Video Backlog: “Mazinger Z”

Publisher: Eastern Star (Discotek, USA)
Format: Region 1 DVD, NTSC, Japanese Dialogue with optional English Subtitles.
Length: 92 episodes x 25 minutes
Production Date: 1972 - 1974
Currently in Print (as of writing): Yes

Dr Kabuto and his assistant Professor Gennosuke Yumi of the Photon Light Institute announce to the world the discovery of the mineral Japanium which has been refined and manufactured into the practically indestructible Super Alloy Z. The alloy can also produce a power called photon energy which they also demonstrate to the astonished media. Afterwards in private, Dr Kabuto tells Professor Yumi of his retirement and hands over the reins to the Photon Light Institute to Professor Yumi. Meanwhile the evil Dr Hell who has ambitions to take over the world, sends his subordinate Baron Ashura (a literal half male/female, split down the middle humanoid) and is group of Iron Masked androids to kill Dr Kabuto and destroy the Super Alloy Z.

Many years prior, Dr Kabuto and Dr Hell were part of an archaeological expedition to Bardos Island in the Aegean Sea. There they find the remnants of the ancient Mycenae civilisation and their giant robots.  Dr Hell asks his fellow scientists to restore the robots, only to order the mechanised beats to kill them. Dr Kabuto was the only survivor and escaped the island via a boat. Ashura first heads to Tokyo where Dr Kabuto’s grandchildren, the teenager Koji (somewhat of a delinquent) and his younger brother Shiro, live. In the absence of the doctor or his grandchildren, Ashura interrogates the live in house keeper as to the whereabouts of Dr Kabuto, and then kills her. The boys arrive back to the house and horrified to find the housekeeper dead. They receive a phone call from their grandfather who urges them to come to his villa at the base of Mount Fuji as soon as possible.

However when the pair arrive the villa has been blown to pieces by Ashura and his henchmen. In a hidden basement below, they find their grandfather pinned under a steel beam, on the verge of death. Dr Kaboto tells Koji about the giant robot he has built in secret called Mazinger Z, made of Super Alloy Z in order to defeat Dr Hell’s ambitions. Tragically Dr Kabouto dies before he can tell him how to operate the robot. After some failed attempts, Koji manages to get the Hover Pilder craft onto the head of Mazinger Z in order to operate it. But as expected moving it isn’t easy. He soon meets Professor Yumi’s daughter, Sayaka, who has a robot of her own, Aphrodite A, which was developed by the Professior without any knowledge of the existence of Mazinger Z.

Seeing as the controls of Mazinger Z seem similar to Aphrodite A, Sayaka attempts to teach Koji how to operate it. However Dr Hell has sent two of his mechanical beasts to Japan to lay waste to everything. It’s up to Koji to fight them off, but he practically has no experience using the robot.

Finally, someone has decided to release Go Nagai’s original robot show to home video in English. Prior to this it was bootlegs and the 1985 English dubbed Tranzor Z which was broadcast on US TV for a short while and released surprisingly widely on VHS in just about every English speaking territory. So, how does the original show stack up? Yes, it may be the original robot show that included a pilot for the first time and spawned countless sequels and imitators right through the 1970’s and beyond, but it’s not too bad. However there a number of problems with the show and as you’d imagine it hasn’t aged gracefully. Early episodes in particular show off the era’s dreadfully limited animation. There’s a far bit of off model animation, the animators also seem to have trouble with perspective in early episodes and in one particular episode animation of fighter jets almost looks as if it was drawn by children. Compare with “Gatchaman” which was on air around the same time. Nagai even writes about this in one of his manga, stating he wanted to outdo “Gathcaman” (oddly enough, both have hermaphrodite villains). But it’s easy to tell which the better show is. There’s also some terrible stock music, possibly decades old from Toei’s archive, inserted into some of the earlier episodes.

