Trider G-7 Italian OP...

Here's a video of the Italian OP to INVINCIBLE ROBOT TRYDER G-7.

The Italian market dubbed many anime shows, and replaced the theme songs most of the time.
This dramatic opening is an example of a song which is better than the original - but you have to wonder if the composers saw the visuals they were singing to.

The show itself, about young Watta Takeo who takes over his father's Takeo General Company (robot-for-rent) is mainly remembered for being the replacement for...GUNDAM! Sunrise and Clover needed a lighthearted replacement for Yoshiyuki Tomino's folly (it came back with a vengeance, of course). Tryder itself is notable for being a robot with 7 modes (take that, Sixshot). The T-Hawk, T-Cosmic, T-Beagle [robot torso mounted on tank treads, and T-Eagle forms were made with the toy itself, while I believe the other 2 modes [THAT I CAN'T FIND THE NAMES FOR!] required a separate shuttle. Tomino went on to do IDEON (toys produced by Tomy).

Devastating Dia Builder...

Here's a Devastator kitbash by "Ptitvite". I gather he repainted the original Constructicons and made custom parts to link them together. Very nice!

I never had the original Devastator/Construction Robo, although I had a cast-off original Constructicon (can't remember which one). I finally obtained the mold when I was 22, thanks to K-mart and their wonderful Easter baskets (which often contain knockoff Transformers or Brave series toys).

The other Transformer combiners until Monstructor were designed to be able to be interchangable with each other (the "Scramble City" concept), which was nice, but the concept got boring after a while - you had 4 little guys who were limbs and 1 big guy who was the center*. The fact you could connect the combiners to Metroplex and Trypticon wasn't publicized (I don't think the parts to combine them were included with either Metro or Trypty).

Here's a Diaclone.net page on all of the Devastating versions of the Construction Robo:
http://www.diaclone.net/orid/diabuild/index.html

Now, with these guys, a giant screwdriver would be cool. (Okay, it'd still be pretty silly, but I'd go with it).

* - Trivia - the Seacon SC team had 5 little members who could turn into weapon platforms - 4 combined with big Snaptrap to become Piranacon, while the other became P's gun.

As stated earlier, I got GAOGAIGAR vol. 1 as a present for Xmas. The show is basically a fun
kid's robot show in its first few episodes. I gather it gets much better after the first half,
but I really enjoyed the first DVD and bought the second one yesterday. Nothing "deep" (thank goodness- depth to anime creators [and to too many other people] means "incomprehensible"], just good robot fun.

A few comments on the first DVD:

-I really like the concept of the monsters being transformed humans, even if I have the suspicion that this was to have a "no killing" policy for international markets (the show's main kid Mamoru transforms the cores of the Zonder robots back to humans).

-The designs for the characters are mostly decent, aside from the kids and Shishido Gai himself,
who are far too "modern" (i.e. big eyes and weird hair) for my hopelessly retrograde tastes. The
cover art makes these guys look even worse than they actually are, since hideous art is
what otaku like nowadays.

-Takara is really hard-selling the toys in the Brave series - not surprising since the show was a replacement for TRANSFORMERS. Still, it gets annoying - new devices are introduced in eps. 3 and 4, new Transformer-like robots [Hyoryuu and Enryuu] are introduced in episode 5, and the combined Choryuujin and his Eraser Head thingy are introduced in episode 6! I miss the old days, when Mazinger Z didn't get the Jet Scrander until his show had been on for almost a year.

-A SCREWDRIVER?! The Dividing Driver is used to create a safe space for battle, not for actually manipulating screws. This IS pretty silly, although I wouldn't have complained if Takara had made the whole show hardware/construction based. [Hey, YOU'D watch a Korean anime starring Devastator fighting blue Zeons. Well, I know I would].

-Speaking of the Dividing Screwdriver, this reminded me of the live-action Metal Hero SPIELBAN'S Hyperslip device. This device whooshed enemy soldiers and battleships from a populated city to a safe (and boring) Toei-standard rock quarry. I'll have to watch more to see if this idea is so the animators don't have to kill themselves drawing backgrounds. [I'm the Kup of robot anime - every show reminds me of some other show.]

