#274: The Big O (1999–2003)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Kazuyoshi Katayama

Screenplay: Chiaki J. Konaka, Keiichi Hasegawa, Masanao Akahoshi and Shin Yoshida

Voice Cast: Mitsuru Miyamoto as Roger Smith, Akiko Yajima as R. Dorothy Wayneright, Motomu Kiyokawa as Norman Burg, Tesshō Genda as Dan Dastun, Unshō Ishizuka as Alex Rosewater, Emi Shinohara as Angel, Gorō Naya as Gordon Rosewater, Hōchū Ohtsuka as Beck Gold, Katsunosuke Hori as Michael Seebach / Schwarzwald, Issei Futamata as Alan Gabriel (Season Two)

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

The Big O begins with Batman. The animation studio Sunrise was commissioned to help on the legendary Batman: The Animated Series (1992-5), and in the creation of The Big O, you have a work paying tribute to this and Western popular culture like film noir films. They were also clearly inspired by older manga and anime such as Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Giant Robo, which is important as director Kazuyoshi Katayama and others on this series worked on Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1992-8), an straight-to-video production which adapted the source manga but also a tribute to Yokoyama's other manga, including characters from even period tales being placed into this sci-fi narrative. The final show inspired from these two sides of influence in The Big O however could have ended up a different way though. It was also a series which managed the near impossible, of how it was not actually a success in its first season in Japanese broadcast, to the point it was cancelled, but was able to continue and finish the narrative for a second series because of its importation to the West and success on Cartoon Network’s Toonami slot on television, commissioning the second series when it did well and the abrupt end the first season came to be.

The Big O is set in Paradigm City, where forty years earlier a cataclysm left it seemingly the last city, part protected in domes and everyone forgetting memories of the past. Enough survived for a proper urban civilization to still function, and latent memories still allow figures to operate even giant robots. One such figure is the Bruce Wayne of this world, Roger Smith a former member of the military police who is now a “negotiator”, a cross between what you would expect for the title and a detective. Good at his job but with eccentricities, like everyone working for him having to wear black and refusing to use a gun on the job, he also has latent memories that gave him access to the titular O, a member of multiple “megadeus“, a giant robot clearly inspired by the comic character Popeye in the piston arms as much as a tribute to the likes of Giant Robo and Tetsujin 28, especially as like those robots, Smith uses a wristwatch communicator to bring him when needed to his location.

His Alfred the butler is Norman, who is also a cool butler, with a clear military history, and calm enough to be cooking dinner whenever Roger is on the job knowing his boss will return at the right time for a fight to enjoy it. The best side character though has to be Dorothy Wainwright, and that is in mind this is one of the strongest casts in general for an anime series, so that is a high bar. Her full name is R. Dorothy Wainwright, and that is explicitly referencing how Isaac Asimov, the legendary sci-fi author, had androids name themselves, as she is one of the few androids in the cast, though explicitly the one who looks entirely human and seemingly is. The show, among tropes it explores, includes how these figures are so close in seemingly having freewill, such as her deadpan rebuttals of Roger’s moments of heroics, that they bleed the lines of what consciousness. She is also just an awesome female character to have, with the amount of times she is threatened with being hacked or destroyed in the series meaning a lot more because she is a perfect foil to a great lead, introduced over the two part first episodes for the show. The English dub for this series is as well regarded as the Japanese one, but I have to confess as much the virtue for this character is Akiko Yajima's robotic yet almost human sense of bluntness, making the fact her most prolific voice acting role funny in a great way, being Shinnosuke "Shin-chan" Nohara, the lead of the hugely popular Crayon Shin-chan franchise. Whilst bowing out as the lead voice for the character eventually, the fact this is the same actress who played a sarcastic and scatological obsessed five year old boy from the first anime adaptations in 1992 to 2018 is evidence of the talent of a lot of voice actors and actresses in their diverseness.

That cast is one of the best aspects of the show, even when I will admit there are some visible pacing issues in the plot that will be addressed later in this review. Office Dastun, who knew Roger Smith in the military police force and stayed friends, is a great side character who has a lot of angst to also work with, as the military police he is part of, the closest to enforcement, is under the pocket of the shady group who run Paradigm City, and are powerless when they need to constantly bring in Smith and The Big O to deal with threats they cannot even with tanks and military weaponry.  Antagonists are the same: Alex Rosewater is perfect as the sinister head of Paradigm City, given more by the second series as he collects fallen foes of Smith’s, resurrecting the robots and unlocking their memories for nefarious means. Beck Gold, who looks like a parody of Lupin the 3^rd, is a lovable git even if his constant crimes and smugness definitely makes him a villain, and thankfully he gets a few episodes for himself, including a parody of Japanese super robots, and even stays by the end of series two when you would presume he would stay merely a tertiary figure. Then there are the more ambiguous figures. One, the femme fatale for Roger Smith named Angel, will become a much more complex character, seemingly a “foreigner” in a world without other countries, by the end an integral part to the complicated twists that key screenwriter Chiaki J. Konaka set up. The other is the one character who should have had more time devoted to him, though thankfully in a form he gets to the ending of his goals: that will be a former journalist who became Schwarzwald, seemingly a villain in his mission to cause mayhem but, standing out for his bandaged visage, he is a figure who will use any means to learn the truth of Paradigm City and open the public’s eyes to the reality of the world. He emphasizes how, from the get-go for all the episodic stories, the huge concern in the series' narrative is how this amnesiac city came to be and what is the truth of its origins, which Schwarzwald is obsessed with learning.