Another thing which sticks out like nobody’s business is the abuse of Sayaka by Koji. Koji is a bit of testosterone filled dickhead most of the time, but on occasion the writers have him flat out beating Sayaka. She’s slapped, has food and drink thrown down her top and thrown against a glass cabinet which breaks. She does get in some slaps and other assorted violence against Koji, and at least this behaviour is rare and disappears altogether after the first half of the show. The secondary cast includes a teenage delinquent motorcycle gang who are in the same class in school as Koji; the leader known as Boss and his two sidekicks Nuke and Mucha. Boss and his gang initially don’t get on with Koji, they soon are always eager to help out Koji and Sayaka whenever Dr Hell sends out another robot to attack the institute. This is despite the fact they’re pretty ineffective. Around the second half of the series, Boss kidnaps three of the scientists working at the institute and forces to build him a robot out of junkyard scrap to he can join in the fighting. The robot, Borot, and the Boss’ gang provide most of the comic relief in the show as you can imagine.

Despite all of the silliness such as Mazinger Z skiing down Mount Fuji on a specially made set of skis, or Dr Hell’s female version of Mazinger Z falling in love with Mazinger Z and refusing to fight (or perhaps because of it), I found the show pretty fun to watch. Whenever things might be going a bit stale, the writers add in a new offsider for Dr Hell. For example Count Brocken, a strange monocle wearing severed head which floats around his headless body and has a battalion of Nazi SS –like Iron Cross troops. An even stranger foe, Archduke Gorgon, appears in the last third of the series. He’s essential a torso attached to the back of a tiger.

Discotek’s discs are pretty damn good. The original source can look a little beat up at times, but the encoding on the discs is good and the show looks great. The subs do have some typos in them, but mostly it’s pretty good translation and for the price of the set’s I’m not complaining. Believe it or not there are extras on the second set; three 8mm rental films from the 1970’s, which are just cut down versions of various episodes. Two are 10 minutes long, the third only 2 minutes. One seems to contain alternate animation for the episode; Koji seemingly being cut in half by a mechanical beast! I don’t recall this happening in any episode, but I might be wrong. The source material for the 8mm films is pretty scratchy and worn out to say the least.

Despite the age of the show, it’s quite fun to watch. There are enough variances in every episode so it doesn’t get too stale. It can be very silly at times and really un-PC. Perhaps it’s best to watch the show in small doses, rather than in big hits. “Mazinger Z” unfortunately has a bit of a disappointing ending. The final episode is an epilogue to “Great Mazinger”, a continuation of the series, which Discotek has not licenced. However in the episodes prior, pretty much all loose ends are tied up and there is a pretty spectacular finale. All in all, it’s a surprisingly good show, despite its age, terribly limited animation and the “monster of the week” plot in every episode. 7 out of 10.

Remaining Backlog: Two series, also waiting for second parts of a number of shows to be released before viewing them.

No Fun... My Babe...

A few days ago I got a spam email from an anime magazine I used to subscribe to many years ago. It had a link to their online magazine which republished the staff’s (mostly negative) views on moe from an article in the print edition from six years ago. The second article was quite scathing about the genre. It was as if the author considered it an existential threat to not only the industry, but bizarrely himself.

The problem I have with fandom, especially those who claim to be at the top of the pyramid (i.e. the ones who write for popular websites and the like), is that they are quite frankly a bunch of boring, glass jawed judgmental cunts who seem to think their opinions are the be all and end all of everything. Despite the fact in the modern world you can enjoy hobbies like anime without having to join clubs and explore and enjoy what you like, the self-appointed hierarchy still feel the need to put down anyone who doesn’t share the same viewpoints or is slightly out of what they consider mainstream.

Now seriously, what does it matter to anyone if people are into being furries, collect thousands of dollars’ worth of moe girl figures, are into kigurumi cosplay or collect sexually explicit doujin or any other niche hobby within the already niche fandom of anime? It’s not as if these people are threatening you, or doing it in a public place (or when they are they’re doing it thousands of miles away from you anyway). It’s highly ironic that these smug, morally superior twats who spew their venom and bile towards certain fans are themselves fans of niche aspects of anime fandom. And that usually means obscure robot shows from 30 years ago that practically no one outside their little circle jerk of friends remembers or cares about. Of course the general public views anyone over the age of 10 who watches robot cartoons (or any animation really) as loners who live in their mother’s basements. If this irony is lost on them, at times I honestly can’t tell.

