide describes how yokai possess people and consume their sanity. The boys come to suspect that one of their classmates is possessed and have to fight to save him from a grisly fate.

The plots are okay, but the OVA really stands out in other ways. The first differentiator is the character designs and artwork. The boys are far from standard anime models, with enlarged heads, spindly necks, and misproportioned bodies.

The old pharmacist has a shark's smile full of mangled teeth. The backgrounds are drawn starkly, with cross-hatched shadows and curving lines.

The second is the writing, which is snappy and compelling. Both artwork and writing keep the viewer engaged, beyond the the twists of the supernatural storylines.

Some translation notes: 

• The spell that Tetsuji is given to uncover the buried corpse is The Mantra of Light, a Buddhist prayer.
• The spell that Tetsuji is given to test for youkai is a kuji-in, a system of mudras (hand gestures) and mantras, possibly of Daoist origin.
• The spell that Tetsuji uses to trap the youkai is a mantra of Acala Vidyârâja, a buddha that appears holding a sword while chanting.
• The "sweet potato candy" that the boys consume at the Jigokudo is a real product. 

The voice cast includes:

• Nagasawa Miki (Niijima Ryoji) played the title role in Vampire Princess Miyu, Cream Panda in the Soreike! Anpanman franchise, Ayako in Black Jack 21, Mutio in Blue Submarine No.6, Helen in Claymore, Judy in Cowboy Bebop, Lisa in eX-Driver, Ayumi in Geobreeders, Izumi Maki in Martian Successor Nadesico, Kizna in Pilot Candidate, Ryou in Princess Nine, Shion in Seraphim Call, and Ibuki Maya in the Evangelion franchise.
• Takayama Minami (Shiina Yuusuke) starred as the title roles in Kiki's Delivery Service and Space Girl Yamamoto Yohko, and, most famously, played Conan Edogawa in the more than 1000 episodes, OVAs, movies, and specials of the Detective Conan franchise. She played Kuroyanagi Meiji in Chocchan Monogatari, Yuu in Cosmic Fantasy, Emi in Genji, Part 1, and you Guy in Heavy, all Orphan releases.
• Takano Urara (Kanamori Tetsushi, the fighter) played Marler in the Aa! Megami-sama franchise, Maria in the Sakura Wars franchise, Cocktail in Knights of Ramume, and Gloria in PriPara. She played Sushi Neko in Let's Nupu Nupu, Ken in Next Senki Ehrgeiz, and Sister Yumiko in Sei Michaela Gakuen Hyouryuuki II, and she  appeared in Gakkou no Yuurei volume 6, all Orphan releases.
• Nishikawa Ikuo (proprietor of Jigokudo) played the title role in Casshan, Robert Hana in Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Great Grandmother in Itoshi no Betty Monogatari, Tarou in Reideen the Brave, Benn Gunn in Treasure Island (movie), and Hagaromo in Yawara!. He appeared in A Ghost Story, an Orphan release.
• Ishii Kouji (Office Mitamura, the town policeman) played Fujisawa in the El Hazard franchise, Taiga in the GaoGaiGar franchise, Mitsukake in the Fushigi Yuugi franchise, John Blade in Sin: The Movie, Tanaka in Kachou Ouji: Hard Rock Save the Space, and Garterbelt in Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. He also appeared as Miyoshi Isannyudo in the Sanada 10 special, Henry Hellgate in Alice in Cyberland, Hyman in Fire Emblem, and Minamoto no Tokitomo in Haruka Naru Toki no Nake de 2, all Orphan release.
• Touma Yumi (Yoshimoto, the possessed punk) played the title roles in Emma: A Victorian Romance and Baby Felix, and Urd in the Aa! Megami-sama franchise. She appeared in numerous Orphan releases, including Tezuka Osamu Works: Kyoto Animation Theater, Sotsugyou: Graduation, Boyfriend, Condition Green, Fukuyama Gekijou, Tezuka Osamu ga Kieta?!, Gude Crest, and Eguchi Hisashi no Nantoko Nareudesho.
• Masuda Yuki (Hayase) played Yuki in the two Ultra Nyan OVAs and appeared in Gakkou no Yuurei, volume 2, all Orphan releases. She also played Yanagi in Flame of Recca, Yuri in the Sakura Wars shows, and Nami in La Corda d'Oro.
• Tomizawa Michie (Kisaragi-sensei, the school nurse) played Linna Yamazaki in Bubblegum Crisis/Crash, Matsuzaka-sensei in Crayon Shin-chan, the nameless Office Lady in Oruchuban Ebichu, Sailor Mars in Sailor Moon, Mihoshi in Tenchi Muyo, Airi Komiyama in Those Who Hunt Elves, and Emi Ogasawara in Ghost Sweeper Mikami. She also played Umeko in Korogashi Ryota, Shitara Yuri in Let's Nupu Nupu and female Joker in Joker: Marginal City, all Orphan releas
• Ebara Masashi (demon) appeared in Shakugan no Shana, Nodame Cantabile, Metropolis. He also appeared in Sanada 10, Blazing Transfer Student, Akai Hayate, Eiyuu Banka Koushi-den, Mikeneko Holmes,  Mahjong Hishouden: Naki no Ryuu, and Apfelland Monogatari, all Orphan releases. 

