Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - I've Got You, Man
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Player No. 3
 Posts: 209 Location: San Antonio, Texas |
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Personally, I always found that Hajime - much like Berg Katze - was more of an idea than a character. Hajime is the inherent good mankind has. It's creativity, energy, playfulness, and tenacity. Berg Katze is the opposite, the selfishness and greed humans have. I take this as a positive and negative aspect of the show; ideas don't really work as characters. Many have pointed out that Hajime doesn't have a character arc. But for me, that was fine. I found that the themes underpinning the show carried it with delicious aplomb.
Oh! And I'm glad you brought up the outstanding performance by Katze's VA. Absolutely bonkers, campy, and creepy. |
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ailblentyn
 Posts: 1688 Location: body in Ohio, heart in Sydney |
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The British comic looks wonderful. Sort of a Don Lawrence style?
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StudioToledo
 Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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That and whoever he did hire to work on it. A studio that was credited for many of those episodes was called "Gallerie International Films", which at the time mostly did TV commercials during the 70's, having looked up some files about them back in the day. Yet many key staffers on board were from the H-B group none the less and the animation pretty much kept to that approach for a TV production as it was. I can see how the confusion happens. |
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grouwl
Posts: 69 |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6253 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Yeah I can see why that person think Hanna Barbera was involved when they didn't. The other thing in common between Hanna Barbera and Gatchaman was Casey Kasem who voiced Shaggy in Scooby Doo, Robin in several HB's Batman and Robin show happened to voiced Ken (aka Mark) in BOTP adaptation. Janet Waldo who voiced Penelope Pitstop and Josie of Josie and the pussycats voiced Jun (aka Princess) in BOTP. That's the only connection, but HB was not involved with Gatchaman in anyway, this was all Sandy Frank's work. |
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StudioToledo
Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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Let's not forget Hoyt Curtin doing part of the music as well. Of course the same year he also contributed to this little beauty. |
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ryanvamp
Posts: 416 |
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I had to drop this series midway through because I couldn't stand Hajime; it baffles me that someone like Mike thinks she's amazing, but to each their own and I respect his opinion.
I'm all for a strong female lead but frankly I don't think a character so one dimensional and incredibly annoying in her behavior and mannerisms qualifies as interesting or even believable. I honestly think that when an anime tries to make an extremely upbeat and cheerful character they get into this UGUU territory and it breaks my suspension of disbelief completely. I don't mind and I actually welcome the intent of avoiding an angsty protagonist, but when I can't even consider him/her a human being in any way regarding her actions & reactions towards events, it's just as bad (or worse) as en emo character. I'd go on more details as to why I say this but I'm not going to convince anyone who likes the series already and to those who hate it probably agree on this point and need no further explanation. |
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Chrno2
 Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
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Some folks grew up with Gigantor, others Astro Boy and Kimba. If there are 2 anime shows I owe gratitude for putting me on the early path to anime goodness it's was Tatsunoko's 'Speed Racer' and 'Battle of the Planets' aka 'Science Ninja Team Gatchaman'. Oh I remember those days when I was 7 or 8. After going through the years of 'Underdog', and Speed Racer when I could get the damn channel airing it to work. I'd finally see something truly interesting that held my attention every day at 3pm. I would rush home after walking a half a mile from school just to arrive in time to sit down in front of the TV and tune in to the further adventures of Mark, Princess, Keyop, Tiny and Jason. It was like this show came out of the blue. I watched the same channel station, channel 44 of St. Petersburg, Fla. for years, and never expected to see such programming that exceeded the days of 'Rocky & Bullwinkle', and 'Underdog'. I never missed a show. From the 'Terrible Terrapin' (it taught me a new word, until I found out that such a thing exist, just not metal ones), to the Asura robot to that damn racing car ep. with Jason. Or the love interest with Keyop. But I never saw the puppy episode. I might have but don't remember. Man with all the tech you mean you couldn't remove a piece of shrapnel.
 As I watched the show I was curious why Keyop always talked like that. Yes, I too bought into the whole 7-Zark-7 deal. Funny thing is the animated transition was done so well you'd think he was part of it. That is until they added 1-Rover-1. I used to love sitting down as a child drawing those 2 out as well as the other team members. Then there was the whole special guest thing where Mark and Princess would show up on the station and surprise 7-Zark-7. Or get kissed by Princess. And let's not forget the infamous "sexy voice of Susan, the robot "eye" who is never seen.
