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A15 Anthology: Cosmopolitan Prayers, Aim for the Hit, Love Love

2004. jpn: Cho Henshin Cos ∞ Prayers; Hit o Nerae; Love Love. aka: Super-Transforming Cos(mopolitan) Prayers; Aim for the Hit. TV series. dir: Takeo Takahashi. scr: Naruhisa Arakawa. des: Miwa Oshima. ani: Miwa Oshima. mus: Toshihiko Sahashi. prd: M-O-E, Imagin, Studio Live, TV Kanagawa. 13 mins. x 8 eps. (Cos Prayers); 13 mins. x 8 eps. (Aim for the Hit); 13 mins. x 9 eps; 13 mins. x 9 eps. (Love Love); + 4 bonus DVD episodes each.

Three stories strung out in short snippets in a late-night slot showing PG-15 rated titles. In Cosmopolitan Prayers, a Japanese schoolgirl is transported to the legendary land of Izumo, where she must team up with local priestesses to rescue the sun goddess Amaterasu, who has been imprisoned within a network of black towers. Using their mystic powers to transform, or “charm up,” to their magical forms, the girls fight demons and demigods to keep the world safe—Fushigi Yugi crashed into Sailor Moon, with a title deliberately designed to recall cosplay (“Costume Play”), the Japlish term for anime-related fancy dress.

Similar allusions might be expected in Aim for the Hit (aka Smash Hit), which, despite its titular resemblance to Aim for the Ace, is concerned not with sporting triumph but a ratings-chasing TV program. Twenty-five-year-old mystery fanatic Mizuki gets the chance of a lifetime when she’s appointed as producer of a new show, but she’s hardly the ideal choice for the job. She’s physically immature, and her childlike appearance goes with a whining attitude that leads to her colleagues making fun of her. Nor is the film much to her liking, since it is a derivative show about a Japanese schoolgirl saving the world. In a triumph of solipsism, the show that Mizuki cannot stand is Cosmopolitan Prayers—perhaps in an allegory aimed at animators forced to put aside their dreams in order to pay the bills on shows like this. But like her media colleague Kuromi-chan, she finally pulls through.

Love Love features Naoto Oizumi, a high school student with an off-putting stare, hired as a cameraman by the production company in Aim for the Hit, and tasked with filming the training of the actresses who have been hired to star in Cosmopolitan Prayers, thereby achieving what must be a modern animator’s idea of franchise paradise: the pop idols of Kira Kira Melody Academy crashed into Tenchi Muyo!.

A.I.C.

Literally “Anime International Company,” although it is usually identified by its acronym, not its full name. Founded in 1982 by former EG World and Anime Room staffer Toru Miura, the company first contributed to later episodes of the color Astro Boy remake. Notable employees have included Katsuhito Akiyama, Hiroyuki Kitazume, Hiroyuki Kawagoe, and Hiroki Hayashi. Representative works include AD Police, Black Heaven, and numerous projects for Pioneer/Geneon (see Dentsu).

A.LI.CE *

1999. Movie. dir: Kenichi Maejima. scr: Masahiro Yoshimoto. des: Hirosuke Kizaki. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Gaga Communications. 85 mins.

A.Li.Ce throws the viewer straight into the middle of the action, with its heroine fleeing from cyborgs across icy wastes. The background details are only filled in gradually—we are in Lapland in 2030, but 16-year-old Alice’s last memory was of an accident on a space shuttle many years earlier. Her guardian is a stewardess robot programmed to protect her, and their travelling companion is Yuan, a local orphan who has lived alone since his parents were “relocated” in an illogical environmental scheme by the Earth’s new ruler, Nero.

An early effort in computer animation, A.Li.Ce often resembles a long scene from a computer game, unsurprising since its writer’s previous credits included the game Shen Mue. Like all the best computer games, the movie regularly alters its protagonists’ aims for maximum effect. What begins as a straightforward chase sequence soon becomes a quest to acquire information and resources. Once Alice realizes that someone has brought her to the future for an unexplained purpose, it changes once more into a train journey fraught with peril. Eluding Nero’s Stealth Warriors, only to be captured by the rebellious Liberation Forces, the cast is temporarily split up, as Yuan and Maria escape from custody, while Alice enters cyberspace to help the resistance break into Nero’s fortress. This, it transpires, is why she is needed, as her past self was/is Nero’s mother, affording her identical brain patterns access to the citadel’s defensive computer systems.

In a series of last-minute twists, Alice discovers that she is partly responsible for Nero’s reign of terror. Nero has decimated the world’s population in a misguided attempt to reduce pollution (compare to Blue Remains), itself a misreading of Alice’s memories of the dying wish of her suicidal school-friend Yumi. The motives of the Liberation Forces are found to be even more questionable, and Alice returns to the past to set things right. This, however, is where the narrative falls apart, as her return is visibly demonstrated to make little difference to the future she has just left. We also see her meeting the man who will become Nero’s father, though now she presumably does so with the full knowledge of his future death, thereby making it impossible that the events we have just seen will actually take place.

Time-travel paradoxes aside, A.Li.Ce remains an intriguing entry in the genre, and a surer step into computer animation than the disappointing Visitor. In Maria, it also has an intriguing take on the ubiquitous robot-girls of anime—a svelte woman in revealing costumes, with an array of pop-out gadgets and power sockets like a 21st century Doraemon. Her name is bestowed upon her by Alice herself, not in homage to the Maria of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (see Metal Angel Marie) but because of her chance resemblance to a statue of the Virgin Mary. Later, she is augmented twice, once by Yuan and once in a self-inflicted upgrade, ending the movie with high-powered retractable machine guns, and built-in roller skates that help circumvent the film’s primitive motion-capture. Soon transformed into a battle-robot, Maria retains vestiges of her former programming, and persists in bossing her charges around as if she is still serving in-flight drinks.

ABASHIRI FAMILY, THE *

1991. jpn: Abashiri Ikka. Video. dir: Takashi Watanabe. scr: Takashi Wata­nabe. des: Shigenori Kurii. ani: Shigenori Kurii. mus: Takeo Miratsu. prd: Dynamic Planning, Studio Pierrot, Soeishinsha, NEXTART. 75 mins.

Papa Abashiri, leader of one of the most notorious criminal syndicates in history, decides it’s time for his superpowered family to retire so his daughter, Kukunosuke, can have a normal existence. However, her “normal” school turns out to be a hunting ground for crazed perverts and brawlers, who have no intention of teaching the students anything. As the violence escalates, Kukunosuke calls in her family to fight against the principal in a final showdown of bone-crunchingly epic proportions.

Recalling Sukeban Deka, with its tale of a bad girl trying to go straight, and Debutante Detectives, with its well-connected students, Abashiri Families was originally released as four short chapters in the Rentaman video magazine. It was soon compiled into this omnibus edition, which is the version circulated in the English language. Its cartoonish comedy angle gives it more in common with creator Go Nagai’s Kekko Kamen and Hanappe Bazooka than with his more serious stories, but the disjointed nature of the original production makes for an inferior offering. Director Watanabe would go on to adapt another Nagai story, Black Lion.

Abe, Yoshitoshi

1971– . A graduate of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Abe’s dark, brooding artwork established distinctive looks in Serial Experiments Lain, Haibane Renmei (based on his own amateur publication), and Texhnolyze. He also designed the characters and wrote the manga of NieA_7. He favors unorthodox typography and likes his name to be written with the Y in lower case and the B in upper. We prefer to keep our English-language text readable.

Acrobunch

1982. jpn: Makyo Densetsu Acrobunch. aka: Haunted Frontier Legend Acrobunch. TV series. dir: Masakazu Yasumura, Satoshi Hisaoka. scr: Ma-
saru Yamamoto. des: Shigenori Kageyama, Mutsumi Inomata, Masakazu Higuchi. ani: Kazuhiro Taga, Masakazu Yasumura, Hideki Takayama, Yutaka Arai, Kazuhiro Ochi. mus: Masaji Maruyama. prd: Nippon TV. 30 mins. x 24 eps.

Half-Japanese amateur inventor Tatsu­ya Lando talks his five almost all-American children into piloting his latest project, a transforming super-robot called Acrobunch. Older boys Hiro and Ryo pilot the two Buncher Hornets, while twin girls Miki and Rika ride the Buncher Arrow flying motorcycles. Middle-child Jun is the 15-year-old boy who gets to pilot the Acrobunch unit formed from the combination of all the vehicles with dad’s Falcon Buncher main craft. Tatsuya is searching for the ancient treasure of Quaschika, which was the true inspiration behind the ancient stories of Atlantis. But Lando is not the only one—Emperor Delos of the undersea Goblin empire is also searching for the Quaschika, and the Acrobunch robot becomes the last line of defense between them and Earth. Each week, it must fight against the robots of the Goblin armies, one of which is led by Delos’s own daughter, Queen Shiira, who develops a crush on her enemy Hiro.

Shunted around the schedules and between two different production studios, the troubled Acrobunch (“a robot controlled by a bunch of acrobats!”) nevertheless served as a training ground for a group of new talents who would find fame in the decades to come. It was the first anime job for future Tekkaman-designer Rei Nakahara. Among the animators, Arai would work on City Hunter, Ochi would make Hikarian, and Takayama would become the director of the notorious Urotsukidoji series. Two decades later, Inomata produced similar character designs for Brain Powered.

AD Police *

1990. Video, TV series. dir: Akihiko Takahashi, Akira Nishimori. scr: Sho Aikawa. des: Tony Takezaki, Fujio Oda, Toru Nagasuki. ani: Fujio Oda, Hiroyuki Kitazume. mus: Kaoru Mizutani. prd: Artmic, Youmex, AIC. 40 mins. x 3 eps., 25 mins. x 12 eps.

A dark spin-off from Toshimichi Suzuki’s Bubblegum Crisis, AD Police concentrates on the AD(vanced) antirobot crime division of Mega Tokyo’s police force. Leon McNicol, a minor character in the original series, is partnered here with butch lady-cop Gena in several investigations that play with ideas of humanity in a high-tech society. The “voomer” robots here are all female in the man’s world of the ADP, where only women who are prepared to become one with machines stand a chance in it. Whereas this device was used in Bubblegum Crisis as an excuse for girls with impressive high-tech kits, here it is far more misogynistic, as femininity is gradually eroded by bionics and prosthetics, taking characters’ humanity with it. A businesswoman, for example, is only successful in the boardroom after she has a hysterectomy, but the trauma turns her into a serial killer. There are shades of Blade Runner in the sex-android stalker that locks onto the man who injured her, and there are also blatant steals from Robocop in the final chapter, wherein one of Gena’s ex-boyfriends receives so much augmentation that his tongue is the only part of his original body that remains.

Canceled after just three of the planned five episodes, the franchise was not revived until 1999, in the wake of the Bubblegum Crisis 2040 remake, as a 12-part TV Tokyo series directed by Hidehito Ueda. The new AD Police was a far shallower affair, ditching many of the old characters in favor of a buddy-movie cliché between rapid-response robot-crime cop Takeru Sasaki and his new partner, Hans Krief. Clearly made with half an eye on the overseas market (all the other leads have foreign names like Paul Sanders, Liam Fletcher, and Nancy Wilson), the melting-pot remake is something of a disappointment.

The franchise was briefly resurrected in Parasite Dolls (2003), a three-part video series directed by Kazuto Nakazawa, focusing on a clandestine branch of the AD Police, called, somewhat unimaginatively, Branch. The story focuses on Buzz, an officer like writer Chiaki Konaka’s earlier Ross Sylibus in Armitage III, who is transferred to an unattractive new posting and forced to cooperate with a detested robot partner. Parasite Dolls also exists in a movie-length edit, which is the version most commonly found outside Japan. LNV

Adrift in the Pacific *

1982. jpn: Jugo Shonen no Hyoryuki. aka: 15 Boys Adrift; Deux Ans de Vacances. TV special. dir: Yasuji Mori, Yoshio Kuroda. scr: Shunichi Yukimuro. des: Hiroshi Wagatsuma, Rumiko Takahashi. ani: Tatsuo Ogawa, Hideo Maeda. mus: Katsutoshi Nagasawa. prd: Toei, Fuji TV. 75 mins., 84 mins.

When bad weather causes her to slip her moorings and drift out to sea, the British schooner Sloughi is left in the hands of the 15 schoolboys on holiday. Without officers or sailors on board, the French boy Briant manages to organize the group and beach the ship on a deserted island they name Cherman after their school. The upper-class British boy, Doniphan, begins to argue with Briant about who should be in charge, and problems are multiplied a hundredfold when a 16th castaway washes up on the shore—a schoolgirl called Kate.

Deux Ans de Vacances, Jules Verne’s low-rent copy of Swiss Family Robinson, remains immeasurably more popular in Japanese than in English. This TV movie included a young design assistant called Rumiko Takahashi, whose growing success with Urusei Yatsura would make her rich and unlikely to work in animation again.

In 1987, the story was remade as another TV movie to cash in on the popularity of the Hollywood movie Stand By Me (which also featured several boys going exploring and getting mildly upset). Directed by Masayuki Akehi, the new version featured Maria Kawamura, shortly to find fame as Jung Freud in Gunbuster, as the troublesome Kate. This second TV movie was released in English as Story of 15 Boys, a pedantically faithful translation of the Japanese title suggesting the U.S. distributor knew little of Verne’s original. See also Video Picture Book and Vifam.

Adult Fairy Tales

1999. jpn: Otono no Dowa Series. Video. dir: Soichi Masui. scr: Shige Sotoyama. des: Kaoru Honma. ani:
N/C. mus: Miki Kasamatsu. prd: Tac, Toei. 50 mins.

A deliberate attempt to take Grimms’ Fairy Tales away from their cuter modern image and back to their darker roots, this series comprises three short versions of popular tales augmented with copious horror and flavor-of-the-moment computer graphics. The tales include Hansel and Gretel, Blue Beard, and Cinderella, all chosen because they presented an opportunity for the crew to depict stories of love and obsession.

Advancer Tina *

1996. Video. dir: Kan Fukumoto. scr: Wataru Amano. des: Hironobu Saito, Kenji Teraoka. ani: Dandelion. mus: Ann Fu. prd: Dandelion, Green Bunny, Beam Entertainment. 45 mins.

Three thousand years after pollution renders Earth uninhabitable, the human race is a space-faring people in search of new planets to settle. Elite super-scouts called Advancers blaze trails for the rest, but Omega 13 is one world proving difficult to conquer. Nine teams have failed to return, prompting high-ranking executive Mugal to make convict Tina Owen an offer she can’t refuse. If she can solve the mystery of Omega 13, he’ll knock a whole millennium off her 2,000-year sentence for an undisclosed crime.

Tina only spends five tedious minutes on Omega 13; the rest of the story involves the pointless hunt for a crew (telepath/alien/comic relief Frill and Japanese love interest/sidekick Akira), and the rescue of fellow Advancer Garuda from a beleaguered ship. The alien menace turns out to be a multi-tentacled creature with acid saliva that burns through bulkheads and clothes but not through girls’ skin. The alien murders all the disposable members of the cast (three concubines whose sole role is to be sexually assaulted in different locations) before being summarily executed as it tries to rape Tina. This, apparently, makes the planet safe and avenges Akira’s dead parents all in one shot, allowing Tina to fly off to her next mission, though a sequel was never made.

Despite promising beginnings that unite the last-chance mission of The Dirty Dozen with the interstellar trouble-shooting of Dirty Pair, Advancer Tina soon collapses into a tacky exploitation movie. With an ithyphallic menace that gestates in human stomach cavities and a predictable, false ending, its debt to the Alien series is obvious, but the film is shoddily assembled from start to finish. Fukumoto, Saito, and Teraoka, the real-world perpetrators of this anime crime, are still at large and can be found elsewhere in this book in the entries for Venus Five, Sexorcist, and Gigolo. LNV

Adventure Boy Shadar

1967. jpn: Boken Shonen Shadar. TV series. dir: Juzo Kataoka. scr: Masaki Tsuji. des: Shinichi Kuwajima. ani: Takashi Saijo, Nobukazu Kabashima. mus: Atsutoshi Soda. prd: Nippon TV. 10 mins. x 156 eps.

When Earth is threatened by the invading Ghostar, a young boy with nerves of steel and the strength of 50 men appears from a cave on Mount Fuji. He is Shadar, a boy of unknown origin who, with his faithful dog, Pinboke, fights each week to save the world in several ten-minute installments, guaranteeing a final showdown for Japanese viewers each Saturday.

Ghostar actor Kenji Utsumi’s voice would come to represent the ultimate in evil to a Japanese audience, and he would go on to play the title roles in Dracula: Sovereign of the Damned and Don Dracula.

Adventure Kid *

1992. jpn: Yoju Sensen Adventure Kid. aka: Demon-Beast Battle Line Adventure Kid. Video. dir: Yoshitaka Fujimoto. scr: Atsushi Yamatoya, Akio Satsu­gawa. des: Dan Kongoji, Ryunosuke Otonashi, Yuji Takahashi. ani: MW Films. mus: Masamichi Amano. prd: MW Films. 40 mins. x 3 eps.

Wartime Japanese scientist Professor Masago devotes himself to his research, ignoring his beautiful wife, Michiyo. In 1945, he is murdered by the dastardly Captain Matsubara’s soldiers, after first being forced to watch them rape her. Fifty years later, the husband and wife are reincarnated as students Norikazu and Midori. Norikazu unearths Masago’s prototype dimension-hopping device, and it propels them into a parallel universe where Masago’s bitter psyche has created a world of marauding zombie soldiers. Eventually Norikazu (good side) defeats Masago (bad side) by dropping him into the Hiroshima bomb blast. The couple then find themselves in Hell Zone, where lusty elf-girl Eganko latches onto Norikazu and accompanies him back to Earth. Back at Norikazu’s school, the reincarnation of Captain Matsubara, college-boy Yukimoto, wants Midori for himself and schemes with Eganko’s mother, Queen Dakiniten, to make Norikazu fall in love with Eganko. The plan goes awry when love potions are mixed up and given to the wrong victims.

A pornographic tale of rape and domination that suddenly turns into a farce, Adventure Kid contains erotic musings on the alien girlfriend-squatter setup of Urusei Yatsura, a clumsy attempt to integrate computers into horror (also seen in Digital Devil Story), and a final episode that pokes merciless fun at the excesses of both itself and creator Toshio Maeda’s earlier Urotsukidoji. In an attempt to draw in new crowds, the producers hired live-action erotic “actresses” to provide some of the voice roles, a move which backfired spectacularly when they couldn’t actually act. In the U.K., the series was heavily cut and renamed Adventure Duo. LNV

Adventure of Kotetsu *

1996. jpn: Kotetsu no Daiboken. Movie. dir: Yuji Moriyama. scr: Yuji Kawahara. des: Yoko Kikuchi. ani: Te­tsuya Watanabe. mus: Kuniaki Haishima. prd: Daiei, Tokuma Japan. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Hot-headed Linn “Kotetsu” Suzuki is an accomplished martial artist at 14 and the last in a long line of warriors. Running away from her old-fashioned Kyoto home to look for her brother in Tokyo, she helps a shapely private eye, Miho, defeat two possessed street thugs. The two soon move in together, and Kotetsu inadvertently saves Miho’s life once again when Tetsuya, the man hired by a corrupt businessman to kill her, instead falls in love with her new roommate. Settling their differences at a hot-springs resort, the trio is attacked by a tree demon, sent by Tetsuya’s boss. Upon defeating it, Kotetsu’s grandmother tells her she can stay in the big city.

Recalling both Devil Hunter Yohko and La Blue Girl with its female inheritor of a family martial arts tradition, this silly affair was based on the best-selling 1992 adult manga by MEE (aka Mikun). Though featuring atmospheric music from Spriggan’s Haishima and direction from Project A-Ko’s Moriyama, the fan-service nudity and setups make it less than the sum of its parts—one assassination attempt involves a nude clone of Miho in the bath simply to arrange a lesbian scene between the two girls. Despite undeserved popularity for its nude heroine’s resemblance to Ranma 1⁄2, the series stopped after the experimental two-part opener. MEE would have better success with his next anime project, the TV series Hyper Police. N

Adventure on Kaboten Island

1967. jpn: Boken Kaboten Shima. TV series. dir: Motokazu Watanabe. scr: Aritsune Toyoda, Masaki Tsuji, Arashi Ishizu, Junichi Yoshinaga. des: Fumio Hisamatsu. ani: Shizuko Komooka, To­yoo Ashida, Kazuo Mori. mus: Various. prd: TBS, Eiken. 30 mins. x 39 eps.

Super Jetter–creator Fumio Hisama­tsu’s 1967 comic in Shonen Sunday magazine featured a group of boys and girls marooned on a South Sea island in an imitation of Jules Verne’s Adrift in the Pacific. The anime version reduced the female cast to a single comic relief little sister called Tomato, preferring instead to concentrate on the male characters as they explore their new home.

Adventures of Korobokkle

1973. jpn: Boken Korobokkle. aka: The Mountain Gnomes. TV series. dir: Yonehiko Watanabe, Yukizo Takagaki, Toru Murayama, Takanori Okada, Yoshikata Nitta. scr: Shunichi Yukimuro, Noboru Shiroyama, Minoru Takahashi. des: Masatoshi Kobayashi. ani: Kazuo Kobayashi. mus: Bob Sakuma. prd: Eiken, Tatsunoko Pro, Yomiuri TV. 25 mins. x 26 eps.

Sword-wielding hero Bokkle, flute-playing mystic Cous-Cous, and brave female Love-Love are very small gods who live under the butterbur leaves in the countryside. Becoming increasingly annoyed that humans no longer pay them any respect, they decide to head closer to human habitation in search of worshippers. Mild-mannered country boy Seitaka is the only person able to see the spirits, who teach him how to stand up for himself against local bullies. His gentle woodland friends, however, are unafraid of fighting with vicious little knives when they are in trouble.

AoK was sponsored, like Piggyback Ghost before it, by Sumitomo Life Insurance as part of the company’s “classic” series—an attempt to associate a company with a successful anime series that paid off much better for the Calpis drinks company with World Masterpiece Theater. The original children’s book Stories of Korobokkle, itself based on folktales from northern Japan’s indigenous Ainu race, was initially adapted with character designs by its author Satoru Sato, but these were replaced with designs by Masatoshi Kobayashi after they tested poorly with young focus groups. That, at least, is what was claimed in Japanese sources, but it seems outlandishly odd to buy the rights to a book if one is only going to throw away its creator’s input! The problem was probably connected with creating character designs that could be more easily replicated by a group of animators. In an additional attempt to appeal to a young audience, the leading role was taken by Satoshi Hasegawa, who had previously appeared in NHK’s child-centered Grave of the Wild Chrysanthemums (*DE). With its disappearing spirits, Korobokkle could be said to be a foreshadowing of later Studio Ghibli efforts like Pompoko and My Neighbor Totoro.

Adventures of Pinocchio *

1972. jpn: Kashi no Ki Mokku. aka: Mokku (Woody) the Oak Tree. TV series. dir: Ippei Kuri, Yukihiro Takahashi. scr: Jinzo Toriumi , Akiyoshi Sakai. des: Yoshitaka Amano. ani: Masayuki Hayashi. mus: Nobuyoshi Koshibe. prd: Tatsunoko, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 52 eps.