Schwarzwald‘s smaller role does present the issues with The Big O, that whilst it leads to a proper conclusion, and that I already view this as a gem from the era it was made, it suffered in terms of pacing itself out and telling said story. When I first saw the series, it was only season one I had access to, which has episodic stories I now enjoy more but were clearly the backdrop for a larger story already being drip fed. Infamously, when cancelled and seemingly gone for good, the first series ended on an abrupt “To Be Continue” moment without any chance for anything to be explained. Sadly when I first saw this, the Bandai DVD releases in the mid-2000s in Britain, through their Beez Entertainment arm in Europe, never released the second series, leaving this with some disappointment. Thankfully we did get that second series in the first place even if it never had a UK physical release, one I have now seen and was able to finally complete the story as supposed to be told, all because of this being one of those cases, in its form getting good ratings on Cartoon Network, where a Western company invested in the franchise seeing potential for more.

Set up in the final episode of season one, where Roger locates Rosewater's father, the founder of the city now going senile on a tomato farm in the countryside, and finds repressed memories are starting to cause him to question his position, it sets up Season Two where Chiaki J. Konaka wrote all the stories, rather than season one where three others contributed stories too. It however also leads to a conclusion itself which did not allow itself to breath, and all of this is entirely due to the final episode feeling rushed. The irony is not lost that, for a series I will praise to the high heavens for so much, the one caveat I have to make is that the final reveal, just the last ten or so minutes of the final episode, is likely to peeve or confuse a few people, and I say this as a person who likes and would normally defend the more unconventional and vague story reveals found in Konaka's other work, where they feel deliberate and not abrupt as here. Some may find the second series too esoteric when a more pulpy narrative twist would make sense, but for me, it is the case that everything works in logic, but that this literally rushed the final moments for what is a very existential story. [Huge Spoiler] That being that this literally all a stage, all an artificial construct but having gained existence and wanting to still exist [Spoilers End]. Thankfully so much works up to the middle of the last episode that means the ending does not ruin the show. So much before is set up well that it thankfully does not become a crushing disappointment for a show with a lot on its mind, merely one you are going to need to stop after finishing the series and digest carefully. Even by those last episodes a lot is already set up to the show's create to expose the real story, this being not a world of amnesia, people being killed for returning memories at one point, but that there is also by the end people who find their memories are being recreated on stages, and that Angel herself becomes far more important as mentioned to how the world works without realizing it. It is really a case that, for someone who even enjoyed Konaka's more vague endings for work like Malice @Doll (2001) that an exposition dump or a more visually explained conclusion for the last episode was really needed.

Thankfully so much did work, and that includes the plot build ups and the one-off stories. Stories of Dorothy adopting a cat in Season One, with its bittersweet end, or the abrupt Christmas episode involving a demon tree now stand out more for when they are connected to a story which, barring that final lack of clarity, get so much right. Even when Konaka took over the scripts for season two fully, he has his moments. to the season, Smith so unconfident his existential crisis literally throws him into an alternative reality of Paradigm City as a homeless man, is inspired as the Japanese robot parody is, the later more so for becoming as a work from a Japanese animation studio a parody of Japanese archetypes. Even plot growth works, between the growing involving of a splinter group of foreigners Angel is connected to, or the ways this can combine the episodic stories with this, such as a threat against all androids with memories like Dorothy which allows a story involving one android detective being brought in as an awkward buddy cop partner with Dastun.

It is a world too with so much rich detail that you do get some proper denouement over the second series, as Rosewater becomes more megalomaniacal and wanting to become God, and the sides clashing over it becoming more prominent, also introducing a season two only character, Alan Gabriel, as a suitably nasty sociopath on his side. It is also helped by the style being incredible through the two series. Inspired by Western works, and very clearly inspired by Batman in the Art Deco style let alone the character designs, it is a sumptuous looking series both visually and audibly, mixing its metropolis location and combining it by a jazz heavy score by Toshihiko Sahashi. Also of note for his own musical compositions is Rui Nagai, though his work sadly had to be re-dubbed over due to how heavily it paid tribute to other music. For the first broadcasts, season two used a piece indebted to British 1970 sci-fi series UFO's own theme, which was replaced quickly. Sadly that even included season one's awesome opening theme, which was on the DVD release I had, a Queen tribute specifically indebted to their song Flash for the 1980s Flash Gordon film, also eventually axed. Thankfully, Rui Nagai composed Big-O! Show Must Go On, as a replacement to both, which is awesome in its own way as a surf riff guitar song with a bad ass solo.