7-Zark-7: Oh Susan, I was in the shower when you called." Susan: I figured you were. 7-Zark-7: Oh...how did you know. Susan: I spied on you with my...ONE...EYE.... 7-Zark-7: SUSAN!!! Can you spell sexual tension in a kids show, between robots? Yes, she could tell you everything that was going on. Talk about hiding the truth. The whole team being in a band, playing ping pong and space burgers. Those animations were hilarious. And the revealing that Zorak was a woman. Man, it almost sounded as good as Metroid some years later. By the time I got into HS, and ran into guys who would connect me with more veteran anime fans, they told me the truth. About Keyop aka originally being a foul mouth boy and not an android. No 7-Zark-7, no 1-Rover-1, no Susan, no space burgers, Zorak being both sexes and that the army were humans not robots, who died in battle fighting with Ken's team and human casualties. Yeah, we can't show kids the truth. But you sure can blow up enemies in Johnny Quest right? Riiiight. I never had the chance to see Gatchaman OVA. I did see some episodes of Gatchman II and the OP to Gatchaman F. I was like, WTF happened to the ship? It went from "chicken hawk" to a damn mini star destroyer. A anime veteran friend had a model one. What were they thinking. I guess they really did try to keep the 'Star Wars' thing going. But the first series was the best. I did manage to find a comic book on the series. It's long gone. I'd be surprised if I managed to find it among my junk but I'm sure it's gone to the recesses of time. Gatchaman Crowds, it could be interesting. I had the chance of seeing part of an ep. In a way the designs remind me of something in the spirit of a Persona game. Hell, when you mentioned 'Karas', I said the same thing. Hell, even that character would be at home in a Persona game. I kind of have no interest in this series, but maybe one day I may give it a look. It definitely looks very different from it's origin but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah, they definitely threw that script across the room.
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StudioToledo
Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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You're lucky to have seen any of that as far as I know. In the 80's I was still doing the same thing picking up channels from Detroit or Cleveland.
I bet that was worth the rush. I know how that felt like too. Today's generation are wasted on instant gratification.
It was certainly "original" for it's time when most syndicated programming seen during afternoon hours on TV either consisted of "Golden Age" material from the 30's, 40's and 50's or the one or two made-for-TV cartoons either originally seen prime-time or Saturday morning. Of course when I was watching Rocky & Bullwinkle, that was a show they deemed suitable as a cult late night deal on my local station who ran it at 11PM Saturdays.
As Mike stated, BOTP randomly selected 3/4 of the 105 episodes of Gatchaman when producing their dub of the series, and many episodes were either dropped or sometimes extracted to fill up space in another (I came across that for the very last episode in the series).
At last you bought into it well. Hope you enjoyed moments like this.
Yeah those were pretty OK I suppose if you had any thought of whether or not some of those guys would speak to Zark in person than through their monitor in the Ready Room as they repeat the same animation cycle over and over.
I feel like that was the writers wanting to let it all hang out while trying to figure out how to go about adapting material that was foreign to them. You can tell they could care less about it as long as they got a paycheck. I recall another moment of Susan telling Zark she was equipped with "Spectra-Vision" and could see for millions of miles, leaving Zark a little relieved to learn she can't see through the cloth of his bath towel (as if his "fosdick" is being challenged either way).
Makes you wanna go out and party! It's no doubt the theme of the show was "Make love, not war!"
Funny, I thought the writers made a clever joke out of it by stating it was Zoltar's sister?
Yeah it's an odd double-standard really. Of course I suppose Hanna-Barbera didn't show it on-screen as much as Tatsunoko did, though making comparisons between both studios is an interesting topic for myself.
Well at first there was a feature film in Japan in 1977 that replaced Bob Sakuma's score with something more fitting of Star Wars in grandeur (the film itself is a compilation of the first series simply retelling several key points during the show leading to it's conclusion). Then in 1978 they came out with the follow-up "II" and "F" a year later, but no doubt Star Wars had a hand there. |
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Chrno2
Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
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Thanks, @StudioToledo for your replies. Seems we had similar tastes in our childhood.
Oh gawd, that filler. Thanks for sharing that.  And fosdick. Hoo boy. 