Finding driftwood that has been struck by lightning, toy-maker Gepetto constructs a puppet that comes alive but wants to be a real boy. Based on the 1881 children’s story by Carlo Collodi, it was also animated as Piccolino. Yoshitaka Amano’s first work in character design. Shown on HBO in the U.S.

Aesop’s Fables *

1983. jpn: Manga Aesop Monogatari. TV series. dir: Eiji Okabe, Jun Hagiwara, Fumio Kurokawa. scr: Michiru Tanabe, Asami Watanabe, Ryo Nakahara. des: Yu Noda. ani: Hirokazu Ishino. mus: Pegumo, Toko Akasaka. prd: Nippon Animation, Transarts. 25 mins. x 52 eps.

Aesop, an ancient Greek storyteller thought to have lived in the 6th century, has been a staple of anime since the beginning with Early Anime such as Sanae Yamamoto’s Tortoise and the Hare (1924) and Frog’s Belly (1929). The 1983 TV series added the term “manga” to accentuate the children’s-picture-book quality of the presentation, running through tales such as The Ants and the Grasshopper, The Sun and the North Wind, and The Thirsty Crow. Eight of the stories were combined to make the theatrical feature Aesop’s Fables (1983, U.S. release 1985), with a framing device of young Aesop tricking his fellow villagers into believing that a wolf is attacking. When a real wolf comes, nobody believes him, and he is chased down a magic hole into a kingdom of animals. As he looks for a way out, he meets a tortoise, a hare, an ant, and other creatures who tell him their stories. Several of Aesop’s fables were also used as part of the Shogo Hirata’s Picture Book series (1995). See also Video Picture Book.

Afro Ken

2001. aka: Afro Dog. Video. dir: Takashi Imanishi. scr: Takashi Imanishi. des: Tetsuro Aimi. ani: Toyonori Yamada, Kayoko Murakami, Fumie Anno, Naoyuki Takasawa. mus: Takeshiro Kawabe. prd: Sunrise, Bandai Visual, Green Camel. 30 mins.

Like its Bandai stablemate Tare Panda, this one-shot, fully computer-animated wonder is an attempt to tap into the Hello Kitty merchandising market, putting the brand first and following with animation only reluctantly. Afro Ken is, as the name implies, a dog with a multicolored Afro hairdo, and several equally hallucinogenic friends. In several short sequences, he is shown visiting various tourist sites, playing with some of his canine friends, walking through Tokyo like a friendly Godzilla, and appearing in ancient cave paintings. The half-hour running time contains only 15 minutes of animation—the rest is bulked out with a “Making Of” documentary that manages to recycle much of the footage already shown, along with creator interviews. The only truly worthwhile item on the disc is the catchy theme song, and even that is played twice.

Afro Samurai *

2006. TV series. dir: N/C. scr: Takashi Okazaki, Tomohiro Yamashita. des:
N/C. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Gonzo, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 5 eps.

After his father dies in a duel with the warrior known as Justice, young Afro resolves to study the martial arts. He becomes a wandering swordsman in a milieu that mixes samurai-era epics with science fiction in the style of Samurai 7. Supposedly conceived in 1995 by a young Takashi Okazaki, the concept achieved new life in the 21st century when it gained the backing of Samuel L. Jackson as coproducer and voice artist. Riding a wave of interest in anime fueled in part by Kill Bill: The Origin of O-Ren, Afro Samurai takes the irreverence of Samurai Champloo to extremes, with characters such as Kuma, an anonymous fighter who wears a teddy bear’s head to hide his identity. Forthcoming at the time of our deadline.

After-school Love Club Étude

1997. jpn: Hokago Ren’ai Club Koi no Étude. Video. dir: Moritaka Imura. scr: N/C. des: Yoshiaki Hatano. ani: Yuki Mine. mus: N/C. prd: Pink Pineapple, KSS. 31 mins. x 2 eps.

Originating in Libido’s mildly titillating computer role-playing game in the same genre as Tokimeki Memorial, this is the story of Shunichi and Sanae, who are attracted to each other, but whose relationship seems to go nowhere. Neither does the plot until episode two, when the members of the “love club” start to get into the sex scenes promised on the box. In the original game, the player had to manage his resources to ensure he could get the most out of 12 sex-starved female members of a dating club in just 30 days. The anime doesn’t retain its appeal for quite that long. N

After-school Tinkerbell

1992. jpn: Hokago Tinkerbell. Video. dir: Kiyoshi Murayama. scr: Akira Oketani. des: Yasuhide Maruyama. ani: Yasuhide Maruyama. mus: N/C. prd: Life Work, Ashi Pro. 45 mins.

In this animated adaptation of two novels in Shoichiro Hinata’s After School series, high school investigators Kenichi and Misako get on the case when the popular Broadcast Club disc jockey, Ryoko, goes missing.

Age of the Great Dinosaurs

1979. jpn: Daikyoryu no Jidai. TV special. dir: Shotaro Ishinomori with Hideki Takayama. scr: Shotaro Ishinomori, Makoto Naito. des: Shotaro Ishinomori. ani: Kozo Morishita. mus: Shogun. prd: Ishi(no)mori Pro, Toei, Nippon TV. 73 mins.

Cyborg 009–creator Ishinomori (just plain Ishimori at the time) was heavily involved in this anime shot on 35mm film, in which naïve boy Jun, his female companion, Remi, and her little brother, Chobi, are whisked away to the Cretaceous Period by a flying saucer. There they hobnob with Cro-Magnon men, which would be damage enough to the program’s educational merit even without the suggestion that aliens wiped out the dinosaurs when their population became too great—a dark portent for the expanding human race and a typical touch from the dour Ishinomori. Dinosaurs were a regular feature in children’s entertainment, also cropping up in Makoto Noriza and Shigeru Omachi’s one-shot video Dinosaur Guide (1989), in which Professor Doctor (sic) escorts children Tai and Ayumi on a trip to the prehistoric past. Aliens would return to do away with the dinosaurs in Laws of the Sun.

Agedaman

1991. jpn: Genji Tsushin Agedama [sic]. TV series. dir: Masato Namiki. scr: Takashi Yamada, Shigeru Yanagawa, et al. des: Hatsuki Tsuji. ani: Hiroaki Sakurai, Hideyuki Motohashi, et al. mus: Toshihiko Sahashi. prd: Studio Gallop, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 51 eps.

Average boy Genji can use his warp key to transform into the superhero Agedaman, the last line of resistance against the evil 11th-century scientist Nostradamus and his equally evil granddaughter, Kukirei, in a brightly colored show that mixes action and comedy.

Ageman and Fuku-chan

1991. Video. dir: Teruo Kigure. scr: Susume Yoshiike. des: Masamichi Yokoyama. ani: Masamichi Yokoyama. mus: Jiro Takemura. prd: Knack. 30 mins.

Mantaro Nishino is obsessed with money and women, but his schemes invariably fail in this satire of Japan and the Japanese in the late 1980s bubble economy. The sexy strumpet Fuku-chan is Mantaro’s eventual undoing in this erotic fable based on a manga by Masamichi Yokoyama, who also created Mister Happy. The title recalls that of Juzo Itami’s live-action Ageman: Tales of a Golden Geisha (1990). N

Agent Aika *

1997. jpn: Aika. Video. dir: Katsuhiko Nishijima. scr: Kenichi Kanemaki. des: Noriyasu Yamauchi, Hidefumi Kimura, Yoko Kikuchi. ani: Noriyasu Yamauchi. mus: Junichi Kanezaki. prd: Graviton, Bandai Visual. 50 mins., 50 mins., 75 mins., 50 mins. x 4 eps.

Aika Sumeragi is a freelancer who lifts artifacts and data from the submerged ruins of Tokyo in the year 2036. She is a friend and business partner to the father-daughter team of Gozo and Rion Aida and has a love-hate relationship with Gust Turbulence, her spiky-haired male rival. Hired to go after the Ragu, an energy source reputed to be the cause of the global catastrophe, Aika must compete against evil superbitch Neena Hagen, Neena’s incestuous brother, Rudolf, and their army of women inexplicably dressed as French maids. Her only advantages: high-tech vehicles and transforming underwear that is really a weapon.

Envisaged by director Nishijima as a replay of Project A-Ko, with Aika, Neena, and Rion as A-Ko, B-Ko, and C-Ko, Agent Aika fast becomes the ultimate in peekaboo anime, as almost every camera angle conspires to get an eyeful of cleavage or panties. Worm’s-eye views and gratuitous nudity soon drag the plot far off course, though exactly where Kanemaki’s story of a treasure-huntress with a sentient bodice was originally headed is anyone’s guess. Compare to the same team’s later Najica. Seven years later, Daphne in the Brilliant Blue would do it all again. N

Ah! My Buddha

2005. jpn: Amaenaide yo. TV series. dir: Keitaro Motonaga. scr: Noboru Kimura, Naoki Takada, Toshizo Nemoto. des: Kumi Horii. ani: N/C. mus: Yasunori Iwasaki. prd: Studio Deen, AT-X. 25 mins. x 13 eps. (TV1). 25 mins. x 13 eps. (TV2).

Ikko Satonaka’s grandmother is Jotoku, a Buddhist priestess. It only follows that he is likely to go into the family “business,” and he duly signs up for an apprenticeship at the temple. There, he is subjected to a series of purification rituals, and exhorted to let go of worldy desires. This proves to be more difficult than expected when he is surrounded by a risibly predictable group of nubile young nuns. Tenchi Muyo!, in a temple, and irritatingly for Ikko, his powers to exorcise demons go up when he is thinking sinful thoughts. For people with very short memor… what were we saying?

Ai City *

1986. aka: Love City (U.K.). Movie. dir: Koichi Mashimo. scr: Hideki Sonoda. des: Chuichi Iguchi, Tomohiko Sato. ani: Chuichi Iguchi, Nobuyoshi Habara, Satoru Utsunomiya, Kenichi Maejima, Hiroyoshi Okawa, Hiroshi Kawamata. mus: Shiro Sagisu. prd: Toei, Movic, Ashi Pro. 100 mins.

Young girl Ai and her protector, Kei, are on the run from rival gangs of “Headmeters”—humans with DNA recombined through nanotech viruses to give them psychic powers. Rival leaders Leigh and Lyrochin want Ai for the terrible secrets she contains, so she and failed Headmeter Kei join forces with an ex-cop turned private eye, an amnesiac ex-enemy, and a gratuitous cute cat (a design rip-off of Lucifer from Disney’s Cinderella).

A poor man’s Akira, even down to blue-skinned mutants with numerical foreheads, AC is much more than the sum of its parts, with surreal sequences of giant heads melting out of sidewalks, a plot revolving around multiple universes, and visceral scenes of psychic violence as Headmeters trump each other with ever-higher power levels. Based on the Action Comics manga by Shuho Itabashi (who went on to draw one of the X-Files manga adaptations) but made just that little bit too early to benefit from the higher budgets of the sci-fi anime boom of the early 1990s, it was eclipsed by its successors and relegated to the anime B-list despite a plot far superior to contemporaries such as Locke the Superman. Masterfully feeding the audience scraps of plot one bit at a time, it throws the viewer into the story without explaining a thing, slowly piecing together the reasons why Ai and Kei are on the run, who is after them, and where they are from. Sonoda’s script, loaded with careful English neologisms like “Headmeter,” “tuned man,” and “metapsychic phase wall,” is truly excellent and even features a serious contender for one of the best endings in anime, later swiped for the grand finale of Urotsukidoji. Available in separate U.K. and U.S. versions.

Ai Yori Aoshi *

2002. jpn: Ai Yori Aoshi. aka: Bluer than Blue; Bluer than Indigo; True Blue Love. TV series. dir: Masami Shimoda. scr: Kenichi Kanemaki, Katsuhiko Takayama, Masashi Kubota. des: Kazunori Iwakura. ani: Yumi Nakayama. mus: Toshio Masuda. prd: JC Staff, Studio Easter, Fuji TV, TV Kanagawa, TV Saitama. 23 mins. x 24 eps. (TV1), 25 mins. x 12 eps. (TV2).

Kaoru Hanabishi offers to help a lost girl in a kimono who seems very out of place in Tokyo, only to discover that the address she is looking for is an empty lot. She is eventually revealed as Aoi Sakuraba, a rich girl from a traditional family, who was betrothed to Kaoru in childhood. Although their engagement has been broken off on a technicality to do with Kaoru’s unfilial behavior, Aoi insists on honoring her side of the deal. While Kaoru wrestles with whether he should take up Aoi’s offer, this Stepford wannabe bustles around the house performing every conjugal duty except consummation. Ko Fumizuki’s manga in Young Animal magazine set up a premise that could have been a fascinating meditation on the changing role of the family and tradition among Japanese youth, but instead turns into Tenchi Muyo!, as a group of gorgeous girls home in on Kaoru like the Japanese Self Defense Force chasing Godzilla. Meanwhile, Aoi is still so eager to please her fiancé that she lets Kaoru and all his would-be girlfriends live in her family’s summer house.

Goodness knows how Masaharu Amiya has the temerity to claim his “series concept” credit, but for every generation of pubescent boys with romantic yearnings there is a new Tenchi clone. This one, like its heroine, is ravishingly pretty and well-mannered, and like its hero, it has its moments and is often more endurable than its fellow shows, but still doesn’t know when to quit—a second season followed in 2003 as AYA: Destiny (AYA—Enishi). The DVD release of each series had a bonus episode: the 5-minute picnic tale AYA Dream Story for series one, and the 15-minute Christmas fantasy episode AYA Beautiful Snow (AYA Miyuki) for series two.

The title is half of a translation of a Chinese proverb: “Qing qu yu lan…” (Blue comes from indigo) which is completed by the phrase “…er sheng yu lan” (but is superior to it). The phrase alludes to the manufacture of dyes, but is used in China to imply that a pupil can, and should, surpass his teacher. In this case, it is presumably meant to suggest that we should rise above the situation in which we find ourselves—fighting words for creators who are handed a touching love story, but merely use it to rehash a paradigm established more than two decades earlier in Urusei Yatsura. A Chinese TV series with the same title, shown on TVB, has no relation to the anime, and has been referred to as Shine on You in English. N

Aim for the Ace

1973. TV series, video. jpn: Ace o Nerae. dir: Osamu Dezaki, Masami Hata. scr: Kazuaki Okamura. des: Akio Sugino. ani: Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Kazuo Yamazaki, Sadao Tomonaga, Shinichi Kato, Katsuhiko Yamazaki. mus: Akira Misawa. prd: TMS, A Pro, Takara, Madhouse, NET. 25 mins. x 26 eps. (TV1), 25 mins. x 25 eps. (TV2), 25 mins. x 12 eps. (TV3), 30 mins. x 6 eps. (v1), 30 mins. x 6 eps. (v2).

Hiromi Oka is a new girl at Nishitaka tennis club, swiftly making a friend in the chatty Maki Aikawa and a deadly enemy in Reika “Madame Butterfly” Ryuzaki, the undisputed queen of student tennis. Sacrificing her personal life (and her chances with lovelorn local boy Takayuki Todo), Hiromi resolves to become the greatest tennis player in the world.

A second series of 25 episodes followed in 1978, with a new coach bringing new problems to the Nishitaka tennis students. With additional animation, this spawned a 1979 theatrical outing (still directed by Tomorrow’s Joe’s Dezaki). There was a renewed interest in the story in 1988, resulting in another movie, AftA 2, and a 12-part video series directed in part by former designer Akio Sugino. Dezaki did make some episodes and also provided some storyboards under the pseudonym Makura Saki. Revolving around the death of Hiromi’s original coach, the final series featured her in many more foreign tournaments, finishing at Wimbledon itself. A bit part as a neighbor in a New York scene proved to be the first anime role for future Sailor Moon–voice actress Kotono Mitsuishi.

The series­ has inspired several other anime, notably Yawara, which follows a similar story progression but uses judo as its sport of choice. It also has the questionable distinction of both SF and erotic pastiches, in Gunbuster (subtitled “Aim for the Top”) and Aim for the A in the Tales Of . . . collection.

Notably, the original TV series was broadcast in the same year as Sumika Yamamoto’s original manga began running in Margaret magazine, suggesting that Aim for the Ace’s position as one of the quintessential sports anime was recognised from its earliest days. Its enduring appeal is attested not only by its anime revivals and its impressive performance abroad (chiefly in Italian, French and Spanish), but also by its high position in many polls of Japanese viewers’ favourite anime and manga. Its most recent incarnation is a 2004 live-action TV series, on TV Asahi (the new name for NET).

Air

2005. TV series, movie, TV special. dir: Tatsuya Ishihara, Hiroshi Yamamoto, Ichiro Miyoshi, Noriyuki Kitanohara, Tomoe Aratani, Yasuhiro Takemoto. scr: Fumihiko Shimo. des: Tomoe Aratani. ani: Kazumi Ikeda, Mitsuyoshi Yoneda, Satoshi Kadowaki. mus: N/C. prd: Key, Visual Arts. 25 mins. x 13 eps. (TV), 91 mins. (m).

Yukito Kunisaki embarks on a long quest in search of a winged girl mentioned by his mother in stories told to him as a child. Running low on funds, he finds himself forced to settle temporarily in a town, where he soon gains the traditionally chaste live-in would-be girlfriend of anime romance, who, predictably, may not be all she appears to be. As with other time-limit girlfriends such as Video Girl Ai, there is a catch—in a pastiche of numerous Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the pretty Misuzu will die if she experiences true love. Compare to Chobits. The story was retold in a movie version later the same year, directed by Osamu Dezaki, and in two 24-minute specials, Air in Summer (2005), broadcast over two nights on TBS.

Air Gear

2006. TV series. dir: Hajime Kamegaki. scr: Chiaki Konaka. des: Masayuki Sato. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Toei Animation, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 25 eps.

Teenager Minami “Ikki” Itsuki is the leader of the East Side Gunz gang at his school, but is swiftly bested by the Storm Riders—a group of kids using “Air Trek” skates that allow them to fly through the air. Before long, he has acquired Air Trek gear of his own, in an adaptation of the manga by Oh! Great, that moves the standard templates of street toughs into a science fictional milieu by substituting roller skates for flying boots.

Air Master *

2003. TV series. dir: Daisuke Nishio. scr: Michio Yokote. des: Yoshihiko Umakoshi. ani: Yoshihiko Umakoshi. mus: Yoshihisa Hirano. prd: Toei Animation, VAP, NTV. 25 mins. x 27 eps.

The daughter of a distinguished gymnast and a former boxing champion, red-headed ex-gymnast Maki Aikawa can perform incredible moves in mid-air, which earn her the name of “Air Master.” Maki’s widowed father now owns a gymnasium and has remarried, giving her a half-sister, Miori. But gymnastics is no longer enough for Maki, and she turns, somewhat illogically, to street fighting as a means of getting the same thrill. She and her gang of girlfriends of various sizes, types, and sexual inclinations have the usual high school adventures while Maki fights a string of increasingly absurd opponents like masked wrestler Lucha Master, aspiring schoolgirl supermodel Kaori Sakiyama (her self-declared rival), quarterstaff master Shinnosuke (who is so smitten with Maki he transfers to her school), writer and street fighter Julietta (a guy who also falls for Maki), Reichi, whose weapon of choice is a bicycle, and so on, in the quirky opponent-of-the-week format of Tiger Mask and Ranma ½. The gritty battles are interrupted by the usual wholly gratuitous efforts to get the cast to take their clothes off, such as a trip to the beach.

Another gang of school street fighters, the Black Alliance, provides more training opportunities for Maki; then she and Kaori get involved in tag wrestling, meeting up with the sister of old opponent Rucha. She joins an elite street fighter group that uses the whole city as its arena, and begins to focus on spiritual power as a way to fight better. In the last episode she loses her final battle, but finds the fulfillment she has been seeking throughout a series that provides plenty of fight action and moderate humor; the animators invest the greatest amount of their time and budget in getting the battles right. Based on Yokusaru Shibata’s Young Animal manga. NV

Airbats *

1994. jpn: Aozora Shojotai 801 TTS. aka: Blue Sky Girl Squad 801 TTS. Video. dir: Yuji Moriyama. scr: Yuji Kawahara, Soya Fujiwara. des: Yuji Moriyama. ani: Yuji Moriyama, Osamu Mikasa, Junichi Sakata. mus: Seiko Nagaoka. prd: Studio Fantasia. 30 mins. x 7 eps.

Geeky Takuya Isurugi is a fan of anime and machinery assigned as a mechanic to the 801 “Airbats” Tactical Training Squadron. Far from being a training ground for elite female pilots, it’s a dead-end posting for burnouts—Miyuki Haneda has been sent there for striking a superior officer, Sakura Saginomiya is an inveterate gambler, Arisa Mitaka has an attitude problem, and Yoko Shimorenjaku is the world’s worst pilot. Haneda and Mitaka both fall in love with Isurugi, and as bureaucrats try to disband the unit, they all try to hold onto their jobs in this wacky military comedy.

Plane fever struck Japan in the wake of Top Gun, inspiring the live-action Japanese rip-off Best Guy, Airbats, and its sharper, more satirical predecessor Hummingbirds. A cute contemporary of Tenchi Muyo!, employing similarly crowd-pleasing tactics of fanboy-meets-fawning-females, Airbats has its origin in a 1990 manga by Toshimitsu Shimizu, creator of Rei Rei. The six episodes and the Airbats in Snow Country vacation spin-off were later edited into the omnibus volumes First (episodes 1–3), Second (4 + holiday special), and Third Strike (episodes 5–6). It was supposedly made with the cooperation of the Japanese Air Force, which accounts for the loving aircraft detail but does not explain why a military organization would consent to be portrayed as misfits, desk-jockeys, and nuts whose main concern is winning a year’s supply of free noodles. Whereas such inanities helped reinforce the realism of the long-running Patlabor, in a short comedy series such as this they only demonstrate how wacky waters so often run shallow.

Akahori Gedo Hour

2005. jpn: Akahori Gedo Hour Love-ge Zettai Seigi vs. Soreyuke! Gedo Otometai. aka: Akahori Gedo Hour Love Pheromone Justice vs. Go For it! Gedo Maid Team. TV series. dir: Hitoyuki Matsui. scr: Satoru Akahori, Takashi Ifukube, Deko Akao, Katsumi Hasegawa. des: Satoshi Ishino. ani: N/C. mus: Harukichi Yamamoto. prd: Radix, TVK. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

Actually two shows set in the same world and sharing the airtime of a normal TV episode—perhaps the first sign of a new trend in impecunious shows for short attention-span audiences, started by the earlier A15 and continued by BPS and Bottle Fairies. Love Pheromone is about the misadventures of two failed stand-up comediennes who moonlight as superheroines while waiting for the big break that will bring them success on stage. But the Pheromone duo are a little short of evil enemies, whereas their sister show Gedo Otometai features five sisters who stumble amateurishly in their own attempts to become an evil secret organization, a job for which they are palpably not cut out. Based on an idea by Satoru Akahori, who presumably based it on some feverish dreams that ensued after he watched Excel Saga while eating cheese too close to bedtime.

Akai Hayate *

1991. aka: Red Gale. Video. dir: Osamu Tsuruyama. scr: Osamu Yamazaki. des: Chiharu Sato, Koichi Ohata. ani: Chiharu Sato, Masayoshi Sato. mus: Takashi Kudo. prd: NEXTART, Pony Canyon. 30 mins. x 4 eps.

