Odin: Photon Sailer Starlight

Odin: Photon Sailer Starlight
Directed by Takeshi Shirado, Eiichi Yamamoto, Toshio Masuda
1986
Original version: 140 minutes
US version: 90 minutes

The year is 2099 and Earth is sending a new type of spaceship, the Starlight, out to explore the galaxy. The ship is like a ship with sails, a boatswain, a poop deck, a plank, I don’t know, the works. This big laser sends a beam out through space and the Starlight follows it. When the crew is about to do their big warp drive test, they pick up a distress signal from a ship called the Alfred. Next thing you know, some asshole named Akira starts dive-bombing the Starlight with his little space fighter. The crew is amused and decide to let him on board. When they test the warp drive, Akira ends up piloting the fucking ship.

So they get to the wreckage of the Alfred and they find a lone survivor, a girl with white hair named Sarah Cyanbaker. The crew of the Starlight also encounter a dickish alien race who begin a series of relentless attacks on their ship. When the alien spacecraft self-destructs, it causes the Starlight to fly through a space buttcrack which transports them even farther away from home. The aliens are related to Odin or whatever. Sarah can read the ancient alien language or Norwegian and they are searching for Odin or whatever. I fell asleep a lot during this stuff. Long story short, the Starlight goes against the alien threat in a huge battle.

The first thing you need to know about this movie is the heavy metal songs in the soundtrack. The famous Japanese metal band Loudness provides the score for some pretty hilarious scenes of the crew running toward their posts on the ship. Be sure to stick around for the epilogue of the film when Loudness themselves actually make an appearance. The rest of the score is made up of pleasing synthy bleeps and bloops.

The second thing you need to know about this movie is its length. This movie is way, way too long for its own good. I actually recommend the American version over the Japanese. It’s 50 minutes shorter and it keeps all the good stuff intact. If you choose to do the longer cut, just put it on mute, get high, and put on your Yes records or your Helloween records or whatever the fuck. I tried to do the Japanese version and passed the hell out. I went back and saw that I had slept through the climactic battle. It's worth staying awake for, I guess. Or not.

Let me tell a little story with these screenshots:

Harmagedon

Harmagedon
AKA Genma Taisen
Directed by Rintaro
1983
132 minutes

I was 16 years old when my mom sent me off to stay with our family friend in San Diego. I hit the local video store like a man possessed. I figured that video stores out in California would have huge selections of Japanese animation. Boy was I wrong (or maybe I was just at the wrong store). Anyway, they didn’t have crap. The only tape that wasn’t familiar to me was something called Harmagedon. It had Katsuhiro Otomo’s name all over it so I figured “Hey, this has got to be as good as Akira, right?” Boy was I wrong again. I triple hated the shit out of Harmagedon and haven’t watched it again… until now!

This fairly obnoxious doomsayer is running around Tokyo predicting terrible shit and then Princess Luna of Transylvania has a vision while flying in a big jumbo jet. A giant evil force named Genma is devouring the universe and it’s got a big (metaphoric) hard-on for Earth for some reason. The plane is destroyed by an asteroid and Luna becomes Psionic Warrior Luna, defender of the Earth. She is commanded by Floy, a benevolent supernatural force, to take Vega, a 2200 year old combat android, to save the dang world.

Luna and Vega’s first mission is to recruit Jo, an ordinary Japanese high school student (and jerkwad), and awaken his psionic powers. Jo freaks out and runs around misusing his powers. When he finally gets his shit together and faces his creepy sister-love complex, he agrees to join the fight against Genma. The slimy and weird looking monster generals that work for Genma go after Jo using the people he cares about like his bitchy girlfriend, his dorky friend, and of course, his sister Michiko. Ohhhh Michiko. Ohhhh, dear sweet, overprotective and smother MichikOH BABY BABY, OH BABY BABY!



So okay whatever, Luna gathers together her multinational team of psionic warriors to train Jo on the fly and get ready to battle Genma. New York City is destroyed and Tokyo just kind of dies in a sandstorm or something? Jo finally stops being a pussy and rises to become the strongest of the psionic duders and well, you can kind of guess the rest of the movie from there.