As a giant robot show as well, all this provides a distinct attitude for a title in the genre, especially as the aesthetic style is distinct. Batman and film noir are very distinct touches for a mecha show to have, feeling close to what Tim Burton brought to the Batman franchise with the 1989 film, which influenced the Batman animated series. Even its tribute to its own country's mecha stories is distinct though, as this also a world where these robots feel like giant tanks slowly lunging about, and where alongside its distinct “typewriter-punk” mechanics has details like how the robot punches are literally piston powered. Thankfully The Big O, despite not being a success for the first Japanese broadcasts, had its day in the sun eventually, with tie-ins like an audio drama, inclusion in the Super Robot Wars video game franchise with other cult mecha anime, and a lot of models/figures both for the Big O himself and its cast. It is a franchise I wish was better known in the United Kingdom, as nothing in this barring its final ten minutes rushing too fast would ever be challenged as being divisive. After my initial disappointment with the first series a long time ago, seen in its full form it is with positivity that they could have continued the story a little longer and avoided ever making a bad episode, still getting to the eventual final with everything as good as it was. If anything, this is the kind of show you introduce to someone curious about giant robot anime, and they could be made fans of the genre just from what this does differently whilst paying tribute to the genre's tropes, which is as high praise as I could write for this.

#257: Zone of the Enders - Dolores, I (2001)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Tetsuya Watanabe

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

Based on the Zone of the Enders franchise by Konami

Voice Cast: Tesshō Genda as James Links; Houko Kuwashima as Dolores; Mitsuru Miyamoto as Leon Links; Narumi Hidaka as Noel Links; Chō as Baan Dorfloum; Fumihiko Tachiki as Sameggi; Yumiko Nakanishi as Rebecca Hunter; Takehito Koyasu as Nathph Pleminger; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Dr. Rachel Links

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

The opening rock theme proclaims the lead may be able to defeat God for all he knows, and this pretty much establishes the tone for what Zone of the Enders the series is. In contrast to the straight to video prologue which began this television adaptation of the Zone of the Enders video game franchise – Idolo (2001), which was a more serious set up for key plot points to this twenty six episode series – Dolores is a much more light hearted, more overtly comedic work whose serious moments are more in tone to an action film. Certainly, whilst with key plot lines also tied to the first 2001 video game, which are not needed for context but appear, this feels a tone different from the other works in this franchise, introducing us to James Links. As a lead he is one you would encounter, as a middle aged man nearing his fifties in futuristic times, piloting his space ship drunk and eyeing up the women. He is however someone with a tragic back-story, with adult children disconnected from him and his wife missing, with the fact he is from Earth and she from Mars part of the world building, as this is a world where the planets despite being both with humans hostile to each other in contrast to their love which crosses literal space. There is also the fact that he is a transporter whose secret cargo will drag him into finding his wife Rachel, said to still be alive after the events of Idolo, and on the run for a murder he did not commit.

It is awesome to have an older male lead, when the joke even for video games from Japan let alone that someone near their thirties or so qualifies them as a grizzled veteran, making this character voiced by Tesshō Genda, a veteran from the seventies who became Arnold Schwarzenegger’s official Japanese dubbing voice, a nice change of pace. It is one of the touches to a story, whilst with clichés, that manages a lot of great things just in terms of a memorable lead, not shy from James being ridiculous with a kitten for an estranged daughter Noel Links’ birthday and a mysterious cargo, pulling him into a conflict between planets, which introduces the titular Dolores, an orbital frame mecha with great power, sentience…but the mind of a teen girl with flights of whimsy who starts calling him “uncle”. Whilst humorous throughout, this with the Zone of the Enders world premise does set up key plot points  - of a racism against Martian born humans from Earth which has caused Martians to secretly plan an extreme coup de trait which will harm both planets, the orbital frames of immense power – even if one of your primary leads is a robot who acts like a naïve niece of the lead, even crushing on him, and a forty nine year old male protagonist who, in attempting to reconnect with him adult children, forced on the lam eventually with him, reads a book of becoming a better father over and over like a sacred scroll. Tragically some family dynamic is lost – Noel, in contrast to her stuffy and gullible brother Leon, is set up as the tough one of the pair, working at the construction site, despite loving her new kitten, only to be sidelined in this factor at some moments – but this show is helped considerably by its characters. A huge virtue coming into this production, with no knowledge of even the games, was that it manages something as simple but difficult to pull off as actually having interesting characters and a world to work with, even if there are plot points here found in many other productions.