The real rulers of modern Japan are the Shinogara clan, whose base is in a hidden valley at the base of Mount Fuji. The leader’s son, Hayate, is executed for patricide but transfers his soul into the body of his sister, Shiori. Hiding out from Shinogara assassins in Tokyo, Shiori is able to call up her brother’s skill in battle but loses a part of her own soul each time she does. As the power struggle continues between several factions of his clan, Hayate must save himself before he kills another member of his own family.

Originally serialized in the Rentaman video magazine, Akai Hayate was later compiled into two 60-minute volumes—the version released abroad. One of a large subset of anime in which the past bubbles to the surface in modern Japan, including writer Yamazaki’s own Takegami, it features Genocyber-creator Ohata as a guest designer for the MacGuffin “Shadow Armor” over which the ninja are fighting.

Akane, Kazuki

1962– . After early work as a character designer on Mama Is a Fourth-Grader and Gundam 0083, he moved into animation. An early pioneer in the integration of digital animation and traditional techniques, his directorial debut was on Escaflowne.

Akane-chan

1968. TV series. dir: Fusahito Nagaki, Yasuo Yamaguchi, Yugo Serikawa, Takeshi Tamiya. scr: Shunichi Yukimuro, Masaki Tsuji. des: Shinya Takahashi. ani: Masamune Ochiai. mus: Keiichi Honno. prd: Fuji TV. 30 mins. x 26 mins.

Young Akane moves to the country and soon becomes popular with the other children in her class, befriending the troublesome local rich-kid Hidemaru and leading her gang into all sorts of scrapes. Tetsuya Chiba’s original manga Miso Curds in Shojo Friend magazine was deliberately designed to evoke a distant, carefree time of rural childhood for city kids deprived of the opportunity, placing it in the same spirit as My Neighbor Totoro. Renamed for its TV outing, it was the first of many Chiba titles to be adapted for anime—the creator is better known for more manly tales such as Tomorrow’s Joe and I’m Teppei.

Akanuke Ichiban

1985. jpn: Showa Aho Soshi Akanuke Ichiban. aka: Showa Era Idiot Storybook: Most Refined; City Boy. TV series. dir: Hidehito Ueda. scr: Takao Koyama, Hiroko Naka. des: Hiroshi Hamazaki, Ammonite. ani: Hidehito Ueda, Shinya Sadamitsu, Tetsuya Komori. mus: Toshiyuki Watanabe. prd: Tatsunoko, TV Asahi. 30 mins. x 22 eps.

Kojiro moves to Tokyo from Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido and insists on bringing his favorite horse, Hikarikin, with him. The alien king Rel arrives from planet Wedelun and gives him a belt that will allow him to transform into a Miracle Hero and to protect the world from alien menaces. He is more interested, however, in impressing the pretty Yuka, though his rival, Michinari, wants her for himself.

Yu Azuki, creator of Igano Kabamaru, enjoys a reputation as an artist who is able to straddle the divide between boys’ and girls’ comics. Though Akanuke Ichiban looks on the surface like a typical superhero story for a male audience, it originally ran in Margaret magazine—perhaps it appeared more palatable to male producers and fulfilled some form of girl/boy quota. The ratings, however, did not bear out the theory, and the series was canceled before reaching the end of its second season.

Akiba Girls *

2004. jpn: Akibakei Kanojo. Video. dir: Shigeru Kurii. scr: Naruhito Sunaga. des: Jiro Oiwa. ani: Jiro Oiwa. mus: N/C. prd: Studio Wood, Image Works, Milky. 30 mins. x 3 eps.

Orphan Nikita Shindo is obsessed with pornographic computer games, an interest he tries to keep hidden from his adoptive sisters. He fantasizes about a pretty girl he saw in a park near Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district, but eventually decides to get out more, and joins a local computer club. He soon discovers that fandom offers many opportunities for clandestine sex, and enjoys liaisons with costume fans, and a brief encounter with a frustrated voice actress, who appreciates his help in showing her how to put more passion into her performances. Meanwhile, he enjoys similar attentions from his elder and younger sisters, and chases after the aforesaid pretty girl, in a porn anime that mixes the 21st century self-referentiality of Genshiken with references to an erotic pastiche of Castle in the Sky—Lord knows why Balthus: Tia’s Radiance wasn’t enough!

The Akiba-kei, in modern Japanese slang, is the subset of Japanese society comprising geeks for whom the electronics district of Akihabara is the center of the world—i.e., fans of anime, manga, and computer games, or a new way of saying otaku; see Otaku no Video. LN

Akihabara Cyber Team

1998. jpn: Akihabara Dennogumi. TV series. dir: Yoshitaka Fujimoto. scr: Katsumi Hasegawa, Hiroshi Yamaguchi. des: KA-NON, Tsukasa Kotobuki, Seiji Yoshimoto. ani: Yuji Takahashi, Seiji Yoshimoto. mus: Nobuyoshi Mitsumoto. prd: Ashi Pro, TBS. 22 mins. x 26 eps.

Early in the 21st century, the combination of personal data-organizers and virtual pets results in a new piece of essential equipment. These “patapi” robots are friends, guardians, and personal computers, but to Hibari Hanakogane, they are more than that. Her patapi, Densuke, has been sent to Earth by a handsome prince to defeat the evil sorceress Blood Falcon. With her friends Suzume, Tsugumi, and their own patapi companions, Hibari forms the titular squad to fight cybercrime.

Tsukasa Kotobuki, who had formerly drawn a Gundam spin-off comic, collaborated with the pseudonymous Ka-non to create this tale of girls and gadgetry for Nakayoshi magazine, soon riding the coattails of the Tamagotchi craze to make the jump to radio drama, computer games, and this anime series. A mysterious clash of genres results in a cloyingly cute show for girls that somehow manages to have an evil character with giant breasts.

Akiko *

1995. Video. dir: Kaoru Tomioka. scr: Kaoru Tomioka. des: Mitsuru Fujii. ani: Mitsuru Fujii. mus: Simon Akira. prd: Fairy Tale, Pink Pineapple. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Lust and forbidden fruits abound at
an all-girls school, as the beautiful female agent Akiko poses as a researcher at the Nobel Academy only to become the victim of a cavalcade of rape, bondage, and sexual abuse. Based on a Japanese PC game with publicity about particularly unpleasant scenes of sex and violence—supposedly strong even by the standards of Japanese pornography. NV

Akira *

1988. Movie. dir: Katsuhiro Otomo. scr: Katsuhiro Otomo, Izo Hashimoto. des: Toshiharu Mizutani. ani: Takashi Nakamura. mus: Geino Yamashiro. prd: Akira Committee, Mash Room, Toho, Hakuhodo, TMS. 124 mins.

In 2019, Tokyo has been rebuilt after World War III. As the city prepares to host the Olympics, it is rocked by antigovernment terrorism secretly organ­ized by power-brokering politician Nezu. Juvenile delinquent Tetsuo is out racing against a rival gang when he crashes his bike into a child with the face of an old man. He is swiftly taken away by the military, while his friend Kaneda allies with a cell of the terrorists to track him down. Tetsuo begins to develop psychic powers and discovers that he is just one of many experimental subjects in a secret government program to replicate Akira, the human bioweapon that obliterated Tokyo in 1988. Tetsuo escapes to the Olympic stadium, where the remains of Akira are kept in a hidden chamber. Losing control of his powers and absorbing several of his colleagues, Tetsuo causes the return of Akira and a second destruction of Tokyo. Kaneda is one of the survivors, while Tetsuo absconds to create his own universe.

Adapted from the early part of the long-running manga by director Otomo, Akira is almost singlehandedly responsible for the early 1990s boom in anime in the English language. Echoes of the seminal Blade Runner
are undeniable (the film is even set in the same year), but Akira owes less to an alleged “cyberpunk” sensibility than it does to the young Otomo’s perspective on 1960s counterculture—rioting students, crazed biker gangs, and corporate intrigue. The military conspiracy in Akira carries elements of the 1963 live-action film Japan’s Longest Day, while other themes include the wartime Unit 731 human guinea pigs and nuclear contamination covered more directly in Barefoot Gen. Even the Olympic stadium is a historical marker—Tokyo was due to host the games in 1940 but only got to do so after postwar reconstruction in 1964. In many ways, Akira is also a retelling of Otomo’s Fireball, an unfinished 1979 story about scientists fighting terrorists for control of an apocalyptic energy source.

Akira was a visual tour-de-force, including experiments in digital and analog animation that were to stun audiences worldwide, enjoying greater success abroad than in its country of origin. With a production budget that ran wildly out of control, it was defeated by its very success—few of its lower-budget imitators compare favorably and Western distributors have difficulty replicating its success. In 2001, Akira was rereleased with a new dub, closer in meaning and tone to the original Japanese version. Scenes from the film were pastiched by the rapper Kanye West in his video for “Stronger” (2007). V

Akitaka, Mika

1964–. After early work on City Hunter, began to specialize in the design of machinery, most notably on Nadesico.

Akiyama, Katsuhito

1950– . Director and storyboarder on the Macross movie Do You Remember Love?, Gall Force, and Elementalors. He also worked as the animation director of the much-loved “American” cartoon series Thundercats (1985).

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp *

1982. jpn: Aladdin to Maho no Lamp. aka: Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. Movie. dir: Yoshinori Kasai. scr: Akira Miyazaki. des: Dale Baer, Jane Baer, Shinya Takahashi. ani: Shinya Takahashi. mus: Yukihide Takekawa, Godiego. prd: Toei, Rankin/Bass. 65 mins.

Aladdin is a poor Arab boy asked by a mysterious stranger (an evil wizard) to help him retrieve an old lamp from an underground cavern. The wizard traps Aladdin in the cavern, but he accidentally releases a jinni from a magic ring and makes a wish to escape. When Aladdin tries to clean up the old lamp, a second jinni appears to grant him unlimited wishes. Aladdin falls in love with the sultan’s daughter, Badraul, and uses the Slave of the Lamp to disguise himself as a rich prince. However, the wizard gains possession of the lamp and orders the jinni to transport the princess inside Aladdin’s new palace to his own home in Africa. The angry sultan gives Aladdin three days to return her. The Slave of the Ring dies in the initial assault on the African palace, and Aladdin and Badraul must use their own wits to defeat the wizard.

There have been many all-Japanese productions spun off from Arabian Nights, but in this case the Baers, former staffers on Disney’s Snow White, contributed to a Rankin/Bass coproduction that also featured music from Godiego, best known outside Japan for the unforgettable theme tune to the Monkey series. The story would be revisited in 1993 in the Sanrio Pekkle video Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. In 1995, several Japanese animators would also work on the Disney Aladdin TV series—enough to qualify it as an anime coproduction in some sources.

Alexander *

1999. jpn: Alexander Senki. aka: Alexander War Chronicle. TV series. dir: Yoshinori Kanemori. scr: Sadayuki Murai. des: Peter Chung. ani: N/C. mus: Ken Ishii, Haruomi Hosono, Inheil. prd: Madhouse, WOWOW. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

In the midst of a bitter war, King Philip’s wife, Olympias, gives birth to a son, Alexander. Reared amid intrigue in the palace, he proves himself on the battlefield at Chaeronia at the age of 16. After his father’s death under mysterious circumstances, Alexander declares war on Darius III of Persia and goes on to become master of the known universe.

Despite its sci-fi sheen, this is a surprisingly faithful retelling of the life of Alexander the Great based on a novel by Doomed Megalopolis–creator Hiroshi Aramata. Featuring a techno-magic based on Pythagorean solids and vast alien armies, it bears more resemblance to Dune or Stargate than a classical biopic. Character designs from the Korean-born Chung contain echoes of his work on Aeon Flux, and some of the visual conceits (such as a swimming pool in the shape of the Mediterranean) are simply superb. The historical Alexander is known in the Middle East as “Iscander,” a name appropriated for Star Blazers. Released in 2003 in the U.S. by Tokyo Pop under the title Reign: The Conqueror.

Alfred J. Kwak

1989. jpn: Ahiru no Quack; Chiisana Ahiru no Oki na Ai no Monogatari Ahiru no Quack. aka: Quack the
Duck; Little Duck’s Big Love Story: Quack the Duck. TV series. dir: Hiroshi Saito. scr: Akira Miyazaki. des: Masaru Amamizu, Susumu Shira-
ume. ani: Susumu Shiraume. mus:
Herman van Veen. prd: Telescreen, Visual 8, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 52 eps.

Dutch duckling Alfred Jodocus Kwak loses his family and is raised by a mole. The series covers his life and times as he travels the world trying to help animals everywhere. Based on a story by Herman van Veen, who also provided the voice of Alfred’s father Johann in the German and Dutch dubs, and Prof. Paljack in the Dutch, and wrote the script and music for the Dutch version as well as a song for the Japanese original. The series has been dubbed and screened in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, and the Arab world as well as in Japan, but does not seem to be well known in English-speaking countries.

Alibaba’s Revenge *

1971. jpn: Alibaba to Yonjubiki no Tozoku. aka: Alibaba and the Forty Thieves. Movie. dir: Hiroshi Shidara. scr: Motohisa Yamamoto. des: Reiko Okuyama, Katsuya Koda. ani: Hideki Mori, Hayao Miyazaki, Yoichi Otabe, Yasuji Mori. mus: Seiichiro Uno. prd: Toei. 55 mins.

Alibaba became rich by defeating the 40 thieves. Now his distant descendant Alibaba XXXIII has inherited the fiefdom and become the worst sultan in history, squandering his ancestor’s wealth and the good will of the jinni of the lamp. Al Haq, descendant of the original leader of the thieves, is a good honest boy who resolves to get back his father’s fortune, enlisting the aid of 38 cats and a lone mouse. Another of the many anime loosely based on Arabian Nights, this short film featured Hayao Miyazaki as a key animator and a flashback sequence using nothing but shadow puppetry. It was not, however, the first anime adaptation of the story—that honor goes to Takeo Ueno’s 17-minute Early Anime The 40 Thieves (1928).

Alice Academy

2005. jpn: Gakuen Alice. TV series. dir: Takahiro Omori. scr: Jukki Hanada, Man Shimada, Masashi Yokoyama, Michiru Shimada. des: Yoshiaki Ito. ani: Akihito Dobashi, Haruo Ogawara, Hideaki Shimada, Hiroki Abe, Hiroyuki Shimizu, Hisashi Mitsui, Yoshihiro Sugai, Kei Takeuchi. mus: Makoto Yoshimori. prd: Group Tac, NHK. 25 mins. x 26 eps.

Ten-year-old Mikan Sakura misses her old school friend Hotaru, and so makes the trip to visit Hotaru at her new school, Alice Academy. But it is no ordinary school—instead it is an establishment for children with psychic powers and superhero abilities. Mikan somehow secures admission for herself, in a cuter, more magical female-oriented version of the same basic “weird school” premise of Cromartie High, based on a manga from Hana to Yume magazine by Tachibana Higuchi.

Alice in Cyberland

1996. Video. dir: Kazuyoshi Yokota. scr: Chiaki Konaka. des: Daisuke Moriyama. ani: Fumio Shimazu. mus: N/C. prd: Warner Vision Japan, Bandai. 28 mins. x 2 eps.

Fourteen-year-old Alice Rena is a 21st-century schoolgirl from Miskatonic College who is dragged into Cyberland, the computer network that connects vast Data Colonies of information. She and her friends are mistresses of the Dive System that allows them to access the treasures within, but all hell breaks loose when one of them falls in love with the prince who rules Cyberland.

A curio dashed off to cash in on a PlayStation game, released along with a radio drama and a PC version of the original, AiC mixes various parts of Lewis Carroll’s original with large chunks of Tron, courtesy of writer Chiaki Konaka, who used cyberspace for more dramatic purposes in Serial Experiments Lain. Konaka’s love of H. P. Lovecraft, as shown in the name “Miskatonic,” also reappears in Armitage III.

Alice in Wonderland

1983. jpn: Fushigina Kuni no Alice. aka: Alice in the Mysterious Kingdom. TV series. dir: Taku Sugiyama. scr: Fumi Takahashi. des: Yu Noda. ani: Yu Kumada, Takao Kogawa. mus: Reijiro Komu­tsu. prd: Apollo, Nippon Animation, TV Tokyo. 30 mins. x 26 eps.

One fine summer’s day, the seven-year-old Alice chases a white rabbit down a hole and finds herself in the underground kingdom of Wonderland. Spending 13 episodes each on Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, Alice through the Looking Glass, this series ran through all the high points of Lewis Carroll’s original stories, though the final two parts were only broadcast in the Tokyo area. To see the series in its entirety, you had to go to Germany, a major financial contributor to this coproduction. In the Japanese version, Alice was played by Tarako, the voice actress behind another children’s favorite, Chibi Maruko-chan. Masako Nozawa, who provided the voice of the white rabbit, went on to play Son Goku in Dragon Ball.

In 1998, an unofficial sequel by Ryo Nakahara was adapted by director Shingo Kaneko into the 14-episode Alice SOS, which featured further adventures in Dinosaur-land, Cookery-land, Topsy-turvy-land, Cactus-land, Bully-land, Salad-land, Edo-land (old-fashioned Tokyo), God-land, Ghost-land, Backward-land, Santa-land, TV-land, and Devil-land. A far naughtier pastiche was CLAMP’s 1995 Miyuki-chan in Wonderland. See also Video Picture Book.

Alice Rondo

2006. jpn: Kagihime Monogatari Eikyu Alice Rondo. aka: Key Princess Story Eternal Alice Rondo. TV series. dir: Nagisa Miyazaki. scr: Mamiko Ikeda. des: Haruka Ninomiya. ani: Hiroko Kuryube, Sawako Yamamoto. mus:
N/C. prd: Trinet, Picture Magic. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

Aruto is a fan of Alice in Wonderland, and is convinced that Lewis Carroll wrote a second sequel, Endless Alice. He is thus perhaps a little less surprised than he otherwise might have been when he finds two magical girls fighting in the library. The victor pokes the vanquished with a key-like staff, causing her opponent to yield up pages of the lost book—it transpires that the mythical Endless Alice does indeed exist, but has been broken up and scattered among a coterie of “Alice-users.” These magical girls must fight each other to regain the missing pages of the book, in a bizarre combination of Read or Die, CardCaptors and Highlander! Aruto is soon surrounded by pretty girls, all fighting over a book and, unsurprisingly, him. Based on an idea by Kaishaku, the creator of UFO Princess Valkyrie.

Alien from the Darkness *

1996. jpn: Inju Alien. aka: Lust Alien. Video. dir: Norio Takanami. scr: N/C. des: Ryu Tsukiyo. ani: Shin Taira. mus: N/C. prd: Pink Pineapple, (KIT). 45 mins.

Sci-fi porn in the spirit of Advancer Tina, heavily influenced by the Alien films. On their way back from a mining trip to the planet Kerun, the all-female crew of the starship Muze finds a vessel drifting in space. The derelict Zogne, carrying an illegal cargo of the narcotic Metrogria, is scattered with naked corpses. The sole survivor, a beautiful girl called Flair, claims to have amnesia. As the Muze continues on its way, the same fate starts to befall members of the crew, and lone scientist Hikari trawls through the Zogne’s records in an attempt to stop the carnage. Needless to say, it involves an alien monster that consists of little more than tentacles and a permanent craving for female flesh. LNV

Alien 9 *

2001. Video. dir: Jiro Fujimoto. scr: Sadayuki Murai. des: Yasuhiro Irie, Kazunori Iwakura. ani: Yasuhiro Irie. mus: Kuniaki Haishima. N/C. prd: Genco, JC Staff, Bandai Visual, Nippon Columbia, TV Tokyo Media Net, Anime Theater X (AT-X). 30 mins. x 4 eps.

In 2016, the very reluctant Kasumi Tomine, Kumi Kawamura, and Yuri Otani are picked as Alien Monitors at their Japanese school, in charge of cleaning up the various kinds of messes caused by unwelcome pests. A right-wing Pokémon, perhaps?

Always My Santa

2005. jpn: Itsudatte My Santa. aka: Mai and Santa Together Forever. Video. dir: Noriyoshi Nakamura. scr: Koichi Taki. des: Masahide Yanagisawa. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: N/C. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Teenage Japanese boy Santa loathes Christmas, chiefly because his birthday is on December 24th—halving his gift potential and lumbering him with a silly name into the bargain. Nor does it help that his parents were always away working, leaving him a series of embittered memories of being forced to spend Christmas alone with his grandmother. However, it also gains him a new friend, in the form of the mysterious Christmas spirit Mai. A Santa in training, she offers to show him the meaning of Christmas by hanging around for the night, only to show up on his doorstep the following day, bemoaning the fact that she has used up all her magic on him, and must now stay with him until the following Christmas Eve. High jinks, of a variety not unlike Oh My Goddess!, duly ensue. Based on a 1998 short manga by Love Hina–creator Ken Akamatsu in Shonen Magazine weekly, reprinted twice thereafter in Christmas issues with minor revisions.

Amazing Nurse Nanako *

1999. jpn: Nanako Kaitai Shinsho. aka: Nanako’s Medical Report. TV series. dir: Hiroshi Negishi. scr: Rasputin Yano. des: Toshinari Yamashita. ani: Toshinari Yamashita, Kazuya Miura. mus: Takahiro Negishi. prd: Save Our Nurse Project, Genco, Pioneer. 30 mins. x 6 eps.

This strange hybrid of 1980s techno-thriller and 1990s geek-meets-girl comedy begins with a pastiche of Ghost in the Shell’s copious computer graphics, as brilliant research scientists construct the humanoid superweapon Venus 2000. But Venus is missing a brain, and Dr. Kyoji Ogami decides that he will put the finishing touches on the project by “borrowing” the brain of his large-breasted maid, Nanako. After all, he reasons, it’s not like she uses it for anything.

Nanako is a bouncy ingenue baf-
fled by the attention of the world’s military—as a violent conspiracy unfolds around her, she frets about cooking and underwear, creating a saucy if puerile antidote to the deadly serious Evangelion and its clones. Those seeking stranger comparisons should note that Catgirl Nukunuku features a girl who has had a small mammal’s brain carefully inserted into her skull, whereas the plot of Amazing Nurse Nanako involves a concerted attempt to remove one.

Amazing 3, The *

1965. jpn: Wonder Three. aka: W3. TV series. dir: Taku Sugiyama, Osamu Tezuka, Ryosuke Takahashi. scr: Ichiro Wakabayashi, Osamu Tezuka, Sadao Tsukioka, Kunihiko Yamazaki. des: Osamu Tezuka. ani: Kazuko Nakamura. mus: Tatsu Kawai. prd: Mushi Pro, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 52 eps.

The Galactic Alliance sends three secret agents to Earth with orders to destroy it if the planet’s warmongering attitude presents a danger. Masquerading as farmyard animals, Major Boko (Bonnie Bunny), Lieutenant JG Poko (Zero Duck), and Lance Corporal Noko (Ronnie Horse) are discovered by young Shinichi Hoshi (Kenny Carter). The younger brother of international crime fighter Koichi (Randy), Shinichi convinces them to help make the world a better place and to give secret aid to Koichi’s Phoenix organization, a group whose aims are approximately equivalent to their own. Based on Osamu Tezuka’s 1965 manga in Shonen Magazine, this minor series was adapted for the U.S. market. Tezuka reused similar ideas in Bremen Four.

