posted
The 2nd Japanese cartoon I ever saw, I ran across the SAME day as my first... ASTRO BOY. Once again, I tuned in in mid-episode, but it caught my attention and grabbed me and wouldn't let go. For years, I used to watch it over and over. Unlike 8TH MAN, I did manage to see the very 1st episode once... only once. (Until about 3 years ago, when I tuned it in about a 1/3rd of the way in, and couldn't believe someone was running it, it hadn't been seen in Philly since 1970 at the latest.)
A scientist's young son is killed in a car crash. In a fit of madness, he gets all his colleagues to help him on a new project... building the most advanced ROBOT ever created, and making it in the IMAGE of his DEAD son. At first he's overjoyed, it's like his son is alive again! But the man's INSANITY tragically shows thru when he becomes annoyed-- then enraged-- by the fact that his "son" is NOT GROWING. He's created this WONDERFUL being-- a robot who actually thinks and HAS FEELINGS like a real person-- but because he's "not real"-- he eventually can't stand the sight of him, and (GASP!) sells him to a CIRCUS. I dunno about you, but this strikes me somehow as even more tragic than the origin of 8TH MAN. (I'm actually getting EMOTIONAL just typing this.)
Well, ASTRO BOY is saved from a life of slavery by the kindly Professor Elephant (he's got a big schnozz, you see...), who manages to get the boy away from his "owner" and ADOPTS him and treats him as if he were his own son... but in a much more healthy way than the boy's creator ever did.
And, because this "boy" has all these "super-powers" (he can fly, he's super-strong, etc.), well, naturally, becoming a super-hero just comes natural.
I LOVED this show when I was a kid... but strangely, when I started to grow up, it began to make me feel uncomfortable, something 8TH MAN never did. Looking back, I think there were 2 reasons for this. First, it was about a BOY, and teenagers don't want a young boy as their hero. Second, there was so much real, genuine HUMAN EMOTION in so many episodes of this show, and in my own life, things became increasingly restricted, more and more, and the show began to represent what I DIDN'T have. (A healthy home life.)
Decades later, watching the few episodes I was able to on Cartoon Network (Saturday nights, 1:57 AM-- that's right, they started it EARLY every week, the idiots), I was able to appreciate the show all over again. The mix of adventure, human emotions and outright SLAPSTICK COMEDY was a joy to behold.
I've seen an episode or two of a later version of this show... sadly, it wasn't 1/10th as good or as inspired as the original.
1966 was a real banner year for me...
Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Sarcasm Kid: I think you mean Xiaolin Showdown, but that was an American cartoon as well.
No, that's a kiddy version. The one I'm thinking of is real people illustrated, sort of. I'll think of it, someday. The title is the main boy's name, a blonde with a white tie around his head.
posted
In the old days (the 60's & 70's), new shows tended to arrive, even on the local stations that ran syndicated reruns, twice a year-- September, and January (more or less). September '66 was an absolute EXPLOSION of wonderful shows from all fronts, and that included the local stations running imports.
Philly's Channel 48 got ahold of 3 shows, presumably all with a small number of episodes, that they decided to run in rotation during the SAME time slot-- 6 PM. It went like this:
Monday -- GIGANTOR Tuesday -- KIMBA, THE WHITE LION Wednesday -- STINGRAY Thursday -- KIMBA, THE WHITE LION Friday -- GIGANTOR
Strange but true!
GIGANTOR, I learned many years later, was the very 1st "giant robot" ever from Japan. It had a fun theme song, nasty but cartoony villains, and, apparently, LOADS of "violence"-- so much that GIGANTOR soon became one of the chief targets of anti-violence censor groups who, having already managed to tone down Prime Time, now set their sights on "children's television".
I don't recall if I ever saw the 1st episode of GIGANTOR. I know it was about an inventor who builds a giant robot, a young boy, Jim Sparks, who CONTROLS it with a small, hand-held remote unit, and a uniformed police character slightly less idiotic than the one on 8TH MAN. If memory serves, the villains tended to have two recurring goals-- conquering the world, and trying to get their hands on GIGANTOR, so they could use HIM to conquer the world. This formula would later be repeated on the live-action show, JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT.
GIGANTOR never stuck in my head as much as the earlier B&W cartoons, although it did inspire me to give my own comic-book character-- a young boy-- HIS own giant robot. I guess at age 7, I must have thought, didn't every kid hero have one? (Hanna-Barbera's FRANKENSTEIN JR. debuted on CBS the SAME week GIGANTOR turned up on Channel 48. What a month that was.)