In terms of video game adaptations, which are notoriously not well regarded, this is a surprise to see virtually forgotten as, whilst it does play to tropes of this genre, and from Sunrise, a studio behind the Gundam franchise and a lot of mecha shows, this does actually manage to be a solid adaptation. It manages to be respectful and actually create an engaging show even if it clearly takes liberties with the source, in having the comedic undertone, and the idiosyncratic take on sentient artificial intelligence where, alongside the trope of a duality between a wholesome side and the destructive alter ego, your titular lead, especially as she does all the episode preview narration, is a whimsical figure of flights of fancy even if capable of destroying everything in sight. This is more so when she learns the virtue of reading books like Cinderella, and tries to learn by herself how to dance as in episode nine (Lost in Space), or her way of hacking data files envisioning herself in a dress, James in a pink bunny suit, and the hacking interpreted as a fairy tale dream of stealing eggs.

As the story goes, searching for Rachel Links, a key character from Idolo, is of importance, as are the cops after James back from Earth, one of them explicitly a racist against Martians who will even deprive a child of her helmet and oxygen in his psychotic obsession with chasing James down for a murder he was innocent of, as is a character returning from Idolo, becoming the main villain if with the baggage of how they came to be and the problems this world has explaining how he became this villain. There are also requisite child pilots, though thankfully they make sense in context. They are part of the story in which we see, as a result of Earth’s iron grip on Mars and their cruelty, those wanting to find their independence have also unfortunately created those who just want to see Earth burn, even if it destroys Mars by proxy, among the teen trio Rebecca the one member pilot whose only “father” figure is challenged by seeing James’ more heroic fatherly actions, and is the one who represents them fully in character dynamics.

Set five years after the “Deimos Affair”, what is the narrative of the Idolo OVA, this continues the world of Z.O.E., in tiny details which do add character and making one able to invest in this story and producing ideas, even if never seen again, that feed the imagination as sci-fi should. Moving “voice” photos to space catapults that allow fast wormhole-like travel between worlds, or the Sargasso, space garbage dumps for illegally dumping materials by companies around Mars’ orbit. It is all fascinating even if for one episode stories, especially when we get to Mars. Attempting to make Mars habitable is one of the more interesting things, even fantastical, for this think piece burst of imagination, such as Earth creating seaweed which is enormous and producing giant air bubbles to create a breathable atmosphere, famers of giant corn, but also environmental normalists wanting to return Mars to its normal state. An entire new show just looking at Mars would have been compelling from the little we see here, such as a brief section about an abandoned Martian theme park with stereotypical “aliens” as decaying decorations. Sunrise also has an obsession with space elevators, something returned to with Gundam Reconguista in G (2014-15), a maligned and not well regarded entry if for me an entertainingly weird one, as one for Earth in this story is the huge McGuffin in terms of Earth’s peril, one of the more over-the-top science fiction pieces of the show, alongside a fabled ore on Mars which is magical in its abilities in building combat robots, that nonetheless still entice in what they bring up in ideas.

There are layers of cheese at times here – with the cheesiest way to stop Martian and Earth soldiers fighting each other – and until the last episodes, comedy does prevent the story from getting too serious for what is a studio, in Sunrise, used to mecha stories to the point they could produce this one effortlessly. There was clearly a lot of fun here on the production, with just the references alone, from the Martian racist cop figure of Baan starting to call James Links instead “John Carter” after Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ seminal Mars jumping pulp hero, or the person who clearly wanted to name episodes after films like “Total Recall” and “Die Hard”. I highly doubt one episode is named after the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Red Desert (1964), even if I wish that is the case, but episode twelve is literally Die Hard (and has that as the title) on a Martial colony ocean lab; the difference is that it has Bruce Willis replaced by a man trying to save the day with a mecha who has a platonic relationship with him and a cat, even joking about it not being set at Christmas.

Individual episodes really do stand out here, even if the whole builds the story well. Episode four, Final Countdown, has the family attempting to escape Earth with the help of a former astronaut, in his old age still wanting to get to Mars on an old NASA spaceship, set at Cape Canaveral at Florida in an abandoned museum, whilst Family Game, episode seventeen, finally brings James together with the man behind the parenting book he has been learning from, a fun episode with the obvious twist being James has to be the one to offer the parenting advice. The tone even by the end is lighter hearted despite with the raising of its stakes, with comedy beats in-between the impending threat, like a gag to cut through the tension before returning to it. With no expectations whatsoever for this it is really strange, tragically damning, that barring ADV Films releasing this back in the day in the West, this show disappeared with a whimper. It was a production I had never heard of, despite the video game franchise still having good regard especially for Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (2003), making its vanishing act from the list of Sunrise releases from this era, and mecha series in the 2000s, a real surprise.  I can guess that tonally, with what this does, this would not have necessarily won fans over for the games, but as its own creation, this manages the one thing that so many video game anime do not succeed with, which is actually be solid in a form in quality and managing to actually stick out to be a good show over its twenty six episodes.