-The $20 per DVD policy is not a good idea - Media Blasters would have been better served to just sub this and release it as a few inexpensive 13-ep "brick" DVD sets. The people like me who eat this old-school robot stuff up are few and far between, and even I balk about eventually spending $200 on this show.

Spacecraft Carrier Blue Noah...

Here's a video of Blue Noah, set to the UCHUU SENKAN YAMATO OP. [The owner of this video does not allow video embedding, so watch here. Teaches ME not to read the side of the page].

BLUE NOAH was a 1979 attempt by Yoshinobu Nishizaki to duplicate YAMATO's success. He failed. (He tried again with ODIN, with much more painful results). The show was dubbed into English as THUNDER SUB and aired in limited US markets, as well as in other territories (my few TS episodes are descended from Canadian broadcast).

Read Voyager Entertainments "Brothers of Yamato" article here.

I wonder if this opening (sans YAMATO song and lyrics text, obviously) was made and never used for the last 3 episodes of the show, which is when the BN and its brother ships went into space. I don't think the opening ever changed on the actual show when the ships went spaceworthy. This opening would have worked better.

For some reason, BLUE NOAH isn't well regarded among even YAMATO fans. Even Voyager Entertainment doesn't like the show, as you can see from their article. I'm not quite sure why.

The biggest problem with BN is the glut of characters, since both the minisub Sheila and the Blue Noah have separate crews until the kids take over the Blue Noah in #21. The ship designs aren't that great, except for the Blue Noah itself (which is obviouly made by a toy company ..and I WANT THE TOYS!).

Some BN toys are at Toybox DX's Nomura page:
http://www.toyboxdx.com/data/nomura/nomuradiecast.htm

Other than the above...yes, the show is extremely derivative of YAMATO, but YAMATO is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and possibly the greatest thing since whole loaves of bread.

The reputed problem with other YAMATO cash-in ODIN (which I rented, but never got to see...except for the infamous Loudness ending) was that it was deathly overlong and boring. The BN episodes I've seen don't hold a candle to YAMATO 1 or 2, but they're more entertaining
than Y3 was.

Come on, Voyager Entertainment. You've released every SB and YAMATO thing you possibly could. (Unless you'd like to give us DVDs of ISCANDAR and COMET EMPIRE that look halfway decent). Release THUNDER SUB or subtitled BLUE NOAH on DVD!

THUNDER SUB...this time, why not the derivative cash in?

It's Xmas!...


A Merry Christmas to you and yours. Hopefully Satan Claus [P10] will bring you something nice, such as a Gaogaigar DVD.

The Lost Triple Changer...

On my old 2005 blog, which I posted on faithfully for a whole *week*, I posted this Korean robot anime site (in Korean):

http://home.paran.com/yanus91/koanimain.html

I wished then to see these mysterious programs. The next spring, Joseph Lai and Digiview Entertainment answered my wish for $1 each. May the metaphorical gods damn them! (These things are *INSANE* - how in the world can the Koreans manage to make them so *boring*!?)

While searching for Goldwing after hearing the "wonderful in an awful way" (or "awful in a wonderful way") theme song by "Gigi" (?) in this AWO podcast (at 35:02), I came across this page, thinking it was some sort of Micro Change ripoff, and spotted this design:

His blades quiver with delight.

(Plenty more pictures of this fellow at the site itself. Also starring a Valkyrie, Don Zauser from DAITARN 3, and Godmars robots with Golion heads).

This is the creatively named "Helicopter Type" triple changer from the tail end of the Diaclone line that was never made into a Transformer, unlike the "Jet Fighter Type" (Blitzwing). The shuttle/train changer Astrotrain was apparently planned for the tail end of the line, but never released until Transformers began.

I've never seen a Transformer fanfic backstory for this guy, although someone has to have written one. It's not too hard to figure out why it wasn't released for the Transformer line - the robot mode looks pretty lame. Those blades have to get in the way, although the poseability of the Triple Changers was pretty limited. The Korean animation actually makes the design look better than the toy. Has that ever happened before - or again?

This is another Diatron-5 situation - I want to see the Lost Triplechanger animated, but at what price? (I'm not talking about the dollar - I'm talking about my sanity. Which is admittedly pretty much gone anyway).