I am really glad I gave Harmagedon another chance. It didn't blow my mind or anything but it wasn't nearly as horrible as I remembered. Sure it is a little long in the tooth and there are a few cheese-stank maudlin moments (the scene where Jo leads the animals out of the burning forest like he was Animal Jesus!), but Harmagedon has some great scenes and even some dashes of horror that really worked for me. As for Katsuhiro Otomo's involvement, he did the character designs and some animation work. This really is Rinatro's beast.

Serial Experiments Lain

Serial Experiments Lain
Directed by Ryutaro Nakamura
Written by Chiaki Konaka
1998
325 minutes (13 episodes)

Lain Iwakura is totally not your average schoolgirl. She is a space cadet (not literally) and she knows nothing about computers. She is the charity case of some school chums; Alice, Reika, and Julie are always trying to get Lain out of her shell. Things get weird when another of her friends at school named Chisa sends Lain an email. I know what you're thinking: "Like OMG, Lain? How does she have friends? She is such a weirdo!" No, that's not the weird thing. The weird thing is that Chisa has been dead for a week (she took a header off a very tall building) and is claiming that her soul now resides on The Wired (AKA The Internet). Lain finds this intriguing and decides to look into this whole "computer thing".

Speaking of fucked up home lives, Lain's is a real doozy. Her father is a workaholic computer engineer who only pays attention to Lain when she starts showing interest in updating her Navi (AKA personal computer). Her mother is an emotional iceberg. Hell, they both might be robots. And lastly, Lain's sister Mika is a total beyatch so I guess she's the only normal one. Well, "normal" until she is replaced by a gibbering doppelganger but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Lain takes to The Wired like a middle aged pervert with a video camera at an anime convention. She immediately discovers her true self online: a totally badass hacker who doesn't take shit from anybody. The more time she spends on the computer, the stranger her world becomes. Weird "Men in Black" type duders start following her around, someone on The Wired begins impersonating Lain for nefarious purposes, she meets a presence online that claims to be God, and she even witnesses a shooting at the local nightclub, Cyberia. Get it? Cyberia!

Back in 2000, when I first saw Serial Experiments Lain, this show was quite a gamechanger. I had never seen anything this cerebral or unsettling in anime before. It takes techno-horror to a whole other level with huge doses of paranoia and depressing themes. Subjects like religion, drugs, video games, sex, aliens, the alienation of modern life, and people's fear of computers are done very well here in horrifying, surreal, and hallucinatory ways.

My only complaints about the show are that it is a little talky (more ideas than action), the technology in the plot is getting a little dated, and there were obviously some budgetary constraints since there are some reused and re-purposed shots throughout the later episodes. The English dub is kind of corny in spots but over the years, I've gotten so used to it that it doesn't bother me much. Flip it over the J-dub if it bugs ya. Either way, Serial Experiments Lain is definitely worth checking out.

Megazone 23 - Part I

Megazone 23 - Part I
Directed by Noboru Ishigoru
1985
81 minutes

Shogo is a free-wheelin' hot rodder in early 1980s Japan. He cruises around with his buddy and chases chicks. One day, he nearly runs over a hottie named Yui Takanaka. While giving her a ride to an audition, Shogo finds out that she's a dancer looking for her big break. Sparks fly and he gets her number. But Shogo's life is about to change forever when his old pal Shinji turns up with a stolen mechanized prototype motorcycle called the Bahamut. Some evil government agents want the bike back and kill Shinji. Because he's such a skilled rider and such a radical dude, Shogo escapes on the Bahamut.



Shogo attempts to contact the MTV-like station to get the host and pop idol Eve Tokimatsuri to broadcast images of Bahamut and his story. But those tricky government agents block that shit and send even more agents after Shogo. On a crazy highway chase, the Bahamut transforms into a mecha! Whoa, I didn't see that coming! Yui and her roommates are drawn into the violence and we find out that the world that everyone knows is bullshit. SPOILER: The city is actually a spaceship floating around... in space. The military is preparing to fight aliens and for some reason, normal citizens are kept in this fantasy world of 1980s Japan. To be continued in Part II.