#254: Zone of the Enders - 2167 Idolo (2001)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Tetsuya Watanabe

Screenplay: Shin Yoshida

Based on the videogame franchise by Konami

Voice Cast: Takehito Koyasu as Second Lieutenant Radium Lavans; Chiharu Tezuka as Viola; Houko Kuwashima as Dolores; Rumi Ochiai as Melissa; Yoshiko Sakakibara as Dr. Rachel Links

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

Idolo as a tie-in does suffer from the issue that, separated from its source, you are aware of the wider franchise it can grow with or lost virtue from, and the inherent concern that if the rest of the multi-media franchise is forgotten, these type of tie-ins rarely get re-released. Only months after this was released, the 2001 animated series Zone of the Enders: Dolores,i was already being broadcast, so there was a considerable push for adapting in animated form the world of Zone of the Enders, a videogame released that year in a big marketing push. Set in a future Earth and its relationship to other colonies, which Idolo deals with from the Martian colony, Z.O.E. as abbreviated was sold as a killer app from Konami for the Sony Playstation 2, a big cultural phenomenon within itself as a videogame machine riding the height of the original Playstation. Zone of the Enders even had Hideo Kojima as a collaborator, which would have hyped the game even in the West when it was released. Ironically though, the legacy of this franchise is more likely held by Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (2003), which was a much larger work in scale, length and virtues for critics, even having animated cut scenes sourced to studio GONZO.

Obviously, in context to this, Idolo is a tie-in meant to sell the first game as well as expand the story with a prologue, in this case setting up an enticing premise in its sleight original-video-animation length of fifty minutes. That it is produced by Sunrise, the Gundam creators and frequent studio for robot and mecha animation, offers an enticing prospect too this merely touches on. In the future, whilst we have colonised the galaxy there is also unfortunately bigotry, in this case to oppression of those humans born on Mars by Earth, who treat them as second class citizens least when it comes to their army on Mars even beating up Martian soldiers for fun, worse as being born on Martian gravity causes Earthlings to have an advantage in incredible strength. What is enticing to this anime, and is a slight spoiler, is knowledge that this is actually a prologue from the perspective of the future antagonists of the first video game. This sets up the BAHRAM, the military force that will invade and destroy the Jupiter colony the first game's lead survives, setting them up from the perspective that BAHRAM are the product of previous evils; colonial discrimination of the Earth forces sets forth those in this story, lead character and soldier Radium and the character of Viola, one of the more important characters herself from the first game, as those fighting back oppression only to become a destructive force in the future of the narrative. That in itself is really interesting, and this Idolo prologue in itself is tantalising in what you get as, whilst none of this is subtly told, it is a context distinct to tell this narrative from, as wishing to free themselves of the Earthlings, scientists on Mars are covertly developing the titular Idolo, a mecha built from the mysterious material Metatron, which presents a dangerous result both to how it influences the pilot and when the Earth forces catch wind of this machine, wanting to claim it for themselves.

As a piece of a full multi-media project, including that there is a twenty six episode television series which runs from Idolo, set before and after the 2001 game, Idolo does suffer from the fact that it is a slight story, where the scenario is  a prologue to a wider document. As a one-off by itself, I credit this with doing a lot to stand out; it does not, truthfully, have as much visual punch as one could wish for at times but including its bleak ending, which sets up the necessary context for later parts, it has a lot to admire. As a prologue to a larger work, it cannot go further, but beyond this there is a lot to admire in terms of the boldness of its story, as Radium's tale is there are someone being more controlled by the Idolo by its special properties, and simply the entire idea of this being a prologue to the antagonists of this franchise is something distinct, as it forces context of how even villainous figures can be moulded by similarly villainous acts, moral complexity something to admire when done like this and actually succeeding in its little form. Violet in particular, without additional context, would be left a character you wish was developed more, a figure harmed by the evils of the Earth forces, including being a victim as a child of "Space Radiation Sickness", causes by an Earth terrorist attack on Mars' colonies, but who even if a mere fragment has the fascination of where her arch is intended to go. Her emotional attachment to Radium, who brought her into the Special Forces after she tried attacking him on the street as a confused young woman, will become a huge emotional trajectory with the bleak outcome of this story, which does get even some visually striking aspects and a twisted bleakness when it involves the artificial intelligence taking personalities and a hallucinated wedding reception. Considering what the epilogue in the future brings up, and whom Violet comes in the franchise, a key antagonist for the first game and the franchise, and this proves one of Idolo's best aspects.

Even in terms of production, whilst the look and style of the show is not the most elaborate, it is solid, and the music especially by Hikaru Nanase is a stand out from this project, alongside "Kiss Me Sunlight" by Heart of Air as the ending theme a little gem, the group collaborators through this franchise.  Idolo is tethered to this franchise, with its director and key screenwriter continuing with the television series, and these adaptations are obscurer nowadays whilst the games were well regarded. The Zone of the Enders HD Collection in 2012 preserved both games, but it is Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, the sequel which continues this narrative, which clearly left a huge mark for many, including a remaster, called The 2nd Runner M∀RS, which was released in September 2018 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. This does place concern that Idolo is forgotten among this, which is a shame as, in terms of what it was meant to achieve, it does a commendable job. The series, which follows on with this its own prologue, is an entirely different narrative structure in length, and has new challenges as a long form narrative to deal with, but Idolo by itself, as the only one, would have been commendable as a one-off tie-in worth resurrecting.