I never found Goldwing, due to the fact that I (gasp!) don't read Korean. Maybe this Tekkamazinger Gundan IV Machine Blaster anime is it (only going on the page title), but I doubt it.

Transformers Trailer...

Since this blog has been dead for a week, I ought to post *something.*

A new TF movie trailer has come out:
uk.promotions.yahoo.com/transformers/

I haven't watched any Transformers cartoon faithfully since Beast Wars (I saw bits and pieces of BEAST MACHINES and ROBOTS IN DISGUISE). I doubt I'll make an exception here.

I absolutely adore the new Transfomers toys. They're head and shoulders over most of the old line (although the original Diaclone and Microman toys have their charm). But I have no interest in seeing a "realistic" Optimus or "spawn-realistic" Megatron duke it out for the zillionth time.

Diatron 5 on the Interweb...

Dear God.

Someone has posted the entire movie of MICRO-COMMANDO DIATRON-5 on YouTube, in 7 parts. (This video is part 1). I'd previously had the movie on VHS, but only watched it once (and NEVER AGAIN)!

D-5 is the closest thing we have to a DIACLONE movie or TV series, which excited many Transformer fans until they actually *saw* the blasted thing. (The DIACLONE toy line was the source of *many* of the original Transformer toys.)

The movie is available in Wal-Mart's $1 DVD racks as SPACE TRANSFORMER, although with a different dub (by Joseph Lai productions - urgh) and the opening theme song in the original Korean with no animation - only white credits on a red background.

I never realized the actual dubs were different until just now when I checked my SPACE TRANSFORMER DVD, since I'm no masochist who wants to actually WATCH these...things.

*You* should watch this, though. And suffer as I have suffered! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

Castigating Cagliostro...

I finally watched the Manga "Special Edition" DVD of Cagliostro yesterday.

This movie is important to two groups of anime fans: fans of Hayao Miyazaki and fans of Monkey Punch's LUPIN III manga/anime series. I have a DVD set of the first LUPIN III series ('71), which was quite fun, but didn't blow me away a la YAMATO or DAIMOS. The only Miyazaki I've seen is the first episode of FUTURE BOY CONAN, which didn't make much of an impression. (Unfortunately, I have neither DVD set at hand at the time I'm writing this review).

Honestly, I got this thing wanting to somehow make burgers out of a sacred cow, but I really enjoyed the movie. The animation was excellent, both drawings and direction. The story didn't blow me away, but it was quite fun. My grandmother watched it with me and enjoyed it as well ("This isn't as noisy as those other things you watch.")

As noted on Wikipedia, Lupin himself is quite different from the manga/anime incarnation. Frankly, I prefer the sleazy anime Lupin (would he REALLY ever say that a treasure is too big for him, as he does at the end)? The creaky animation of the first series has its own charms, but there is something to be said for animation that's actually good, as is the case in CAGLIOSTRO.

I watched the movie with the dub on as well as the Jpn-track subtitles. The dub was decent aside from a few dippy one-liners put in because Amurricans can't handle no silence ("Now that's upscale living!" when looking at the castle, for example).

A few snarky n' spoilery comments (highlight them):

-Why is County getting married in what looks like a goat-headed S&M outfit?

-Why is the clock tower set to kill whoever activates it? What if the goat was eyed by someone who wasn't an evil pedophilic S&M wearing A-hole?

-The destruction of the clock tower was imitated by many entries in the Castlevania series of games. (Short summary: whip-wielding hippie hunts down Dracula). The north tower that Clarisse lives in is apparently accessed via a horizontal elevator from another tower - Dracula's abode in CV is a tower which is unreachable except by a rickety bridge (in at least one of these games, the bridge rapidly collapsed and the player had to race across it without dying or getting knocked off by attack crows).

-I know it's not the writers' fault, but it's hard to mentally disassociate the name Clarisse from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (which came out 12 years after this film).

-A Roman city at the bottom of a lake? Where did THAT come from?! And why hide it with a killer clock tower? This reminded me a bit of the ending of UMI NO TRITON, although I'm almost certain that was a coincidence. You'll be hearing plenty about TRITON in the future...

