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The Mike Toole Show - West Quest

Yes, that's precisely why I didn't mention it. We could probably spend days reeling off omissions; the fact is, I have to stop writing the darned column sometime. I also maybe could've mentioned Tatsunoko's 1980 telefilm adaptation of Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin adventure, 813. But I haven't seen that one yet (there's no DVD release, but there was a VHS tape for the rental market! Been trying to find that one cheap...), so I'll have to settle for Nigh Hood reruns in the meantime.

I feel like I've asked like fifty filipinos this question in the past few months, but do you remember seeing WONDER SIX (English dubbed Sasuraiger) as a kid? I'm desperate to track some of it down. Also, were FUTURE BOY CONAN and DETECTIVE CONAN dubbed in English?

fuuma_monou wrote:

Yeah. I'd love to hear a UK English dub of The Twins at St Clare's or a U.S. dub of the 1990 Daddy Long-Legs series.

Gosh, yes. I didn't even know the Twins anime existed until I read about it in the Anime Encyclopedia. It blows me away that there's a supposedly pretty darn good cartoon based on Enid Blyton books, and it's never been seen in the English-speaking world.

Speaking of which, a Famous Five anime TV show would be pretty alright, yeah?

This is an excellent point. Along with the smoking, there's at least one scene where Conan is captured and has the absolute crap beaten out of him by his adult captors, and that wouldn't go over well with a producer hoping to sell the show to kids.

The solution, of course, is to NOT sell the show to kids-- at least not specifically. IMO, just put the thing on video with a TV14 rating; Miyazaki's name will still sell it.

IMO Wheel of Time would make a decent anime in the right hands, and could possibly improve on the source material if they "tightened up" the parts where Jordan was obviously getting burned out and just meandering along.

Ignores the Doctor Who rant

though to me anime doctor who is Galaxy express 999 without time travel

The problem with Deltora Quest's dub is that the music they replaced the original with is the same background stuff from the dub of Monster Rancher. In other words, recycled.

And Mike also omitted the upcoming Marvel anime adaptations we can look forward to- Wolverine, X-men, Ironman and Blade are all getting animated by Madhouse, which will apparently see broadcast and dvd releases here.

I sort of want to see the Poirot and Marple anime, but am not sure if I'd like the insertion of younger characters into the storylines-

Another series who FUnimation put a little of out on dvd, with the rest being released here in Canada by CookieJar on dvd recently, is Spider Riders.

The problem with Deltora Quest's dub is that the music they replaced the original with is the same background stuff from the dub of Monster Rancher. In other words, recycled.

To be honest, I never saw or heard of any of these adaptations.

You know, I'd love to read The Incredible Tide. The problem is I've yet to find a copy and I've been hunting off and on for one since I was 14

- Osamu Dezaki's Moby Dick anime was released by ADV Films. I need to get that sometime. It's set in SPPPAAAAACCCE! I'm guessing it's another you ran out of space for. You should come back to this topic again sometime for another MTS.

I'm not sure how the fact that ANN streamed Remi made it a good candidate to skip mentioning,

how frustrating is it to try to track down an old book only to find that one copy exists in the reading room of some library on a university campus on some mountain somewhere and they won't lend it out?

IMO Wheel of Time would make a decent anime in the right hands, and could possibly improve on the source material if they "tightened up" the parts where Jordan was obviously getting burned out and just meandering along.

MeggieMay wrote:

You know, I'd love to read The Incredible Tide. The problem is I've yet to find a copy and I've been hunting off and on for one since I was 14

I had to borrow mine from the library. See if your library has it, or if they can find it (most libraries are part of regional networks that share books, so if yours doesn't have it a nearby one might).

Lensman was one of the three shows that first got me interested in anime, the other two being Vampire Hunter D and Robot Carnival. I remember it well because those were the first three anime ever shown on SciFi Channel in a special one night block back when the network first launched, predating the short lived Saturday block and morning blocks. Lensman got a huge merchandise push in Japan and I'm always jealous when I see the Tomy figures in people's collections, especially when they don't even know what they are and just thought they looked cool on eBay. Someday I WILL own a Cycroader II and Grappler & D-E, they're just so awesome!

Future Boy Conan is pretty much hands down the best childrens' cartoon series I've seen ever, anywhere. I like it as well, maybe more than Batman: The Animated Series and Animaniacs (which are very different from it, of course), and I bring up that comparison as a means of saying that, just like these two American shows, it can appreciated by adults as much as by its original young audience, in a different way. If you've ever wanted to see the roots of Miyazaki's storytelling style, this is where you've got to turn...

...aaaand you've got to turn to fansubs to do it. I wish this was licensed, but I imagine it would be hard to do it in America at this point for a number of reasons:
1) The animation style is "old." I mean, it's wonderful animation, but an audience raised on more recent-style cartoons might be turned off on it.

2) It needs a dub. Unlike some older series that I would be content with seeing a barebones release, this is one I would want to be able to show my children (or nieces and nephews) one day. And unless they are raised fluent in Japanese, it'll need a dub.

3) Most executives would want to cut stuff out of it, and I'm not sure that if Miyazaki has any say that will happen. What "stuff" am I talking about? Blood (for as we all know, nobody bleeds, not even if you seriously hurt them ) and a scene in which the trying-to-look-tough Jimsy smokes a cigarette and offers it to Conan. Never mind that the scene concludes with Conan deciding cigarettes are gross, we can't depict drug use in front of children!

I sort of hope that some studio somewhere proves me wrong, that in the post-Avatar: the Last Airbender age someone will take a chance on a series with an ongoing story and some serious themes. I mean, it slows down maybe a little too much at the midpoint, but other than that, it's awesome.

With regards to Heidi - you get can a collection of three compilation films on YESASIA that contain English subs. Not the same thing as having the complete 52-episodes, I agree, but nice enough - and I believe that this is not a bootleg (the edition is from China, Taiwan or Hong-Kong, I'm not sure).

You know, I'd love to read The Incredible Tide. The problem is I've yet to find a copy and I've been hunting off and on for one since I was 14 (which was 1979 FWIW) I loved Alexander Key's books when I was a kid and it's a pity they've all been pretty much out of print since that time. I've always hoped someone might pick up Future Boy Conan and put it out in R1 just so someone might attempt to get his books back into print as well.