Ambassador Magma *

1993. jpn: Magma Taishi. Video. dir: Hidehito Ueda. scr: Katsuhiko Koide. des: Kazuhiko Udagawa. ani: Kazuhiko Udagawa. mus: Toshiyuki Watanabe. prd: Tezuka Pro, Bandai Visual, Plex. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

Long ago, the evil Goa was defeated by the golden giant robot Magma, created to defend this planet and its people. Now the two warriors are locked in a deep slumber, while on Earth the descendants of the Asuka family are guardians of their spirits. Fumiaki Asuka is kidnapped by aliens and used to awaken Goa. Schoolgirl Miki, the link to Magma, is forced to flee and takes refuge with the Murakami family. Mamoru Murakami meets with the protecting spirit of our planet, who calls himself “Earth,” and is drawn into the battle between good and evil, becoming the one who can summon Magma with a magical golden whistle. Based on a minor manga by Astro Boy–creator Osamu Tezuka, Ambassador Magma was one of several projects, along with Zero Man and No Man, that only reached the pilot stage during their creator’s lifetime. When Tezuka failed to sell AM as anime, he allowed the company P Pro to make it as a live-action series instead—the poor-quality 1966 52-episode rubber-monster show eventually released in the U.S. as Space Giants.(*DE)

It was only much later, as Tezuka’s estate embarked upon a long and ongoing project to adapt all of his works for a new generation, that the series finally got an anime release, deliberately made in the blocky, old-fashioned 1950s style of the original, even so far as using the original artwork in the closing credits screened over an impossibly peppy martial theme. The show itself is never quite as interesting as it could be, alter­nating between scenes that are too childish to be engrossing and too hard-hitting to be suitable for young children. Despite its camp villains, the story has its scary moments—and is simply bursting with ideas and relationships that The X-Files later reprised, such as covert alien takeovers, human sleeper-agents, and time disturbances.

Amon Saga *

1986. Video. dir: Yoshikazu Oga. scr: Noboru Shiroyama. des: Shingo Araki, Michi Himeno. ani: Shingo Araki. mus: Shigeya Saegusa. prd: Centre, Tokuma, Yumemakura, Ten Pro, TMS. 72 mins.

Amon’s family is destroyed and his country conquered by the evil Valhiss. Befriending Gaius the giant, Amon joins forces with a number of disgruntled individuals to attack Valhiss’s capital city, which is located on the back of a giant turtle. While sneaking into the city, Amon meets and falls in love with the beautiful hostage, Princess Lichia. Captured and thrown into the dungeons to be devoured by Valhiss’s savage pet, Amon escapes while one of his companions rescues the princess, only for her to be recaptured when their camp is attacked by werewolves. The final battle is on to defeat Valhiss, avenge Amon’s parents, and rescue his love.

Not to be confused with the similarly named Devilman sequel, this video was also shown in theaters on a double bill with Beloved Betty. The manga in Ryu magazine was written by Baku Yumemakura and is the only one ever drawn by Yoshitaka Amano, who, dissatisfied with the manga medium, soon returned to straightforward illustration.

ANAL SANCTUARY *

2005. jpn: Requiem. Video. dir: Yoshito Machida. scr: Kazuhiro Muto, Hiroyuki Ishii, Kosuke Fujii, Shinji Yamamoto. des: Kumi Shimamoto. ani: Yoshimitsu Murayama. mus: N/C. prd: GP Museum Soft, Milky. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Akio is a music teacher at the prim St. Cecilia’s School for Girls, where he enjoys a secret hobby as a serial rapist, thanks to the hypnotic effects of Cannone, the satanic violin. With just a few notes on the fiddle of fornication, Akio can bend pliant young girls to his will, in an anime adaptation of a computer game from Clock-up. The second episode sees Akio facing resistance from schoolgirls Yukina and Mizuho, who have somehow obtained the angelic violin known as Cecilia. Victory, however, is unlikely to come without a good deal of tentacles and nude flesh. LNV

Angel *

1990. Video. dir: Hideki Takayama, Hiromitsu Taida, Kaoru Toyooka. scr: Wataru Amano, Koji Sakakibara. des: Rin Shin. ani: Osamu Tsuruyama, Mi­tsuru Fujii, Masato Ijuin. mus: N/C. prd: Studio Angel, Pink Pineapple. 45 mins. x 2 eps., 30 mins. x 5 eps.

The adventures of Kosuke, a sex-obsessed college boy who’s always ready to help damsels in distress, just so long as he gets something special in return. Cue a succession of short stories in which a young, often nameless female comes to him with a problem; he sorts it out, then sorts her out. The one exception is Shizuka, the childhood sweetheart Kosuke befriended at the age of five, when she tried to commit suicide over the death of her pet bird. Moving back to Tokyo with her family, she hopes to make an honest man out of him, though she has a difficult task ahead.

U-jin is the pseudonymous artist who was made famous in Japan by the efforts of the Association to Protect Children from Comics to have his Young Sunday comic Angel banned. The video versions of his hard-core comics are not quite as explicit as the originals but are still pretty eyebrow-raising. The original Angel video was followed in 1994 by five volumes of New Angel, though the running time soon was cut to a mere two-thirds of its former size. The U.S. distributor has made it available in both uncut and edited editions, though your guess is as good as ours as to who would want to watch a porno movie with the porno taken out. Similar erotic stories from the same author can be found in U-Jin Brand and the Tales Of . . . series. N

Angel Blade *

2003. Video. dir: Masami Obari. scr: Remu Aoki, Jin Koga. des: Masami Obari, Magnum Tana, Mocchii, Yosuke Kabashima, Mikoshiro Nagi. ani: Makoto Uno, Yosuke Kabashima. mus: N/C. prd: Frontline, Studio G-1Neo, MUSE. 30 mins. x 3 eps. (v1), 30 mins. x 3 eps. (v2).

In a future in which only 99 human cities remain above the clouds of a war-torn Earth, a floating castle appears in the sky over City 69, and an evil force plots against women. Moena becomes Angel Blade, a fighter with the beauty of a goddess who appears to rescue the victims from bondage, rape, and depravity, all of which feature prominently, since the Dark Mother is trying to conquer Earth by attacking girls at a college, as one does. Masami Obari is renowned for eroticizing mainstream anime, but here he makes a rare foray into pornography, bringing with him a larger budget than usual in order to make an erotic anime that has an involved plot to accompany the usual rapes and assaults. The English voice cast use pseudonyms like Likki DeeSplit and Syndi Snackwell in an effort to keep it off their more respectable resumés. An erotic SF adventure with the gravity-defying breasts and cute pointy noses for which Obari is renowned. A “movie” edit also exists, which runs the first three episodes together with some bonus footage. For the sequel series, the show was renamed Angel Blade Punish. NV

Angel Cop *

1989. Video. dir: Ichiro Itano. scr: Sho Aikawa. des: Nobuteru Yuki. ani: Yasuomi Umezu, Satoru Nakamura, Hideki Takayama, Hiroyuki Ochi. mus: Hiroshi Ogasawara. prd: Studio 88, DAST, Soeishinsha, Japan Home Video. 30 mins. x 6 eps.

At the close of the 20th century, Japan forms a Special Security force to protect it from foreign terrorists like the fanatical Red May. Angel, the newest officer, loses her partner, Raiden, to psychic vigilantes and suspects that she has more to fear from a secret government cybernetics project than from left-wing activists. Soon all hell breaks loose, as cyborgs and psychics fight for access to the secrets of the mysterious “H-File.”

Consisting of long fight scenes stitched together by ham-fisted expository soliloquies, Angel Cop wastes loving detail on weapons and machinery but leaves its characters shallow and uninteresting. A nasty bloodbath from Violence Jack–director Ichiro Itano, it fails despite a crew of great talents who would go on to work on Escaflowne, Armitage III, and, admittedly, the equally soulless Kite.

The original creator, Taku Kitazaki, was only 17 when he sold his first story, shooting to fame thanks to his work’s resemblance to flavor-of-the-moment Akira. As one might expect from the creator whose publications include War Story Busty, Angel Cop is aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator. Different arms of the military show off their hardware and are then trashed by psionic supersoldiers, while a mad scientist cackles . . . madly. The final showdown is against Lucifer, a glacial blonde seemingly modeled on Brigitte Nielsen, in whose bone-crunching defeat the good guys take an ethnically suspect pleasure—a few of their antiforeign quips have survived the English-language dub, though the original Japanese script is far more anti-American and anti-Semitic throughout. There is, however, an ironic happy ending; by the time Angel Cop was made, its 23-year-old creator had already tired of the genre and moved into gentle romance with Like This Love Song. LNV

Angel Core *

2003. Video. dir: Ran Misumi. scr: Hiroshi Watanabe. des: Hiro Asano. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Picol, Blue Eyes. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

As the clouds of war gather, the United Empire puts into action a secret scheme to extract “Angel Core,” a crystallized form of divine power that can be found in human descendants of gods. They do this with a vague, Evangelion-inspired notion of Kabbalah sorcery, but of course it is actually an excuse to imprison a bunch of innocent girls in a secret base and subject them to sexual degradation in an attempt to draw out their life force. Young officer Ralph frets that torturing and raping women is not the way for a military defense plan to operate and resolves to help two of the girls escape, even though it will cause him to directly disobey an order. A pornographic anime that is unpleasant enough to begin with, before anyone starts bringing up parallels with Japan’s wartime record on “comfort women.” LNV

Angel Heart

2005. TV series. dir: Toshiki Hirano. scr: Sumio Uetake. des: Takashi Saijo. ani: Takashi Saijo. mus: Taku Iwasaki. prd: Thomas Entertainment, Yomiuri TV, Tokyo Movie Shinsha. 25 mins. x ?? eps.

Xiang Ying is “Glass Heart,” a 15-year-old girl reared as an assassin by Taiwanese gangsters in the style of Gunslinger Girl. She tries to end her torment by committing suicide, but is saved by a heart transplant and emerges from a coma a year later, reporting strange visitations from a dream figure she calls Kaori. Evading her gangster bosses, she runs for Shinjuku, guided by a voice in her head that announces “I died here” when she stands at the center of the area’s distinctive crossroads. In an attempt to shake off her pursuers, she ducks into a café called the Cat’s Eye, where Umibozu, the blind manager, senses that his beloved Kaori has somehow returned. Kaori, of course, is the original owner of the transplanted heart, haunting the heart’s new owner in a manner previously used in episodes of Black Jack. Umibozu’s best friend is Ryo Saeba, the famous City Hunter of anime legend, who has been living in a traumatized daze for the months following the death of his partner Kaori in a car accident. Before long, Ryo and Xiang Ying form a new partnership, in what may at first seem like a pointless continuation of the City Hunter storyline with a new label. However, AH’s existence seems to owe something to a major power shift in the manga industry in 2001, when a number of creators defected from their old publishers to write for Shinchosha’s new Comic Bunch weekly. Just as Kenichi Sonoda once refashioned Riding Bean as Gunsmith Cats, and Fist of the North Star proclaimed itself “new,” AH is likely to be a rebranding exercise that allows manga creator Tsukasa Hojo to continue using his popular characters and situations from City Hunter without getting caught up in a maze of red tape from the rightsholders to various anime, manga, and live-action versions of his creation.

Angel Legend

1996. jpn: Angel Densetsu. Video. dir: Tatsuo Misawa. scr: Naoyuki Sakai. des: Nobuyoshi Ito. ani: Nobuyoshi Ito. mus: Jun Sky Walkers. prd: Toei. 45 mins.

New kid in town Shinichiro Kitano is a noble, sensitive boy with “the face of a devil and the kindness of an angel.” Pushed into a world of drugs and crime simply because of the way he looks, he tries to make the world a better place without fighting, eventually becoming the leader of the local gang. This adaptation of Norihiro Yagi’s manga from Shonen Jump only lasted for a single episode—at the time it was released, Japan was obsessed with more compelling “angels” in Evangelion. V

Angel Links *

1999. jpn: Seiho Tenshi Angel Links. aka: Stellar Angel Angel Links. TV series. dir: Yoshikazu Yamaguchi. scr: Masaharu Amiya. des: Asako Nishida, Rei Nakahara. ani: Hiroyuki Hataike. mus: N/C. prd: Sunrise, WOWOW. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

Orphaned 16-year-old Li Mei-Feng inherits the family business from her grandfather, Jian-He—it’s the private police franchise for an entire solar system that’s simply crawling with pirates. Refusing to be scared away, Mei-Feng assembles the Angel Links team of troubleshooters, including a weapons expert and the last survivor of a race of dinosaur vegetarians, and sets out to bring the system under the rule of law. A spin-off from Takehiko Ito’s Outlaw Star, replaying the mood, look, and staff.

Angel of Darkness *

1995. jpn: Inju Kyoshi. aka: Lustful-Beast Teacher. Video. dir: Kazuma Muraki, Suzunari Joban. scr: Yukihiro Kosaka. des: Kazunori Iwakura, Yuji Ikeda. ani: Kazunori Iwakura. mus: Takeo Nakazawa. prd: Pink Pineapple. 45 mins. x 4 eps.

In a typical girls’ boarding school, Atsuko and Sayaka manage to fit in a lesbian affair around their class schedule without too much trouble. But when one of their teachers digs up an ancient artifact and releases a demonic entity, things get a bit more hectic. The entity needs to be fed a steady supply of nubile young women to keep itself alive and build the new form it needs to take over the world (the ancient spirits of Earth oppose this, or would if any of them were more than nine inches high). With the help of an elf who fits in her handbag, Sayaka sets out to save her girlfriend and classmates from a fate worse than death and foil the threat to the world, though similar events wreak havoc in other schools, with the same basic setup and conclusion. Much ripping of underwear, bondage, “comical” characters like the Kuroko from Urotsukidoji, and sexualized violence to match. The four episodes were also filmed as live-action movies in 1995–96 directed by Mitsunori Hattori and Koji Shimizu. LNV

Angel Rabbie

2003. jpn: Tenbatsu Angel Rabbie. aka: Judgment Angel Rabbie; Divine Punishment Angel Rabbie. Video. dir: Shinji Ishihara. scr: MitsuhiroYamada. des: Noritaka Suzuki, Chisato Naruse, Hiroshi Ogawa. ani: Seigi Matsumoto. mus: Under 17, Haruko Momoi, Masaya Koike. prd: AIC, Kogado Studio, Angel Chamber. 25 mins.

In a far future when magic and science have combined, a war breaks out for control of the magical lunar city of Sorceriam. Both sides unleash terrible magic, destroying Earth’s civilization in the process. A few thousand years later (so that’s the far, far future, then), mankind recovers but Earth is still menaced by giant monsters left over from the original conflict. Sorceriam has been cut off from Earth for all this time and has flourished. Queen Mirchol and the Seven Sisters now rule the Moon, and dispatch agents known as Angels to protect the Earth. These elite fighters are chosen from a group of lower-ranked warriors known as the Surrogates. Heroine Lasty Farsen is 16, but usually takes the form of a clumsy 12-year-old who is useless with technology. Only when her powers are released does she transform into Angel Rabbie and become her normal self. Each Angel has a special type of magic, or “mode,” but Rabbie is unaware of what hers is. There’s a reference to 9th-century Hokkaido hero Aterui—the church that opposes Lasty is named after him—but most of the comedy seems to revolve around food. Action comedy based on the PC game of the same title, part of the Angelic series; as if Sailor Moon had never happened.

Angel Sanctuary *

2000. jpn: Tenshi Kinryoku. Video. dir: Kiyoko Sayama. scr: Mayori Sekijima. des: Hidekazu Shimamura. ani: Hidekazu Shimamura. mus: Hikaru Nanase. prd: Bandai. 30 mins. x 3 eps.

As a punishment for defying God Almighty and fighting against the legions of Heaven (led by her brother, Razael), the soul of the fallen angel Alexael is imprisoned in a crystal, doomed to be forever reincarnated as a human being who will die a young and violent death. Born into the body of male juvenile delinquent Setsuna Mudo, Alexael realizes that God is dead and the world is ending, just as foretold in the Black Book of Revelation. S/he is the long-awaited Messiah but would rather seduce his/her sister than take up arms in the final battle between Heaven and Hell. Based on the manga by Kaori Yuki, AS tries but fails to cram the original storyline into three tiny episodes, reducing Yuki’s carefully paced original into a mad rush of revelations. Compare to other apocalyptic tales of androgynous young men pouting sulkily, such as X: The Movie and Earthian.

Angel Tales *

2001. jpn: Otogi Story Tenshi no Shippo. aka: Angel’s Tails; Fairy Story Angel Tails. TV series. dir: Kazuhiro Ochi, Norio Kashima. scr: Yuji Minamide. des: Takashi Kobayashi. ani: Takashi Kobayashi. mus: Yoshinobu Hiraiwa. prd: Wonderfarm, Tokyo Kids, Angel Tales Project, WOWOW. 25 mins. x 13 eps. (TV1), 25 mins. x 11 eps. (TV2).

Goro Mutsumi is plagued by bad luck: he’s lost his job, he’s broke, and has no success with women. Then a fotune-teller predicts his luck is about to change. The very next morning, three cute girls show up at his apartment. Ran, Tsubasa, and Kurumi are Spirit World Angels assigned to watch over him; they are reincarnations of his former pet hamster, rabbit, and cat, still vying for their master’s attention, like the similarly undead companions in Bubu Chacha. Nine other “Angels” turn up—Goro has never ceased to love his pets, and now they’re here to help him turn his life around. We dread to think what will happen when the erotic anime production companies start looking for a way to rip this one off. Based on an original story by Devil Hunter Yohko’s Juzo Mutsuki, it was originally screened on the satellite channel WOWOW in Japan, and followed in 2003 by Angel Tales Kiss! (Tenshi no Shippo Chu!) on Kid’s Station. Note that 12 companion animals give this show a certain similarity to the zodiacal Fruits Basket. N

Angelic Layer

2001. TV series. dir: Hiroshi Nishikiori. scr: Kazushi Okawanai, Reiko Yoshida, Akihiko Inari. des: Takahiro Omori, CLAMP. ani: Koichi Horikawa. mus: N/C. prd: Bones, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 26 eps.

Diminutive junior high school girl Mi­saki Suzuhara is separated from her mother at an early age. When her father dies, she must move from her home in Wakayama to her aunt’s house in Tokyo. There, she becomes intrigued by the Angel dolls, customizable dolls with “micro-actuator” controls, which are hatched from eggs and appear to be fully alive. The Angels are controlled by their owner’s willpower but can only move within the “Layer” battle arena. Misaki gets an Angel called Hikaru, and their battles begin. This anime based on a Shonen Ace manga by Card Captors–creators CLAMP has all the appearance of a game tie-in, just without a real game to tie into.

Angelique

2000. Video. dir: Akira Kiyomizu. scr: Midori Kusada. des: Kairi Yusa. ani: Masanori Fujioka. mus: N/C. prd: Yumeta Company. 30 mins.

Angelique, Rachael, and Rosaria are three of the nine guardian angels, members of a secret sect called Alios, whose job it is to protect mere mortals from ruining their lives. Angelique is also destined to be the future queen of the universe, which may be why sweet-talking Osaka charmer Charlie is so keen on her. The events of the anime take place a little after Requiem for the Sky, the computer game that spawned it.

Angelium *

2004. Video. dir: Kazunari Kume. scr: Mitsuhiro Yamada. des: Mamoru Yokota. ani: Naoki Sosaka. mus: Toru Horasawa. prd: Moon Rock. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Trainee angels Yu, Miki, and Chadoko come down to Earth to learn more about humanity, volunteering to work in a flower shop as their cover story. They are unaware that their boss Zeus, ever hungry for more sexual conquests, takes over the body of a local Japanese boy whenever the possibility of sex is near, thereby hoping to escape the notice of his jealous wife Hera. However, Zeus’s brother Hades is secretly backing an attempt by local gangsters to scare away the florists, and is spooked enough by Zeus’s arrival to call in more powerful minions (Persephone and her crew of monsters) to scare the girls away. Cue a bizarre mixture of Earthian and Weiss Kreuz with the standard tropes of porn anime, distinguished by above average design work, and brief interludes of tentacle sex that seem quaintly old-fashioned in the 21st century. For a different kind of butchering of Greek myth, see Hermes. Based on a computer game from Alice Soft, although this adaptation peters out mid-story without a proper ending. LNV

Angel’s Egg *

1985. jpn: Tenshi no Tamago. Movie. dir: Mamoru Oshii. scr: Mamoru Oshii. des: Yoshitaka Amano. ani: Yasuhiro Yukura. mus: Yuhiro Kanno. prd: Studio Deen, Tokuma Shoten, Tokuma Japan. 108 mins.

In a timeless, placeless everytown, a boy with a crucifix arrives and meets the sole inhabitant, a young girl. She shows him her most treasured possession, a magical egg, which she believes will hatch one day. When the girl is asleep, the boy smashes the egg open but finds that it contains nothing. The boy heads off alone.

Plotless and highly symbolic with hardly any dialogue, reputedly a stream-of-consciousness exercise by Patlabor–director Oshii, the film features his trademark Christian imagery and an inexplicable passage through the town of soldiers with motorized artillery. Surreal elements recall Oshii’s work on Urusei Yatsura, including spaceships full of silent people bearing other eggs and even shadows of fish that swim through the air in the city streets. The animation and design, incorporating work from 1001 Nights–creator and illustrator Amano, is beautifully executed. Parts of the film were plundered for interstitial footage in Carl Colpaert’s live-action film In the Aftermath (1988).

Angels in the Court *

2000. jpn: Court no Naka no Tenshitachi. Video. dir: Satoru Sumisaki. scr: Yasuyuki Moto. des: Seiji Kishimoto, Poyoyan Rock (original game). ani: Ten Nakazama. mus: N/C. prd: Saburo Omiya, Pink Pineapple. 30 mins. x 2 eps. (v1); 30 mins. x 2 eps. (v2).

A volleyball geek’s fantasy as new girl Nanase Morimura, who “wears glasses, but has big breasts,” joins the Aota Academy team, led by former All-Japan ace Coach Akira Motoura. She is unable to unleash her true potential without a session of “special tuition” with Coach (who does not neglect the other team members, either), but in episode two he goes missing after saving another player from three would-be rapists in the park. Mostly harmless, particularly when compared to other porn anime out there. A sequel, Return of the Angels in the Court (2001, Kaette kita Court no Naka no Tenshitachi) took the girls off to a national competition, but is unreleased in the U.S. at time of writing. Volleyball has been a strange obsession of the Japanese media world ever since the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, when the local women’s team won gold in the event. LN

Animal Alley

2005. jpn: Animal Yokocho. TV series. dir: Yukio Nishimoto, Nam Jong-sik. scr: Hiroshi Yoshikawa, Hideki Sonoda, Masahiro Yokoya, Megumi Sasano, Tatsuto Higuchi, Yuka Tamada. des: Kyota Mizutani, Lun Hyung-jin. ani: Kazuyoshi Kobayashi, Ahn Jae-ho. mus: Kazuhiro Hara. prd: Studio Gallop, Dentsu, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 12 eps.

A secret door in five-year-old Ami’s bedroom leads to a magical land, from which animal playmates come to see her. Based on the manga by Ryo Maekawa in Ribbon Original, and filmed in a surreal and absurdist style reminiscent of Haré + Guu.

