Wolf Guy

Here's another good show that was lost on Laserdisc: 1992's six-part OVA, Wolf Guy. This is an action/adventure/sci-fi story about immortals who can transform into wolves battling the Phoenix Group, a hideous conspiracy led by an American company called Biomeasure. It's quite baffling at times, because it starts in the middle of a complex situation and ends without reaching much of a conclusion. The nominal hero is fighting not only the Phoenix Group but also Chinese Intelligence's Tiger Corps (immortals who can transform into tigers) and Japanese Cabinet Intelligence. Add to this four-sided battle characters who change allegiance and appearance, and you've got quite an explosive and confusing story.

The protagonist and immortal "wolf guy" of the title is Inugami Akira, who transforms at full moon and when he needs to into a golden wolf. He's deeply attached to his high-school teacher, Aoshiko Akiko, whom he has saved on more than one occasion. The Phoenix Group is aiming to seize the secret of immortality from the wolf-men, wipe out most of planet's population, and then rule the world. Their agents kidnap Akiko, drug and rape her, and use her as bait to try and catch Akira. He in turn seeks an antidote for the poison and to defeat the Phoenix Group.

After some initial hostility, Akira is aided by Hu Ssu, a tiger-woman from the Tigers Corps. She gradually falls in love with him, to the detriment of her loyalty to the Corps. He's also aided by another wolf-man, Jin Akira, a journalist who is out to uncover the truth about the Phoenix Group. Occupying a more villainous role is Saijou Kei, the Phoenix Group agent who, among other bestial acts, raped Akiko. After he is betrayed and left for dead by his bosses, Saijou starts working as an agent of Japanese Cabinet Intelligence, but he's really out for himself.

With all these combatants, there's lots of action, bloodshed, and death, but the series is surprisingly calm in spots, allowing time for character development and interaction. Saijou has as prominent a role as the two Akiras and Hu Ssu. Akiko, reduced to dazed obedience by the Phoenix Group's "Narcotic 800," is mostly a cipher.

Wolf Guy was originally a two-volume manga by Hirai Kazumasa; it has never been published in English. Hirai worked the manga into a novel series than ultimately included 19 volumes. (The OVA appears to start in the middle of book two and cover through book four.) In 2007, the story was re-adapted as a longer and more violent manga known as Wolf Guy: Ookami no Monshou. This later manga version is available in English but diverges considerably from the plot of the original manga and from the OVAs.

The voice cast is stellar. Morikawa Toshiyuki (Inugami Akira) has had a long and distinguished career, including the lead roles in Ear of the Golden Dragon, Gallery Fake, and numerous other shows, as well as a scene-stealing performance as Panda Mama in Polar Bear Cafe. Yokoyama Chisa (Hu Ssu) has also appeared in many shows, playing Sasami/Pretty Sammy in the Tenchi Muyo franchise, as well as the title role in Galaxy Fraulein Yuna. Gouri Daisuke (Saijou) has been in many long-running franchises, including Dragonball and Kinnikuman. Horiuchi Kenyuu (Jin Akira) continues to be active; he played Lt. Colonel Yuki in this year's Joker Game. The director, Yoshonaga Naoyuki, worked on several classic shows, including Maison Ikkoku and Patlabor. The music is by the peerless Kenji Kawai; for some reason, Wolf Guy doesn't show up in his English discographies. I'm still looking for the two soundtrack albums.

The Laserdiscs came from two sources. The first three volumes are from Erik's collection and were encoded by him as Piyo Piyo Productions. The last three volumes are from an anonymous collector and were encoded by M74. The significant differences in color and brightness reflect the sources as we received them and were probably a result of different players and capture setups. Iri translated, ninjacloud timed, I edited and typeset (not many signs), and Nemesis and Calyrica did QC.

I really enjoyed Wolf Guy; it's far-fetched and violent, but it's not a cookie-cutter retread like so much of modern anime. I hope you'll like it too.

