Gatchaman and Cowboy Bebop

Okay, I totally didn't blog about watching the entire run of Cowboy Bebop this summer, including the movie. It was totally freakin' awesome. That said, there were a couple of times while watching Bebop where I was like, "is that...? Could that be a reference to...?" After watching Samurai Champloo I sussed that Watanabe is referencing many other classics of Japanese media culture. I caught only a few of them, however, being the dreadfully clueless gaijin that I am. However, there was an episode around halfway through the 26-ep run -- dang it, and I wish I had a screenshot of it to put up -- where Spike and Faye are in space gear ready fly out of the Bebop in their ships, and they TOTALLY look like Ken and Jun from Gatchaman! You heard it here first, folks! I googled this reference and I am totally the ONLY ONE who caught it! Nyeh! I am so going to get a screenshot and post about it at a later date.

Battle of the Planets or Gatchaman?

Most definitely, Gatchaman totally rocks and rolls over Battle of the Planets, the watered-down, weird U.S. transposition of this totally cool anime from the early 70's. You know, leave it to the Yankees to screw up a totally good imported cartoon. I am reminded, of course, of the New Line Warriors of the Wind fiasco, where Roger Corman bought the U.S. distribution rights to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and edited it so badly that it made absolutely no sense. It would be another 10 years before Miyazaki would trust us with another of his movies.
I grew up watching Battle of the Planets and so watching the original source anime, Gatchaman, is like watching a whole different story. I recognize the characters and the music, but the stories are completely different. For one thing, the stories in Battle of the Planets all take place in space, while Gatchaman's stories seem to occur more often under water.

The nice thing about finding all the original Gatchaman episodes on DVD is that I get to introduce DJ to this important cartoon from my childhood in its original, unadulterated form.

Check out the very cool Gatchaman fansite by Veronika Henkels which has a link to Tatsunoko's website (not for easily culture-shocked Gaijin). It was totally not a surprise to me that this was the same studio that put together Speed Racer, and in fact just before I left for work the old man and I had a discussion about the music from Gatchaman. He said it sounded a lot like the music from Johnny Quest and therefore was a total rip-off because Gatchaman came out 8 years after JQ; I said the music sounded just like Speed Racer. Back and forth until I said, "well, honey, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree," to which the old man said, "yeah, to agree that I'm right and you're wrong!" We have such intellectual discourses in our house. In your face, old man!

And another thing about Liberty's Kids

DJ and I were watching an episode from the DVD of Liberty's Kids that we have at home, "Give me Liberty." It has only three eps on the thing which is a criminally small number to put out on a DVD. The other thing that is irksome is that they only have, like, three or four sets of these things and they are by no means anywhere close to being in order or to being complete. I saw a complete 6 DVD set of Liberty's Kids at an educational media website, for $500.00! That's insane! The Producer of this cartoon, DIC, is probably making money hand over fist because a lot of stations (like the pass-through digital station we suddenly get on our analog set) play Liberty's Kids to satisfy their federally-mandated educational content quota for the kiddies. And what about the adults? Don't we get a federally-mandated educational content quota? Or maybe that's what American Idol and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? are for.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that there were a buttload of movie stars who did voices on Liberty's Kids. For instance, Liam Neeson did the voice of John Paul Jones on the episode we watched the other night. But there are a ton of big names on this show (including the velour fog, Mr. Cronkite) like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dustin Hoffman, Annette Benning -- Ben Stiller??? Huh? And I could go on and on. The only other show that could match that Hollywood body count is The Simpsons, and their DVDs cost less and have more eps per!

Here's a good article at Common-place about commercial fare that caters to teaching children about American History, like History Rock, a part of Schoolhouse Rock that taught a bunch of us the Preamble to the Constitution with a catchy tune. You have to scroll down a bit to read the Liberty's Kids part but the whole thing was very balanced and pleasurable to read.

Here's a so far great (I haven't read too far into it yet) online encyclopedia on cartoons that seems pretty darn complete, called Toonarific. Go there and poke around -- it is totally worth it!