Animal 1

1968. TV series. dir: Taku Sugiyama, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Ryosuke Takahashi. scr: Tadaaki Yamazaki, Shunichi Yukimuro, Masaki Tsuji. des: Noboru Kawasaki. ani: Sadao Miyamoto. mus: Hiroki Takaragi. prd: Mushi Pro, Fuji TV. 30 mins. x 27 eps.

The seven Azuma brothers have all been raised as fighters by their longshoreman father. Sent to a new school when the family moves, Ichiro Azuma becomes a great success in the wrestling club. As his prowess gains greater fame, he is soon known as “Animal 1,” as you might expect from someone who’s had to fight over the bathroom with six siblings. Based on the true story of Ichiro Azuma, who represented Japan in the 1960 Mexico Olympics, this series about a gold medalist only won silver in the race to become the first sports anime—Star of the Giants beat it onto the screens by just a month. Noboru Kawasaki, who created both stories, would also supply the original manga for Song of the Ladybugs. This tale of true-life wrestling included early directorial credits for two future specialists in giant-robot combat, Gundam’s Tomino and Votoms’ Takahashi.

Animaru-ya

Sometimes written as “Animal-ya.” Animation company formed by seven Shin’ei Doga employees for the purpose of working on Little Goblin in 1982. Subsequently hired in on other productions, including Miami Guns and Anpanman. Notable members include Hiroshi Fukutomi and Katsuya Yamamoto.

Animate Group

A conglomerate of animation-related companies, including the Animate store chain, the Movic promotional group, Marine Entertainment, and Frontier Works. The company is an object lesson in the vertical integration of modern media, since fans purchasing Anime Shop-Keeper, for example, would discover that they have paid the Animate store for an anime about a man who runs an Animate store, which would have received the anime from an Animate subsidiary, which would itself have been the production company that made the anime in the first place.

Animated Classics of Japanese Literature *

1986. jpn: Seishun Anime Zenshu. aka: Youth Anime Compendium. TV series. dir: Fumio Kurokawa, Akiko Matsushima, Noboru Ishiguro, Eiji Okabe, Isamu Kumada, Hidehito Ueda. scr: Kenji Yoshida, Shizuo Kuriyama, Haruhiko Mimura, Ryuzo Nakanishi. des: Hiroshi Motomiya, Tetsuya Chiba, Shotaro Ishinomori, Osamu Komori, Hiromitsu Morita. ani: Yoshio Kabashima. mus: Koichi Sakata, Hideo Shimazu, Junnosuke Yamamoto. prd: Nippon Animation, Nippon TV. 30 mins. x 37 eps.

Few Japanese classics make it to the screen in an anime industry obsessed with spectacle and entertainment. This series made some small attempt to redress the balance, adapting some of Japan’s most famous stories, including works by Eiko Tanaka, Yasunari Kawabata, Shintaro Ishihara, Masao Kume, Sachio Ito, Yasushi Inoue, and Jiro Akagawa.

As one might expect, a nation’s literature is not readily sawed into bite-sized chunks for digestion on prime-time TV, and the selections are often arguably off-base. The collection does best with punchy short stories like Junichiro Tanizaki’s Tale of Shunkin. Longer works often suffer through drastic cutting (Shiro Ozaki’s Theater of Life is condensed from 530 pages to less than 30 minutes), censorious editing (the prostitution subplot is removed completely from Ogai Mori’s Dancing Girl), or sloppy translation (the English version makes several silly errors, and explanatory liner notes are unforgivably absent from the video release). The choices for adaptation also seem haphazard or overly conser­vative. It’s difficult, for example, to think of something less representative of Yukio Mishima than The Sound of Waves, and there are duplicates of Botchan and Sanshiro Sugata, while The Tale of Genji, Hakkenden, and The Sensualist are conspicuously absent. The collection also includes a story by “Koizumi Yakumo” without revealing he was the foreign-born author Lafcadio Hearn. But although this story is not Japanese, others debatably “classic” and occasionally barely “animated,” it is still a noble failure in its attempt to get couch-potato children interested in real books. Two episodes, adaptations of Masao Kume’s Student Days and Musanokoji Saneatsu’s The Friend Who Didn’t Believe in Friendship, were not broadcast, appearing instead as two “specials” on TV Asahi the following year.

Animation Runner Kuromi *

2001. jpn: Anime Seisaku Shinko Kuromi-chan. aka: Animation Runner Kuromi-chan. Video. dir: Akitaro Daichi, Yumi Tamano. scr: Mitsuru Nagatsuki. des: Hajime Watanabe. ani: Hajime Watanabe. mus: Toshio Masuda. prd: Yumeta Company. 40 mins. (v1), 45 mins. (v2).

Self-referential comedy about the attractive Mikiko “Kuromi-chan” Oguro joining the production department of an anime company, and on the first day finding herself in sole charge (the production manager having collapsed and been rushed to the hospital after handing over responsibility) of episode two of Time Journeys (see Time Bokan), which is due in seven days, with almost none of the work completed. She must dig deep into her heart and her love of the anime Louis Monde III (see Lupin III) for the necessary fortitude, as well as learn the tricks of the trade from jaded veteran Hamako Shihonmatsu, in order to complete the episode in time. Based on a four-panel gag strip that appeared in Anime Station, the anime industry’s in-house magazine—compare to Otaku no Video. Released in Japan with English subtitles, and subsequently brought to America. After winning the Best Video Anime award at the 2001 Tokyo International Anime Fair, where the authors rather suspect it was preaching to the choir, a second episode followed in 2004.

Animatrix, The *

2002. Video. dir: Koji Morimoto (Beyond), Shinichiro Watanabe (Detective Story, Kid’s Story), Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Program), Mahiro Maeda (Second Renaissance 1 & 2), Takeshi Koike (World Record) Peter Chung (Matriculated), Andy Jones (Final Flight of the Osiris). scr: Koji Morimoto, Shinichiro Watanabe, Larry Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Yoshiaki Kawajiri. des: Shinji Hashimoto, Yutaka Minowa. ani: Shinji Hashimoto, Madhouse. mus: Don Davis. prd: Studio 4°C, Madhouse, Square USA, Inc., DNA Seoul. 102 mins.

Of these nine short animated spin-offs from The Matrix (1999), seven were written and/or directed by Japanese filmmakers and produced by Japanese studios. Beyond is set in an urban Japan of waste lots and abandoned buildings where a young girl finds a glitch in the Matrix in a “haunted” house. Cowboy Bebop’s Watanabe directs Detective Story, where grizzled detective Ash tries to track down renowned hacker Trinity, and Kid’s Story, introducing us to a disaffected teen who sees “reality” for the artifice it is and later appears in The Matrix: Reloaded (2003). Kid’s Story has guest voice performances by Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss. Program raises the issue that Cipher might not have been the only person ever to regret leaving the Matrix, as Cis and Duo fight in full samurai gear inside a simulation of medieval Japan. The two-parter Second Renaissance uses the visual inventiveness that later resulted in Gankutsuou to give a disorienting and dazzling cyber-eye view of history. World Record is a punchy, powerful story of passion breaking through all boundaries, as runner Dan pushes his mind and body to their limits and, for one moment, sees himself suspended in a dark, fluid-filled chamber. Two further stories, which do not technically qualify as “anime,” are Matriculated, written and directed by Peter Chung, and Final Flight of the Osiris, directed by Andy Jones and written by the brothers Wachowski.

It was, we are sure, a coincidence that the engines of transformation in the original Matrix movie were red and blue pills like those used by Marvelous Melmo, but Animatrix does nevertheless sit well in the tradition of Japanese animation. It can be argued that it is only the latest in the long-running tradition of anthology movies to showcase the talents of great animators, alongside Memories, Robot Carnival, and Neo Tokyo. However, in its origins as a tie-in to a Hollywood blockbuster it is also one of the most successful anime of all time, bolstered by the name-recognition of the contributors and the Matrix franchise, which itself owes a considerable thematic and artistic debt to Ghost in the Shell. Its worldwide sales were in the hundreds of thousands, easily making it one of the best-selling anime, alongside Akira and Pokémon. Before long, other creators were trying to plug into the Japanese animation as the flavor of the moment; the most conspicuous being Quentin Tarantino, with Kill Bill: The Origin of O-Ren. There were also several copycat prequels to mainstream Hollywood films, most notably Sharon Bridgeman’s Van Helsing: The London Assignment (2004) and Peter Chung’s Riddick: Dark Fury (2004). However, these productions do not feature enough Japanese creatives on the production staff to qualify as “anime.” LV

Anime R.

Also “Anime Aru”—the letter stands for “Retake.” Animation company formed by Moriyasu Taniguchi in 1978 at the Kyoto commercials house Film Art. Incorporated as an independent company in 1993, with notable members including Satoru Yoshida, Masahiro Kato, Miko Nakajima, Masahiro Kimura, and Sachiko Iwamura. Representative works include Corrector Yui and Conan the Boy Detective.

Anime Shop-Keeper

2002. jpn: Anime Tencho. Video. dir: Hideaki Anno. scr: Hiroyuki Imaishi. des: Kazuhiko Shimamoto, Hiroyuki Imaishi. ani: N/C. mus: Cublic. prd: MOVIC, Animate, Gainax. 30 mins.

The new manager of the Animate store faces more than the usual amount of fan envy when two heavies employed by a rival store rough him up outside the store on his first day. His injuries are too severe for him to survive, so, with his dying breath, he appoints the young guy who intervenes to stop the bullies as his replacement. Aided by a bevy of cute girl assistants, Meito Anizawa (“Ani-Mate” if contracted and shuffled into Japanese name order) brings his enthusiasm for anime goods, a strong sense of justice, and compassion for the fans whose hunger for merchandise can never be sated.

It was only a matter of time after Otaku no Video that other elements of anime fandom would become the subject of self-referential anime themselves. After Kuromi-chan, an anime about making anime, we have an anime about selling anime, in an adaptation of Kazuhiko Shimamoto’s manga, itself an extended commercial for the real-life Animate chain. The show features other wacky characters: Toya Dogenzaka manages the Shibuya store, and Gai Denki the Akihabara branch, while President Takahashi rules his anime merchandise empire from behind the scenes in Ikebukuro. The anime is said to be based on elements from His and Her Circumstances, and also spun off into a radio drama and a live stage show.

Animentary: Critical Moments

1971. jpn: Animentary: Ketsudan. TV series. dir: Fumio Kurokawa, Ip-pei Kuri, Hideo Makino. scr: Jinzo Toriumi. des: Tatsuo Yoshida. ani: Sa­dao Miyamoto, Tsutomu Shibayama, Yoshi­yuki Tomino, Ryosuke Taka-hashi. mus: Nobuyoshi Koshibe. prd: Tatsu­noko, Nippon TV. 30 mins. x 26 eps.

This Anim[ated Docum]entary details the various critical moments that brought Japan into World War II and eventually caused the country’s defeat, including the battles over Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong, Malaya, Bataan, Rabaul, Singapore, Java, Corregidor, Midway, the Solomon Islands, the Philippines, and Leyte Gulf. The story concentrates chiefly on Isoroku Yamamoto, the “reluctant admiral” who urged his superiors not to declare war on the U.S. but was eventually given command of the Japanese fleet, and planned the attack on Pearl Harbor. A more dramatic look at some of the same events can be found in Leiji Matsumoto’s Cockpit, and the logical conclusion of the “what ifs” implicit in Animentary gets an airing in the alternate-universe Deep Blue Fleet, in which Japan gets to replay World War II and win it.

Anne of Green Gables

1979. jpn: Akage no Anne. aka: Red-Haired Anne. TV series. dir: Isao Takahata. scr: Shigeki Chiba, Aiko Isomura, Isao Takahata. des: Yoshifumi Kondo. ani: Yoshifumi Kondo. mus: Kurodo Mori. prd: Nippon Animation, Fuji TV. 30 mins. x 50 eps.

Green Gables is the house in Avonlea village on Prince Edward Island in early 20th-century Canada where childless brother and sister Matthew and Marilla bring an 11-year-old orphan, Anne, to live. Though there is some confusion when Anne turns out not to be the strapping male farmhand they were hoping for, she soon makes friends with local girl Diana, and the pair begin a happy, if somewhat tedious, rural existence.

Based on Lucy Maude Montgomery’s book, this entry in the World Masterpiece Theater series was directed by Grave of the Fireflies’ Takahata and featured animation from Whisper of the Heart’s Kondo. The earlier part of the series contained layouts by Takahata’s famous cohort Hayao Miyazaki, although after episode 16 he left to make Castle of Cagliostro.

Anno, Hideaki

1960– . Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Anno entered Osaka University of Arts in 1980, where he met future Gainax cofounders Hiroyuki Yamaga and Takami Akai, with whom he made the opening short for the Daicon III SF convention. After early anime work on Macross, he gained a key position animating the God Warrior in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind. After his directorial debut on Gunbuster (1988), he spent a prolonged period working on The Secret of Blue Water, on which he had a lack of creative control that caused him to retreat from the business. He returned with the landmark Evangelion (1995). His subsequent anime work has included early episodes of His and Her Circumstances, although much of his recent work has been designing and directing for live-action, including an adaptation of Cutey Honey. He is married to manga author Moyoko Anno.

Anno, Masami

1944– . A protégé of Hiroshi Sasagawa and Hisayuki Toriumi, Anno joined Tatsunoko and first made his mark as an animator on the comedy Gazula the Amicable Monster. His subsequent successes included Nils’ Mysterious Journey and Shame On Miss Machiko, before leaving Tatsunoko to work for Studio Pierrot.

Another Lady Innocent *

2004. jpn: Front Innocent; Innocent. TV Video. dir: Satoshi Urushihara. scr: N/C. des: Satoshi Urushihara. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: ARMS, Moonrock, Earthwork. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

In a Civil War–era America far removed from Little Women, the innocent young farmer’s daughter Faye Carson enjoys sexual awakenings with John, her childhood sweetheart (and brother!), and Sophie, a serving maid on the family farm. However, her carefree teens come to an end when she catches the eye of Lord Mark, a sinister landowner. No, we don’t know what someone with a European noble title is doing in 19th-century America, either, but then again, plot and story cohesion has never been a staple of the works of Satoshi Urushihara, from Legend of Lemnear to Plastic Little. His forte, then as now, lies in the distinctive and luscious skin tones of his female nudes, seen here in copious amounts. Of the two episodes listed at time of writing, the first is numbered “episode 0.” Video extras include a tour of Urushihara’s studio, notes on the original audio drama on which this is based, and a montage history of the American Civil War. See, it’s all educational. LN

Anpanman

1988. jpn: Sore Ike! Anpanman. aka: Go for It! Anpanman. TV series. dir: Akinori Nagaoka. scr: Ayako Okina, Jiro Nakajima, Osamu Nakamura. des: Michishiro Yamada. ani: Minoru Maeda. mus: Taku Izumi. prd: TMS, Nippon TV. 30 mins. x 500+ eps.

A superhero constructed from bean paste by the kindly Uncle Jam, Anpanman fights for justice alongside his ethnically diverse cohorts White-Breadman, Curry-Breadman, and Cheese the Wonderdog against the dirt-obsessed Germ-man.

Ringing Bell and Little Jumbo–creator Takashi Yanase’s original illustrations for the Japanese chain-store Froebel Kan took 15 years to reach the screen, transforming into stories in publications such as Mommy, New Baby, and Baby Book. Regularly restored to life through the simple act of getting a new head from the saintly Uncle Jam, Anpanman gives those he rescues something special to remember him by—a piece of his own head for them to eat. This trick has proved to be immensely popular, especially with parents encouraging children to finish their breakfast (although what damage the concept of consuming one’s playmates has done to a generation of Japanese, only time will tell). The TV series has also spun off into several short theatrical outings, including The Disappearance of Uncle Jam, Anpanman in the South Seas, The Secret of Breadrollman, and Christmas with the Meringue Sisters. More recent outings have included Anpanman and the Mermaid’s Tears (2000), a Little Mermaid spoof in which he helps the sea-dwelling Sunny in her quest to become human, and Anpanman and Ruby’s Wish (2003), in which Anpanman comes to the aid of another damsel in distress.

Yanase would also try to duplicate the success of Anpanman with another food-related superhero. Riceball-man (1990, Omusubiman) was a 27-minute theatrical short featuring a samurai snack, but it could not compete with its bun-headed predecessor.

Antique Heart

1988. jpn: Antique Heart: Gakuen Benriya Series. aka: Antique Heart: School Handyman Series. Video. dir: Chuichi Watanabe. scr: Asami Watanabe. des: Minoru Yamazawa. ani: Takumi Tsukasa. mus: N/C. prd: Animate Film. 40 mins.

In this short-lived adaptation of a long-running series from Wings magazine, three intrepid school investigators track down ghosts in the restroom, anonymous love letters, and any other mystery they can find. Intended to be the first of a series, this video was ten years too early. The concept of supernatural schools would return in the 1990s with the successful Real School Ghost Stories, Here Comes Hanako, and Haunted Junction.

Anyone You Can Do… I Can Do Better *

2004. jpn: Bakunyu Oyako. aka: Milk Junky, Busty Mother and Daughter. Video. dir: Norihiko Takahama. scr: Naruhito Sunaga. des: Takao Sano. ani: Takao Sano. mus: Yoshi. prd: YOUC, Digital Works (Vanilla Series), Blue Gale. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Yusuke is invited to become the private tutor of Reina, a girl with large breasts. But when he arrives at her house, he discovers that her equally large-breasted mother Mizuki is looking for a man to seduce. When Mizuki catches her daughter in the act with Yusuke, she takes it as a personal challenge, leading to a fight over who gets to have sex with Yusuke next—more not-quite-incest from the Vanilla Series, based on the game Milk Junky by Blue Gale, creators of Spotlight. LNV

Apocalypse Zero *

1996. jpn: Kakugo no Susume. aka: Onward Kakugo. Video. dir: Toshihiro Hirano. scr: Akiyoshi Sakai. des: Keisuke Watanabe. ani: Keisuke Watanabe, Toshihiro Yamane. mus: Takashi Kudo. prd: Ashi Pro. 45 mins. x 2 eps.

On a postapocalyptic Earth prey to monsters, Kakugo and Harara Hagakure have been trained by their father in the ancient Zero fighting technique to protect the last remnants of humanity. Paramount in their arsenal is the Tactical Zero armor, a fighting suit charged with the souls of ancient heroes. But Harara turns to the dark side, killing his father and creating the new Tactical Evils. Left for dead, Kakugo reaches a ruined town and offers to help the few human inhabitants protect themselves from cannibals and depraved mutants. Meeting once again with his insane sister, he fights to save the world in this gory adaptation of Takayuki Yamaguchi’s Shonen Champion manga. Though AZ contains veiled allusions to honor and tradition (the siblings’ surname is a famous samurai manual), it has more in common with the mutant maulings of Fist of the North Star. V

Appleland Story

1992. jpn: Appleland Monogatari. Video. dir: Kunihiko Yuyama. scr: Atsushi Takegami. des: Minoru Yamazawa, Keiko Fukuyama. ani: Minoru Yamazawa. mus: Morgan Fisher. prd: JC Staff. 45 mins. x 2.

On the eve of World War I, Vale Sibelius is a young orphan pickpocket in Appleland, a central European state that could be an important prize in the coming conflict. He befriends Frida, a girl with the secret of a new weapon that could decide the country’s future, and the two go on the run from the evil East European duo, Aryana and Attila. Based on a novel from Yoshiki Tanaka, the prolific creator of Legend of Galactic Heroes.

Appleseed *

1988. Video. dir: Kazuyoshi Katayama. scr: Kazuyoshi Katayama. des: Yumiko Horasawa, Takahiro Kishida, Hideaki Anno. ani: Yumiko Horasawa. mus: Norimasa Yamanaka. prd: Gainax, AIC. 70 mins.

In an authoritarian utopia, humanity has handed the reins of power to super-capable robots. But the suicide rate goes up, mostly among people from the wastelands outside the city; rehabilitated and brought back to civilization they are unable to cope with paradise.

As the first scene (a suicide freeing her pet before she jumps) makes clear, the inhabitants of Olympus are no freer than birds in golden cages, and a group of human beings (led, in a typical touch of Masamune Shirow irony, by a cyborg) organize a revolt to seize the city back from the robots. Working for the benevolent dictator, Athena, human SWAT team leader Deunan Knute attempts to foil the terrorists before it is too late.

This adaptation of Shirow’s best-selling manga was adequate for its time but was soon eclipsed by Akira, which permanently raised the stakes on high-quality sci-fi. The next Shirow anime, Ghost in the Shell, had a far higher budget—ironically, the straight-to-video Appleseed was often shown in foreign theaters in unfair competition with its richer, better-endowed cousin.

Look out for a couple of in-jokes (a magazine named after Shirow’s superior Black Magic M-66) and some very bad Japlish spelling on signs. There are some sweet touches, such as the loose change falling out of Deunan’s pants when she gets in the shower, or the cloying way she starts simpering whenever she sees a child. But for an anime produced by the peerless Gainax studio, Appleseed depicts a curiously mundane future—1980s Japan with a few shiny buildings. Tough-girl Deunan uses conventional firearms, drives a normal-looking car, and eats contemporary fast food. Only the robots add any real sense of the future, particularly a “multipede” tank modeled on the Probe Droid from The Empire Strikes Back.

Shirow loaded the original story with classical references, of which only Olympus, Gaia, Tartarus, and Athena survive the dub unscathed. Inadequate translation and diction have hidden the true pronunciations of Gyges, Charon Mausolus, and Briareus Hecatoncheires, which is why the English voice actors refer to a robot as “Gudges,” a male character named “Karen Mawserus,” and a lead cyborg called “Bularios.” The uncredited translator was more successful in spotting references to U.S. cop shows (a police chief called Bronx) and Ridley Scott’s ubiquitous Blade Runner (the terrorist A. J., not J. F., Sebastian). Although he ignored the author’s classical interests, adapter John Volks added much bad language, inspiring critics to invent the term “fifteening” for those U.K. anime dubs that insert swearing purely to attain a more commercial rating. That’s not to say that the dub isn’t a peppy paragon of cop-show cussing, including such immortal dialogue as, “Half cyborg? He’s all bastard!”

The franchise was revised for a new movie, also called Appleseed (2004), directed by Shinji Aramaki. The new version is an intriguing example of the “state of the art,” although not necessarily for the reasons that the filmmakers might have hoped. Whereas the 1998 Katayama version begins with Deunan and her partner Briareus on a police raid and already working for their bioroid masters, the Aramaki version features a variant of the induction scene from volume one of the manga. It takes the time to introduce Deunan’s hand-to-mouth existence in the Badlands, although unlike the manga, it does not have her in the Badlands with Briareus. It also accentuates a subplot only hinted elsewhere, that Deunan and Briareus had once been lovers, but that only tiny vestiges of their relationship have survived his mutilation and cyborg rehabilitation.

The Aramaki Appleseed was sold to fans as a cutting-edge example of digital animation, and, in the wake of the failure of the Final Fantasy movie The Spirits Within, included a deliberate attempt to shy away from realism in favor of toon shading that treated motion-capture footage to make it look more like anime. The result, it was hoped, would be a hybrid of live-action and animation—Ai Kobayashi, who voices Deunan, also functions as her own body double, which adds to the immediacy of the performance.