Juliet

At first, the 1998 OVA Juliet seems like an incongruous mixture of tones, ranging from slapstick comedy to blatant fanservice to violent tragedy, until you realize that it's based on a four-volume manga by U-Jin, creator of the very ecchi and sometimes sketchy Sakura Diaries. The tonal shifts are still jarring, but knowing who created the story makes matters a little more understandable.

Another oddity of Juliet is its title, as the anime contains no character or location named Juliet and no references to the Shakespearean character. (Perhaps the manga spells out the connection.) Instead, it's the story of two siblings, Anzu and Naruto Nozaki, heirs to the fabulous Nozaki fortune. Naruto appears to be an overbearing sis-con. In fact, he's madly in love with Anzu, because they're not blood-related. He confines her to the family mansion for "security," depriving her of companionship and a real life. At age 16, she starts to rebel. She smuggles in a kitten as a pet (Naruto hates cats) and then escapes in a delivery truck. Naruto catches up to her and realizes that she can't be confined like a bird in a cage. He agrees to let have a normal life, but just then, tragedy strikes.{Spoiler alert - well, not much of a spoiler, because the AniDB summary spills the beans.} Brother, sister, and kitten are all killed.

However, it isn't Anzu's time, so she is brought back to life. Her brother, desperate to stay close to her, reincarnates as the kitten and, in feline form, continues his quest to dominate and letch after her. Anzu starts working at an all-services pet store and, after some comic adventures, finds the prospect of a new life, and possibly romance, beckoning. The feline Naruto continues to watch over her, alternating gratitude at being able to cuddle with her and jealousy at her prospects for human love. And there the story ends... but not before there has been a lot of gratuitous nudity, panty shots, and other fanservice.

Araki Kae, who played Anzu, is probably best known for her lead role in all the Fushigi Yuugi properties.Yamanoi Jin, who voiced Naruto, has had featured roles in many anime. The director, Tomii Wataru, is relatively unknown; his only other credited work is Rance.

This is an M74 release. M74 started with jan55's raw and German subtitles. He retimed the subs and translated them into English. The project then languished a long time until the subs could be checked; a new Orphan team member, Kou, fixed them up. I edited and typeset, and Nemesis and Calyrica did QC. Just before release, M74 made a new encode directly from the R2j DVD. The source has terrible blending/deinterlacing problems on horizontal pans, but the encode is the best that can be done.

Anyway, if you're in the mood for something a little ecchi (and a little sketchy), Juliet will fill the bill nicely. Enjoy.

Kuro ga Ita Natsu (Summer with Kuro)

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.
                    -- aphorism attributed (without much proof) to Josef Stalin

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, artists have grappled with the problem of presenting massive tragedies in ways that are neither overwhelming nor overly distancing. How do you present the Holocaust - or the genocides in Armenia, Bosnia, and Rwanda - or the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - or what's happening in Syria right now, for that matter - in ways that allow people to relate to and comprehend the incomprehensible?

Nakazawa Kenji, a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima, wrestled with this dilemma all his life, and he returned to the subject repeatedly. He was involved with four anime films about the bombing:

• Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) - 1983 - available commercially
• Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Lashed by the Black Rain) - 1984 - subbed by Orphan
• Hadashi no Gen 2 (Barefoot Gen 2) - 1986 - available commercially
• Kuro ga Ita Natsu (Summer with Kuro) - 1990, and now subbed by Orphan

The first three reflected Nakazawa Kenji's bitter personal experiences - his family was killed in the bombing. They were tragic, angry, and often deeply anti-American. For the last, Kuro, Nakazawa wrote an original screenplay and took an entirely different approach.

Kuro ga Ita Natsu tells the story of a family living in Hiroshima near the end of the war: a father, a mother, and two elementary school students, Nobuko and her younger brother Makoto. Unlike in Barefoot Gen, the hardships of war - in particular, the lack of food and prevailing malnutrition among the poor - are not in evidence. Except for air raid drills and enforced patriotic salutes at school, Nobuko and Makoto lead fairly normal lives.

One day, Nobuko finds a black-and-white kitten that has been orphaned by a killer band of crows.

