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The Mike Toole Show - TAC-tical Withdrawal




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chronoclast



Joined: 29 May 2008
Posts: 97
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 11:39 am Reply with quote
Night On the Galactic Railroad is a great film and it's something I've been really wishing someone like Discotek or Sentai would rescue. The original CPM DVD was non-anamorphic from what I remember and I'd assume it looks terrible these days. It got an anamorphic DVD release in Japan some years ago.

I recently saw The Life of Guskou Budori and it's a beautiful film visually especially in HD. I agree that it isn't as compelling as Galactic Railroad though. I still would like to see someone license it. I'd be curious to see the 90's film Ryutaro Nakamura directed too.

I've yet to see Spring and Chaos. I know the dub has been on Hulu for a few years but I'd like to see it subtitled first.
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vanfanel



Joined: 26 Dec 2008
Posts: 1239
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 12:06 pm Reply with quote
One note: "Hidamari no Ki" is a TV series (and more recently, a live action drama) based on a Tezuka manga; not a film. I've seen it all the way through, and yes, it really is pretty great, especially for people intrigued by the historical aspects of "Rurouni Kenshin."

Sad to hear about Group TAC's passing. Now I regret even more not seeing their final production in the theater last summer. I'll need to give it a rent when I get a chance. Gisaburo Sugii is one of the true greats; he's kept a high standard of quality over a phenomenally high output over the course of his career. Glad he's still at it.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2530
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 12:24 pm Reply with quote
Group TAC always did seem to be willing to try something different out, no doubt partially because of Sugii himself. If there is a TAC production that got my curiosity the most, though, it definitely is a title that they were planning to make, but never got to do.

After watching the 2005 live-action TV adaptation of 1972-1976's Astro Kyudan/Team Astro, an awesomely insane baseball series that truly has to be seen to be belived, on DramaFever.com I had wondered why there was never an anime adaptation of it made before. Upon doing some research I found out that Group TAC had actually planned on doing a TV series adaptation back in 1992. Unfortunately, a lack of baseball anime at the time made any & all TV stations hesitant to pick it up, & the OVA market was in decline at that time (so straight-to-video wasn't going to work), so it never got made. Eventually I picked up a 1999 book by Ohta Publishing called Astro Kyudan Memorial that actually showed the original pitch as well as a couple of actual "steel-cel prototypes" that showed that TAC was definitely going to stick to the look of the manga. It certainly would have been interesting to see how a title as insane & all over the place as this would have done back in 1992.
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dlian



Joined: 09 Dec 2010
Posts: 8
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 12:24 pm Reply with quote
Didn't Tokyopop release a remastered disc for Spring and Choas?
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Zhou-BR



Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1419
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 12:25 pm Reply with quote
Great column as usual, but when you say The Daichis was "the last TV series to extensively use cel animation before pretty much everyone went to digital", you're only considering other Group TAC shows, right? There were many other cel-animated shows produced by other studios after The Daichis, such as Gainax's first season of Mahoromatic and Sunrise's Inuyasha (which only switched to digital after 98 episodes), and I also believe Sazae-san remained cel-animated for a long time after that.

Last edited by Zhou-BR on Sun Jul 14, 2013 3:41 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Sakura Shinguji



Joined: 09 Feb 2005
Posts: 190
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 12:48 pm Reply with quote
Great article as always, Mike. Probably one of your better ones, I'd say. There was quite a bit of information in there I didn't know.

Night on the Galactic Railroad is easily one of the most treasured discs I have in my collection. It's nice to see it getting some love; not that a lot of people don't care for it, but increasingly just not a lot of people have even seen it.

A couple of things:

1) Spring and Chaos did receive a terrible-looking U.S. DVD release courtesy of Tokyopop... but then soon thereafter due to fan feedback actually got a reauthored, better-looking second version with corrected subtitles, plus a replacement program. Here's the press release from ANN's archives: animenewsnetwork.com/news/2001-06-07/tokyopop-spring-and-chaos-recall. Funny thing, though, is that for some reason I apparently didn't have to send in my DVD as the recall program apparently required, because I have both versions sitting right in front of me.

2) Regarding The Daichis, it should be clarified that of the two versions of episode 11 included on Geneon USA's third DVD, the one identified as the actual episode 11 was the episode that was originally broadcast on TV in Japan, while the "Alternative" episode 11 as the disc names it was released as the correct, originally-intended episode 11 once the series made it to DVD. Unlike the situation we find ourselves in today, where it's common for shows to have unfinished episodes broadcast and then subsequently polished up for DVD and Blu-ray, in this case TAC decided to commission a placeholder episode that could be completed quickly rather than complete enough of the actual episode 11 in a rush in order to use what there was of it for the broadcast. Neither episode actually shares any animation content other than the OP and ED sequences. The broadcast episode 11 is fundamentally no different than a recap episode, in that it uses a lot of recycled animation (and recycles numerous clips of that animation over and over in some attempt at dramatic emphasis), and what new animation there is, is of clearly lesser quality than the rest, while what little story there is, is largely inconsequential and doesn't have much of anything to do with the episodes around it. The actual episode 11 features a real story with continuity, and completely new animation.
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Greboruri



Joined: 09 Jul 2003
Posts: 373
Location: QBN, NSW, Australia
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 9:17 pm Reply with quote
"Stormy Night" got a English subtitled DVD a few years back courtesy of AVP in Hong Kong. I'm assuming a subbed film print did the rounds of the film festival circuit back in 2005/06, becuase the subs are really good. Great film too.