However, for all its attention to 21st-century technology, the Aramaki Appleseed stumbles with an inept and amateurish script, full of redundancies, technobabble and B-movie motivations. Adapting Masamune Shirow’s complex and often muddled originals is a difficult task, but it is not impossible. Whereas Shirow’s original Appleseed had a subtle background family dynamic, replaying the paternal inventor of Astro Boy by having Deunan Knute’s father as the creator of an entire robot society, the Aramaki remake pointlessly introduces Deunan’s scientist mother, in what seems to be a dysfunctional setup inspired by Evangelion. Far from benefiting from its digital technologies, the Aramaki Appleseed seems trapped by them, forced into unending repetitions of dull exposition, broken up by perfunctory action sequences. The result, despite its proclamations of originality and innovation, seems to follow the soullessly escalating formula of a low-grade computer game, and not the rich source material of Shirow’s manga. The 1988 video version, for all its faults and old-fashioned look, is the one with the better script. L

Approach of Autumn, The

1998. jpn: Kasho no Getsu Aki no Kyogen. aka: Hot Month Autumn Performance. Video. dir: Mamoru Hamazu. scr: Mari Hirai. des: Takashi Komori. ani: Takashi Komori. mus: Yuriko Nakamura. prd: SME. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

A strange medieval romance based on a manga by Mari Hirai in which a pretty-boy sorcerer in Kamakura-period Japan begins a relationship with a hermaphrodite creature who is half-human, half-cat. The titular aki no kyogen refers to the last performances of the theatrical year, with their undertones of final curtain calls, farewells, and tomfoolery.

Aqua Age

1996. jpn: Mizu-iro Jidai. aka: The Water-Colored Years; My Years in Blue. TV series. dir: Hiroko Tokita, Shin Mi­sawa, Susumu Kudo, Hiroaki Sakurai, Hiroshi Fukutomi. scr: Junji Takegami, Tsunehisa Arakawa, Reiko Yoshida. des: Shinichi Yamaoka. ani: Takahisa Ichikawa, Tatsuo Otaku. mus: N/C. prd: NAS, Comet, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 47 eps.

A quaint but uneventful look at the life and loves of average schoolgirl Yuko Kawai as her home life and school life place her under pressure to succeed, and she develops a crush on classmate Hiroshi, whose window faces hers. Named for the “Aqua Age” hair salon where she gets a part-time job and for the distinctive blue colors of the sailor-suit uniform worn by so many Japanese schoolgirls, this anime was somewhat marginalized in anime sources for committing the heinous crime of featuring no robots, interdimensional gateways, erotic plot twists, or anything out of the ordinary at all. Scratch the surface, however, and you will find a role-reversal of Kimagure Orange Road, with a female lead and an idealized male love object without the latter anime’s occasional intrusion of psychic subplots. Based on the manga in Ciao magazine by Yu Yabuchi.

Aquarian Age *

2002. jpn: Aquarian Age: Sign for Evolution. TV series, video. dir: Yoshimitsu Ohashi, Fumie Moroi. scr: Kazuhiko Soma. des: Hisashi Abe; Haruhiko Mikimoto, Fumie Moroi. ani: Fumie Moroi. mus: Yuki Kajiura. prd: TV Tokyo, Victor Entertainment, Broccoli, Madhouse. 25 mins. x 13 eps. (TV1), 60 mins. (v).

Kyota Kamikurata is a vocalist in an indie garage band, with a voice that drives audiences wild. It’s not his singing, but a rare psionic ability called “mindbreak” which lures people to him and then brings out their own psionic ability. Kyota is a psychic Pied Piper, though he doesn’t have a clue about it. His childhood friend Yoriko Sanno is a priestess who lives at the Isuzu shrine, who also moonlights on keyboards for Kyota’s band, but her family has a higher destiny in mind for her—she’s the reincarnation of ancient demigod Benzaiten, and they want her to unleash her powers and become head of the secret organization Arayashiki.

Kyota starts seeing visions of girls engaged in supernatural battles; he thinks he’s going crazy, but he’s just catching glimpses of all-out psychic warfare in a parallel dimension. There are other mindbreakers out there, usually male and bent on world domination. Secret factions, known as Wiz-Dom, Darklore, E.G.O., and Arayashiki, are fighting for supremacy and he and Yoriko are drawn into the conflict. As reality becomes more tenuous, the only solid thing they can hold on to is their love for each other. When a new threat emerges, they must unite the battling superpowers to save two realities.

Aquarian Age began as a collectible card game from Broccoli devoid of much in the way of an over-arching plot—the above synopsis was largely concocted for the anime adaptation, which also adds impressive character designs from Pet Shop of Horrors’s Hisashi Abe. It was followed by a video sequel Aquarian Age Saga II: Don’t Forget Me (2003). After the various secret organizations joined forces to defeat the alien Eraser threat to Earth at the end of the first TV series, a new enemy emerges in the form of the Polestar Empire, ruled by the strongest Mindbreaker ever. Four girls, each from one of the original warring organizations, square up to fight the Empire on Earth. High-school psychic Megumi, Taoist priestess Miharu Itsukushima, vampire Yoko Ashley, and immortal sorceress Stella Blavatsky are all based on character concepts by Haruhiko Mikimoto, better known for Macross.

The second video, misleadingly titled AA: The Movie (2003), moved past the events of the first video to depict Earth under the domination of the Polestar Empire, whose use of forbidden magic creates dimensional rifts that plunge the planet into chaos and conflict once more. Mayumi Fujimiya of E.G.O. has astounding powers, but her fears and her unresolved complex about her famous mother leave her unable to use them, until she is joined by Yoko, Miharu, and Stella. Director Ohashi once claimed that Aquarian Age was a metaphor for the entertainment industry itself, in which warring factions fight for the attention of an audience unaware of the investments at stake—compare to Armitage III, with similarly allegorized conflicts behind the scenes in the entertainment industry. Not to be confused with Aqua Age.

Aquarion

2005. jpn: Sosei no Aquarion. aka: Holy Genesis Aquarion. TV series.
dir: Hideki Tonokatsu, Kenichi Koba-yashi, Shoji Kawamori, Yasuaki Take-uchi. scr: Shoji Kawamori, Hiroshi Onogi, Eiji Kurokawa, Natsuko Takahashi. des: Futoshi Fujikawa, Takeshi Takakura, Shoji Kawamori. ani: Atsushi Irie, Nobuteru Yuki, Satoru Utsunomiya. mus: Hisaaki Hogari, Yoko Kanno. prd: Satellite, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 26 eps.

Eleven years after a terrible natural disaster not unlike that found in Blue Submarine No. Six, the Antarctic ice cap has melted, leading to upheavals that have wiped out two-thirds of the world’s population, and the surprise thawing of Atlantis (or Atlandia), a lost continent revealed by the disappearing ice. Atlantis awakens from its 12,000-year slumber, along with the “Fallen Angels,” winged humanoid creatures who send mechanical beasts … all right, giant robots, out to harvest human prey for their prana life-force energy—compare to Legend of Duo.

Members of the human race desperately try to fight back by forming the familiar-sounding DEAVA organization (almost but not quite Evangelion’s NERV), salvaging “Vector Machines” from the bottom of the sea. These transforming aircraft are rumored to be the weapons that originally defeated Atlantis, although, with aching inevitability, only certain youthful individuals seem to possess the right elemental energy to pilot not only them, but also the fabled Aquarion device that may be assembled from several combined Vector Machines. A predictably international team of prospective pilots is assembled, although the clear top gun is Apollo, an orphan boy who may be the reincarnation of Apollonius, an “angel” who famously rebelled against the people of Atlantis.

A futile retelling of Brain powered with an added bonus of combining robots à la Getter Robo, from a crew who can do a lot better, distinguished only by Yoko Kanno’s customarily wonderful music, which has saved many an anime from the dustbin of history.

Arabian Nights

1969. jpn: Senya Ichiya Monogatari. aka: 1001 Nights. Movie. dir: Eiichi Yamamoto, Osamu Tezuka. scr: Kazuo Fukuzawa. des: Osamu Tezuka, Eiichi Yamamoto. ani: Kazuko Nakamura, Sadao Miyamoto. mus: Isao Tomita. prd: Mushi Pro. 128 mins.

Aladdin the water-seller (modeled upon French star Jean-Paul Belmondo) carries the beautiful Miriam away from a Baghdad slave market where she is just about to be sold to Havahslakum, the spoiled son of the chief of police. They spend a night of passion in a house they believe to be deserted but is actually a hideaway for the pervert Suleiman, who has been watching them. The police arrest Aladdin on suspicion of Suleiman’s murder, and a heartbroken Miriam dies shortly after giving birth to his child. In fact, the murder was committed by Havahslakum’s father’s assistant, Badli, who not only covets the chief’s job but has also been arranging secret trysts between Kamhakim, leader of the 40 thieves, and the chief of police’s wanton wife. Badli plays all sides against each other, allowing the thieves to escape to make his boss look incompetent but also raping Kamhakim’s tomboyish daughter, Mahdya, to break her spirit. He has even had sex with a crocodile, believing an ancient prophecy that promises a kingdom to anyone who can manage it. Aladdin escapes from jail, steals some treasure from the 40 thieves, and escapes with Mahdya, who soon deserts him when he succumbs to temptation on an island of nymphomaniacs. Discovering they are really snake-women, Aladdin flees and eventually finds a great treasure after many more adventures.

Many years later, two interfering jinn cause Aladdin and Miriam’s daughter, Yahliz (now Badli’s stepdaughter), to fall in love with Aslan the shepherd boy. In search of her lover while disguised as a man, Yahliz is forced to marry a king’s daughter, a lesbian who is extremely pleased to discover her new “husband’s” secret. The princess helps Yahliz find Aslan, and they return to Baghdad in time for the arrival of “Sindbad,” who is really Aladdin in disguise. After a feud with the king (engineered by Badli, of course), Aladdin becomes ruler and Badli his vizier. Badli fakes Aslan’s death and persuades Yahliz to join Aladdin’s harem. Aslan is saved by the two jinn, one of whom turns into a lioness to pleasure the lions who are supposed to devour him, and returns in time to prevent Aladdin committing incest with his own daughter. Mahdya kills Badli in belated revenge for her father’s death, and Aslan and Yahliz become the new rulers, leaving Aladdin penniless but happy once more.

During a mini-boom of Japanese interest in the Arabian Nights, Astro Boy–creator Tezuka published his own manga adaptations and subsequently adapted them into this sumptuous film, faithfully including erotic elements often dropped from modern versions. As well as music from composer Isao Tomita (who scored several Tezuka anime), it included early contributions from future big names Akio Sugino, Gisaburo Sugii, and Osamu Dezaki as lowly animators. For reasons known only to himself, Tezuka also invited several famous novelists to contribute to the production as voice actors. Unsung talents included Silence–author Shusaku Endo and the science fiction writers Yasutaka Tsutsui and Sakyo Komatsu. Komatsu would return to help Tezuka in a more sensible capacity on Space Firebird. There have been several other Japanese versions of the same classic cycle of stories, including Alibaba’s Revenge, 1001 Nights, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, and Sindbad the Sailor. An English-dubbed version, running at approximately 100 minutes and missing the crocodile sex, the lesbian princess, and several other scenes, was reputedly made for foreign distribution, though none of our sources can confirm its existence in translated form. Tezuka went on to make a far less successful erotic movie, Cleopatra: Queen of Sex. See also Video Picture Book. N

Arai, Wagoro

1907– ?. Also credited, even in some Japanese sources, as Kazugoro Arai—we are unable to determine which is correct. Sometimes miscredited as Goro Araiwa. Born in Tokyo, he graduated from Tokyo College of Dentistry. He practiced as a dentist, while still finding time to work on early puppet shows and animations, including Madame Butterfly.

Araki, Shingo

1938– . A mainstay of Toei Animation during the 1970s, a one-time employee of Mushi Production, and the founder of Araki Productions. A distinctive character designer whose work is familiar all over Europe, courtesy of translations of Saint Seiya and Ulysses 31. Araki founded Araki Productions in 1974, a company whose notable employees now include his long-time collaborator Michi Himeno, as well as Hiroya Iijima, Masayuki Takagi, and Keiichi Ishijima.

Arc the Lad *

1999. TV series. dir: Toshiaki Kawasaki. scr: Akimi Tsuraizu. des: Yoko Kikuchi. ani: Satoshi Murata, Kenji Teraoka. mus: Michiru Oshima. prd: B-train, WOWOW. 25 mins. x 26 eps.

Roughly based on the events of the second Arc the Lad PlayStation game, this series, directed by Nadesico’s Kawasaki, takes place after the events of the War of the Holy Coffin and features Hunter Erik (or Elk), the last surviving member of a tribe of fire-wielding sorcerers called the Pyrenians. He becomes a mercenary, teaming up with monster-tamer Lena, orphans Shunter and Sanya, exiled prince Grueger, and android Diecbeck. Needless to say, the many quests for revenge on behalf of wronged parents (which accounts for at least four party-members’ motivations) are all tied up in an adventure plot in an incoherent but attractively designed world so typical of computer games in the wake of Final Fantasy.

Arcade Gamer Fubuki *

2002. Video. dir: Yuji Moto. scr: Ryota Yamaguchi. des: Hideyuki Morioka. ani: Hideyuki Morioka. mus: Sakura Nogawa. prd: SHAFT, Arcade Gamer Fukubi Committee, Bandai. 30 mins. x 4 eps. (TV/v) + 6 min. “bonus episode” featurette on DVD.

Fubuki Sakuragasaki’s excellent arcade gaming skills issue from her “passion panties,” which trigger a magical girl-style transformation. When an evil organization tries to steal her powers, she channels gaming spirits the world over to unleash her other self, an arcade powerhouse with angel wings and sword. Starting out as a gag anime, but winding up as a preachy family fable too long-winded to sustain its jokes, this creation from Mine Yoshizaki inherits the mantle of Game Center Arashi, with onscreen homages to gaming classics like Virtua Fighter and Pac-Man. This would-be satire also recalls less impressive anime antecedents like Ultimate Teacher, in which another heroine used special bloomers to release her fighting spirit, but was a waste of space without them. Made for video release, although the first episode was screened on TV before the release date.

Archa Lyra

1992. jpn: Aru Kararu no Isan. aka: The Inheritance of Aru Kararu. Video. dir: Koichi Ishiguro. scr: Mayori Sekijima. des: Satoshi Saga. ani: Masamitsu Kudo. mus: N/C. prd: Tokuma Japan Communications. 70 mins.

In the 26th century, humans discover a humanoid race living on the distant world GO/7498/2, a dark-skinned, golden-eyed people who seem to eke out a primitive, carefree existence. However, a scout team from Earth discovers that there is more to them than meets the eye—they live in symbiosis with vicious reptilian parasites, and the Terran scientists have upset the delicate natural balance.

Despite the obvious tip of the hat to Ray Bradbury’s Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, Archa Lyra taps into a rich vein of SF concepts and puts them to good use, including the alien symbionts of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte and the addictive allure of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Original creator Katsumi Michihara is best known in Japan for drawing adaptations of other people’s work, including Legend of Galactic Heroes and the Joker series.

Area 88 *

1985. Video. dir: Eiko Toriumi. scr: Akiyoshi Sakai. des: Toshiyasu Okada. ani: Toshiyasu Okada. mus: Ichiro Nitta. prd: Project 88. 50 mins. x 4 eps.

In a faithful adaptation of Kaoru Shintani’s 1979 manga from Shonen Sunday, ace pilot Shin Kazama is duped into joining a mercenary air force by his acquaintance, Kanzaki. At airbase Area 88 in the tiny, civil-war-torn Middle-Eastern kingdom of Asran, desertion is a capital offense. Kazama must live through a three-year tour of duty or shoot down enough enemy planes to buy out his contract. Meanwhile back home, the venal Kanzaki moves in on Kazama’s girlfriend, Ryoko, trying to force her into a marriage of convenience to save her father’s ailing business.

Area 88 is a lively adventure story, featuring a dastardly cad, noble pilots, and star-crossed lovers who, while they may occasionally be within waving distance of each other, are always torn apart by circumstances. Parallel plots of desert storm and urban mischief ask the viewer what either civilization really thinks they are fighting for. The incongruously sweet-faced characters draw a tense, thrilling picture of the way war, corruption, and simple compromises change people. Few war anime compare, although the following year’s Grey: Digital Target makes a similarly masterful use of a popular genre.

Made as a four-part series in the earliest days of video anime, the first two chapters were also cut together into a movie in 1985. Several other Shintani stories have been turned into anime—Two Takas, Desert Rose, Cleopatra DC, Goddam, and I Dream of Mimi. The artist also worked as a designer on God Sigma. The story was remade in 2004 as a 12-part TV series on TV Asahi, directed by Isamu Imakake and written by Hiroshi Onogi. The new version retells the story through the framing viewpoint of photojournalist Makoto Shinjo, who visits the base in search of a story and hears Shin’s dilemma—does he fight and hope to earn his way back to his love before he dies, or desert and risk execution? Shinjo and mechanic Gustav are characters original to this incarnation, in which dogfights are entirely rendered in CG, creating a warplane-lover’s delight in the style of the racing sequences of Initial D. Twenty years on, there’s also a new cast of voice actors, but 75-year-old voice superstar Chikao Ohtsuka, who had a role in the original video series, returns to voice supply chief and fixer McCoy.

Argent Soma

2000. TV series. dir: Kazuyoshi Katayama. scr: Hiroshi Yamaguchi. des: Shuko Murase, Matsuri Yamane. ani: Takuro Shinbo, Shuko Murase, Asako Nishida. mus: Katsuhisa Hattori. prd: Sunrise, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 25 eps.

Mysterious metallic life-forms attack Earth in 2054 and also haunt the dreams of Earth boy Kaneshiro Takt, who is unable to show his feelings for his lover, Maki, until it is too late. Maki’s laboratory pieces together “Frank,” a whole alien made from parts scavenged from wrecks, but when the monster is activated, it destroys the laboratory and kills Maki. Hideously scarred in the accident, Takt changes his name to Ryu Soma and vows to avenge himself on the aliens, only to discover that his new bosses at the “Funeral” organization are now employing one. The damaged but functional Frank resolves to help humankind (although humankind may not necessarily want to be helped in the way Frank intends), but the only human he is prepared to communicate with is the pretty Harriet Bartholo­mew—a girl who reminds Takt of the dead Maki. Mixing the nihilism of Grey: Digital Target with the ambiguous enemies of Evangelion, AS also features curiously lopsided designs for the asymmetric Frank and obvious tips of the hat to the Frankenstein story. As with many other TV series of the cash-strapped turn of the century, it also demonstrates a noticeable drop in animation quality, going from reasonable to barely adequate in the space of the first few episodes.

ARGOT AND JARGON

Anime appreciation has developed a slang all its own, incorporating a number of Japanese words, often with uses different from those employed in their country of origin. We believe such terms present an unnecessary barrier to comprehension for the newcomer. Consequently, with the exception of the terms anime and manga we have used them as little as possible in this book. This entry is designed to point out certain words to aid the reader in understanding some of the more opaque fan texts. The better anime magazines refuse to use them unless absolutely necessary, in order to ensure that new readers are not baffled by a slew of obtuse terminology. Despite this, many mainstream journalists love to use as many as possible when covering anime, because it suggests they know what they are talking about. The terms are also very popular with fans who cannot speak Japanese but like to imply that they can.

Basic Terminology

• Anime refers to animation from Japan. The term was first coined by critic Taihei Imamura, as a replacement for the cumbersome mangaeiga in his book Mangaeiga Ron (On Cartoon Films, 1948). Other terms in use include doga (“moving pictures”). By our definition, a work is Japanese if the majority of the main creatives (director, script writer, character designer, and key animators) are Japanese. Within Japan, the term “anime” refers to any form of animation, including foreign cartoons. We employ it specifically to distinguish Japanese animation from products of other nations. There have been attempts among unscrupulous Western distributors to call anything anime that looks remotely Japanese. We do not subscribe to this deception and file such titles as False Friends. If a Japanese origin is not of fundamental importance in the definition of anime, then it is a futile pretension to use the term at all, and we might as well call everything “cartoons.” The term “Japanese anime” is a tautology, since anime is Japanese by definition. Some sources, particularly in Japan, use the term “Japanimation,” which was deliberately promoted by some companies in America as a viable alternative. However, the term has proved unpopular abroad through its inevitable separation into the component parts “Jap” and “animation”—Jap being a pejorative term with wartime associations.

• Manga refers to comics from Japan. As with anime, the term is used slightly differently in Japan itself, where it once meant “caricature,” drifted semantically into the same basic area as “cartoon,” and has meant “comic” for the last fifty years or so. As with anime, claiming that something can be a “manga” even if it is not from Japan is rather pointless in the English language—you might as well call everything “comics.” There is, nevertheless, a growing number of artists in the West who claim they draw in a “manga-style,” itself a meaningless term, since manga are so varied there is no such thing as a single style. A mangaka is a “manga creator.” In the 1990s, an anime company called Manga Entertainment established itself as a very powerful brand in the European market, ensuring that to this day the term “manga video” in most of Europe actually means anime. However, in Japan the term manga video actually refers to a video showing pages of a comic, while off-screen actors read it aloud. We never said this would be easy.

Other Terms

• CB means “child body,” and is a pun on chibi, meaning little. It refers to childlike caricatures of particular characters, shown in moments of embarrassment or comedy, occasionally in comical sequences. The term has fallen out of use in recent years, and seems to have been merged with the similar SD (q.v.).

• Chokyo is a subcategory of hentai (q.v.), about the “breaking in” of new sexual conquests through abuse and domination.

• Cosplay is a contraction of “costume play,” and means “dressing up.”

• Dojinshi are amateur publications or fanzines.

• E-Conté means “storyboards,” a comic-style run-through of the scenes in an animated film, depicting everything on a shot-by-shot basis. The term derives from the Japanese e, meaning “picture,” and “continuity.”

• Fan Service is a temporary suspension of the concerns of the story in order to amuse or entertain the audience—usually images and moments in which the female characters lose their clothes or pose provocatively. Supposedly, this is because it is a special gift to the loyal fans on the part of the animators; often it is a creepy objectification that only encourages moe (q.v.) in certain sectors and derision from non-fans. Fan service need not always be sexually suggestive; there is, for example, such a thing as mecha (q.v.) fan service, foregrounding machinery at the expense of other aspects.

• Gekiga, literally “dramatic pictures,” are supposedly comics for adults, roughly equivalent to the Western term “graphic novels.” The term, however, is rarely used in contemporary Japan and seems to date from the time when the term “comic” still contained a juvenile implication.

• Hentai is anime erotica. The term first spread among coy fans and distributors who preferred to use a foreign term for their pornography, and then among porn consumers and distributors in search of a means of classifying the animated variant separately from the live-action version. Since the term literally means “perverse,” it is sometimes found contracted to the letter “H” or its Japanese pronunciation ecchi or etchi. Some have claimed that the contraction is “softer” in meaning than the full term—calling a Japanese boy “H” might be flirtatious, as opposed to the more insulting “hentai.”

• Leica Reel is the Japanese industry term for what is known in the West as animatics—a “movie” made using the storyboards for a production, in order to check timings, and often used as the visual track to which the voice actors will record their dialogue while the actual visuals are still being animated. Leica is a camera manufacturer that seems to have entered Japanese slang as a name for one of its products, much as Hotchkiss in Japanese continues to mean stapler.

• Lolicon or Lolicom is a contraction of “Lolita Complex,” an unhealthy interest in underage girls exemplified by the Lolita Anime. Its rarer male variant is Shotacon (q.v.).

