In Which I Take a DIC Entertainment PR Person to Task For Doing His Job

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the letter letting me know about "Liberty's Kids" being aired on the History Channel. We don't have cable in our house and I don't know if the History Channel is an appropriate venue for "Liberty's Kids." For instance, here's the lineup for March 4th (tomorrow):

07:00 AM		Liberty's Kids: Across the Delaware James knows a secret about a captured spy named John Honeyman, but he can't tell anyone--not even Sarah. Using the element of surprise, General Washington gets two much-needed victories at Trenton and Princeton.
TVG
07:30 AM		History's Lost & Found: The Lost Squadron/Uncle Tom's Cabin Manuscript/Ty Cobb's Dentures. In this half-hour version of our historical scavenger hunt we locate: the P-38 fighter planes and B-52 bombers that crash-landed on a glacier in Greenland in 1942; the 14 remaining pages from the original manuscript for Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's explosive book about slavery; and baseball great Ty Cobb's dentures, which sold for $7,475 at auction in 1999.
TVPG
08:00 AM		Hillbilly: The Real Story: The two-hour special, hosted by celebrity Billy Ray Cyrus, brings these mythic people to life through stories that span 300 years. Outcast immigrants, war heroes, isolated backwoodsmen, hard working miners, fast moving moon shiners, religious warriors, musicians and statesmen make up the rugged cast of characters.

"Across the Delaware" is a great episode, but followed up by a show featuring how much Ty Cobb's dentures fetched at auction somehow seems not a good fit for children or the history buffs who watch the History Channel at 7 am.

DIC Entertainment has had some good shows, but a lot of your stuff leaves a lot to be desired, like "Dino Squad" as part of CBS' Kewlopolis. Why not do more educational shows like "Liberty's Kids" and less stuff like "Dino Squad" and "Archie's Weird Mysteries" --- Good God, what's "Sushi Pack?" Oh, wait, here's the synopsis:

The Sushi Pack are tougher than tough, mighty munchies of goodness! Four pieces of sushi and a wad of wasabi jolted to life – out on the streets fighting for what is right! In a world where dark forces will always pursue their wicked goals, the crusading, crime-fighting Sushi Pack is here to fight back on our behalf. These bite-sized morsels of might are ready to serve!

But you already probably know that about "Sushi Pack."

Look, I realize you're doing your job, but c'mon, you obviously haven't read the blog enough to know that I'm mad at DIC Entertainment for charging 400 dollars for the complete canon of "Liberty's Kids," making it next to impossible for mom and dad consumer to purchase the collection for their children; or, alternatively, DIC has only made a few episodes available (12, I think) on DVD where you have to buy a DVD with only 3 episodes on it, and the episodes do not fall into any particular order, either.

Thanks, anyway, and keep reading the blog!

Sincerely,
Michele of Saturday Morning Cartoons Blog

On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 6:46 PM, Bennett, Mark wrote:

Dear Michele,

I was glad to come across your blog that mentioned “Liberty’s Kids,” which is being tested right now on The History Channel at 7:00 in the morning.

For the next ten days we need to get the word out to people like you who may favor putting an award winning animated series about the America’s Revolution on the air. This series was done with PBS and has received Emmy nominations (2 for Walter Cronkite’s rendition of Benjamin Franklin) and features an all star cast. This is a great show but it is hard to get shows like this on TV when so many toy and game supported shows fill up the network time. This is an important opportunity for us to let The History Channel know that they will be rewarded by bringing this type of programming to kids.

Thank you for your time and please let others know that we are on the air for the next ten days at 7 in the morning (except for Sunday).