One of the extras is a very informative interview with "Animation Director" Yasuo Ohtsuka, who worked on Cagliostro and directed the first LUPIN series. Not sure where this was filmed, but it wasn't soundproof - a siren can be heard at about the 10 minute mark. One interesting factoid - the original LUPIN was yanked off the air early at a 6% share, which is apparently very good now where shows are kept running at 0.8% shares. Too much junk around these days.

Summary - I paid 18 bucks, and the movie and interview were well worth it.

Ugh - giving a positive review. I suddenly feel so dirty.

The comment policy was merciless in content.

The penalty for giving aid and comfort to trolls - death!
The penalty for taking discussions off topic - death!
The penalty for posting hot stock tips and ways to increase the size of one's genitalia - death!
The penalty for dying - death!

I have enabled comments on this blog. Please be nice, have informative and polite discussions, and don't make me regret turning comments on.

Have a nice day!

Classics Minicons...

I nabbed Cybertron Primus yesterday - who I'll review later, since I want to also include screenshots of an anime that I've lost the disc for (I believe I know where it is, but I won't be there until Christmas).

There are 3 versions of Primus - "plain", one with a hideous plastic Unicron head, and one with a bonus pack of Minicons that is a Wal-Mart exclusive. The last is the one I picked up. I assume the "bonus" versions of Primus are to avoid the major problems with Armada Unicron backstock, which was on the shelves for about a year after the toy came out. The 4 minicons are available in their own "themed" packs as well.


Offshoot, Nightscream, Knockdown, and Strongarm in vehicle mode.

The robot modes of the toys. Note the leaning Offshoot.

These guys are COMPLEX, at least for Minicon toys. I actually had to use the instructions, which I usually don't have to do. This is admirable in a way, but I still broke every one of these toys - luckily, today's Transformers have parts that snap right back on. Parents are going to go nuts helping their kids "fix" these guys when they break. To make matters worse, there are no pictures of the robot modes of the toys on the Primus package, which makes the line drawings in the instructions all that you have to go on.

The beast/vehicle modes all look fantastic, but the robot modes of Knockdown and Offshoot are pretty lame. Strongarm and Nightscream are tolerable, but not impressive.

As you can see in the photo, Offshoot will not stand up on its own (I had to lean him on the chair). Knockdown is just a mess in robot mode. His front feet (which turn into the robot legs) look vaguely like fists and have holes which look like they should hold something. This is *really* confusing when transforming the toy sans instructions.

I can't say I'd recommend these guys to adult collectors. I REALLY wouldn't recommend them for children -the transformations are far too frustrating and stuff breaks off way too easily.

Snippy Gekiranger comments...

Japan Hero has posted publicity photos of the new sentai series Juuken Sentai Gekiranger (all pictures are taken from there):


The designs remind me of Abaranger, which was a whole...4 years ago! However, they are apparently cats now. Will they be fighting the Dog Army? The Vacuum Cleaner Corps? The Catnip Pusher Squad?

Here are the mecha:

Might be cool to see the separate cats in action, but the main robot has serious thunder thighs.

This will be my only comment on this, at least unti I see POWER RANGERS CATATONIC* - I don't have the time to track the 20 more robots and 10 more sentai members that will come into the series.

* - not an official or even unofficial name.

More pictures are available at Japan Hero's full gallery.

Ajiba 3


Here's a parody song by Sunrise - a slightly reworded DAITARN-3 theme with the characters of Ideon.

I still haven't watched BE INVOKED, aside from the ending that's not worth watching. (From what I've read, just like SPIELBAN 44 and the theatrical cut of Blade Runner*, INVOKED is a case of "Shut the video player off at the right point and it's perfect"). The TV series is well worth getting, although only the movies and 1-19 have been subbed (and the latter only by Chinese DVD pirates).

EVANGELION creator Hideki Anno cited IDEON as an influence, although aside from the fact that the endings to both IDEON and EVA were awful**, it's hard to see. EVA has:

NO cultural conflict between people who are so alike, but so just want to kill each other!

NO exploration of the universe and neat if often unoriginal worlds!

NO space samurai!

NO flying giant space trucks that are *supposed* to be ancient artifacts!

And, most importantly,

NO dudes with big red 'fros!

Bah.

* - Hey, I LIKED the Harrison Ford voiceover, even though it went over some good music. The "happy" ending was worthless.

