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The Mike Toole Show -The Astro Boy Next Door


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mewpudding101
Industry Insider


Joined: 07 Apr 2009
Posts: 2204
Location: Tokyo, Japan
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 10:03 am Reply with quote
I just finished watching Freakazoid for the 5th time, so I must write this...
"I must succeed!!"
https://youtu.be/HCEgKAHtpEA
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veemonjosh



Joined: 06 Mar 2008
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 11:00 am Reply with quote
One thing worth mentioning that wasn't brought up in this article (and I can understand why as there's shockingly little info available, but the mention of the Star of the Giants special reminded me of it) is that the 2003 series actually sort of has a movie attached to it, a 40 minute film titled "Tetsuwan Atom Visits the Person, IGZA—100,000 Light Years Away!" that came out in Japanese IMAX theaters back in 2005:

http://www.astroboy-online.com/wiki/igza

As far as I know, IGZA hasn't been seen since its original theatrical release (it never got a home release for who knows what reason despite being a relatively recent film), and the most that can be found of it is a clip uploaded by Tezuka Productions on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY0EewGSlNI
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residentgrigo



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
Posts: 2404
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 11:06 am Reply with quote
Hey i like and prefer it Moroder cut as it made Metropolis an interesting viewing experience. Metropolis may look amazing but the story is a very passive mess but turn it to a 90 min 80s music video and i am on board.

Pluto is the best part of Astro Boy and why was the recent Atom - The Beginning manga overlooked. It has a talanted writer + artist combo and i even wrote a review over @MU.
The GBA game Astro Boy: Omega Factor is also of high quality.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 11:45 am Reply with quote
Quote:
There's also that 2009 IMAGI CG film, which remains fairly well-known as the movie that bankrupted its studio. As a product, the 2009 Astro-Boy is a fascinating mess, a Hail Mary pass in movie form, meant to succeed and bring IMAGI out of their financial woes. There's an alternate universe where Biff stole the sports almanac and rules the world, but in that universe, Astro-Boy was a runaway hit, leaving IMAGI to go bankrupt only after completing their proposed Gatchaman and Gigantor CG films, which flopped instead. Honestly, it's not such a terrible film. Not only does it feature Nicolas Cage as Astro's “dad” Dr. Tenma, I think its plot and visual quality are fine. It still “feels” like Astro-Boy. The movie's problem is in the script, which is an absolute disaster. Every character talks way too much in this film, even the ones with no dialogue at all. If you can stomach that, at least this Astro-Boy is easy and inexpensive to track down.


I was just about ready to leap to my usual battle stance in the persecuted IMAGI movie's defense (among its other mistakes was being dumped in October as a major-hyped wide release from a struggling indie-release company, and coming out in 3D before the craze had gone wide), but errr....you got a point. Confused

Although at the time, I considered the movie's desperately over-earnest attempt to create emotion (which worked) one of the movie's good points, since A) I had never seen the 60's or 80's show but it didn't do much for me, and B) I knew the only reason we were getting an Astro Boy movie in the first place was the clueless-producer Attack of the Old Fogeys during the late 90's/early 00's. (See also Speed Racer, Lion King, the abandoned Star Blazers movie, that unkillable live-action Akira, and the live-action Gigantor that Fox was originally going to do back before IMAGI.) Also that we would never have gotten any series tribute as laid-back, thoughtful and canon-friendly from any other studio--I'm at looking at YOU, Dreamworks' Mr. Peabody, and shifting a furtive eye toward Disney's Big Hero 6.
It actually won me over to watching the 00's series on Netflix, which is the first job of a TV-series feature done right.

residentgrigo wrote:
Hey i like and prefer it Moroder cut as it made Metropolis an interesting viewing experience. Metropolis may look amazing but the story is a very passive mess but turn it to a 90 min 80s music video and i am on board.


Did someone mention the Moroder Metropolis? Very Happy

(No, seriously, DID someone? Apart from some third-generation association with Tezuka's Metropolis, which had no resemblance to Fritz Lang whatsoever outside of Tezuka's imagination, I'm not quite following how we got on that.)
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omnistry



Joined: 03 Mar 2005
Posts: 1015
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 1:04 pm Reply with quote
I'm surprised that you didn't mention the new Astro Boy Reboot cartoon being made: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z240pys_D4A
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zawa113



Joined: 19 Jan 2008
Posts: 7357
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 2:06 pm Reply with quote
I went onto a Korean sale site, I don't see any discs past the third for the 2003 series. It's hard even to find fan subs for it, that's rather unusual.

I'm a bit more ok with the English version as it's what I saw first (though being wildly out of order results in Uran showing up before she's properly introduced), but yeah, I would like to see it sub someday.