 

Oh Megazone 23, where have you been all my life? Director Ishigoru also directed one of my favorite animated films of all time: Macross: Do You Remember Love? so you know I am down with this shit. I love the character designs by Toshihiro Hirano. The story is pretty weak (that big revelation doesn't make a lick of sense) but this is some violent and bloody melodramatic entertainment. I am definitely looking forward (though somewhat terrified) of what Parts II and III may bring. I seriously wish I had seen this 25 years ago.

Leda: The Fantastical Adventures Of Yohko

Leda: The Fantastical Adventures Of Yohko
AKA Genmu Senki Leda
Directed by Kuhiko Yuyama
1985
70 minutes

So this teenage girl named Yohko has a crush on a dude but he doesn't know she exists. She writes him a love song and chickens out when she's about to hand him the tape. Suddenly, Yohko gets whisked away to Ashanty, a magical land with fantastic beasts, bizarre creatures, and weird mecha. She makes friends with Ringhum, a talking dog, loses her walkman with her precious love song, and falls into a plant that transforms her from boring plain ordinary Yohko into scantily-clad badass sword-wielding Yohko.



You see, her love song isn't just some ordinary pop jam. Hell no! In Ashanty, her dumb old song is the source of something called "Leda magic". And it is been prophetized- oh that's not a real word? sorry- prophesied that if the "Leda magic" falls into the wrong hands, a warrior will come to set things right. Obviously, Yohko is that warrior and those wrong hands belong to Zell, an androgynous duder who looking for "Leda's heart". Zell wants to take advantage of the hole (tee hee) in space and time between Ashanty and Earth. Why? Brace yourself. He wants to conquer our planet!



So Zell has this army of robots or whatever. Sure Yohko is pretty cool and all with her newly discovered super sword-fighting abilities but she is only one person. How can she hopefully hope to defeat all this freakin' evil and get home to Earth so she can confess her love to that dude? Enter Yoni, a shrine maiden who pilots a giant mecha (that looks like the Tin Man), to help Yohko bring the pain to Zell and his weird cronies.



I like how the people behind this animated feature couldn't decide if they should do fantasy genre or mecha genre or whatever-the-fuck genre then they said, "Fuck it, let's do all three!" I expected this to be a lot more sleazy (don't worry, someone actually animated a porn version) and violent. There's no blood in the action sequences but they aren't hurt by it's absence. This movie also features the least annoying talking dog in the history of animation. I like Leda despite the fact that the plot is embarrassingly stupid. The 80s cheese and accompanying soundtrack are big bonuses. Before he went all Pokemon on us, director Yuyama did one of my childhood favorites: Windaria.

Gamera, Super Monster

Gamera, Super Monster
AKA Uchu Kaiju Gamera
Directed by Noriaka Yuasa
1980
92 minutes

This film is about... Oh please don't make me think about it. Shit! Okay, fine. Space alien ladies come to Earth for some reason and a little dumbass kid named Keiichi does some stuff and there's an evil space lady and Gamera battles monsters and Keiichi thinks his pet turtle is Gamera or um- FAAAAART!!!! It really doesn't fucking matter.

My wife (because she's awesome) got me another Shout Factory double DVD set of Elvira's Movie Macabre. This time it was Gamera, Super Monster and They Came from Beyond Space. Until I put the disc in, I thought that I had never seen this Gamera film before. But after only a few minutes, the whole mess came flooding back into my brain. This less-than-half-assed garbage had kept me glued to the couch for 2 hours (with commercials) once upon a time. Before we go any further, I am NOT recommending this. Gamera, Super Monster fuckings sucks. Got it? Good. I had to get that out of the way.

What's really interesting is how much I hate stock footage now, especially when a sequel or a film in a series reuses footage from previous entries. Obviously, flashbacks (within reason) are fine but when old footage is presented as new material I get pretty pissed off. However, I think 80 percent (or more) of this film is footage from other Gamera flicks (six according to IMDB). It's unbearably annoying seeing footage from 60s and 70s films cut into a film from 1980. That being said; how did this affect my enjoyment as a kid in the 80s? Not at all. From the Wiki, I know that this episode of Movie Macabre premiered in 1983 but God only knows when I caught it. Either way, my young mind just enjoyed the monster mayhem (and oh yeah, I had a huge crush on Kilara, one of the trio of super space chicks).