#240: Starship Troopers (1988)

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Tetsurō Amino

Screenplay: Tsunehisa Ito and Shō Aikawa

Based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein

Voice Cast: Yasunori Matsumoto as Juan "Johnnie" Rico; Akira Kamiya as Sgt. Charles Zim; Hirotaka Suzuoki as Greg Patterson; Kazuhiko Inoue as Alphard "Kitten" Smith; Masahiro Anzai as Cherenkov; Mika Doi as Captain Yvette Deladrier; Rei Sakuma as Carmencita Ibañez; Saeko Shimazu as Claire; Shingo Hiromori as Sgt. Dunn

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I think you can sum up why few may know of the first adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 sci-fi novel, a six part animated straight-to-video production from the legendary Japanese studio Sunrise no less, from watching what is in some episodes the opening credits animation or the end credits one. It is of Carmencita, the lead female character and love interest for Johnnie Rico, the good old son from New Buenos Aries joining the Mobile Infantry, frolicking on the beach contrasted by a song sung in English called WE CAN MAKE IT by Tsunoda☆Hiro, with her even turning into a seagull at some point between constantly cutting to the avian figure multiple times flying. Nothing perfectly encapsulates Heinlein's tale of Earth protecting itself in the far future from giant insects than an inspiration eighties Japanese lounge song of believing yourself and jump cut transmogrification into another species.

Starship Troopers is a work I really know from Paul Verhoeven's 1997 film adaptation, which you need to take with a pinch of salt as it is the result of the transgressive Dutch filmmaker attempting to read the novel itself, hating it and giving up part of the way through, and the final film reflecting an unfaithful adaptation and a deliberate sabotage of the source's ideals¹. It is an epic which I was allowed to get away with seeing at a much more early age than one probably should, appreciated then as a sci-fi fiction spectacle from the time, and still admired as an adult. When I became an adult too, it was also so visible that a layer of satire, and even loading in fascist readings of the human characters, was there all alone adding to the fun of the film. For me, you cannot hate a film with the line "I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill them all!", but neither is this a faithful Starship Troopers adaptation, though the straight-to-video sequels attempted to move past the humour. More appropriate for a teenager was Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles (1999-2000), a CGI animated series which, just going from hazy memory, was an ambitious and admirable attempt at a serious sci-fi work, with a continuing narrative and even legitimately dangerous stakes for its cast, one I was glad to also see at this time and I have always wished to return to. Sunrise's adaptation though, even next to Verhoeven's, is weird in that until the sixth episode, you never get a proper moment of Rico, our lead, in the battlefield, whilst most of the show is a science fiction tale of learning to adapt to being in the army, not Starship Troopers' main story.

This is weirder as Starship Troopers presents an important influence on anime. Only seen in the third film in the live action adaptations, 2008's Marauder, the novel includes personal combat suits, giant robots for individuals to pilots, arguably among the earliest in science fiction. Those suits, and how publications of the source novel in Japan had illustrations of them designed, have a legitimate claim to having influenced a certain section of anime science fiction when it came to designs for personal combat suits², which makes Sunrise's decision to adapt the book at this time for them enticing to consider how it could have gone differently. Starship Troopers the anime (not to be confused with Shinji Aramaki's Starship Troopers: Invasion (2012) and Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars (2017)) is a surprise in how the power suits and combat with the extraterrestrial threat in this adaptation is kept to about a minimum in favour of a story of Rico's progression through the Mobile Infantry to being combat ready, which is an acquired taste for taking up most of this three hour narrative altogether.

It is compelling, mostly because I have had such a low bar of expectation to this mini-series when I first heard of it. It is fascinating as this mix of almost light hearted drama, in which Rico and his band of miscreant fellow soldiers, from one with headphones always on to another obsessed with a nude photo of his older girlfriend he keeps with him, try to survive through the gruelling training with the Mobile Infrantry and try their hardest, only to cut to how Buenos Aires is attacked by the alien menace, leading to loss in Rico's family, or when cast die. The opening and ending songs, also one called BELIEVE by Tsunoda☆Hiro, also include animation set to Rico against the cosmos like a space exploration yearning towards the deep space, which does not suggest the peril of war which the source was about. Even Paul Verhoeven's piss take was, on the surface, an epic science fiction action film full of action that could still be appreciated for that. Able to get away with the gore it had alongside his interest in sexuality and brazen vulgarity, the bug menace in that film could decimate and render a human being into pieces, and the spectacle even with nineties CGI needing to be used is still impressive decades on.