Thing is I never knew what Gigantor or the other shows were. I didn't know about them until older family members who grew up in the 50's and onward had watched it. So I had no clue to what they were referring until they started buying the shows for their kids from bargain bins. So at least I got a chance to grow up with something as most [as you mentioned] don't get into until either the 80's and 90's. And we never knew it was part of a bigger scheme. But we did know it was something truly different than what we were used to. The whole deal with getting the channels to work that did happen. Remember those old TVs that had VHF and UHF. Well, channel 44 is like the Fox channel of today. But when I was growing up in St. Pete, 44 was the main channel for all your syndicated programming. From daytime shows like the 3 Stooges and Lil' Rascal reruns to Underdog, by 3pm. So when BoTP came along that was the show which pretty much replaced the older cartoons in the 3pm slot. I have no idea how I managed to get home so quickly once school got out when I assumed sessions ended at 3pm. Then after those shows you get programming that your parents might watch before the evening hours, like Emergency One or live action stuff like the Bionic Woman or the Six-Million Dollar Man. But there was one channel, called ch. 6. This station was seemed like wasn't part of the main channels everyone used. It hosted 'Speed Racer' in the afternoons and Tezuka's 'Space Giants' aka 'Magma Taishi' (live-action) on that station. It was a ritual with me during that time. Watch Battle of the Planets at 3pm, then tune into channel 6 for 'Speed' and 'Goldar' up until 5pm. But the channel always had technical difficulties. Even with an antennae the problem was always technical on their end. And sometimes when it did work, it would just cut out right in the middle of your viewing. And I thought that if you changed the channel and then go back it would work. Not always. I later led me to believe that the channel was an odd fluke. Kind of like accidentally picking up a signal you shouldn't have been able to. Or like when people could pick up these alternative music videos on UHF in NYC. Or and adult signal from someone's cable. When it worked it worked, when it decided it didn't it was when you watching. I have to admit those were fun days. I will admit the original Phoenix ship was the best. You just get used to it. After see those other things, it was like how I feel today about Pokemon going from subtle patterns to downright crazy. |
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StudioToledo
Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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I had to dig it up.
Sounds like my mom with pushing UPA stuff like Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing Boing on me. It takes one generation to rub off on the next.
That's true, though I had cable TV and it use to be truly different when they weren't trying to be like the mainstream channels of the day. Cable TV use to be such a different beast then with what they use to show.
For me, it was WKBD, channel 50 in Detroit that was my channel back then (eventually becoming Fox in '87 and later a UPN/CW affiliate that is now owned by CBS (a duopoly with another channel up there).
It usually varied. Having looked through microfiche of my town's paper I saw WKBD did air BOTP themselves when it debuted in '78, though oddly the show was also picked up locally here in Toledo on WDHO channel 24 (an ABC affiliate). I see they had it on at 4PM weekdays, that was much easier I'm sure. http://vintagetoledotv.squarespace.com/print-ads-wdho/wdho-tv-24-print-ads/2381247 Strangely it didn't last on that channel and after half a season they replaced it with Tom & Jerry. That didn't surprise me.
Wonder if it was telecine problems with their projectors? This was still an era when shows were shipped on film prints rather than video and often problems of that sort can occur over extended periods of usage of said equipment.
Was this an out-of-town station you were essentially "DX-ing"? I suppose if I knew more about what this I would see why that was.
This is why we stop paying attention. |
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Chrno2
Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
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It could have been but I wouldn't have known anything about that. I was only 7 or 8. All I knew is that it was a regular VHF channel. When it worked, programming ran all day. When it stopped it was totally unexpected. The show will get a cut, then static and a message that would say "experiencing technical difficulties" or something. Sometimes it was out in the mornings and sometimes it was on. But the afternoon was my greatest fear. Like cable during a massive interference from satellite. But this is before cable. They later moved 'Speed Racer' to morning hours. Lets say, it worked about 60% of the time out of 100%. And that's my being generous. I never really knew what programming was on that station. But it could have been pulling in something from another area. This whole deal also reminds me of the stations that they had in NYC during the 80's, where they had a local station that did Japanese programming. And the first anime they featured (and I think it was subbed) was Romance of the 3 Kingdoms. |
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StudioToledo
Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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Channel 6 alone is also a very unusual frequency on the dial as it corresponds to an FM signal as well, very often a station that is on 6 could be heard on radio as well if you turn to 87.7FM.
That's the problem about memories or wanting to track down these things later in life, you always end up back in square one.
There's been a few of them around like on the West Coast and Hawaii. I had a pal who use to watch Japanese cartoons on New York's ch. 47 (now a Telemundo station) when they use to give a few hours to some group to air those type of shows on it. These type of stations basically did the brokered-time deal that allowed minority groups to provide said programming which I'm sure cost plenty to do. The earliest anime fandom grew out of this. Fred Patten goes into great detail it in these posts. http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/how-home-video-created-anime-fandom/ http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/anime-fandom-in-north-america/ http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/anime-fandom-in-north-america-part-2/ 
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Chrno2
Posts: 6171 Location: USA |
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Thanks for these links I'll definitely read them. I'm know who Fred Patten is. A few veteran anime fans I knew (who ran the anime CFO chapter in NYC and Philly) knew him personally when he attended cons. I've only heard about him and I get the chance to see him in person at Confurrence East, but never gotten close to him because I felt he was highly unapproachable. But I've read his book 'Reading manga and Watching Anime', which was very thorough. In fact much of what he mentioned I remember. I know that he had a stroke, but there hasn't been much said about him for a few years now since then. Oh gawd Jason's lips. Those are Tatsunoko lips. |
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StudioToledo
Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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Well he still gets around, I actually sent him a get well card after his stroke.
I also assume it was hard on those American animators to try copying what Tatsunoko did before here. It's like looking at Public Domain VHS covers! |
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