Many years later, I managed to rent a tape of the show, and sat down with my best friend to watch it for the first time in decades. I can't really say if it aged well or not... suffice to say, it wasn't that well-written, but that may explain why the episodes didn't stick in my mind the way 8TH MAN or ASTRO BOY had.
[ September 13, 2010, 05:34 PM: Message edited by: profh0011 ]
Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Sarcasm Kid: I've never been one for live-action adaptions of cartoons to be honest. They tend to make the campy stuff even campier.
I know what you mean. I can't stand the recent Transformers films. But the kid in me wants the Star Blazers film to rock.
posted
Some shows last; others run briefly and disappear forever. Who can say why?
There were 4 B&W Japanese cartoon shows that ran in Philly back in 1966. I don't remember which station had it, or even exactly when it started or how long it lasted, but the 4th was called PRINCE PLANET. This may be one of the most obscure Japanese cartoons that actually ran in America.
Sadly, I don't recall much about the show. What I do recall (if memory serves) was that that, like ASTRO BOY, it starred a young boy hero (not a robot this time!), an alien from another planet, who could fly, and wore a medalion that gave him great powers. I'd be really curious to see this again, to find out more of what it was about, and see if it was any good or not. (Oddly enough, my brother did one comic of his own inspired by this show, only in his version, he turned the hero into a robot-- like ASTRO BOY.)
Registered: Aug 2003
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"Because the markets can't spin a line of cheap toys off it?"
That's NOT what I'm talking about. I'm referring to the way some shows run in syndication ENDLESSLY, while others have short runs and disappear forever. In Philly, I'm pretty sure PRINCE PLANET ran once-- EVER. Ditto for JOHNNY SOKKO AND HIS FLYING ROBOT. There were 25 episodes of that show, Channel 17 ran each one ONCE. After that, it disappeared. I mean, that's ridiculous! ULTRA MAN hads several runs in Philly, and during the 70's, ran for 8 YEARS without ever taking a break. Ditto for the 1967-70 SPIDER-MAN cartoons. I don't care how much I like something, when I was a kid, I would always wanna see SOMETHING ELSE. The thing used to be, they'd run all the episodes of a show twice, then put something else on. If the show was popular enough, 6 months or a year (or two) later, it might come back, and get another 2 runs.
I'm guessing doing it the other way makes it simpler for brain-dead programmers who can't be bothered to actually do the work they're hired for. (He said, sarcastically.)
Registered: Aug 2003
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Now, what was the name of the spacesubmarine show? SUPER famous classic!
I think Actor Lad got it when he mentioned Star Blazers.
Speaking of which, there's a live action version set to be released in Japan in December.
I must have missed his comment, I'm sorry.
Star Blazers is sooo totallly right! I really liked that show! Maybe, more than my kids.
I know I'm afraid to see the live action 'Avatar - the Last Air Bender'! I don't know how they'll compress all of those lovely episodes into 2 hours. sigh
Star Blazers might work, though. That series didn't have as much going on between each event, so to speak. That I remember, anyway. Avatar was SO rich.
The Japanese live action stuff tends to be really dorky. I remember a comment from one of the producers/directors/etc. of Jurassic Park who said that when they showed the show to a sample audience in Japan that when the first dinosaur appeared the entire audience's mouths dropped and not a sound was heard for the rest of the picture.
They got kind of, what, lazy? traditional? with their live action stuff with Godzilla success, I think.
Usually, the cartoons that are re-aired over and over are the ones that have a bunch of merchandise spun off them. There must be at least a billion different Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards by now.
And toys, DVDs, VHS, CDs, video games, computer games, art books, clothes, cups, plates, health items, bumper stickers, accessories...
If my logic is flawed I'm willing to admit it.
-------------------- I want to be hated by lies - Bring Back Lian Harper
posted
For me when it comes to live-action adaptations it really depends on the material, for instance I very much enjoyed Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
Candle you'll likely be disappointed the the live-action version of The Last Airbender but it's planned as a trilogy of films.
As for syndication issues there a ton of factors that go into that like the intended audience, how much of a success it was, how long it ran, if the series is getting an update somehow, etc. Some series are just created to be longer or shorter then others. From what I understand (although I could be wrong) when series are aired in Japan they don't generally show reruns. That's why so many popular series such as Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc often have "filler arcs" also sometimes to let the series keep going while the manga version may be on a hiatus, finishing other arcs and various other factors.
Proth0011 if you really want to see Prince Planet again the whole series appears to be available to view on Hulu here:
Hyperpath: Email this page to someone!
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