On the flip side you have fans who consider criticism of their favourite shows a personal attack on themselves. All of this bullshit from the fandom community at large has made it pretty much impossible for me to reconnect with others in fandom. Express dissenting opinions, no matter how valid or politely said, you’ll soon find yourself on the outer.  It’s even worse if you have difficulty expressing yourself. After a couple of bad experiences, mostly what should have been minor disagreements over what any normal person would think were extremely trivial matters, I resolved not to get involved in fandom ever again.

It can be quite easy to avoid a lot of this nonsense. 20 years ago it was difficult to get most anime. You had to join anime clubs and occasionally interact and negotiate with some really horrible people. Now you can pretty much watch anything free, legally too. There’s no need to deal with arseholes of the first water. However is this what we really want?  People still want to make connections with others who share the same interests. I know there are some decent folk out there in the anime fandom community, but for me, personally, I’ve been burnt too many times. I really have had enough of the bullshit and have given up on the social side of this hobby. There are many other outlets for me socially, without the associated stress and nonsense. The problem is that the current mob's shitty attitudes force newcomers out of the hobby, not that those already inside the hobby seem to care.

Come on Down Black Dog...

I have been trying to update this blog and write reviews, but work and life have just been getting in the way. It has been a very stressful 12 months. My dreadful brother in law managed to give my father his flu, which turned into pneumonia which almost killed dad. He survived, but his Parkinson’s is worse, dementia is setting in and with my mother at age 72, she’s not coping well. Add in a forced renovation of my bathroom with an angry and bizarrely unresponsive live in owner below my unit complaining randomly about leaks, and threatening me with legal action if nothing was done as well as falsely claiming that I knew about the leaks two years before she bought the place. Not only was the renovation highly stressful, it was done with money I really didn’t have, pushing me further into debt.

But work has been probably most stressful of all. Staff are disappearing and not being replaced. For three months I was forced to do the job of three people. Sometimes I had staff to help, whom didn’t know what the hell they were doing at times, sometimes I had none. Add in recently arrived senior staff who seemingly don’t give a shit about what works and what doesn’t, and seem hell bent on changing things as they see fit regardless of the outcomes, regardless of what staff tell them, ignoring the fact staff are leaving in droves. Luckily they’re the ones fronting Senate Estimates when everything goes pear shaped, not me.

Worst of all is that a long overseas holiday that had been in the planning for over a year had to be cancelled less than a two days before I was due to go because of a viral illness witch left me lethargic for nearly two weeks. I had saved and saved for this trip, giving up a lot of things and going without to reach this goal. The months and months of planning, and to have it all fall apart and have it all amount to naught is highly disappointing to say the least. With the realisation that the trip had to cancelled, an argument developed with a tenant’s real estate agent claiming my property as part of another unit’s sent me into an extremely rare epic meltdown. While in terms horrible experiences, it should have be mild but the stress was too much, it was the icing on the cake of a shitty year. From 1995 to around 2000, I had undiagnosed severe depression. It was pretty dreadful, but somehow I managed to dig myself out of it by myself without any drugs (legal or otherwise) and without killing myself. The periods of depression continued off and on for many years until I finally decided to seek some real professional help in late 2007. I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome which explained a lot of my behaviour and my constant failures with relationships.

I have managed to live a depression free life since then, but now I think I have reached my limit unfortunately. The cancelation of the trip has managed to trip everything over the edge. The anxiety has come back and along with moments where I can feel that that heavy lead coat called depression. It’s absolutely awful. Everything that I thought I had resolved long ago in terms of Asperger’s and depression, namely problems with relationships, both sexual, and to a lesser degree social, have come back big time. It is dreadful. I don’t want or really need this. My doctor is a very understanding and has given a mental health care plan, however I’m not sure if I will take up the chance to see my old psychologist again. I’m not all too fussed about going on medication again. I thought Lexapro made a bit manic and I crashed on it a few weeks later. It’s not been two weeks yet, so I’m hoping the anxiety goes away by itself and I can sleep a bit better. The good thing is I can now recognise what is happening and can plan to head off what is coming. I really don’t want to go through the same experiences I had in the late 1990’s.