The one sense of threat is in how, deciding against the bug aliens of the novel, these aliens are freakish in a credible way in their anime interpretation. Like crustacean, or something from the bottom of the sea, mixed with living pink bacterium, they are freakish and compelling as a truly alien form, which to travel in space (and even create their "bases" of operations) form together into mass of pink entity and can split off, including latch pieces onto human ships to than attack innocents on Earth. There is, as a result, enough here even as a lower budgeted production to have made this more of an action or intergalactic work, but instead emphasis was placed on the drama. This feels less like a compromise, or that this show was cancelled before it could progress, but a deliberate choice. This choice is going to make the show off-putting for some, simply because most of the 1988 Starship Troopers is a military training drama which, in context of its world and source, is a mistake for only three hours of a work, even if the scenes of contemplation or Rico being back on Earth, even fighting with local ruffians at a bar, were entertaining for me at least if for no one else.

I found it interesting in spite of this, even if details of the show do show a foot forward was not always the best in other areas as well, such as how, whilst the figure who keeps Rico strong, Carmencita was unfortunately drawn with eyes that can burn holes into people even when she is relaxed. Without the dramatic tension this animated work eventually brought in with the vast number of aerial combat scenes still within it too, what this feels like was Sunrise were taking a page from what Area 88 (1985-6) did perfectly, in terms of emphasising the human drama first, but here with the scene that it takes too much of the adaptation, even if I respect what this is as a strange curiosity. This is stranger knowing that half this series, arguably at some of the more interesting moments, is written by Shō Aikawa; infamous at one point for being the man penning the likes of Urotsukidôji to Violence Jack at this point, he became a well regarded screenwriter in the decades after, and he would have been the sort of person who would have cut to the chase and made this a more pulpy and dynamic work, alongside the virtues he showed as a writer in his career, with the sense here that was a choice left off the table.

The turnover between episodes, from October to December 1988³, also sadly suggests that the production was under the gun, undercutting the potential for the elaborate spectacle this adaptation could have provided. But this did not hurt anyone. This was just a script co-written by Shō Aikawa, who was working with Tsunehisa Ito, a prolific writer from anime before this adaptation as well such as Sherlock Hound (1984-5). Director Tetsurō Amino is prolific and would go on to his biggest work with Macross 7 as a franchise; starting with the 1994 TV series, this franchise entry, where music is literally the weapon in its take on the science-fiction and music from the Macross franchise, is one of the largest in quantity of material and did well. Sunrise is, well, Sunrise, prolific and making Gundam and non-Gundam shows and animation to the current day, and Robert A. Heinlein's source text, beyond the Paul Verhoven film, has had other adaptations even into video games. (There are the Shinji Aramaki anime films too, but that is for another day.) Suffice to say, no one lost any sleep about this barring the lost promise of an eighties hand drawn and lavish Starship Troopers adaptation from Sunrise, who were big even then, which is a disappointment. It is not going to cause me to lose sleep when, knowing this was the warning about this show, I came with nothing expectations and found joy here in spite of the creative decisions.

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1) Triple Dutch: Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi trilogy, written Adam Smith and Owen Williams for Empire Online, published on February 12th 2014.

2) In Pursuit of the Powered Suit: The Class of '83, written by Sean O'Mara for Zimmerit, published on July 14th 2022.

3) Anime New Network's Episode listings for Starship Troopers.

#233: Angel Links (1999)

 

Studio: Sunrise

Director: Yuji Yamaguchi

Screenplay: Jirō Takayama, Masaharu Amiya and Yasuko Kobayashi

Voice Cast: Ryoka Yuzuki as Meifon Li; Atsuko Tanaka as Valeria; Hikaru Midorikawa as Kousei Hida; Kazuo Hayashi as Leon; Kenji Utsumi as Duuz

Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles

 

I came to Angel Links with no knowledge this series from Sunrise had never existed, that this was a work set in the same world as Outlaw Star (1998), a series with flaws but one with a huge amount of virtues that I admired, able to overcome those flaws to become something special and see why it gained a fan base in the West when it came to the Cartoon Network Toonami slot. Sadly, adapting both a one volume manga by Takehiko Itō, the original creator of Outlaw Star, and a light novel by Ibuki Hideaki, I can see now why I had never heard of Angel Links, but not wishing to just damn the production. For whatever reason, the production does not gel despite nothing being inherently amiss in the plan of how this goes on. The one immediate issue, and a huge one to its detriment, is a really simple mistake, that thirteen episodes, whilst it should be long enough, really is not in the context of a series, which you need to carefully use.

The titular Angel Links is a giant ship of a private escort and protection firm who provide free outer space defence from pirates, headed by a sixteen year old girl named Meifon Li, taking over from her late grandfather as a group with comrades. Two of them, a Dragonite (a dragon humanoid of a combat species) named Duuz, and a human woman named Valeria, made a cameo in one episode of Outlaw Star, episode 19, with no additional context for them barring being on the side of security forces against pirates, which makes this a fascinating mirror to have created. This is Meifon Li's story however, entirely hers as the centre of its main narrative thrust, and a figure vastly different from how Outlaw Star, fully an ensemble cast, nonetheless had a cocky fiery male lead, whilst Meifon Li is marketable for a different reason.