You might be wondering how the hell this film fits into anime month. Well, speaking of stock footage, while crapping around in space, Gamera runs into two anime icons and it really blew my mind. First he runs into Space Cruiser Yamato during Keichii's dream and then later, he flies by Galaxy Express 999. Um, what the fuck? Bonus trivia: This film was so poorly received that it bankrupt the studio that produced it and there wasn't another Gamera movie for 15 years. That's also from Wikipedia. It's my new dictionary.


Yeah, I'm checking my watch too.


I swear I didn't Photoshop this shit. 


I maybe have been 10 years old but Kilara made me a man.


Yeah, I make this face when she changes costume too.

X

X
Directed by Rintaro (AKA Hayashi Shigeyuki)
1996
97 minutes

The city of Tokyo is about to be ass raped. The final battle to determine the fate of the planet Earth is about to go down within the city limits and you know it's gonna get ugly. Kamui, who has mommy issues and looks really good in a cape, is coming to town even though his presence will bring about the apocalypse. He just can't resist meeting up with his childhood friends, brother and sister: Fuma and Kotari.



Some evil wizardy type folks with crazy powers are going to recruit Fuma to fight with Kamui over the city, the planet, and Kotari. Not surprisingly, Kamui is in love with Kotari so yeah, that's a thing too. Kamui is not alone in his fight since there are also good wizardy type folks with crazy powers who want to save the Earth. Blah blah blah, energy dragons, people with swords inside their hearts, cherry blossom petals, angel wings, etc. You get the idea.




Don't let my snark fool you, I really dig X. The score is epic as are the battle scenes and prophetic visions. The animation is outstanding and I'm just guessing that this had a huge budget from the looks of things. Director Rintaro (Galaxy Express 999) really, really loves destroying Tokyo and it shows. This film makes me very curious about the 2001 animated series based on the same manga from Clamp.



My only complaints about this film are 1) it feels a little too long and 2) it also feels condensed at the same time. X has a lot of characters and many of them are barely introduced at all. At the risk of contradicting myself, I wish this film didn't feel longer but actually was longer. Fleshing out the characters, even just a little, would have helped things greatly. I would avoid the English dub on this one. The corny dialog is less painful when it's subtitled. For rivers of blood and lots of destruction, give this film a look. Just turn your brain off when it comes to the story.

Queen Millennia

Queen Millennia
AKA Sen-nen Joo
Directed Masayuki Akehi
1982
121 minutes

The place: Tokyo. The time: 1999. You know what though? Tokyo 1999 looks like Pittsburgh 2076. Anyway, Yukino is just your average young lady who also happens to be a friggin' alien space queen (or whatever). She stays on the Earth to keep an eye on us stupid humans. Her one thousand year reign is up and it's time for one of her sisters (chick has a lot sisters) to take over. On Lar Metal, Yukino's planet, all of its people sleep during winter -which is a thousand years long- and they only wake up during the "momentary spring".



Well, these guardians are sick of the warlike, moronic humans who are always destroying the Earth and they want it for themselves so they can stay awake all throughout the millennium. They trick Yukino and the humans into thinking that Lar Metal is going to collide with Earth by throwing the entire planet into chaos with a wicked meteor shower. BUT IN REALITY, they are just going to get the planets close enough so that they can cross the "ephemeral bridge" (?) and take our planet for themselves. Bastards!



Yukino says, "Fuck you, fuckers!" (I'm paraphrasing) to her alien comrades and decides to rescue as many humans as she can and go to war against her own kind. With her student Hajime (one of those damn pygmy-sized male lead characters that you see over and over again in manga artists's Leiji Matsumoto work), her badass sister Selen, and a continent sized warship on her side, Yukino gives her all to stop the plot that her dumb dickhead alien shitface friends have concocted.



One of my favorite things about Queen Millennia is the score by Kitaro. It is electro-fabulousness of the highest order mixed with the most melodramatic orchestra in the universe. I fucking love it. For a 2 hour movie, I'd say the pacing is pretty good. Once you get through the first half hour or so, you'll probably get hooked. And when you've got all the gothic overtones and straight-faced, pretentious, and hokey dialog under your skin, it's hard to shake and that's a good thing. There is also some nice atmosphere, great animation, and some pretty spectacular disaster sequences.