• Mecha literally refers to mechanical items or machinery, a subset of anime appreciation for all those boys who like to see how things work. If one is watching a mecha anime, it usually means one is watching something with lots of giant robots, such as the famous Gundam. It can, however, also refer to more general forms of machinery—Initial D’s obsession with engine interiors makes it just as much a mecha anime, for example.

• Moe is a fetishistic obsession with a particular topic or hobby, entering modern parlance as a replacement for otaku (q.v.), although in the rapid-pace world of Japanese slang, it is already falling out of favor. Toshio Okada has written that a moe fan need only be obsessed, while a true otaku actually develops background knowledge. Its etymology here is related to moeru, to burn with enthusiastic fervor. Also often associated in anime fandom with one particular kind of moe, an intense attraction to cartoon characters, particularly young and innocent girls that need to be nurtured and may be looking for a brotherly protector. Its etymology here is more related to moederu, to sprout or bud. Unhelpfully, it is also an acronym for an anime company, m.o.e., or Master of Entertainment. Such popular confusions over what Japanese and other foreign terms actually mean is precisely why we have avoided them in the body of this book.

• OP refers to the opening theme to a show, as contrasted with the ED, or ending theme. Although the trend in American TV is toward short, punchy OP’s that do not permit viewers the opportunity to grow bored and surf to another channel, Japanese broadcasting favors longer sequences. This permits a promotional showcase for the all-important song tie-ins, and in anime also permits a reduction in the length of new animation required for a weekly episode.

• Otaku has a highly complex derivation, and now means “geek,” “nerd,” or “obsessive fan” (of any hobby or pursuit) in Japanese. It does not have these negative connotations in Western fandom, where it simply means an anime/manga fan, particularly a devoted or knowledgeable one. The word was first used in its modern sense in An Investigation of Otaku (Otaku no Kenkyu), a series of columns published by Akio Nakamori in 1983. This was later parodied in Otaku no Video, the first anime made by fans, for fans, about fans.

• PRO is a shorthand for “Production,” and often appears in studio documentation for animation companies, such as Mushi Pro, Tezuka Pro, or Sho Pro (Shogakukan Productions).

• Pseudomanga is a Western comic that pretends to be a manga. The term is highly unpopular with Western fans, since they feel it implies that some Western creators are trying to pass their work off as something it isn’t. Other attempts to categorize the phenomenon include “American-style manga,” or “Amerimanga,” much to the annoyance of non-Americans. The authors prefer to call them “comics,” because that’s what they are.

• Ris Work, sometimes mistransliterated as “Lease Work.” The use of a “telop” or television opaque projector, aka an optical printer, to add certain video effects, particularly rain, mist, or certain fore- and background projections. Largely superseded in modern anime thanks to digital animation, but often still used to add the closing credits to some anime.

• SD means “super-deformed” or sometimes “squashed-down.” In both cases it refers to squat cartoon variants of characters, used in parodies or in comical sequences. See also CB.

• Seiyu means “voice actor” and refers to the people who provide voices for the animated characters. In order to maximize profits and give magazines something to write about, the Japanese anime press began to include seiyu coverage in the 1980s, particularly when seiyu singing careers generated more income, as in the case of Macross. The trend reached the Western anime press in the 1990s.

• Shojo means “girl” in Japanese. Consequently, a shojo anime is an anime made for girls, like Candy Candy. A Bishojo is a pretty girl and a Maho Shojo is a “magical girl”—an anime sub-genre dating back to Little Witch Sally and Comet-san. Shojo-Ai, or “girl-love” would be the logical term for a lesbian subset of anime erotica, but general usage favors yuri (q.v.)

• Shonen means “boy” or “youth” in Japanese. A shonen anime is hence an anime made for boys or youths in their low teens. Shonen-Ai, or “boy-love” is a homosexual subset of anime erotica. A Bishonen is a pretty boy.

• Shotacon is a contraction of “Shotaro Complex,” or an unhealthy obsession with little boys. It is said to derive from the boyish good looks of Shotaro Kaneda, the protagonist of Gigantor.

• Studio is a place where an anime is made. It is often assumed that such entities are large old-time Hollywood-style conglomerates, although even “major” anime companies only have staff levels around a couple of hundred, whereas many of the smaller “studios” to which they subcontract piece work are often single offices in nearby buildings. Some companies enjoy the corporate implications that come with the term. Others, particularly small design operations, prefer to use the humbler “Office” designation, or even half-jokingly use the French term atelier—an attic or garret, the traditional residence of a starving artist.

• YAOI is a contraction of yamanashi, ochinashi, iminashi: “no climax, no punchline, no meaning,” originally a pejorative term for erotica about homosexual male love, created by female fans. The term has now been embraced by such fans and used by them.

• Yuri is lesbian erotica, deriving from yurizoku or “Lily Tribe,” a term coined for lesbians by the editor of Barazoku (Rose Tribe), a magazine for gay men.

Acronyms and Initials

Japanese marketers often assume that their audience can be easily fooled by a few pompous acronyms—one only needs to look at the Japanese “Making Of” videos for Ghost in the Shell or Akira to see them at work. With the coming of video in the 1980s, some companies attempted to put a positive spin on the idea of straight-to-video entertainment—direct-to-video (DTV) has a pejorative connotation in the Western media world, often with good reason. Consequently, marketers coined the terms Original Animation Video (OAV) or Original Video Animation (OVA), pointless neologisms which seem to have survived in Western fandom because non-linguists found them easy to spot on pages of Japanese text.

Recent years have seen the creation of yet more acronyms, this time in the West. An Original Net Animation (ONA) is an anime that premieres on the Internet, while an Anime Music Video (AMV) is a fan-produced music video using footage from one or more anime. The term Original English Language (OEL) has been used in the publishing industry as a term for pseudomanga (q.v.)—it presumably being far too much trouble to simply call them “comics.” None of these acronyms appears to be remotely useful for anything except misdirection, and we have not employed them in this book.

Aria

2005. TV series. dir: Junichi Sato, Kazunobu Fuseki. scr: Reiko Yoshida. des: Kozue Amano. ani: Makoto Koga. mus: Choro Club. prd: Hal Filmmaker, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

In a.d. 2301, Mars has been so fully terraformed that it is 90% water, and has earned the nickname Aqua. Pink-haired Akari Mizunashi arrives at the Martian city of Neo-Venezia, an idyllic canal-crossed metropolis modeled on Venice, Italy, where she hopes to find her fortune as a gondola pilot or “undine.” Based on the manga by Kozue Amano, itself a sequel to Amano’s earlier Aqua, which began in 2001 and is hence absolved of any charges of ripping off Mars Daybreak. In fact, with its emphasis on life in a serene future, it owes more of a debt to Yokohama Shopping, while its backstory transformation of the Red Planet echoes Armitage III.

Ariel *

1989. Video. dir: Junichi Watanabe. scr: Muneo Kubo, Yuichi Sasaki. des: Osamu Tsuruyama, Yuji Moriyama. ani: Osamu Tsuruyama. mus: Kohei Tanaka. prd: Animate Film, JC Staff. 30 mins. x 2 eps., 45 mins. x 2 eps.

Mad scientist Grandpa Kishida builds a giant robot called the All-Round Intercept and Escort Lady, or ARIEL, a convoluted acronym that is the namesake of his dead wife. Earth is attacked by the elfin alien general Hauser, who is searching for the Breastsaver Haagen, a powerful fighter he believes to be somewhere on the surface, but his assault is repelled by the Ariel team. Pilot Kasumi (Kishida’s granddaughter) enjoys herself immensely, but her sister, Aya, and friend, Miya, refuse to fly again. The girls have no choice, however, when a second wave of alien attackers pours toward Scebai base, and they are humanity’s last line of defense. The two initial sci-fi robot episodes in this low-rent Gunbuster clone were swiftly followed by the two longer Deluxe Ariel sequels, even though the original series hardly deserved a comeback.

Arion

1986. Movie. dir: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. scr: Akiko Tanaka, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. des: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Kyoko Yamane. ani: Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. mus: Joe Hisaishi. prd: Sunrise, TMS. 118 mins.

Three brothers, the last of the Titans, divide the world between them, but a quarrel soon breaks out between Poseidon, Lord of the Sea, and the Mountain-god Zeus, engineered in secret by the third brother, Hades. Fearing the wrath of Zeus, goddess Demeter hides Arion, her son by Poseidon, far away from Olympus. Caught up in the power struggles of the gods, Arion becomes the prisoner of the dangerously unstable Artemis and her capricious brother, Apollo, until he is set free, once more through the machinations of Hades. He is also falling in love with a slave girl, Lesfeena, but fears she might be his sister.

Beginning life in the pages of Ryu magazine (which it shared with the similar fantasy Amon Saga), Arion, a loose adaptation of classical myth with a distinctly oriental flavor, is a mature and exciting adventure. Though original creator Yasuhiko is credited with most aspects of production, he also recruited some impressive assistants. Miyazaki composer Joe Hisaishi supplies a magnificent score, while Fairy King’s Ryoko Yamagishi, an artist specializing in myth, helped with the design. Epic battles, perverse cruelty, great heroism, and unselfish love all have their place in this film, which is superior in every way to Yasuhiko’s later Venus Wars.

Arisa *

2005. jpn: Moke-moke Taisho Dendo Musume. aka: Groping Taisho-era Electric Girl. Video. dir: Eijun Reikishi. scr: Kentaro Mizuno. des: Akihiko Emura. ani: Kyoichi Daihiryu. mus: N/C. prd: Green Bunny. 27 mins., 29 mins.

In an erotic parody of both Steel Angel Kurumi (with additional swipes from Chobits), Shinichiro Morisaki and his nubile adopted sister Kotomi run a cafe in Japan’s Taisho Era—the 1912–26 dreamtime that also provides a backdrop for Sakura Wars. Late one night an Imperial Army airship accidentally drops an experimental android through the roof of the cafe. With the help of his grandfather Gennosuke, Shinichiro activates the android, which becomes the busty but clumsy Arisa. Anxious to retrieve their “Fire Bee,” the army sends an agent to infiltrate the cafe; sex duly ensues. Based on a game by mixwill soft. NV

Arjuna *

2001. jpn: Chikyu Shojo Arjuna. aka: Earth Girls Arjuna. TV series. dir: Shoji Kawamori, Eiichi Sato, Tomokazu Tokoro, Yoshitaka Fujimoto. scr: Shoji Kawamori, Hiroshi Onogi. des: Takahiro Kishida. ani: Ma­nabu Fukusawa, Haruo Sotozaki. mus: Yoko Kanno. prd: Satellite, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 12 eps. + 1 bonus video ep.

Young teenager Juna Ariyoshi is in an accident and receives a vision of life on Earth in the future. She sees that humans have been raised to a higher state of consciousness but are still victims of predatory raids from evil Rajah invaders, who must be held off by the wearer of the “Aura Suit.” She is soon enlisted by local boy Chris Horken in a mission to save both worlds. Or in other words, Escaflowne, but traveling in time instead of space. Ichiro Itano, former anime director, adds another string to his bow here as director of the CG motion-capture sequences, while director Kawamori claimed in press releases that the show was designed to encourage a return to nature and renunciation of material things. We’ll see what the merchandising department has to say about that.

Armitage III *

1994. Video. dir: Hiroyuki Ochi. scr: Chiaki Konaka, Akinori Endo. des: Atsushi Takeuchi. ani: Kunihiro Abe. mus: Hiroyuki Nanba. prd: AIC, Pioneer. 30 mins. x 4 eps.

“Red to Blue” is the motto, but it will be many generations before Mars is truly habitable. The air is still too thin for human beings, so colonists live beneath the roof that now closes off the Marineris Trench. Like Hong Kong and Singapore before it, the city of Saint Lowell has become a bustling metropolis simply because there is nowhere else to go. Although the Trench is hundreds of miles long, the colony has expanded fast, and Saint Lowell resembles much older cities back on Earth, packed with cramped skyscrapers and dark streets. With a shortage of manpower in the mines (and girl power in the bars), Mars becomes the center of the solar system’s robotics industry, pioneering the functional “Firsts” and the lifelike “Seconds.”

Discredited cop Ross Sylibus is transferred from Earth to the colonies after he loses his partner to a rogue robot. As the city is terrorized by a brutal flurry of killings, all he’s got to help him are his Terran wits and his new partner, the underdressed Naomi Armitage. The victims are all female, but they are also all “Thirds,” the state of the art in android technology. Sylibus discovers that the murders are part of a gargantuan conspiracy involving big corporations, scientific cartels, and Earth’s feminist government.

Blade Runner comparisons are a dime a dozen in the anime world, but Armitage truly deserves it. Wells City (as in H. G. Wells) and the spaceport at Saint Lowell (as in astronomer Percival Lowell) are dead ringers for Ridley Scott’s Los Angeles. The frontier feel of newly colonized Mars only arrives in the later episodes, when Ross and Naomi are out in the barren countryside beyond the city standing beneath the glorious red of a Martian sky—an image also purloined for the later Cowboy Bebop. With its high-tech future, android technology, and Mar­tian frontier life, Armitage hits many sci-fi hotspots, but it is also a cop-buddy movie, a romance, and a sexy pastiche on several military conspiracy shockers. Writer Chiaki Konaka, who would go on to write the quintessential Internet thriller Serial Experiments Lain, made Armitage conspicuously cyberpunk, including a trip to cyberspace via a painfully messy human interface and meditations on the place of humanity in a high-tech world.

Originally released as part of a multimedia experience that included false newspaper reports to fill narrative gaps, the omission of these items in the English-language release renders Ko­naka’s plot less coherent than it could have been. But there are still hidden depths in his script, the first episode of which was written in collaboration with SF veteran (and author of the Ghost in the Shell tie-in novel) Akinori Endo. There is also a sly dig at modern Japanese business; the rival Conception and Hu-Gite cybernetics companies battle to create the first android that is more human than human, continually outperforming each other with new formats and better models in a storyline no doubt inspired by the large corporate battles of recent years, such as Sega versus Nintendo and Sony versus Pioneer. The script is also scattered with references to H. P. Lovecraft’s Dunwich Horror (a favorite of Konaka’s), including Professor Armitage, the writer Lavinia Whateley, and a laboratory on Dunwich Hill.

Regarded as the most Americanized “girls-and-guns” example of Pioneer’s output, Armitage initially got much less attention than it deserved. As with Konaka’s later Bubblegum Crisis 2040, it is sometimes easy to miss the fine line between his satirical sexism and the everyday variety prevalent in so many other shows. Following the success of the video, it was rereleased as the movie Polymatrix with some cuts, a couple of extra scenes, and a completely new ending. It was also redubbed featuring the voices of Kiefer Sutherland and Elizabeth Berkley in the main roles in an attempt to gain extra press attention through star power—a tactic common for Disney but rare in anime until Buena Vista’s acquisition of Princess Mononoke. However, the video ending, which looks farther into the future of the lead characters, remains the better of the two—Armitage really belongs on the small screen. It was originally made for video, and although the story is compelling, the art does not really survive being enlarged in a theater. But the bright design, powerful sound, and lemon twist of romance all make for a great retelling of one of sci-fi’s oldest stories: the machine that wants to be human.

Note: the Roman numerals in Armitage III are part of the lead character’s name, and not, as some commentators have assumed, evidence of two earlier episodes in the series. It is read “Armitage the Third,” not “Armitage Three.” The video sequel Armitage III: Dual Matrix (2001) takes place six years after the original, with Naomi and Ross now living under a false identity on Mars as Mr. and Mrs. “Oldman,” with their daughter Yoko. With news of robot riots breaking out offworld, Naomi travels back to Earth to hunt down a new conspiracy, in the process facing her most powerful foes—replicas of herself. However, the same could be said of Dual Matrix in its entirety, since while it may attempt to restart elements of the original, it could be accused of merely rehashing them. There was much in the original Armitage III to recommend it, not the least in a reproductive subplot that foreshadowed the new Battlestar Galactica by several years. But Dual Matrix failed to move the franchise further along, and it ground to a halt here.V

Around the World with Willy Fogg *

1985. jpn: Dobutsu 80 Nichikan Sekai Icho. aka: Animals Around the World in 80 Days; La Vuelta al Mundo de Willy Fog. TV series. dir: Fumio Kurokawa. scr: Ryuzo Nakanishi. des: Isamu Noda. ani: Hisatoshi Motoki, Hirokazu Ishino. mus: Shunsuke Kikuchi. prd: Nippon Animation/BRB, TV Asahi. 30 mins. x 26 eps.

Wheelchair-bound old goat Lord Guinness believes it is possible to travel around the world in 80 days, but he is too infirm to prove it himself. A lion called Willy Fogg volunteers to put the theory to the test, betting against several other people at the Gentlemen’s Reform Club. Accompanied by two circus refugees, Rigadon and Tico, Fogg sets off around the world. However, Sullivan, who has bet against Fogg, hires a jackal thug called Transfer to ensure that the trip is a failure. Fogg is also hounded by two Scotland Yard detectives convinced that he has robbed a bank and has to rescue Romy, a beautiful Indian princess, en route.

This anthropomorphic (but chiefly feline) adaptation of Jules Verne was a companion piece to the canine Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds made in association with the Spanish studio BRB. Though it charmed a generation in Europe, the Japanese version was not broadcast until 1987 and omitted episodes 14, 18, 21, and 22—curiously, one of the missing chapters was “En Route to Yokohama.” Fogg and friends would return in a 30-episode sequel in the early 1990s, adapting Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea in similarly flamboyant style.

Arrow Emblem

1977. jpn: Arrow Emblem Grand Prix no Taka. TV series. dir: Rintaro, Nobutaka Nishizawa, Yugo Serikawa, Takenori Kawada, Yasuo Yamayoshi. scr: N/C. des: Akio Sugino, Takuo Noda. ani: Bunpei Nanjo, Takeshi Shirato, Toshio Mori. mus: Hiroshi Miyagawa. prd: Toei, Fuji TV. 25 mins. x 44 eps.

Takaya Todoroki cherishes a dream of becoming a Formula One racer. He puts all his energy into winning a beginners’ heat, but causes a massive pile-up due to an error of judgment. Initially swearing to give up racing, he is talked around by world-famous driver Nick Lambda, who encourages him to dust himself off and give it another try. Before long, he is a team member of Katori Motors, hoping to become the first Japanese racer to become a Formula One champion, driving the Todoroki Special, a car built to his own design.

Art of Fighting *

1995. jpn: Battle Spirits: Ryoko no Ken. aka: Battle Spirits: Dragon Tiger Fist. Video. dir: Hiroshi Fukutomi. scr: Nobuaki Kishima. des: Kazunori Iwakura. ani: Kazunori Iwakura, Kenichi Shimizu, Mamoru Taniguchi. mus: Akira Konishi, SNK Sound Team. prd: Fuji TV, NAS. 45 mins.

An anime clone of a Neo-Geo game clone of Street Fighter II, even to its mismatched leads, except instead of Ryu and Ken, we’ve got Ryo and Robert. The two heroes witness a gangland slaying and are accused of stealing a valuable diamond by the gang that has kidnapped Ryo’s sister, Yuri. The two martial artists are obliged to fight to get her back in a tired story-by-numbers suspiciously like Tekken, or Toshinden, or Virtua Fighter. V

Artland

Animation company, founded in 1978 by animators from TV Doga, Onishi Pro, and others. Founder member Noboru Ishiguro took the company in to complete work on its first notable project, Farewell Space Cruiser Yamato, one of the spin-offs of the Star Blazers series. Other high profile members include Noboru Sugimitsu, Kenichi Imaizumi, and producer Hidenobu Watanabe. The studio went on to contribute extensive work on the Macross saga.

Artmic

A design studio, specializing in original science fiction, founded by former Tatsunoko staffer Toshimichi Suzuki. Its greatest achievements include Megazone 23, which sold over 100,000 copies in Japan, although the studio subsequently went bankrupt, leaving its coproduction partners such as Youmex and AIC holding not only the outstanding debts, but also the intellectual copyright of its creations. This complex arrangement of ownership is what led to the breaks and re-versionings in the serials Gall Force and Bubblegum Crisis, as well as the rebranding of Riding Bean as Gunsmith Cats—seen as a successful attempt by former employee Kenichi Sonoda to regain control of his work.

Asari-chan

1982. TV series. dir: Osamu Kasai. scr: Tadaaki Yamazaki, Masaki Tsuji, Akiyoshi Sakai. des: Hideyoshi Ito. ani: Tadashi Shirakawa, Koji Uemura, Nobuyuki Endo. mus: Hiroshi Tsutsui. prd: Toei, TV Asahi. 25 mins. x 54 eps.

Asari Hamano is a preteen girl who refuses to try at anything except sports. Her elder sister, Tatami, however, is a model student, adored by their mother, who pays Asari no attention at all. As the sisters fight a continual game of one-upmanship, Dad buries his head in his paper and tries to be even-handed. Both girls make life hell for the Morino boys next door—Jiro, who is waiting to retake his exams, and his younger brother, Kakesu.

Mister Pen-Pen–creator Mayumi Muroyama only changed the names to protect the guilty when she started writing about her own family for Corocoro Comic in 1977. Asari-chan is still running to this day, but its anime incarnation was less successful. The 54 episodes were shown several times (occasionally split into 100 installments since most could be neatly divided into two shorter stories) and also spun off into a 25-minute film at the Toei Manga Festival in 1982, in which Asari is forced to read a five-volume compendium of fairy tales in order to prove to her aunt that she genuinely does like the gift.

Ashi Productions

Often abbreviated as Ashi Pro. Animation company formed in 1975 by Tatsunoko employee Toshihiko Sato. Notable members include Seiji Okuda, Hidehito Ueda, and occasional cameo appearances from freelancers including Seiji Kishimoto, Hideki Fukushima, and Keitaro Kawaguchi. Representative works include Cybuster and the Beast Wars Neo sections of the Transformers franchise. A member of the Namco-Bandai group.

Ashida, Toyo’o

1944–2011. Born in Tokyo, he began as a sketch artist at the TCJ studio (now Eiken) before moving to Mushi Production, where he was a key animator on Osamu Tezuka’s Cleopatra: Queen of Sex. With the collapse of Mushi in 1973, he found work on Star Blazers, before becoming one of the ten founders of Studio Live. At Live, Ashida was a designer on shows ranging from Cyborg 009 to Dr. Slump, before parlaying his experience of key animation (and working in impecunious circumstances) to a winning role as the director of Fist of the North Star.

Asia-do

Animation company formed in 1978 by defectors from Shin’ei Doga, including Tsutomu Shibayama and Osamu Kobayashi. Became a limited company in 1987. Other notable members include Michishiro Yamada, Hideo Kawauchi, and Tomomi Mochizuki. Productions include Chibi Maruko-chan—a long-running anime for the children’s market that may not be well known in the English-speaking world, but is a blue-chip business for animators.

Ask Dr. Lin

2001. jpn: Doctor Lin ni Kiitemite. aka: Listen to Dr. Lin; Pay Heed to Doctor Lin. TV series. dir: Shin Misawa. scr: Jun Maekawa. des: Takahisa Ichikawa. ani: N/C. mus: Takanori Arisawa. prd: Nippon Animation, NAS, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 51 eps.

