Forum - View topicPile of Shame - MARCO: 3,000 Leagues in Search of Mother
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1242 |
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I'm happy and sad to see this article. Happy to see Marco get some attention, and sad to learn the movie didn't turn out so well.
Around 2003, I managed to snag a cheap, non-bootlegged Taiwanese release of the TV series with English subtitles. It's still easily one of the best, most moving anime series I've ever watched, and knowing it was from Takahata, I had no idea whether it would end in joy or tragedy. As someone else said, I can only imagine watching this as a kid in the 70s, wondering every week what would happen next. Although the ending is important, like so many of the great anime, it's all about the journey, and seeing what kind of people these characters become.
Time? People are busy; most Japanese don't have the time or inclination to sit through a 50-odd episode series. Otaku do, but WMT shows were never made for otaku. Many of them predate the otaku phenomenon (though by being so fantastic, they played an unintentional role in laying the foundations for why we have otaku in the first place). Also, there's money. If you're a parent who just wants to get your kid something to watch, and you can choose the 2,000 yen movie or the 16,000 yen box set, which would you go for? |
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Penguin_Factory
 Posts: 732 Location: Ireland |
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I've watched the Anne of Green Gables series from 1979 on fansubs and absolutely fell in love with it, which has sparked a general interest in World Masterpiece Theatre shows.
But I can absolutely see why they've faded into obscurity. I like both slow paced, quiet series (Haibane Renmei is one of my favourites) and have a weakness for slightly saccharine, slightly maudlin nostalgia-fests about childhood (Figure 17 is another one of my favourites) so I was kind of the perfect mark for it; a lot of people are just going to be bored silly by any of these series, and I can't really blame them for that. |
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vanfanel
Posts: 1242 |
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I understand the market forces that are at work, but I can't help finding it slightly....galling, I guess, that none of these shows -- not even the ones based on classic American novels -- can get a US DVD release, while stuff like "Momo Kyun Sword" will probably be fast-tracked. To the person who posted the link to where the "Little Women" anime is showing, great find! I'm not familiar with that channel and don't have access to it, but to anyone who does, it's an enjoyable show, and I recommend it. Be aware that it only covers Part I of "Little Women" the novel, so when you're done, there's still the book and its two sequels if you want more. Also: be aware that Jo drops a big spoiler for Part II in the final episode's epilogue, so you might want to tune out at that point if you're planning to read the book afterward. |
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EvilOmar78
Posts: 34 |
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This was one of the first anime I remember watching as a kid in Peru in the early 80s. Along with Captain Harlock, Captain Future and the Tomb of Dracula movie this is the stuff that got me hooked.
Marco will always have a special place in my heart. I remember watching the Spanish intro a few years ago on Youtube and it made me tear up a bit. |
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Penguin_Factory
Posts: 732 Location: Ireland |
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Momo Kyun Sword is going to sell, though. Because it has boobs. If you released Akage no Anne on DVD I'd be surprised if it sold more than 100 copies. Ultimately I've just made my peace with the reality that a lot of good, older obscure stuff is never going to get an official release. Most of it has been fansubbed, so it's not like you can't watch it. |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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It has boobs, but they're not visible often and the show isn't really that interesting. Just because something is full of lame ecchi doesn't make it a guaranteed hit, it probably won't even break 1,500 discs. Why this stuff gets fast-tracked in the US is because it's new and freely visible/available for anyone to see. Comparing that to something like Marco or Anne of Green Gables or Treasure Island is just ludicrous. You're talking different markets over the span of several decades. You might as well complain that Wicked City and MD Geist have had releases for all they have to do with old family WMT anime. |
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StudioToledo
 Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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It's fun when older shows get referenced in newer ones people don't expect to know anything about.
You probably are. I've already been past it by now.
It's nice when they care to do that at all. Some countries in Southeast Asia may also get English dubs as well through cable channels like Animax as I've often heard that was the case.
I didn't think it was so great, of course I knew of it's presence there for the past three years. I don't even get TBN and it's ilk locally to watch it.
Well the channel is available online so you can watch it there too. http://www.smileofachildtv.org/watchOnline.htm
And this is why I don't watch this stuff anymore. |
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Jayhosh
 Posts: 972 Location: Millmont, Pennsylvania |
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I've always loved the World Masterpiece Theater series! If the current "otaku" fanbase can't enjoy them then that's their loss. Most can't get into anything unless it has sexy female characters and dark and edgy stuff like blood and gore in it. A lot of these series though are classics, naturally, considering their origins from western literature. A lot of my enjoyment probably stems from the fact that I just love classic animation in general. And just when I thought I'd seen them all, I discovered Japanese animation. It's a shame most of these never have or will see the light of day in the US. Which is odd, you'd think they would be pretty pretty popular with children but I guess not. Like an earlier post said, these were never aimed at those otaku anyway,they didn't even exist when these were produced.