Locke The Superman

Locke the Superman
AKA Chojin Locke
Directed by Hiroshi Fukutomi
1984
120 minutes



Locke is an ESPer (that's a person with telekinetic abilities). In fact, he is probably the most powerful ESPer in the known universe. He is famous for his hatred of war and his refusal to allow himself to age. He doesn't want to be become an adult because all adults think about is war. Adults are losers. Colonel Ryu Yamaki tries to employ Locke to help him stop Lady Kahn, an ESPer who is building an army of evil ESPers to take over the universe. This Lady Kahn character wants to create a kingdom with herself on the throne to rule for a thousand years.



At first, Locke is hesitant to join up with Yamaki because he doesn't like violence. Once he senses how dangerous Lady Kahn actually is, he signs right up! Meanwhile, Lady Kahn and her right hand lady, Cornelia Prim, plan to use Jessica (a purple-haired ESPer) as a tool to destroy Locke. They implant false memories (of Locke killing her parents) and violent suggestions in her head, give her a new personality named Amelia, and send her off to seduce Yamaki. The moment she lays eyes on Locke, all hell breaks loose as Jessica/Amelia attacks with all of her powers.



After this vicious assassination attempt fails, Jessica/Amelia is basically left a basketcase and Yamaki is injured (but mostly in his heart (awww, you poor baby!)). As Locke is leaving to go wreck some shit at Lady Kahn's space fortress, Yamaki insists on going with him. The two dudes teleport (oh yeah, Locke can do that) to the distant part of the galaxy where Kahn and her army are hiding out. An epic showdown takes place and you'll just have to check out the film to find out how it ends.



This entertaining flick from Fukutomi, the director of Battle Angel, really hit my sweet spot. All the blood, gratuitous nudity, melodrama, heavy-handed messages, and silliness I crave from 80s anime is all here. The animation is pretty good. There are some flubs and awkward transitions but the style is exactly the kind of old school look that I love. Did I mention the homosexual overtones between Locke and Yamaki? No? Oh well, maybe we'll have time for that if we all decide to never grow up. Locke the Superman is one heck of a good time.



Lady Kahn: "This automatic gun will fire if you use your powers to snuff out any of those candles. Which means that man will die."

Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell
Directed by Mamoru Oshii
1995
83 minutes

Hi there. I guess I should start with off my month of anime with something overdone and over-analyzed to the point where it becomes generic. Ghost in the Shell is one of those titles that really is as fucking good as everyone says it is. I first saw this film in a packed theater in Palm Beach back in 1996. It didn't matter to me that the place was a ratty dump with uncomfortable seats because I was seeing something totally new. This was an unprecedented moment in my life. It was the first time that I was seeing quality anime on the big screen*. If my being an anime nerd wasn't already carved in stone at that point then that night is the chisel and the mallet that made it happen.

There are masterpieces and there are masterpieces and then there is Ghost in the Shell. This ultra-violent spectacle has a Blade Runner boner and it doesn't skimp on the atmosphere at all. The animation is top notch with great attention lavished on lighting and shadows. Kenji Kawai's score is haunting. The guy scored Ringu and over a hundred other kickass films so yeah; you're in expert hands here. The only misstep I can find in this flick is the writing. There's a lot of cheese and techno-babble info-dumping in the dialog but you probably won't care. I know I don't!


One of the most astonishing things about this film is how it slows down and chills. When there is a moment where we can just pause and appreciate the beauty of a world overrun by technology, Ghost in the Shell never wastes it. In another film, these quiet moments might be filler or time-wasting animator showoff nonsense but this isn't over 2 hours; it's a lean 83 minutes. There are even long, philosophical conversations between cyborgs about what it means to be (formerly) human! Director Oshii had already done a brilliant job with Patlabor 2, a gorgeous mecha movie that clocks in at 113 minutes. That 1993 effort is a fine film (that I hope to be covering this month) but it pales in comparison to this. Mad props to veteran editor Shuichi Kakesu for knowing where to trim and where to just let it ride.