"The Life of Guskou Budori" has also got a subbed DVD release via Eos in Korea.
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samuelp
Industry Insider


Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 2228
Location: San Antonio, USA
PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 9:43 pm Reply with quote
Greboruri wrote:
"Stormy Night" got a English subtitled DVD a few years back courtesy of AVP in Hong Kong. I'm assuming a subbed film print did the rounds of the film festival circuit back in 2005/06, becuase the subs are really good. Great film too.

"The Life of Guskou Budori" has also got a subbed DVD release via Eos in Korea.

Oh, look at that! I had no idea an english subbed package existed.

That's almost certainly my translation, as I translated the film for festivals and the like while I was working at Tezuka Productions.
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Penguin_Factory



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 732
Location: Ireland
PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 5:30 am Reply with quote
I was always kind of interested in Spring and Chaos, the cat designs are very appealing. I keep meaning to track down Night On The Galactic Railroad as well.

Quote:
Maybe most interestingly, it was the last TV series to extensively use cel animation before pretty much everyone went to digital


There was a show (on the same channel, oddly enough) called Figure 17 that I believe aired after this that was mostly hand drawn cel animation. It might not count though, since the animation switched (quite jarringly at times) to digital for parts of some action scenes. It's an interesting contrast, as the digital animation, which looks very high quality for the time, is by any reasonable measure more technically polished and "better", the cel stuff has a much more appealing look to it. [/i]
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Lady Multi



Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 673
PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 1:07 pm Reply with quote
I love "One Stormy Night". Sad that it was never brought over here; I so wanted to officially add it to my collection.
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Brand



Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 1028
PostPosted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 2:11 pm Reply with quote
I'm really interested in seeing The Life of Guskou Budori now. Night on the Galactic Railroad is one of those formative anime for me. I think back now and I had a choice between getting Night on the Galactic Railroad and Miyuki-chan in Wonderland. Let me tell you I choose correctly. Holy crap, did I dodge a bullet on that one. I watched Night on the Galactic Railroad a ton in high school. Then at some point my VHS got lost. I recently picked up a DVD for it. I also have a script book, movie pamphlet, and movie poster for it.
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Lady Multi



Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 673
PostPosted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 1:21 pm Reply with quote
brand wrote:
I'm really interested in seeing The Life of Guskou Budori now. Night on the Galactic Railroad is one of those formative anime for me. I think back now and I had a choice between getting Night on the Galactic Railroad and Miyuki-chan in Wonderland. Let me tell you I choose correctly. Holy crap, did I dodge a bullet on that one. I watched Night on the Galactic Railroad a ton in high school. Then at some point my VHS got lost. I recently picked up a DVD for it. I also have a script book, movie pamphlet, and movie poster for it.


Haha, I bought "Miyuki-chan in Wonderland" ONLY because it was based on CLAMP manga.

Back in the VHS days, I only bought things I KNEW I would like, though. Some of the more obscure or single titles I never touched. I used to have to make an hour trip to buy my anime though...so I usually had what I wanted planned out before hand...
..I'm sure I missed out on a lot of obscure good anime.
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WWAanimefan



Joined: 19 Jul 2006
Posts: 60
Location: Everett WA USA
PostPosted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 2:25 am Reply with quote
Confession time: The only anime I ever got a fansub of was the Street Fighter movie. Though the reason I did was a scene not mentioned in the article: Chun Li's shower scene right before her fight. She has always been my favorite fighter babe and I think you can figure out the rest. Still, even though the copy I got was mediocre, the animation I thought was quite good. A company that will be missed.
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Chrno2



Joined: 28 May 2004
Posts: 6171
Location: USA
PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 2:14 pm Reply with quote
Great column. So many connections. It's shame to hear about great studios like this just go away. I saw some of these films like the Jack and the Beanstalk feature. I was really surprised that it wasn't what I expected it to be.

Night of the Galactic Railroad, and Spring and Chaos were very interesting films. But Chaos, was definitely surreal. I grabbed those 2 for myself. I never knew who they were based on but the structure of using cats was an interesting analogy. I would love to see the last feature. It looks almost sinister.

Everyone could remember SF. Man that had so many stories on that. You should do a column about that.

I saw the film Arashi no Yoru ni and I found it interesting. Now that's a film should get a release. We could use a film like that. I would love to own it myself.

But yes we need to see more good stuff like this.
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StudioToledo



Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Posts: 847
Location: Toledo, U.S.A.
PostPosted: Fri Nov 18, 2016 7:21 pm Reply with quote
Despite being three years later, I just found out Japan FINALLY got a DVD out of "Jack & The Beanstalk" last year through Kadokawa Pictures. Ought to be worth tracking down.
http://www.fandompost.com/2015/08/13/kadokawa-sets-jack-to-mame-no-ki-anime-dvd-release/
https://www.amazon.com/Animation-Jack-Mame-Japan-DABA-4891/dp/B013DIH5GM
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