She brings the cat home and persuades her reluctant parents to let her keep it. Her younger brother Makoto names the kitten Kuro. Both children grow attached to the cat and try to scrounge food for their hungry pet without taking from the family's limited rations. They weather several mild adventures and watch their young kitten grow into a mature and intelligent cat. And then, on August 6, 1945... I can't say more without spoiling the plot, but the story uses a narrow focus to both convey and humanize the tragedy of the event.

Kuro ga Ita Natsu was co-written and directed by Shirato Takeshi, who directed the strikingly different Kuroi Ame ni Utarete. The music by Satou Mikio is mostly cheerful, reflecting the slice of life approach of the first three-quarters of the film, but turns doleful after the bombing. There is no information on the voice cast is public anime databases.

Iri translated the movie, and Yogicat timed it. I edited and typeset, and Nemesis and Calyrica did QC. M74 encoded from a Japanese DVD ISO, but the DVD is mastered horribly, with blended frames throughout. Despite that, the moving signs tracked reasonably well, so most signs are typeset.

A few translation notes:

• Makoto pretends he is Tange Sazen, a fictional samurai featured in serials and movies. His stylized laugh, "Gah hah hah...", is intended to be like a samurai's.
• Nobuko and Makoto attend a National People's School, the name given to elementary schools starting in 1941.
• A ho-an-den was a small building that housed a portrait of the current Emperor and Empress. It was typically found at elementary schools.
• The marsh in Kawaguchi-cho is between the Ota-gawa and Tenma-gawa rivers on this map.
• Funairi-hon-machi is a tram stop in HIroshima. 

With this release of Kuro ga Ita Natsu, all of Nakazawa Kenji's animated films about the Hiroshima bombing are now available to an English-speaking audience. As different as they are in approach, they all serve as indelible warnings about the horrors of atomic warfare. Those reminders are as important today as they were when the films were made; perhaps more so.

Neko Nanka Yondemo Konai

Just in time for the holidays, here's another venture into contemporary short-form anime: 2015's Neko Nanka Yondemo Konai (Cats Don't Come When Called). The series has twelve ultra-short episodes (90 seconds each) about a pair of brothers who adopt a pair of kittens, Kuro and Chin, and soon find out, as all cat owners eventually do, that the critters rule the roost. In other words,

           You've made a basic error
           Now let me expound
           This master/servant thing's okay
           But no, not that way round
                         -- Les Barker, Guide Cats for the Blind
 
Although the animation is fairly minimal, it has cats, so what more do you need?

The anime is based on a manga of the same name by Sugisaku and seems to be autobiographical. Sugisaku graduated from a trade school in Niigata, went to Tokyo to become a boxer, had to give up after suffering a torn retina, and then worked for a flower shop and anime companies. When his brother went back to Niigata after getting married, he became a mangaka. The voice actors were chosen by auditions from a school called Nihon Kogakuin Creator's Carriage. The production company, Dub, seems to be associated with the same school.

Orphan must have a lot of cat lovers, because there was no problem staffing the project. Iri found the raws, translated, and did the research on the anime's creators; Yogicat timed the episodes; I edited and typeset; and Nemesis and Calyrica QCed. The series provided some good laughs during an otherwise grim stretch of time.

So have a happy Thanksgiving. We don't plan on subbing the live-action movie.

Dragon Fist

If I may paraphrase Forrest Gump, 80s and 90s OVAs are "like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're going to get." That's exactly the case with 1991's Dragon Fist. As one of the QCs fumed, "I've signed on for this OVA to see some martial arts and inhuman characters, not for a really stupid plot about teenagers playing with cloning." You never know.

Dragon Fist starts out on a promising note, introducing Ling Fei-long, heir to the White Dragon Clan. Its members carry the power of the White Dragon in their fists. (Sort of like Ear of the Golden Dragon, where the clan chief carries the power of the Golden Dragon in his left ear.) Normally, heirs to the clan chief are born holding a silver jewel, but Fei-long was born holding a transparent jewel. For this aberration, his kin regard him with suspicion. He is sent to Japan to be schooled and to finish his training. And suddenly, we have a high school drama with sci-fi overtones.