Something that is a recurring phenomenon in anime of from this part of the decade is the daft English dubbing. Right now, I feel that voice actors who dub anime are a fairly respectable lot. Since anime is such a big industry, it seems to foster talented people and great performances. Well, Ghost in the Shell came out in 1995 which means the dubbing is going to be a crap shoot (emphasis on the crap). To be fair there are a few excellent voice actors in this movie and the rest are either directed to be hammy or are just overacting because no one told them to cut that shit out. How much of this is just corny dialog in the script and folks just trying to make the best of it? Honestly, I don't know.

I'm thinking that a lot of the technology and ideas expressed in this movie will seem trite or old fashioned one day (or maybe they they feel that way now) but the care and artistic flourishes in every minute of this film will never go out of style. For folks who have trouble getting into anime, Ghost in the Shell is an excellent place to start. I also recommend the TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It is a solid show and very entertaining.

As a final note, I just noticed that instead of making something new and awesome, Mamoru Oshii decided to make Ghost in the Shell 2.0 with some CG moments and flourishes. This version is terrible and pretty much an abomination of the saddest variety. The CG is extremely invasive and the transitions between the original film and the new animation are jarring. Avoid it at all costs.

*Ah ha! I just caught myself falsely remembering Ghost in the Shell as the first anime I ever saw on the big screen but that is not true. Technically, the first anime I saw on the big screen was Transformers: The Movie but that was an American-Korean-Japanese co-production so it kind of doesn't count. Anyway, the first real anime I ever saw (at that very same shithole theater) was Wicked City (the original anime (not the far superior live action HK classic)) with a baffled and uncomfortable crowd a few years earlier.

Anime Month Begins Monday

The Invasian 2: Total Destruction Anime Happy Month

My friends, will you come with me on a little journey? Starting on Monday, I am going to be delving into the world of anime. I haven’t done a theme month in a while and I thought that since I’ve seen such a good boy that I should do something totally self-indulgent. And hey, the last I checked, that’s what blogs are supposed to be about, right? So yeah, I am going to do a big old belly flop into a very deep pool. This is my little journey and the only condition is that I want to watch stuff that’s roughly 15 or more years old. I guess you could call September 2012 my old school anime month.

Since I was 14 years old, anime has been almost as important to me as horror films. Actually during the late 90s and early 00s, anime was THE most important thing in my life. There is a lot of good stuff out there nowadays but back in the day, any newly discovered titles were sacred. Totally desperate, I would sit through all kinds of mediocre and sometimes terrible crap just to get a glimpse of some hyper kinetic Japanese drawings! For this month, I plan on focusing on stuff from those dark times (the 80s/90s) and perhaps go as far back as the 60s and 70s to the real old school of what we used to call "Japanimation". Heck, I might even get to something made in this century.

One thing I am painfully aware of is that anime is not for everyone. Some people hate it because they’ve seen the garbage (Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon*, Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh!, etc.). Some people hate it because they have met one too many anime fans. (FYI: Anime fans are a subsection of nerd that is great in number but is also the most despised because let’s face it, they’re a silly group of people.) Some people hate it because it’s a huge industry with more genres and subgenres than you can shake a wooden sword at and they don’t have a clue where to start. And some people hate it because they just do. I am definitely not going to convert anyone this month or even try. I’m just hoping that some of you will be entertained while I do my thang.

There are lots of cheesy horror anime titles out there and I assure you, those are high priority. However, there are so many more sci-fi, action, and sci-fi-horror-action hybrid** titles in the anime abyss that I feel like I’d be missing out if I just tried to do horror exclusively.  I’ll be hitting up some serious giant robots too but avoiding the Robotech and the Gundam if I can. So be here on Monday if you want to witness the beginning of a whole month of me breaking the nerd barrier or puncturing the nerd ovum wall or losing your respect or some other metaphor.

*I can’t lie; I loves me some Sailor Moon. Deal with it.

**Japanese animators are brilliant genre blenders.

Can Anyone Identify This Music?

Hey gang. I finally watched my Vestron VHS of House by the Cemetery and I immediately noticed something odd about it. The music on the opening credits is different. It sounds very familiar. Can anyone identify this:

Give me headstone

I finished a little min-album of sound-icicles. Check it out!

I am so stoked.

Related reviews:

Freaky Farley Review

Monsters, Marriage, and Murder in Manchvegas Review

Back Soon

Working on a theme month for September. C U THEN.