Sincerely,

Mark Bennett

<>

http://www.dicentertainment.com

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Goodbye Gatchaman

Just finished watching the last of 18 discs of Gatchaman. It is mind-boggling to realize that I watched 105 episodes of this show. It was so worth it and feel, ultimately, like I watched the show for the first time, even though I was a big fan of Battle of the Planets as a child. In the span of 105 episodes I saw about every type of insect and fish stylized into a giant "mecha" built to destroy the earth; in the Gatchaman universe Jesus has a place on Mt. Rushmore; a giant Buddha mecha destroys a bunch of stuff. I cannot remember every weird disconnect I noticed but it was so amazing. I recommend this show to anyone who wants to see some really good, early Japanese animation in a developing genre.

I feel bad that we couldn't let our son watch the rest of the series, but the ADV dubbing and the heavy violence made it simply inappropriate for a 5 year old. I did make him a Gatchaman t-shirt, however, which I will surprise him with today when I pick him up from school.

I did see one other instance where I suspect Watanabe is referencing Gatchaman in Cowboy Bebop. In Gatchaman it is the scene where Joe is shot in the front of the church in the episode where he returns to his home town, only to find out it is a Galactor stronghold (and -- gasp -- his parents were Galactor agents); it is sort of like an altar-like area with steps leading down and I was suddenly reminded of the last scene in Cowboy Bebop where Spike is shot, also on an altar-like space with stairs leading downward (ever downward).

When I retire I'm going to sit down with the entire oeuvre of Gatchaman and completely deconstruct it. Yes, and that is what I'm going to do in my dotage.

Raging Rudolph

(Note: the YouTube link below has animated violence and should not be viewed by young children)

I was visiting Blog Hero! as he lamented the advent of parody in the name of base commercialism -- welcome to America, Blog Hero! The cause of his lament was an AFLAC commercial that shows Rudolph and the gang in the original Rankin/Bass stop action animation. Rudolph has a cold and the possibility of not being able to pull Santa's sleigh weighs heavily in the air -- until, that is, Santa (still pre-Christmas fighting weight) comes in to say , "Rudolph with your nose so stuffed, AFLAC will take care of us!" Okay, Santa doesn't really say that, but that's the import of his message, however.

I love the old Rudolph -- in fact, we're going to huddle up with some hot chocolate tonight (it's finally getting a little chilly in our part of the terrestrial universe) and watch it. We have resisted the urge to purchase the whole Rankin/Bass ouvre, because of the temptation for off-season viewing. Since we don't have cable and don't watch much broadcast TV to begin with, we've most likely missed the annual showing of these classics of my childhood. Luckily, we have a well-stocked library and was able to get a copy of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and The Little Drummer Boy.

Destiny's Child apparently does a sooped-up version of the Rudolph song on the DVD we have, and hopefully it will be on some tucked-away, special feature track. If they're going to commit sacrilege with Rudolph, they might as well use Joan Jett's version of "Little Drummer Boy," as well.

But that's not the point of this point. The point, if there must be one to show this demented little gem, is in counterpoint to AFLAC's cynical take on this sacrosanct childhood favorite to sell insurance. Cynical? You want Cynical? I got your cynical.

"Raging Rudolph" was originally shown on MadTV sometime in the mid-90's and became an instant underground hit. The only thing I can say in the AFLAC abomination's favor is that their animation is way closer to the original. Watching "Raging Rudolph" again in preparation for this post I realized that it was a lot funnier in 1995 or whenever it first premiered than it is in this post-millenium morass of popular culture taken to the limits of reflexivity.

Hang your head in shame, Gatchaman

I've been meaning to update on our Gatchaman-watching activities since...when was the last time I posted? September 1st -- wow! Anyway, over the course of the fall we've gotten through 9 out of the 18 volumes and then I lied and told DJ that V9 was the last one in the series. It was just too full of cuss words. I realize that ADV Films was trying to be faithful to the original Japanese version, but I just couldn't continue to let DJ be exposed to words we never use in our home (well, at least not in front of our son). I didn't experience the deleterious effects of this exposure, but the old man did. He and DJ were talking and DJ just suddenly uses "dammit" in a sentence. The old man told me later and that was the last straw. But, I'm still getting the volumes from Netflix, just watching them when DJ is asleep.

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!