In Japan, Fei-long is an apparently normal high-school student who is bullied for being a foreigner. One day, he sees some thugs trying to kidnap a girl named Katano Fuyuka. He intervenes and saves her, only to learn that she is not Katano Fuyuka. Fuyuka is actually dead, and this girl is a clone. (Despite this, clone Fuyuka seems to have original Fuyuka's childhood memories.) When a subsequent kidnapping attempt succeeds, Fei-long tracks the baddies to their laboratory in the mountains. There he fights the villains, mostly unsuccessfully, until he suddenly comes into his special powers, easily trounces everyone, and rescues the girl. There follows a totally arbitrary and tragic development, and the OVA ends.

Sasaki Nozomu, who played Ling Fei-long, has had prominent roles in better shows, including Tetsuo in Akira and Mello in Death Note. Nishiwara Kumiko, who voiced Fuyuka, played Iris Chateaubriand in all the Sakura Wars franchise and numerous live musicals derived from it. She also had a lead role in Tenkousei, which Orphan subbed this year. Matsumodo Yasunori, who played the chief villain, Sugiura, has had many roles, including Rin, the confused young protagonist in Joker: Marginal City, and Muto, the stalwart hero of Oz. (Orphan has subbed both of those OVAs as well.) The director, Yamauchi Shigeyasu, has had a long career, including Boys Over Flowers, Crying Freeman, the Saint Seiya franchise, and more recently, Yumekui Merry and Kimi no Iru Machi. Dragon Fist doesn't add much to his resume. The music is by the peerless Kawai Kenji, whose accomplishments are too long to summarize, and works well.

Iri found the raw (a VHS rip) and translated it. ninjacloud did the timing. I edited and typeset (there isn't much). Calyrica karaoked the OP and ED. Calyrica and Nemesis QCed. The OVA was never released on DVD, so this raw is probably as good as we're going to get.

Dragon Fist isn't top drawer anime, but it isn't Bavi Stock II or Twinkle Nora Rock Me! either. Enjoy.

Downhill (Twinkle Nora Rock Me!)

There's no way to soften this. Twinkle Nora Rock Me! (Nora 2) is to the original Nora as Bavi Stock II is to Bavi Stock I: a descent from the barely passable into the laughable. It's so bad that...

Audience: How bad is it, Collectr?

Collectr: It's so bad that Mike Toole, of Anime News Network, used it as a prime example in his panel, The Worst Anime of All Time.  He noted the almost total lack of in-between animation, the awkward jerkings that pass for dancing, and other failings. I could point to the absurd plot and the misspelled Engrish signs - DEPURTURE and AERIVAL - in the spaceport, but this just scratches the surface.

To start, the Nora Scholar of the sequel is a totally different character, even though she looks the same and is played by the same voice actress. In the original, Nora was an air-headed teenage space tourist who outsmarts an out-of-control AI by treating him as a naughty teenage boy. In the sequel, Nora is an interstellar bounty hunter with strong psychic powers. The universe is different too. In the original, the setting was the near-Earth planets and moons. In the sequel, the canvas is much broader.

Second, the plot is absurd. After defusing a hostage situation, bounty hunter Nora sets out for the "desolate mining planet" Dazzle. There she enters a rowdy bar and draws the unwanted attention of a huge bruiser named Touchino. She's actually after his older brother, Fuuchuro, who has psychic powers too. In order to find Fuuchuro, she must convince Max, a wannabe dancer, to disclose the brothers' hideaway. (She does this by playing air drums and convincing him to dance with her.) She then has a "wizards battle" with Fuuchuro, defeats him, and joins Max in a concluding dance number at the same rowdy bar as before.

