Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show -The Astro Boy Next Door
Goto page Previous 1, 2 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
Author | Message | ||
---|---|---|---|
belvadeer
|
|
||
It really annoys me that neither the 2003 TV series or the 2009 movie garnered much love here. I especially loved Pluto in the 2003 TV dub, both in voice and design.
|
|||
residentgrigo
Posts: 2404 Location: Germany |
|
||
@EricJ2 This is how i got here:
Colorization is the worst but i liked the washed out colors. The Tezuka manga and the Madhouse movie have nothing to do with it btw. Fun fact: George Lucas spoke out against altering films in 1988: http://www.slashfilm.com/george-lucas-speaks-altering-films-1988/ Ah the irony... |
|||
EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
|
||
Colorization is the worst but i liked the washed out colors. The Tezuka manga and the Madhouse movie have nothing to do with it btw.[/quote] Oh, that--WHY are people still psychologically convinced the "color" on the Moroder Metropolis was some kind of "heretical graffiti" on the movie (apart from just their other gripes about the music and their frustration at Ted Turner), when mood tinting already existed in the days of silent movies, to establish mood (blue for night, red for fire/battle) and ease the audience's eyes on B/W. Go watch any professionally restored silent movie. ANY of them. In fact, go watch the Kino restored Intolerance, with a different color for each historical era, that'll teach ya. Yes, has nothing to do with Astro, but it's been thirty years, somebody either slap this urban legend on a couch and give it a month of therapy, or bury it with a wooden stake! |
|||
Maokun
Posts: 53 |
|
||
I came to post exactly this. As I was reading the article, I looked forward to read Mike's take on the somewhat controversial visual style changes. |
|||
Levitz9
Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
|
||
Ah, the many Astro Boy cartoons... I have to be honest, I've only seen the 2003 version, but that show is beautiful--and it lended the designs to the phenomenal Astro Boy: Omega Factor on the GBA! That game got me excited over Pluto and the World's Strongest Robots--and with folks like North and Atlas and levels titled "The World's Greatest Adventure", it's hard not to get excited.
It's a shame that the 2003 cartoon didn't do very well. Also, are people still claiming Lion King was a Kimba rip-off? C'mon, take off the tinfoil hats, people. |
|||
EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
|
||
It was meant as an illustration of Old Fogey Syndrome that got us all those Speed Racer, Gigantor and Astro Boy movies in the US in the first place-- According to legend, Disney was in Japan during the '87 20th-anniversary hype for Jungle Emperor, back when most people literally didn't know Japan had an animation industry. And so, like cultural Commodore Perrys, US baby-boomer Disney execs in their 30's and 40's get their first look at Akihabara: There's Doraemon, there's Lum, there's Hello Kitty, there's Nausicaa...And who do they immediately recognize? "Look!--It's KIMBA! I remember that from when I was a kid! " (And that set the tone for Hollywood's attempt to cash in on "the Japanimation (sic) craze" for the next twelve years.... Of course, that didn't start it, that would be when Carl Macek kept putting the original 60's Speed Racer back in theaters to remind us of what we associated with anime.) Last edited by EricJ2 on Tue May 19, 2015 9:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
|||
Apollo-kun
Posts: 1213 Location: City 7, Macross 7 |
|
||
Man, I'm glad I'm not the only one that remembers how WB treated that show back in the day! I was about 11 or so when that came out, and I loved the ever-loving crap out of it. I even had a few of the excellent toys that Bandai put out. It was pretty upsetting to watch it get yanked so quickly.
A while back, I managed to snag the boxed set of it that Sony put out. It has all the English-dubbed and altered episodes (outside of the Peter Pan one,) and I enjoyed that just fine. It's a bit of a shame that we have to rely on more, erm, illicit means of watching the show in its entirety. It's quite a good program. This might sound weird, but while we're on the topic of "lost anime," I was wondering if you'll ever do an entry in your series on Speed Racer. That show has a pretty weird history to it in terms of licensing and release, and that's not even touching the lost 90's reboot or the weird Fred Wolf version that got put out. I'd love to see a pro's take on the franchise, especially considering it has somewhat of an enduring legacy. Anyway, awesome post as always! I look forward to seeing what you put together next week, and what you and the other people behind Anime Hell put together for Animazement this weekend! |
|||
Apollo-kun
Posts: 1213 Location: City 7, Macross 7 |
|
||
|
|||
EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
|
||
(And not to quibble, but Astro had jet engines in his feet, and guns in his behind. As the Imagi movie helpfully took the trouble of pointing out in every trailer.) |
|||
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
||
Oh, the 2003 version was shown out of order? No wonder I couldn't make any sense of it. I'd bet the kids trying to watch it couldn't make sense out of it too, as it felt somewhat more serial than the other versions I've seen. I remember seeing the very same thing happen when Toonami made its way to Kids' WB!, and they then aired Dragon Ball Z out of order. (Well, KTLA did anyway.) It would be completely natural that Kids' WB! would have aired another anime out of order.
See, that's why serial children's entertainment has never taken off in the United States. Everything's rerun out of order, and in this case, premiered out of order. You practically have to give the episodes to the networks week by week to get them to put something in the order you want them to be in. It always bugged me: Why do they do that? There are a few cases where I can see why (most notably holiday episodes rescheduled to actually premiere right before that holiday), but there's no real reason I can find otherwise. I actually quite liked the IMAGI Astro Boy movie. The trailers played the whole guns-in-my-butt thing ad nauseam though, almost as bad as "That's a woman!?" in the trailers for The Lorax. I heard that Dr. Tenma was one of the dream roles for Nicolas Cage, having long been a fan of Astro Boy. If it's true, it shows: He gave his all for that movie. In any case, Toonami's Tom said it outright: "Astro Boy gets no love from the Americans." He said it to kick off his review for Astro Boy: Omega Factor, which, true to what he anticipated, wound up in the bargain bins of GameStops and Toys R Us stores everywhere for $5. It was one of the few games to survive two post-Christmas clearance sales, putting it in the same league as AMF Pinbusters.
If you thought DreamWorks's Mr. Peabody & Sherman was unfaithful, you should take a read at William Steig's Shrek. They are completely different in story, and Shrek's swamp is the only thing to have remained intact. The ridiculous success of the movie, however, pretty much convined the guys at DreamWorks beyond any doubt that they don't have to be faithful to the source material to print money. |
|||
F-Man
Posts: 111 |
|
||
From CDJapan, it was just revealed today that Little Astro Boy and most of the rare theater shorts from Kyoto Tezuka Osamu World are finally coming to DVD!
Little Astro Boy Tezuka Osamu Sakuhin Shu - Kyoto Anime Theater Hen - EDIT: From Happinet's site, Little Astro Boy will be bilingual! EDIT2: Only the first 2 Astro Boy shorts will be in the Kyoto DVD, and not the 3 directed by Osamu Dezaki. |
|||
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
||
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group