** - Yeah, END OF EVA was very pretty, but what the [bleep] happened? The IDEON ending was perfectly comprehensible - it was just stupid.

Jetfire review with pictures...

I finally found the Classics Jetfire toy. I gather this was based on a comic design (Stormbringer), changed just enough so Bandai and/or Harmony Gold couldn't sue Hasbro.


The Super Jet form that the toy comes packaged in. The guns automatically pop out when the red part near the thruster is pulled back.

The "Skyfire" form of Jetfire, with Rodimus manning the backpack as a gun emplacement. (Dave Van Domelen did the gun emplacement thing first).


The Super form of Jetfire which resembles the Valkyrie design. The wings look to me like those of a butterfly when set this way.

While the toy didn't remind me of any classic anime designs besides the blatantly obvious, it did remind me of a ship design in one of my favorite video games: the Mmrnmhrm Transformer in the STAR CONTROL series. The Transformer ship was actually two-in-one: the X-form was a slow moving, but maneuverable form which fired a steadly double-laser beam, while the Y form was a fast moving ship that fired very weak missiles. Sadly, the ship didn't transform into a robot.

My impression of the X-form.


My impression of the Y-form.

C'mon AnimeEigo - We Want Galvion!

Let's try posting a video.

This guy "Harlockhero" tries to persuade AnimEigo to license the colossal flop GALVION by describing the opening in ludicrous detail. I'm on his side.

All the rights to the other works of Kokusai Eigasha (Movie International) have Enoki Films sitting on them. They have been given appropriately stupid "international" names (ironic, ain't it).

Acrobunch
Bryger (J-9 I)
Baxingar (J-9 II)
Sasuraigar (JJ-9)
Srungle(chopped together with Goshogun to make [MA-MA-MA-MA-MA-MA-] MACRON-1. Feel the power.)

Enoki has released a compilation video of SPACE OZ, which is sold at WALMART alongside classic Joseph Lai-dubbed Korean anime. So where's my $1 J-9, you bastards?

At least I have the J-9 soundtrack CD, which kicks 3*9 types of ass. Well worth the 30 bucks and 3 months it took my money order to travel through the maze of the Japanese postal system.

PLEASE NOTE: While $1 Korean anime DVDs are fun to hunt down and collect, never ever ever ever actually watch one of them. They are pure pain.

BTW, there *is* a true gem in those $1 DVD racks - STARBIRDS, the dubbed compilaton film of FIGHTING GENERAL DAIMOS, my favorite robot anime of all time. Sadly, it's only appreciated in the Phillipines, where it is a far second to VOLTES V in terms of popularity. BUY IT!!!!

Leo PrOn...

A few images of the SoC Leopardon and the Soul of Sofubi Spidey...


The Soul of Spiderman. Unfortunately, he's pretty much stuck in this pose (his arms move, but look bad in any other pose).



A Spiderman and his robot.


My attempt to take a "Sword Vicker" shot. I forgot to raise the left arm.


Leopardon fights the only other toy I had around at the time - Cybertron Galvatron.


Galvatron defeated. Unfortunately, there was no place in Galvatron to stick the sword for a corpse picture.


The sword included in the toy is all plastic, but still shines very nicely in the light.

REALLY trivial Leopardon SOC comments...

As you had probably guessed, dear readers, I succumbed and ordered the SOC Leopardon about 0.00000001 milliseconds after posting this.

Some really nitpicky comments on the toy from an insane fan of the show (or at least the robot):

1. Very poseable arms (although they have to be removed and replaced with "Arm Rocket" arms to transform the toy), not so poseable legs although they do a decent job. The TV show suit looked to be very difficult to move in, which is why I suppose the producers just had it fire weapons even before the suit was supposedly stolen in #10.

2. There's a nice "garage" for a mini-GP7 in the leopard head, but you can't store the thing in reverse without it getting stuck. The GP-7 was dispatched from the head in #1. Much of the rest of the time it resided in a garage somewhere, which just looked like a metal box.

3. The door for the leopard head garage is weirdly angled - it looks straight, but it's not. The show door wasn't on a hinge IIRC - it just opened like a garage. Can't these people get anything right? Worst Toy Design Ever. :) /COMIC BOOK GUY

4. It's nice to have the firing Arc Turn, but the thing is REALLY hair-trigger - I've already lost the head crest in the couch at least 5 times.