But above all, the animation is wretched. The first major scene - a hostage situation in a spaceport - has no in-between animation whatsoever. Nora's air drumming is completely out of sync with the background music. And the critical dancing scene between Nora and Max is animated at four frames per second. The dancing is awkwardly drawn and not very imaginative, but the jerky animation destroys any credibility.

With Bavi Stock II, at least, there's an explanation for the drastic changes between the first and second episodes: it was made by a totally different staff at a different company than Bavi Stock I. Twinkle Nora Rock Me!, on the other hand, is drawn from the same source material as the original and has the same director, character designer, voice cast, and production company. What happened?

Budget might be one explanation. It definitely looks as though money ran out at some point along the way, and the producers were unable to pay for in-between animation in many scenes. Lack of time - some sort of schedule crunch - might be another factor. Then again, perhaps the staff realized how bad this OVA was going to be and just threw in the towel.

Twinkle Nora Rock Me! has the same voice cast as Nora; see my blog entry on Nora for comments on the principal actors. The music is by a rock group called Vigilante and is entirely in English, most of which is incomprehensible. Fortunately, the soundtrack album has printed lyrics for the ending song.

Intrepid translated the show, his first for Orphan, and Iri checked the translation. ninjacloud timed, I edited and styled, Calyrica and Nemesis did QC, and M74 encoded from a Laserdisc ISO provided by an anonymous donor. The ISO is missing the last thirty seconds due to uncorrectable damage on the original Laserdisc. Despite that, it is  better than the only other raw, which is from a VHS tape. To provide a complete version of the ending song, I've cut out the ending from the VHS raw and added the song lyrics. It's available as a separate file.

So here's the sequel to Nora. Don't all rush to thank us at once.

Meisou-Ou Border

Orphan has done many forgotten 80s and 90s OVAs. Some have been stunningly good, like Oz, and some have been stunningly bad, like Bavi Stock II. But none have led to as much head-scratching as Meisou-Ou Border, a 1991 OVA from Artland. One of the QCs remarked after watching it, "Well, that was random." Nonetheless, it's quite an interesting show.

Meisou-Ou Border is the only anime to come from a 14 volume seinen manga (completely untranslated) by Marley Carib and Tanaka Akio. It tells the story of two drifters, Kubota and Hachitsuka, who return from the Middle East and choose to live on the "border" of conventional society in Tokyo. The anime relates one specific episode from the start of the manga. Kubota and Hachitsuka are lured down to Osaka by an unscrupulous documentary producer, who places them as "innocent bystanders" in the middle of a yakuza gang war. The two manage to hold their own, much to the producer's dismay, and then they drift back to Tokyo. The episode closes with a completely unrelated encounter between Hachitsuka and his former mentor, Jinno, now a homeless man down on his luck. And that's it. The tone is mostly comic - even the yakuza violence isn't very scary or bloody - but the ending is elegiac and very sad.

Kubota was voiced by Horiuchi Kenyuu, a veteran voice actor who is active today, often playing authoritative figures like Colonel Yuuki in this year's Joker Game. Hachitsuki was voiced by Yara Yuusaka, who also had a prolific career (for example, he played Kai in Tomoe ga Yuku!) but is now retired. The director, Ishiguro Noboru, was an industry veteran who directed several episodes of Animated Classics of Japanese Literature; he also worked on Mushishi (another Artland property) before his death in 2012.

Iri found the raw - a VHS rip, apparently - became intrigued by the show, and translated it. ninjacloud timed, I edited and typeset, and Calyrica and Nemesis did QC. The raw is marred by awful frame blending, in a pattern of three good frames followed by two bad frames. There's also a noticeable dropout just past the 4 minute mark. As a result, it's impossible to make moving signs look good, and they've all been set "Yawara style," i.e., as notes at the top of the screen. If a better raw surfaces, we'll do a second version.

My main feeling after watching Meisou-Ou Border is that I wanted to know more, but just like with Sanctuary, this one episode is the only animation we'll get from a much larger manga. At least with Sanctuary, the manga is completely translated into English. For Meisou-Ou Border, the OVA is the only tantalizing fragment available to an English-speaking audience. Enjoy.