Satou Junichi (director) also directed Akuma-kun, Sailor Moon, Gatekeepers, Kaleido Star, Aria and its sequels, Phi Brain and its sequels, Kimama ni Idol, and many other renowned shows.

Perevodildo translated and timed the show. (He drops the additional vowels for long Japanese vowels; hence, Jigokudo in the script versus Jigokudou in the standard title.) Paul Geromini edited. I typeset and QCed. Nemesis also QCed. The raw was encoded by an anonymous friend from an R2J DVD ISO.

Jigokudou Reikai Tsuushin is stylish, suspenseful, and fun. The main characters are not the usual mass-produced models, either in their design or behavior. The artwork is striking and memorable. Everyone who worked on the project enjoyed the it, and you will too. You can get the OVA from the usual torrent site.

 

Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke

Toei's second feature-length cartoon was 1959's Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke (Young Sarutobi Sasuke). It was Toei's first wide-screen feature and the first Japanese animated film to be released in North America, under the title Magic Boy. Orphan is pleased to present a new version in high(er) definition, based on the Toei channel broadcast of the remastered film.

Sarutobi Sasuke is a legendary Japanese folk hero, a ninja who supposedly served the Sengoku warlord Sanada Yukimura in the latter's ultimately futile resistance to the rise of Tokugawa Ieyesu. (Sarutobi is a generic term for a ninja who servers a local lord.) Sasuke has appeared in many manga and anime, including Orphan's release of Shinshaku Sengoku Eiyuu Densetsu Sanada Juu Yuushi, better known as Sanada 10. Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke purports to be an origin story, telling how young Sasuke became a master of ninjutsu and met up with Sanada Yukimura.

In the movie, Sasuke is a boy living in a forest with his sister, Oyuu, and the usual collection (for Toei) of animal sidekicks - a monkey (Jiro), a sun bear (Kolo), a female deer, her fawn (Eri), and others. 

His idyllic existence is interrupted when a giant eagle snatches the fawn and eventually drops it into an evil-looking lake, home to a voracious giant salamander. The doe and Saskuke follow. The doe jumps in to save her fawn and is taken by the monster. Sasuke attempts to fight the salamander, 

but he is unable to save the doe from a grisly fate. The salamander transforms into a woman and easily defeats Sasuke's pursuit. 

Oyuu tells Sasuke that the salamander is a powerful witch, Princess Yasha, in disguise. Determined to become stronger, Sasuke leaves home to learn the secrets of ninjutsu (ninja techniques).

On his travels, Sasuke runs into and fights a bandit gang from Mt. Oyama, led by the villainous Gonkurou. 

They're allied with Princess Yasha, and her intervention proves almost fatal to the boy - but also fortuitous. The unconscious Sasuke is discovered by Tozawa Hakuunsai, a legendary hermit and ninjutsu master from Mt. Togakure. 

He agrees to teach Sasuke ninjutsu and puts the boy through a rigorous training regimen. Meanwhile, the bandits attack and sack a nearby village, escaping before the local lord, Sanada Yukimura, can arrive to fight them. A young village girl, Okei, refuses to be parted from her chest of belongings and ends up the "captive" of two comically inept bandits, Kinta and Sanji.

Three years pass. Yukimura meets Oyuu and is smitten by her. 

Sasuke masters all of Tozawa's teachings and prepares to leave. But when Princess Yasha learns of the budding romance, and Oyuu's connection to the boy who confronted her before, she is infuriated. She orders the bandits to capture Oyuu in order to lure both Yukimura and Sasuke into a fatal trap. 

Needless to say, the outcome is not what she intended.