Liberty's Kids

I've been wanting to post about Liberty's Kids for awhile. When DJ was a baby, it was on the local PBS station as part of its morning lineup on the weekdays. I didn't pay much attention to it other than as background noise while I changed diapers and did transcription work, but as DJ got older it became apparent that he was keenly interested in American history, specifically the Civil War. There are few videos or cartoons that discuss this part of our history in a fundamental way for children so I decided instead to purchase a DVD with 3 of the Liberty's Kids episodes. DJ watched them over and over which is a good sign that he found it interesting. We don't watch the DVD too much these days, being supplanted with A Pup Named Scooby Doo and episodes of Scooby Doo/Dynomutt Hour, but DJ likes to watch Liberty's Kids on the pass-through digital station when it comes on Thursday and Friday mornings.

I like Liberty's Kids because they gives ME a fundamental look at American History -- I feel like a dumbass sometimes trying to answer DJ's questions about our nation's history, so Liberty's Kids helps me at the same time. And who can resist the smooth, silky voice of Walter Cronkite breathing life into one of America's greatest patriots, Benjamin Franklin. The "kids" of Liberty's Kids, well, I could definitely leave them but they do provide a bridge to explain the events in a relate-able way to children, so if watching an ep has DJ running around the house screaming "give me liberty or give me death!" it's had some positive effect, right? Um, right?

Here's a link to the lyrics from Liberty's Kids from Blackcatter's World of TV Theme Song Lyrics. Not really sure why I'm posting that except because I swiped the pic from them and to point out that they neglected to point out that the song, "Through My Own Eyes," was performed by Aaron Carter (who?) AND Kayla Hinkle as referenced in the Wikipedia entry about Liberty's Kids.

Ultra-Nationalist Patriotism, Cartoon Style

My son has been obsessed with this WWII-era Warner Bros. short, "Scrap Happy Daffy." I had never seen any of these Looney-Tunes cartoons, produced as a strange, ultra-nationalistic propaganda for the US as we entered WWII. This one, featuring Daffy Duck, is not only strange but oddly jingoistic even for a cartoon -- especially one by a beloved animation studio like Warner Bros.
The thing that freaks me out the most is that the boy doesn't want to just watch the whole thing in its entirety 50 times an hour, it's that he only wants to watch one scene over and over -- the old man finally had to go off and do something and taught DJ how to rewind the DVD himself. It's the scene in which Daffy is almost defeated by the Nazi-sympathizing billy goat and he is given a "pep" talk by his American foreducks that "Americans don't give up," and "America is in to win." Daffy then summons the strength to fight and defeat the Axis!
What I found most interesting was that right before the visitation by, among other poultry, a Lincoln-esque Daffy, Daffy says "What I would give for a can of spinach now." The first time I heard that I thought, "is he referencing Popeye?" And that was even more bizarre than Daffy being this ultra patriot.

Aang-st

There was an older kid at the playground once who asked my son if he watches Avatar -- my son said "huh?" and I told the older boy that we didn't have cable, which is code for, "I don't let my child watch crap." But then I thought later on, "hey, wait a second, of course I let my child watch crap!" And proceeded to put the first season of Avatar in the ol' Netflix queue. I'm not going to go all out and say that this show is awful, anime-wannabe pap, but it does rip off from Miyazaki a lot, and doesn't even do it right. Where Miyazaki was trying to convey the idea that wild animals are not for the amusement of humans, Aang seems to think that all these exotic animals in the four kingdoms are part of some x-treme sporting ritual. And Aapa, his flying bison? Totally the catbus! But with less legs.

Snuffy Smith: Victim of 21st Century

"Snuffy Smith no longer makes moonshine," my husband lamented this morning on the way to work. "Huh?" was my puzzled, initial response and then recovered with, "oh, that's too bad?" Which of course peaked our son's curiosity -- "Daddy, what's moonshine?" We spent almost the rest of my part of the ride to work discussing the ins and outs of making illegal liquor and who Snuffy Smith was/is, that effervescent Appalachian American. Here is Dan Markstein's Toonpedia entry on Snuffy Smith. I never knew about the Barney Google/Snuffy Smith connection!