Junior high school student Meilin Kanzaki possesses magical powers and can drive away evil spirits and foretell the future. Consequently, she has a secret identity as fortune teller Dr. Lin. She’s also in love with her best friend Yuki Asuka, but he’s a practical, down-to-earth guy who has no time for superstitious nonsense. Based on the manga by Kiyoko Arai, creator of Magical Emi.

Asobot Chronicle Goku *

2002. jpn: Asobot Senki Goku. aka: Asobot Chronicle Goku, Monkey Typhoon. TV series. dir: Mamoru Hamatsu. scr: Hiroshi Hashimoto. des: Tsuneo Ninomiya. ani: Studio EGG. mus: Kohei Tanaka. prd: Studio EGG, TV Tokyo. 26 mins. x 52 eps.

Earth’s environment has been devastated, and humans leave their homeworld for planet Meshichi, where they live alongside Asobots (Associate Robots). These are androids, but not just servants—they have emotions, consciences, personalities, and habits not so different from humans, and grow up alongside them to help and protect them. Some, unfortunately, pick up less admirable human habits, like brigandry. Goku is a boastful, irrepressible young asobot who runs into the mysterious Sanzo and ends up traveling west to the land of Zipangu with him. They meet cute Mion, mechanical genius Jo, pretty asobot thief Susie, and asobot drunkard Tongo, while avoiding the decidedly nastier asobots known as Hooligans, and their mysterious adversary Professor D.

The Journey to the West has been a favorite starting point for animators from Osamu Tezuka onward. For the anime version of this manga by Joji Arimori and Romu Aoi, TV Tokyo wheeled out some impressive talent, and was rewarded with good enough audiences to get a 52-week run, increasingly difficult in these days of multiple-choice entertainment. Compare to Spaceketeers, which was another sci-fi adaptation of the same Chinese legend. Part of the series, perhaps a movie edit, was screened at a convention in the U.S. in 2003 as Monkey Typhoon. Broadcast in English on Animax-Asia.

Assemble Insert *

1989. Video. dir: Ayumi Tomobuki. scr: Mitsuru Toyota, Michiru Shimada. des: Masami Yuki, Yutaka Izubuchi. ani: Toyo­mi Sugiyama. mus: Kohei Tanaka. prd: Studio Core. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Demon Seed, a group of power-suited criminals, has stolen over a billion yen in valuables and caused immense damage while resisting arrest. In a drunken stupor, Police Chief Hattori decides to catch the group by auditioning for a super-idol, a singing girl who can wear Professor Shimokawabe’s new giant robot suit, defeat the menace, and keep him from doing too much overtime. The 15-year-old Maron Namikaze, who can bend steel microphone stands with her bare hands, is put to work stopping the Demon Seed gang from stealing an expensive museum exhibit. She defeats the bad guys but destroys the priceless artifacts in the process.

Three months later, the Special Operations group is so discredited that it decides to enter Maron for a talent contest. When an onstage display of strength is caught on camera, Maron becomes a star, and the police become her managers. Annoyed at the change in direction, Professor Shimokawabe secretly gives Demon Seed four new suits, and it stages another heist that coincides with Maron’s big concert.

Predating both the showbiz-satire of Hummingbirds and the insane self-referentiality of Dragon Half, Patlabor–creator Masami Yuki wrote this musical comedy for Out magazine, reuniting many of the staff in both off-screen roles and onscreen cameos. The drunken Hattori is based on Shonen Sunday–editor Fukuda Takahashi, who first took a chance on Yuki. His lieutenant, Taka, is based on designer Yutaka Izubuchi, while the three other members of the Special Operations group are caricatures of Macross Plus’s sensible Shoji Kawamori, laconic Patlabor-staffer Yutaka Yoneda, and a drunken pervert modeled on Yuki himself.

Astro Boy *

1963. jpn: Tetsuwan Atom. aka: Mighty Atom. TV series. dir: Osamu Tezuka, Gisaburo Sugii, Daisaku Sakamoto, Eiichi Yamamoto, Osamu Dezaki, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Minoru Okazaki, Fusahito Nagaki. scr: Osamu Tezuka, Noriyuki Honma, Masaki Tsuji, Kenichi Takahashi. des: Osamu Tezuka. ani: Daisaku Sakamoto. mus: Tatsuo Takai. prd: Tezuka Pro, Fuji TV. 30 mins. x 193 eps.

In the year 2003 (2000 in the U.S. release), Professor Tenma (Boynton) is distraught when his son Tobio (Astro/Toby) is killed in a car accident. He loses himself in his latest project, creating Atom (Astro), a robot boy programmed to be forever good. Upset that his Tobio-substitute can never grow up, Tenma sells Atom to Hamegg (Cacciatore), the cruel ringmaster of a robot circus. Atom meets the kindly Professor Ochanomizu (Elefun), who adopts him, inspires him to become a crusader against evil, and eventually builds him a robot “sister,” Uran (Astro Girl).

Often erroneously described as the first TV anime (see Instant History), AB began in 1951 as Captain Atom in Shonen Magazine. Renamed Mighty Atom a year later, it became the flag­­ship title of the magazine and was made as a live-action TV show in 1959. A combination of Pinocchio and Superman, it became the first of many animated adaptations by Tezuka of his own work.

First shown on Fuji TV on New Year’s Day 1963 but eventually moving to the NHK network, it was the first anime to be broadcast abroad. Still known around the world as Mighty Atom—the U.S. name change was forced by the existence of a local comic character with a similar name—it was adapted for the English-language market by Fred Ladd, and its success created the first wave of anime abroad. The U.S. version eventually screened 104 episodes of the full Japanese run, including such curiosities as a TV special of Atom fighting the Star of the Giants—though the latter remains unknown in the English-speaking world. The influence of AB extended further than is often realized. On the strength of AB, Stanley Kubrick offered Tezuka a job as a production designer on 2001: A Space Odyssey, though Tezuka declined.

The Japanese series, whose ratings peaked at over 40%, ended with Atom sacrificing his life to save Earth. He also appeared in a feature-length anime movie, Hero of Space (1964), directed by Atsushi Takagi. Hamegg, Tezuka’s stock villain, was recycled for Kimba the White Lion, and Tezuka attempted to write Atom for an older audience with the more philosophical Atom Chronicles for Shonen Magazine.

An inferior copy appeared as Jetter Mars in 1977, but the original itself returned in a new color format in 1980. These New Adventures of Astro Boy featured a younger-looking hero in keeping with audience expectations and scripts written chiefly by Tezuka himself, though Ryosuke Takahashi contributed several and Kenji Terada was credited with “literary assistance,” whatever that may be. With many of the original crew now famous in their own right, the new production drafted new faces including directors Noboru Ishiguro, Tetsu Dezaki, Naoto Hashimoto, and Takashi Anno. Perhaps as a result of Tezuka’s own dissatisfaction with the series, the New Adventures were dark in mood despite their bright colors, featuring many failed missions and dying good guys. There was a greater concentration on Atom’s evil twin, Atlas, built from stolen blueprints by Count Walpurgis (Walper Guiss), a European arms manufacturer. Deciding to conquer the world, Atlas opposes the emotional Atom with cold logic, eventually coming to realize over many episodes that it is he who is lacking something. Atlas was not the only one: the series was unsatisfactory to makers and viewers alike, and only lasted for 52 episodes—a quarter of its predecessor’s longevity, though still considerably longer than most modern serials.

Despite its failure to live up to the impact of the original, the color AB kept the myth alive for a new generation, existing in two separate dubs from Australia and Canada. Homages abound in both the U.S. and Japan, from the obvious Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot to the desperate stab at legitimacy of Birdy the Mighty. The character’s simple, recognizable lines became an icon in U.S. subculture and was rumored to be the subject of several remakes as the character’s original “birth-year” of 2003 approached. A live-action feature failed to materialize, and a Japanese-Canadian IMAX coproduction began development but was shelved in 2000. The only project that did make it to completion was a 50-episode TV anime remake under the general control of the Konaka brothers, writer Chiaki and director Kazuya. Diligently walking a difficult line between retro homage and modern update, the new series faithfully recreated much of the original’s effect, both in its cartoonish charm and in its ability to surprise children’s programmers. The 2003 Astro Boy was taken off air partway through its American run, and did not survive much longer in the U.K. either, where even continuity announcers expressed their surprise at some of the harder-hitting plots. It also suffered somewhat from being broadcast in syndication in an order different from that in which the episodes were intended to be shown, resulting in some characters being “introduced” several episodes after they had first appeared. The series was subsequently released on DVD in America in a “complete” edition, although one episode from the original, “Eternal Boy,” has been replaced by a clip show in order to avoid any possibility of incurring the wrath of Disney over alleged similarities between the titular guest star and its own Peter Pan.

Astro Ganger

1972. TV series. dir: Masashi Nitta, Kenjiro Yoshida. scr: Tajio Tamura, Toyohiro Ando. des: Eiji Tanaka. ani: Eiji Tanaka. mus: Akiyoshi Kobayashi. prd: Nippon TV, Knack, Toei. 25 mins. x 26 eps.

The Earth is under attack by hostile aliens called the Blasters. Professor Hoshi creates a giant robot using a bar of living metal that his wife has brought from her home planet of Kanseros. After their deaths, their son Kantaro is left to pilot the humanoid Astro Ganger robot in the struggle to save the Earth. Astro Ganger was a curious amalgam of controllable vehicle and sentient android; he could think for himself, had variable expressions, and would eventually sacrifice himself, like Astro Boy before him, to save a human life. The series was popular enough that it was still referenced a decade later in the Urusei Yatsura manga, when Ataru Moroboshi sung a snatch of the theme song. Afterward, the Knack production company went on to work on Chargeman Ken.

When Astro Ganger was broadcast, it was the first giant robot anime shown in five years. Animators and producers had shied away from the genre, fearing that Gigantor had said all there was to say, and that anything in imitation of it would be seen as pointless and derivative—those were the days!

Asukas of Flowers, The *

1987. jpn: Shin Kabuki-machi no Story: Asuka no Hanagumi. aka: New Story of Kabuki Town: Asuka’s Flower Collection. Video. dir: Atsutoshi Umezawa. scr: Kenji Terada. des: Satosumi Taka­guchi, Yuri Handa. ani: Toei. mus: Kenji Kawai. prd: Kadokawa, Tohoku, Toei. 48 mins. x 2 eps.

In this adaptation of a famously sensational girls’ manga said to encapsulate the ennui of the 1980s, Asuka is a teenage student who wanders the windswept streets of Kabuki Town each evening, dragged into teenage prostitution and gangland violence. She saves fellow schoolgirl Yotsuko from another gang and returns the girl’s diary, remaining honorable but distant—even when she subsequently prevents Yotsuko from committing suicide.

The original story, published in a magazine also called Asuka, was a huge hit for artist Satosumi Takaguchi, spawning 27 volumes, a six-part spin-off, a live-action movie, and a TV drama. This two-part series, however, was the only anime appearance. The youth-gone-wild of the following decade were similarly “sensationalized” in the live-action Bounce Ko-gals, nicely demonstrating that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Aterui

2002. Movie. dir: Tetsu Dezaki. scr: N/C. des: Setsuko Shibuichi. ani: N/C. mus: Yuse Nakajima. prd: Magic Bus, Cinema Tohoku. ca. 93 mins.

Twelve hundred years ago in Hiraizumi, north Japan, Emishi prince Aterui Otamono-kimi fought the Imperial Court for 38 years to defend his native culture—different from the more famous Ainu people of the north, but still not part of the mainstream “Japanese” world. Known as “the Tiger,” and considered a demon by his foes, he was finally defeated in a.d. 801 by Saka no Ue no Tamamura-maro, who turned his headquarters into a temple to the god Bishamon-ten which can still be visited today. The legend has inspired many historical novels, and a manga, Aterui the Second, by Katsuhiko Takahashi and Fist of the North Star creator Tetsu Hara. However, this historical movie may also have been greenlit for its title character’s racial resemblance to another Emishi hero, Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke. The production was funded by Cinema Tohoku (i.e., northeastern Japan), no doubt in an attempt to maintain visitor interest in a region also promoted through Spring and Chaos. Compare to the less sensible tourist magnet Cutter’s Story.

Attack Number One

1969. TV series. dir: Fumio Kurokawa, Eiji Okabe. scr: Masaki Tsuji, Tetsu Dezaki, Haruya Yamazaki, Tsunehisa Ito. des: Jun Ikeda. ani: Shingo Araki. mus: Takeo Watanabe. prd: TMS, Fuji TV. 30 mins. x 104 eps.

Kozue is a new student transferred to Fujimi College. Though she has a low opinion of her own abilities, she resolves to practice hard to fit in with the school volleyball team. She soon makes a lifelong friend in the kind Midori and a bitter enemy in Yoshimura, the girl who was formerly the school volleyball superstar. She falls in love with a local boy but is prepared to sacrifice everything to please her beloved Coach Honma.

This adaptation of Chikako Urano’s 1968 volleyball manga was the first sports anime made specifically for a female audience, generating not only four 1970 movies assembled from reedited footage, but also an entire subgenre that survives to this day. Successors that simply switch the focus to another sport include Aim for the Ace and Yawara, while recent years have seen misguided pastiches such as Battle Athletes.

In 1977, Kurokawa, Okabe, and Yamazaki would return on the staff of Attack on Tomorrow (Ashita e Attack!), a cloned TV series timed to cash in on Japan’s successes in the volleyball World Cup. Mimi, a student, decides to revitalize a volleyball team that is still recovering from the accidental death of one of its members. The new series was a shadow of its illustrious predecessor and ceased after 23 episodes. The story was also adapted into a live-action drama series for TV Asahi in 2005.

Attacker You!

1984. TV series. dir: Kazuyuki Okaseko. scr: Hideki Sonoda, Susumu Yoshida. des: Jun Makimura, Teruo Ki­gure. ani: Satoshi Kishimo. mus: Shiro Sagisu. prd: Knack, TV Tokyo. 30 mins. x 58 eps.

Thirteen-year-old Yu Hazuki moves to Tokyo to be with her cameraman father. Bumping into volleyball star Nami Hayase on her first day at school, Yu joins the volleyball team and trounces the former champion with her brilliant abilities. Teaming up with Eri, an ace attacker, the trio try to realize their dreams of getting to the all-Japan finals.

Though there was a spin-off manga by Jun Makimura, Attacker You! was actually based on Shizuo Koizumi’s novel Now the White Ball Is Alive. While its predecessor, Attack Number One, romanticized school drama and camaraderie, Attacker You! concentrated on volleyball as a career in itself, making it less a sports anime than a professional soap opera that happened to revolve around sports.

Aurora

2000. jpn: Umi no Aurora. aka: Marine Aurora. Movie. dir: Yoshinori Kanno. scr: Michiru Shimada. des: Katsuya Kondo, Katsuya Kondo. ani: Satoshi Fujiwara. mus: Masamichi Amano. prd: Nippon TV. 91 mins.

An action thriller with overtones of The Abyss and Sphere—a 21st-century drilling team based at the bottom of the South Pacific is searching for age-old bacteria that can synthesize oil. The team finds it, but the glowing bacteria proves highly combustible in the oxygen-rich atmosphere and can eat through metal. Biologist Oshunru is aware of the potential danger and suspects the bacteria “wishes” to restore Earth to the primeval conditions that created it, wiping out all other life in the process. This hackneyed, predictable sci-fi thriller’s CG origins merely make the characters more expressionless than usual. Aurora was Japan’s first full-length 3-D computer-animated movie, though Visitor and A.LI.CE were shorter works that preceded it.

Avenger *

2003. TV series. dir: Koichi Mashimo. scr: Hidefumi Kimura, Mitsuhiko Sawamura, Satomi Sugimura. des: Yukiko Ban, Kenji Teraoka. ani: Minako Shiba, Mamoru Morioka, Tomoyuki Kurokawa. mus: Ali Project. prd: Bandai Visual, Bee Train, Production I.G. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

In the distant future, Earth has been destroyed and humanity survives in domed cities on Mars. Vital resources are dwindling, birth rates have fallen to zero (compare to Armitage III), and the end of human civilization is in sight. Volk, the ruler of Mars, presides over a society where childlike androids or “dolls” have been created to fulfill the population’s need for children. He exploits the people’s need for a hero and the bread-and-circuses principle to make rationing a national sport. Scarce resources are awarded to the people of a residence dome if their champions defeat opponents in an arena. Meanwhile, warrior-woman Layla Ashley flees from Volk’s minions with dollmaker Speedy and Nei, a doll regarded as the “child of destiny” by the government. Layla refuses to cooperate with Volk because he was the instigator of the purge that killed her family; she would prefer to avenge their deaths, in the arena or out, whichever works. V

AWOL *

1998. TV series. dir: Toshifumi Kawase. scr: Koji Miura, Toshiyasu Nagata, Chika Hojo, Atsuhiro Tomioka. des: Isamu Imakake, Wataru Abe. ani: Yoshihiro Yamaguchi, Masahiko Murata. mus: Shiro Hamaguchi, Kazuhiro Wakabayashi. prd: BeStock, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 13 eps.

Turncoat scientist Dr. Culten turns off perimeter defenses around a military compound just long enough for the Solomon terrorist group to get in and steal several powerful PDB missiles. To demonstrate their zeal, the terrorists detonate one of the bombs, though they do not make any demands. Meanwhile, within the government, a scandal breaks out when it is discovered that Dr. Culten’s secret orbital defense network, constructed without presidential approval, can be turned into a weapon and used against its makers. An elite team of commandos sets off to stop the Solomon terrorists before things can get any worse.

From early scenes of partygoers, lovers, and a child blissfully unaware that they are about to be blown to smithereens, to the introduction of a rookie character who might as well have “Dead Meat” tattooed on his forehead, AWOL is a low-rent Cold War thriller. Former X-Japan member Hide’s theme song was the best-selling anime single of 1998, but this poor effort is otherwise doomed to obscurity. The fact that it’s set in space amid a confederation of worlds seems like a last-minute idea designed to justify it as an anime production, though even the cost-cutting tactic of drawing the spaceships and explosions still falls down when faced with such a low budget as this. Given millions of dollars and a Hollywood star, this would have been just as bad, but it would have made it onto a thousand screens as a successor to Broken Arrow and Under Siege. In the anime world, however, it is simply below par, and few are likely to be fooled by half-hearted sci-fi design fudges like turning the Pentagon into a Triangle.

Ayane’s High Kick *

1996. jpn: Ayane-chan no High Kick. Video. dir: Takahiro Okao. scr: Isa Shizuya. des: Kazuo Tatsugawa. ani: Kazuo Tatsugawa. mus: Norio Inoue. prd: Nikkatsu. 30 mins. x 2 eps.

Ayane secretly wants to be a female wrestler but is swindled into fighting as a kickboxer. Despite opposition from the ineffectual school principal (as if expulsion would scare this sports addict), Ayane throws herself into the world of professional martial arts, fighting off a roster of surprisingly stupid opponents, a large number of whom seem amazed that people actually get hurt in the ring.

Originally announced as a six-part series, Ayane’s High Kick was canceled after only two episodes. To excuse the cartoonish design, the script tries to play for laughs, piling on dozens of Japanese sporting in-jokes that fall flat. What’s left is a predictable rags-to-riches tale, ripping off Tomorrow’s Joe and Aim for the Ace without any of their charm. The Japanese version relied heavily on a voice cast that included Yuko Miyamura (Asuka from Evangelion, in another fiery red-haired role), but this was not enough to redeem it. Matters are not helped by a truly awful English-language dub that features a cast who cannot even pronounce each other’s names, with only Debbie Rabbai as Ayane producing anything like a decent performance.

Azuki-chan

1995. TV series. dir: Masayuki Kojima. scr: Shunichi Yukimuro. des: Yoshiaki Kawajiri. ani: Katsuyoshi Iizuka. mus: Akira Tsuji. prd: Madhouse, NHK2. 30 mins. x 117 eps.

When someone mispronounces her name at age eight, Azusa Nogami finds herself stuck with the nickname Azuki (“Red Bean”). Now in the fifth grade, she makes friends with a transfer student, Yunosuke, when he overhears another boy teasing her and can’t help remembering such an original name. Azuki swiftly develops a crush on Yunosuke but doubts he will ever look at her as anything more than a friend, especially with the irritating Ken and Makoto eternally scheming to ruin everything for her.

Based on the comic serialized in Nakayoshi by writer Tsukasa Akimoto and artist Chika Kimura, Azuki-chan’s timeless school romance has found great popularity across Europe and East Asia while preparing a whole generation back in Japan for the more cynical yet similarly entertaining high school antics of His and Her Circumstances.

Azumanga Daioh *

2002. TV series. dir: Hiroshi Nishikiori. scr: Ichiro Okochi. des: Yasuhisa Kato. ani: Takashi Wada. mus: Masaki Kurihara. prd: Genco, JC Staff, TV Tokyo. 25 mins. x 26 eps. (TV) 5 mins. x 130 eps.

Ten-year-old Chiyo Mihama is so bright she’s skipped five grades and is just starting high school; but it will take more than genius-level brains and industrial-strength cuteness to survive the strange classmates and even stranger faculty. She joins Miss Yukari Tanizaki’s English class and finds a teacher who loves drinking, snoozing, and video games. Yukari’s best friend Minamo ‘Nyamo’ Kurosawa teaches Phys. Ed., and seems very cool, except for her hidden fear that she’ll never find a husband. Mr. Kimura, the classics teacher, lives in his own little world and only emerges to gawk at the girls—the reason he took up teaching. The result is an enthusiastically nostalgic look at school days from the point of view of both teachers and students, over a three-year timescale that rockets past; with only five minutes per sequence, the seasonal events and examinations whip round before you know it.

Half a dozen girls become Chiyo’s friends and mentors, including the shy Sakaki, the nervous Osaka, and the overenthusiastic Tomo. The challenges of their school life have a strong vein of the surreal, and the series’ humor is of the love-it-or-hate-it variety. Even Chiyo’s cat starts talking, in a nod to I Am a Cat—just one of a slew of cultural and pop-cultural references buried in the madcap onslaught of gags. The format of the show is unusual—five unrelated segments in each episode, which were also broadcast as individual mini-episodes, give each of the multiple characters their own moment in the spotlight. They also tie in to the original format of Kiyohiko Azuma’s manga, a four-panel strip in the tradition of Sazae-san or Peanuts. Technically, the serial’s first anime appearance was as a second feature to the Sakura Wars movie, when a frantic six-minute edit called AD: The Very Short Movie was screened as an advertisement for the forthcoming TV series. The series also had an online presence, in which mini-episodes with different voice actors were available for download. Based on the manga by Kiyohiko Azuma in Dengeki Daioh magazine, hence “Azu-manga Daioh.”

Azusa Will Help

2004. jpn: Azusa Otetsudai Shimasu. Video. dir: Hajime Kamegaki. scr: Yuko Kawabe. des: Satoe Nakajima, Kazuya Hiratsuka. ani: N/C. mus: N/C. prd: Thomas Entertainment, Tokyo Movie Shinsha. 45 mins.

In the near future, when robots are used in many aspects of everyday life, the students of Karugamo High School decide that it’s time for them to improve the performance of their baseball team by buying a robot player. However, in a cliché that goes all the way back to Doraemon, they are unable to afford anything except a model designed to be a housemaid. Predictable sports, maid, underdog, and school high jinks ensue in an adaptation of a script by Yuko Kawabe, which won the second Animax screenplay contest—compare to Super Kuma-chan.