Even more amazing to me was the booklet that came with the toy, featuring design sketches (unfortunately, they didn't have any sketches that were substantially different from the final product), a toy gallery, and promo pictures - one featuring Leopardon menacing Machine BEM Double Headed Demon (#2) with the Vicker Sword and the shield included with the toy! That scene was never in the show itself.*

The toy gallery is awesome. Lots of stuff I hadn't known about or had only seen box pictures of in there. But no Spider Bracelet toy was made?

My Holy Grail, the Leopardon Jumbo Machinder, is pictured, of course. The fist in the picture looks like a hole was imposed on the toy's fist graphically at the last minute. There were two versions according to a Cool Japanese Toys article by Tom Franck - one which came with no holes in the fist (not good when the toy comes with a ginormous sword) and a later run that had fist holes. I'm assuming the booklet artists got hold of one of the first versions and had to do a last minute graphic fix, although maybe the second version fist hole actually looked that messy.

[I just know that that last paragraph will be attracting some unsavory readers. Sorry, perverted Googlers, nothing to see here.]

* - The original ending sequence featured Leopardon picking up and throwing Double Headed Demon, a sequence not in the battle in episode #2. There's also a scene of Despot Dragon (#1) enlarging that is different from the one in episode #1.

X Minus One...

Currently, I'm doing paper reduction data entry - basically an assembly line job on a computer. I get through the day by putting myself on automatic and listening to radio programs and podcasts- two of my favorites being Anime World Order and Penn Jillete's radio show.

I also have a couple of MP3 CDs of "old time radio". My favorites are Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre/Campbell Playhouse and X Minus One. I just discovered that Otelle Jeune has a full set of episodes of the latter for download. Time to plug some holes...

All right kids, let's try posting some purty pitchers.

Here's my festively decorated Christmas Garada!

(As you can see, I'm not going to make my living as a photographer).

Die REAL Silver Mask...

Spurred on by the faithless remake, I dug out my DVD of SILVER MASK (the real one) 9-12.

Senkousha's SILVER MASK was the first show to try to cash in on the success of KAMEN RIDER. Giant heroes were the big thing at the time, but KR (with the "luck" of a horrible bike accident by its first star) managed to change the tide of tokusatsu to henshin heroes.

However, SILVER MASK didn't resist too long. The show started as a henshin hero, but in episode 11 it yielded and made its hero giant-sized.

The show involved the efforts of four siblings (3 boys, 1 girl) to protect their dead father's "Proton Rocket" from invading aliens. The thing must be cool to warrant coming all the way to Earth for. Of course, one brother can transform himself into Silver Mask with the innovative henshin phrase "Attack!"

Episode 9 was, well, incomprehensible to a non-Japanese speaker. Four aliens disguise themselves as the four siblings and attack a funeral. Naturally, the real siblings must exonerate themselves. The imposters are stabbed (in the case of the girl) or gunned down (the bros) by the real siblings. After this, the aliens combine into a lame gray kaijin that Silver Mask kills in a fairly dull battle. No action at all aside for gunplay and the SM
battle at the end.

I was busy doing laundry for most of episode 10, which seemed to have Silver Mask fighting aliens dressed like Chinese/North Korean solders. At the end, the sibling find a message from their father that (I think) lets them into the Proton Rocket.

In episode 11, the heroes decide to launch the Proton Rocket to the moon (I think), finding an alien base - and a giant beast protecting it, which claims space for the Satan Seijin! Silver Mask, of course, is too wittle to fight against the thing, and the gang must fly away to Earth, where the rocket crashes...and gives Silver Mask gigantism and a much improved costume. Of course, the monster comes to Earth to plant signs on it, and Silver Mask must fight it off. Hey, Shin Kishida* shows up!

*-Shin Kishida acted in SUNVULCAN, FIREMAN, and GODZILLA vs MECHAGODZILLA (I believe he also played Dracula). I think he wrote a few episodes of FIREMAN as well.

[9-10] Maybe there's Shakespeareian dialogue going on here that I can't understand, but I doubt it. Seriously, most 30-minute toy commerical tokusatsu can be at least partially enjoyed without knowing Japanese, but it's really not the case here.