In short, Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke resembles the other early Toei films, notably Saiyuuki, drawing its plot from Japanese legends, interspersing the action with physical comedy, providing lots of animal sidekicks, lightening the villains' villainy with comic ineptitude, and including a fair number of songs. Fortunately, the songs are not intrusive or long. and Oyuu is far less cloying than Saiyuuki's Rin Rin. The character designs for the human characters are still a bit off, and in medium and long shots, the characters appear to glide across surfaces rather than walk on them. 24fps animation is used to good effect where needed. So the movie's a decent albeit mixed ride, exciting and a bit scary for children, tolerable for adults.

The CVs of the voice cast are mostly lost in the mists of time. Many in the cast were stage or screen actors.

• Miyazaki Teruo (Sarutobi Sasuke) - no other information.
• Sakuramachi Hiroko (Oyuu) - no other anime credits.
• Nakamura Katsuo (Sanada Yukimura) played the title role in Kaitou Lupin: 813 no Nazo, Lloyd Steam in Steamboy, and Yagyuu Munemori in Samurai Resurrection.
• Sugiyama Tokuko (Princess Yasha) played the mother in Taiyou no Ouji: Horus no Daibouken, an Orphan release, and appeared in two Sekai Meisaku Douwa movies.
• Yoshida Yoshio (Gonkurou) - no other anime credits.
• Itou Ryouei ( Kinta) - no other anime credits.
• Sakai Shunji (Sanji) - no other anime credits.
• Matsushima Tomoko (Okei) played Annie Sullivan in Helen Keller Monogatari, Princess Aya in Anju to Zushio-maru, and Yumi in the original Mazinger Z.
• Kishii Akira (Miyoshi Seikai Nyudo, Yukimura's lead warrior) - no other information .
• Susukida Kenji (Tozawa Hakuunsai) - no other information.
• Kishido (Iwata?) Kazuo (Yukimura's gatekeeper) - no other information.
• Akagi Harue was a film and TV actress with no other anime credits.
• Asou Mitsuko played the title role in Donkikko and Matsuyo in Osamatsu-kun and appeared in Attack No. 1 and Sarutobi Ecchan,
• Kashii Kuniko played the title role in Ciscon Ouji, Maneko in Okawari-Boy Starzan S, and Shinpachi in Shin Dokonjo G.

Two directors are listed. One, Daikuhara Akira, was an early pioneer of Japanese animation, with his first credit dating from 1942. He worked on most of the early Toei movies before retiring in the 1980s. The other director, Yabushita Taiji, also worked on the early Toei movies.

Perevodildo translated and timed. Yume translation checked. I edited and typeset, with massive help from Perevodildo (more on that in a moment). Nemesis and imatu QCed. The encoder, as usual, wished to remain anonymous. The raw was encoded from a Toei channel HDTV broadcast of the remastered film. Although the web stream is too bit-starved to support FHD, it is sufficient for HD (720p equivalent), the same as Orphan's previous Toei channel encodes. The result looks better than the DVD, particularly for color fidelity. The encoder noted:

[An] x265-based encode this time as following testing, it achieved source transparency at a markedly lower file size than x264 (despite the descaled resolution over the native broadcast stream, it's actually the footage grain contained within and associated high bit rate required to preserve it that reduces compression efficiency). A clean progressive 23.976 fps film IVTC was extracted from the interlaced 29.970 fps NTSC video stream, and 4:4:4 10-bit to preserve color resolution.  Light chroma cleanup, deblocking, dehaloing, and grain-matching were also employed to take care of the transport stream's residual artifacts. 

There was only one sign of significance: Sasuke's note to Oyuu that he is leaving home to learn ninjutsu. It appeared to be a simple plan and zoom on a static painting, but it simply would not track. After banging my forehead on the screen for weeks, I realized that during the zoom, the aspect ratio of the sign was changing. (I have no idea how this happened.) Perevodildo discovered that the motion tracker's "shear" parameter allowed the sign to be tracked, and a different Aegisub script (perspective motion) allowed the sign to scale independently in the x and y axes. Props to him for figuring this out. Remember, kids, I'm not a typesetter; I only play one in this column.

Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke was the first Japanese anime to be dubbed and released in North America, under the title Magic Boy. Like the ones that followed, it was not financially successful, and the dub was unavailable on home media until 2014. As I've stated before, I don't think the dubs of the Toei films add anything, and it's not included in this release.

Shounen Sarutobi Sasuke showed that Toei's faux-Disney format could be made to work as entertainment, but it's still a hit-or-miss proposition. You can get the movie from the usual torrent site.