I've always been especially fond of Future Boy Conan. That's a WMT title, isn't it? It definitely feels like one. The Miyazaki connection is what got me to watch that. |
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REDOG
Posts: 37 |
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The original series has few later to be famous in the industry personals, mainly hayao miyazaki on layouts and continuity and yoshiyuki tomino from the gundam frenchise.
Also few famous seiyuu (but that's not unusual) like: ichiro nagai,kei tomiyama, noriko ohara and akio nojima (ok he's not that famous, but still). Like justin says, this became famous in many countries all over the world, not only in latin america but in 80's israel as well, it was the national tear jerker or something like that, all the country saw it, in fact it was so famous that on the primetime news before the last episode had been broadcasted the news reporter opened the edition with the sentence "everybody can calm down, marco had found his mother". Besides the opening had been sung by a then famous celebrity singer and the dubbing cast was made of many famous theater actors. |
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StudioToledo
Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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That certainly made them accessible to an audience outside Japan by default there. Sometimes these shows do have violence too, but of course they wouldn't turn them into gorefests at all.
It happens.
The 1980's was a perfect time when cable TV was young and would often pick up stuff like this when it was convenient.
No it isn't, it was aired on NHK and wasn't produced under the same category as WMT was on a separate sponsored network.
At least they took it to heart to follow up on that. Some countries in Europe had also played Marco too. I'm sure similar feelings were felt too. Often I've read in these countries, Japanese cartoons were FAR cheaper to obtain than American ones, this benefited some places like Italy when privatization of TV channels occurred in the 80's. |
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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That makes me think on why America never really imported many Japanese shows in the 60s-80s. Sure, we definitely got some, but we also had a robust animation market of our own, so the need to fill in more timeslots didn't occur until Nick and Disney's cable channels appeared. But even when not focused on the old stuff, who ever paid attention to recent WMT like Les Miserables or WMT-esque like Dezaki's Snow Queen. You'd think some company would want to siphon off some Frozenbucks and license that one at least for streaming: "An anime based on the book that Disney kind of sort of took inspiration from for Frozen but really has nothing in resemblance to". That'd probably work better than actually trying to market it as a Dezaki anime.
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Like Robotech and Battle of the Planets, there was too much of a need to "camouflage" imported anime shows, so that we wouldn't suspect they were from, shh, somewhere else... If the show happened to be about Peter Pan, or Thumbelina, or Grimm's Fairy Tales or The Little Prince, that just made the ruse that much easier, and you didn't have to worry about not having a built-in audience. (And there's even stranger ones we never saw floating around on ToonGoggles' streaming site...) Don't know whether it was WMT, but remember watching the original fansubs of the Peter Pan series, which got through its World Classic story in the first season, improvised new anime-style adventures for the second season, and then was replaced by a WMT serial of Daddy Long Legs. Think it was as much anime's attempt to find itself in the late 70's and early 80's, as much as other countries' attempt to find something to show. |
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StudioToledo
Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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Given the limited nature of TV in those days when you had basically three commercial networks and a public TV station to deal with, it was pretty selective (let alone the junk that was being made at the time that only lasted a season on Saturday morning and quickly forgotten).
Certain our country was not as open-minded to this sort of thing as it was elsewhere.
Why the 1970's anime film "Jack & The Beanstalk" fooled most of us with it's ruse!
I've never been there before, but now that I see what it is, it kinda reminds me of Nickelodeon in it's early days. Random unheard of cartoons simply to fill in a void that was never asked for. And certainly there's plenty of stuff made over the years that never had a chance of US distribution/licensing simply out of chance (oh, nice they have have Saber Rider & The Star Sheriffs). At least it's something for the modern era when the net might be the best way to watch any of this cooky stuff.
Wouldn't surprise me. Not that any country was/is capable of putting out original productions on it's own (of course in Europe you had certain producers who did work with Japanese studios in putting out co-produced works like Vicky the Viking, Willy Fog, Orban Star Racers or Mysterious Cities of Gold in the past). |
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zeopower6
Posts: 191 |
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Aw, that first dig at Welcome to the Space Show with the Susan Boyle comment...
 That was a cute film, lol.
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StudioToledo
Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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Some people want more development/breathing space in their movies, though I'm probably thinking of something else where since I'm not sure where that comment came from otherwise. |
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