Episode 11's giant monster battle isn't bad. I think Senkousha made the right call in gigantizing the guy. Still, I'd rather watch Senkousha's giant hero follow up IRON KING or live-action super robot RED BARON.

Die, DIE SILBERMASKE...

First there was KAMEN RIDER...the First.

Then MIRRORMAN REFLEX...

Then LION MARU G [-arbage, -ag, -igolo, etc...]

Now DIE SILBERMASKE! Who is a girl in 1920 Tokyo who fights Dr. Caligari and Maria the robot. (The original show had Silver Mask defending "modern day" earth and his daddy's Proton Rocket from invading aliens).

CAN'T ANYONE DO ANYTHING ORIGINAL ANYMORE!?!?!?

Toho's CHO SHIN SEI (GRANSAZER, JUSTIRISER, SAZER X) appear to be the best shows out there (although I haven't heard a peep about SAZER X anywhere). From what I saw (1-10 or so) JUSTIRISER was a good attempt at a modern sentai show, and felt much fresher than what Toei is putting out, but still...I want something more original.

A sympathetic friend responded that yes, people are doing original things these days. It's just that people with my tastes don't want to watch them.

Aside from these remakes and the lumbering remains of the Ultra, Kamen Rider, and sentai shows, serious SF action dramas seem to be dead*. And that was pretty much what I was into anime and tokusatsu for.

* - This pretty much sums up my tastes, although it does sound too pretentious considering that 99% of the stuff I watch was made to sell toys to 5 year olds or model kits to teenagers.

Fortunately, there's still a lot of moldy old treasures to be appreciated.

Gag-inducing Gordian...

I just spotted the Italian opening to TOUSHI GORDIAN (1979) on Youtube, which has actual footage of the robots fighting things other than tanks.

The Japanese opening - which is (relatively) much prettier, with a much better song, but little action.

GORDIAN is an absolutely crappy show that was made to sell one of the most kick-ass robots ever made. Gordian was made up of the large Gardin, the medium Derringer, and the small Protester, who fit inside one another like a Russian doll. Daigo, the hero, fits inside Protester. His bionic panther Clint was also included with the DX Gordian set. The toy was also sold as "Gardian" in the Godaikin line.

I don't have the Gordian toy (or the knockoff that is circulating), but I do have a neat Gardin knockoff remolded and repainted as Mazinger Z. The toy really is neat, and I'm sure having all 3 robots is even better.

The SHOW, on the other hand, is agonizing. I gather Tatsunoko didn't have much experience with directing mecha anime (there was a robot in TEKKAMAN, but it was basically a transforming device). Daigo is the protector of Victor Town, kidnapped by his sister Saori to pilot Gordian. Saori piloted Gordian in the first episode and somehow burned her mouth by doing so. Daigo's mouth is fine even though he doesn't wear any kind of cool pilot uniform
like all good Super Robot pilots do. The villains are the Madocter, who I gather are looking for the "Screen of the Sun". The action in 1-2, as in the Gordian opening above, is mostly Gordian stepping on tanks, and once firing his leg missile.

Italian site on Gordian - Use Google or Babelfish to translate.

One comment - Madocter villain Barbadas looks a lot like the "normal" form of Silverhawks villain Mon-Star (the only cool thing about that show). Mon-Star's wild haired form was transformed into the robot form on the card by "Moon Star Light". (No promises about accuracy - I don't feel like digging the tape out of the barn for one obscure fact).

The really horrifying thing? Due to the coolness of the toy, this abomination went on for 73 EPISODES!

And I want them all. Not as much as I want all of DOUGRAM (another insanely long runnning show that everyone today seems to hate - or at least not care about), but I still want to see just how bad this thing could get. Not enough to pay Jpn DVD or even obscure tape trader prices, though.

Transformers Classics Rambling...

I picked up the TF Classics Rodimus yesterday while Xmas shopping (couldn't resist).