However, some digging did give me some positive results: Tudou (which is like Chinese youtube) appears to have most of the series fully subbed and up online! Being a chinese site, the subs are.... meh (though certainly not the worst I've seen), they can't seem to translate names like "Ochanomizu" very well for example, timing is also a bit meh, but it's kind of the closest option it seems. It has the right aspect ratio and Japanese voices (presumably the right music too) though video quality is...meh. So yeah, sometimes it's impossible not to encourage this sort of solution over nothing. Perhaps I'll just watch some of the best episodes and skip some of the episodic ok ones (I have enough anime to watch as is, after all)

At least we got all the manga! It's out of order too, but at least it was based on a version that Tezuka put out of order himself (to try and get it all published) Of course, my favorite bit of Astro Boy will always be the GBA Omega Factor game. Which was also my Tezuka gateway drug (though not the first Tezuka thing I saw, that was Metropolis).
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F-Man



Joined: 18 Sep 2013
Posts: 111
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 2:33 pm Reply with quote
classicalzawa wrote:
It has the right aspect ratio and Japanese voices (presumably the right music too) though video quality is...meh.

They're actually 4:3 and horizontally stretched. I used these to watch the second half of the series a while ago (never came out on Korean DVDs) by saving them to my PC first and used a bunch of tricks in Media Player Classic to get a non distorted image.

I should probably mention that being rips of the bootleg DVDs for the series, those are not legal streams in any way.

As one can probably tell from my avatar, I'm (im)patiently waiting for the grand return of Little Astro Boy. A bit mad it was never put up on Anime Sols, along with other Astro Boy things that would've been assured successes.
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everapril



Joined: 24 Apr 2009
Posts: 112
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 2:59 pm Reply with quote
Perfect timing! I literally just re-read Naoki Urasawa's Pluto this weekend and was wikipedia-ing everything Astro Boy last night. Though the drawn-out suspense wasn't as effective the second time around and the whole gritty reboot thing has since been done to death, it still is the only manga that has ever made me cry to this day. spoiler[Those g-d scenes where Gesicht and his wife adopt the little obsolete robot? Makes my uterus twist up in knots.] Anime cry
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
Posts: 13540
Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 3:36 pm Reply with quote
Having animation done by Tezuka's protege Ishinomori, is something I find to be cool. That is, because I like when there are ANN articles that mention Ishinomori or something else Cyborg 009 related.
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ly000001



Joined: 30 Apr 2010
Posts: 73
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 4:50 pm Reply with quote
Mike Toole wrote:
It took me years to figure this out through conversations with frustrated pals from up north, but Canada actually got a completely separate dub of Astro-Boy 1980.

The reverse was true for me: I had assumed for a long time that the English dub we had here in Canada was the only North American English dub Embarassed
Also, I recall seeing Astro-Boy 1980 first as Astro Le Petit Robot on Radio-Canada (CBC in Quebec) years before the English TV networks that Mike mentioned, so we had both English and French-Canadian dubs courtesy of the company Telefilm Canada.
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TonyTonyChopper



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 256
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 5:32 pm Reply with quote
I actally mentioned the article on Astro Boy forums just now, awesome you linked to us Mike Toole Smile
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Zhou-BR



Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1419
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 6:23 pm Reply with quote
The 2003 series is way overdue for a Blu-ray release in Japan. It was one of the last shows to be produced in traditional cel animation, and I'd love to see how it looks in high definition and in its original aspect ratio. I tried watching the Brazillian dub (based on the American one) when it was airing on Cartoon Network, but I couldn't stomach the replacement soundtrack, and I didn't even know they had messed up the episode order.

Last edited by Zhou-BR on Sun May 17, 2015 10:53 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Shiyonasan



Joined: 18 Aug 2010
Posts: 30
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 6:34 pm Reply with quote
Thanks for mentioning the AstroBoy Online Forums' Little Astro Boy thread in your article! It's an honor. Smile

Great article as well! Astro Boy certainly has had an interesting history over the years.

Also, Omnistry brought it up as well, but I'm surprised you didn't mention Astro Boy Reboot in your article. We have an ongoing thread for that upcoming series as well over on our forum:

http://www.astroboy-online.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8866
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4564
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 6:38 pm Reply with quote
I know so very little about Astro-Boy (and really Tezuka in general) beyond seeing a handful of episodes of the original series, but the praise of it made me track down the Omega Factor GBA game, and it really piqued my curiosity. I'd love to dig into one of the reboot series someday.
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taster of pork



Joined: 11 Nov 2008
Posts: 594
Location: My House
PostPosted: Sun May 17, 2015 10:35 pm Reply with quote
Ad the 2003 Astro Boy to the list of shows that will probably never get a proper release in the US. I guess the best we can hope for is that it gets released in Japan with subtitles, or a fansub group subs it.
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