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The Mike Toole Show - Bein' a Hata

I pre-ordered my Sea Prince and the Fire Child DVD back during the TRSI back to school sale, I can't wait to finally get my mitts on it!

It was perhaps inevitable that Little Nemo would turn out like that. It's such a huge landmark in U.S. comic art and narrative, yet it never reached animation for many decades after McCay's death.

I'm not trying to be rude, but I think the DVD cover art for Sirius no Densetsu is actually very good.

(And speaking of Hata and Discotek... I'm going to continue crossing my fingers and holding my breath for a DVD box-set of the Mushi-Pro trilogy; knowing their penchant for releasing classic, ground-breaking, or experimental anime titles from the sixties and seventies, it seems like a perfect fit. That, for me, would be the release of the century.)

Little Nemo? That's the one with the NES video game, right?

I see that Makoto Shinkai has yet to find a place in this list. Rintaro has been mentioned however, so I shall make no further quarrel of this.

I'm sure that should have been, "before going on to make the quintessential Girls with Guns trilogy of the turn of the century,

What, no mention of Ryutaro Nakamura in the stream of directors?

I'd like to see Junichi Sato profiled. He's directed a whole bunch of awesome and important anime. Plus, you haven't even done a single column on shoujo anime yet. :cry:

You mentioned Mashimo and I think Kawajiri but what about Maeda Mahiro, Yuasa Masaaki, Mochizuki Tomomi, Watanabe Shinichi(ro) to name a few? Not to mention Tomino, Kawamori, and, yes, Shinbo?

As did I- Discotek is quickly earning my respect for releasing titles no other company would be willing to bother with. I hope to start sending more money their way (sadly, right now most od their catalog is works I'm just flat-out not interested in, or already own from a previous release.)

I feel like Discotek releasing something like Fairy Florence or Unico is a distinct possibility, since they've gotten Sea Prince out of the gates.

I'd like to see Junichi Sato profiled. He's directed a whole bunch of awesome and important anime. Plus, you haven't even done a single column on shoujo anime yet.

I mentioned Yuasa. As for the rest, um, I don't really feel the need to turn in a 10,000+ word column just so I don't miss anybody. These guys'll get their due-- Tomino, in particular, is a creator I could probably rip off 10k words about just by himself. He is particularly interesting to me in that I think of the majority of his works as failures (near-misses), but very, very interesting failures.

I was initially dismayed to discover that Sea Prince was 4:3, rather than widescreen, but closer scrutiny revealed that the movie was produced open matte - its theatrical presentation may have been widescreen, but the film was created in Academy ratio, so it's supposed to be 4:3.

Ever heard of this movie? If you haven't, just go and find any veteran Los Angeles-based animator over the age of 40 and ask them about it, because there's at least a 50% chance they worked on it.

I'm not trying to be rude, but I think the DVD cover art for Sirius no Densetsu is actually very good. In fact, I think it's better than most I've seen.

I REALLY want to get the DVD for this. I sincerely hope Discotek will save other classic anime titles, like Ringing Bell or maybe even the Dog of Flanders anime movie!! Of course, those are dreams that will likely never come true.

Little Nemo? That's the one with the NES video game, right?

skchai1 wrote:

It was perhaps inevitable that Little Nemo would turn out like that. It's such a huge landmark in U.S. comic art and narrative, yet it never reached animation for many decades after McCay's death.

The other big problem with Nemo in general is that Nemo himself is a blank sheet: an entirely bland and personality-free kid to whom things happen. (That was kind of the point, hence his name, "Nemo" or "no-name".) In the comic, he only ever expresses having a will of his own once or twice. That worked well in the short narrative confines of a comic page, but makes for a pretty much impossible screenwriting task.

Oh my god, I so clearly recall watching The Mouse and His Child just once years ago on Disney. That movie really gripped me as a kid. I can clearly recall the scene where spoiler[the rat goes crazy and crushes the father and son with a rock, all while hearing the child mouse's protests to stop]. That part really freaked me out when I saw it. Did it ever get any kind of media release outside of TV?

I'm interested in that Oceanus fellow. His design looks pretty badass. I've heard a lot of glowing reports about great Sea Prince still is, so I should add it to my list of anime. And wow, Tony Oliver? I'd love to hear how young his voice was.

Little Nemo, ha, how could any late 80s to 90 kid forget that one? I had researched some years back to find out more about who worked on it, but I hadn't realized there had been such a fiasco over it. Was it really because Nemo had essentially no personality? The Nightmare King was so awesome to me, and many people told me he was very frightening then.

Oh and as for the 'Jack and the Beanstalk' feature, that's available now. Through a group called 'Henstooth video'. The have quite a few decent acquisitions not to mention rescuing Fear of Black Hat.

Chrno2 wrote:

Oh and as for the 'Jack and the Beanstalk' feature, that's available now. Through a group called 'Henstooth video'. The have quite a few decent acquisitions not to mention rescuing Fear of Black Hat.

They even have the second volume of BEANY & CECIL! Another DVD I'd recommend people pick up from them is the bizarre German-Italian co-pro animated slop "Once Upon A Time".

I would also like to add (that was not in my earlier post) that someone needs to pick up the 'Unico' movies. There was mention some years ago that some studio was going to release them. I remember this because we got this as a request from a student. At that time the only available formats were "out of print" VHS copies. And not a good selection. They only sold 1 or 2 out of the 4 movies. I had to research and approve the purchase. But at that time my job (college art library) had slowed down buying old VHS tapes unless it was really important. As of now we just did a big weeding project of withdrawing some VHS tapes and replacing them provided they're available on DVD. I kept watch for a long time waiting for a possible release based on such announcement. The only Unico that are available on DVD are these "all region" copies with the Sanrio logo. It states that it has a new English translation. Sounds fishy. So I hope that someone will finally grab their license and release them since the first announcement was never a go.

I'm going to continue crossing my fingers and holding my breath for a DVD box-set of the Mushi-Pro trilogy; knowing their penchant for releasing classic, ground-breaking, or experimental anime titles from the sixties and seventies, it seems like a perfect fit. That, for me, would be the release of the century.