The Classics line is apparently the bone given to TF fans so they'll be happy when the Michael Bay movie comes out (which is ruining every classic character design, aside from the mostly untouchable Optimus Prime). I currently own:

Starscream - very nice updating of the Diaclone design and transformation scheme, although the plane fins aren't very adjustable. Then again, the Diaclone was a brick with arm chunks; the Classics version is very poseable. My only annoyance is that the eyes are pretty shabbily painted on mine - one's completely gray.

Astrotrain - I never owned the Diaclone version (I can't recall if it was actually sold as a Diaclone or just planned for the line before G1). The Classics version is very nice, aside from the fact that the shuttle has big bullet train chunks on the sides, and the train has a nose cone on its butt badly disguised by shuttle wings.

Megatron - Not great, but he's a gun again, so I cut the creators some slack. The thing's basically an origami puzzle with a gun shell covering it. At least he doesn't have a big plank with a trigger sticking out of his crotch.

Yes, I should post my own pictures. But it's hard to rationalize buying a digital camera to take pictures of
A - robots
B - dogs
C - dogs with robots.

At any rate, Rodimus is, like Starscream, a more poseable and better proportioned update to the G1 toy. A flip-out sawblade (a homage to the Movie scene where Roddy hacks through tentacles on Quintessa) is attached to the arm, only it's a "data-com", since sawblades are apparently too violent. I like the design, aside from the grimacing face - I guess the innocent face on the G1 version isn't X-TREEM enough for today's youth. (The G1 Rodimus Prime toy looked mad, but that guy was always grouching about something on the show).

The color scheme of Hot Rod/Rodimus always reminded me of Zanbo A from ZAMBOT 3, which has the same red color and yellow fins (if no flames). Zambot 3 is probably my favorite anime robot design (and second favorite robot design after this site's mascot). The show's not shabby either.

Video of Zambot 3 combining

P.S. - I've added Dave Van Domelen' site of extensive TF reviews on the sidebar for anyone who wants to read more exhaustive reviews than mine.

Me HTML good? No...

I've finally managed to add an email link at the sidebar.

Next task - how to get my titles by themselves on the sidebar. Blogger doesn't seem to have a "highlight and click sentence to make title" option.

Yes, yes, I should be doing this on my own site with my own hand coded HTML. But I'm quite lazy, if you hadn't noticed.

Crappy GOJIRA and MYSTERIANS reviews.

Okay, I owe a report on GOJIRA and THE MYSTERIANS. (Mental note: never promise anything again, especially since my attention span is too short now to last through 90 minute movies).

GOJIRA - After hearing about how much better this was than KING OF THE MONSTERS, I was surprised to find myself pretty much bored through the first half or so. The characters (the Yamanes, Serizawa, and Ogata) are fine on paper, but I was disappointed with the actual execution. The atomic bomb references were...well, there.

What happened to Akihiko Hirata's voice? He didn't sound like the AH I heard in RAINBOWMAN and as a pleasant suprise guest star (to me, anyway) in a few ULTRAMAN episodes. His Mysterians voice was "normal".

Of course, once G attacks, the movie kicks into high gear. I finally was able to see the famed "We'll see Father soon" scene, and the few seconds of G's stop motion tail (never picked these out of KOTM). This is serious business, not the camp of the later films.

One note - I got the Sony DVD release of the original G and KOTM, which is very nice, but the damned subtitles on the thing are almost unreadable (yellow text on B&W). Both G and KOTM look good, and the commentaries are very informative, so nab it anyway. Just be warned.

MYSTERIANS/CHIKYUU BOEIGUN - I wanted to watch this since it's the first Japanese "alien invasion" movie - the prototype to so many of my favorite anime and TV tokusatsu. It set the standard for the genre, but not much else.

The Mysterians themselves look nice, but sound and act like robots - no personalities at all. Isn't their space station still floating about Earth at the end? Yep, I feel safe. One character mentions a satellite floating above to alert Earth to invasion, but I'd think that'd be easy to shoot out of the sky. Did I miss something?

The FX in both of these movies are great, of course. I personally prefer tokusatsu FX to modern CGI stuff, so I'm not going to add the "great, if dated" qualifier. Mogera looked like MechaGonzo, as has been noted by Stomp Tokyo and others, but his rampage was fun.

I do recommend both of these movies to tokusatsu and monster movie fans - the action direction and FX are great, and they were the first kaijuu and alien invasion movies. I'm just very hard to please.