It is creepy she is explicitly sixteen as, frankly, her costume design and her silhouette is explicitly with sex appeal, her design exaggerated (and sometimes) depicted with an eroticism, alongside the fact that, including a cat-bat thing named Taffei as a pet which can turn into a sword, even her character design stands out alongside having the most plot, leaving everyone else decidedly the background side characters despite some background narratives for a couple. Meifon's past is marked from the first episode, as there is a grave in a cemetery there marking her death at seventeen whilst she is still alive, progressive a sword of Damocles over her head. The show for its first few episodes though is very lightweight and comedic, Angels Links an example of how the last episode is alien to the first in progression and tone.

It takes a lot of build for just thirteen episodes to get ahead with this plot, very episodic for the first quarter. It starts as a broad show, if with the touch that, unlike Outlaw Star, the crew of Angel Links are more inclined to obliterate space pirates into dust with their super beam cannon. It has cartoonish villains for episodes, where the rival president of another protection firm, hiring mercenaries to snuff them out, is a stereotypical evil large man with a pet pig, or one joke which was funny in episode 2 with mob bosses, one eating sundaes and the other spaghetti, where their minions are eating the same in unison on mass before an explosive argument transpires. The one figure who does carry over from these first episodes though, introduced in episode one, is Leon Lou, who becomes very important as a business man rescued by Angel Links. There is a potential romance with Meifon Li, all in spite of the obvious issue with her age and that her back-story, and its secrets, is interlink with him and become central to the proper drama.

Honestly the rinse repeat nature of these early episodes, very episodic, do reveal the huge problems with this show, that for all the animation budget still there, the bombastic opening and closing themes, and that the story of Meifon Li is meant to be eventually a sombre one where she even questions who she is, Angel Links takes too long to get anywhere. The tone of the first half going into the more serious later half has a lot to get through, [Huge Spoiler] that our female protagonist is an android, built from the real her by her grandfather who was killed, given the memories and the function as a figure with a temporary lifespan to kill Leon Lou, who is a space pirate connected to him in the past [Spoilers End]. The issue is that it is absolutely undercut by this feeling like it should have been twenty four episodes like Outlaw Star was, but even under thirteen episodes, most of the episodes of this do not feel structured to make this work, or that this even with the episodic episodes do not stand out.

And, honestly, most of the drama just being ordinary in how it was executed, saying a lot that the stand out episode from this entire episode for me was none of the drama but episode 4, LiEF〜Living Ether Flier〜, the one which feels like an Outlaw Star episode or, to give Angel Links a chance outside its shadow, one which feels like an exploration of the world itself. It follows "LIEFs", either absorbing living spaceships which are effectively sci-fi space whales, an endangered species protected and watched by tourists when they travel with their young as incredible ethereal behemoths, but are targets for poachers for dragon stones in the body, a fuel source, or in the episode itself for a presumed immortality remedy. This episode works, as a more comedic story which yet expands the world beyond the stars, with a completely unnatural form in the centre, and with space action still a central part, action set pieces which stand out against a legitimately fantastical concept that it compelling.

The episode afterwards however, The Rain upon the Stars, manages to reveal so many of its flaws, including its weight on importance on Meifon's tragedy, instantly in just the episode afterwards. Episode five introducing a female space pirate named Jesia, and leads to the male left hand man Kosei Hida and his habit of winning women over becoming a flaw he is meek enough to feel guilty about, especially as it is explicit he is smitten over his captain Meifon. Episode five pretty much has Kosei bumping into multiple ex-girlfriends when trying to appease Jesia, who is fixated on him, but the episode's twist fully exposes the problems with Angel Links in its lack of weight, in that Jesia after being introduced is killed in the same episode, which is more out of place when the killer looks like T-Hawk, a Street Fighter beat-em-up character, undercutting the emotion fully. It emphasises, back with Outlaw Star, how that earlier show had a surprising lack of characters that died in that show, even grunts, and those who did had impact. There is also the fact this tries to cram a dynamic narrative into its length with Meifon which is as equally rushed.

There is enough here to stand out - between episodes 6, trying to tackle the back-story of Angel Links itself, which is interesting, and includes the dangers of attacking with ruthlessness, and episode 7 where Meifong's secrets even unknown to herself become more prominent. There is even another interesting candidate for the best episode, another lighter hearted one involving the Outsiders, vagrant pirates without ships who formed a mercenary group underground ran by a figure named Cyrus, again another which is expanding the world and the universe in interesting ways. By its ending however, it is fully the melodrama of Meifong's life, but as much as it has enough drama to work with, it does not have the time to stand out. [Major Spoiler] None of the existentialism that Melfina in Outlaw Star, a bio-android having to accept her fate, is here, and ending your villain by him abruptly falling into his own trap on purpose seems abrupt as it is ridiculous, alongside an unexpected escalation involving a virus he will unleash. [Spoilers End] It feels as well, to continue as a work without the cruel weight of the previous title, a science fiction story which does not have a lot which really stood out. Those episodes which did are outnumbered by those once the drama of the serious story fully begins which feel squandered, whilst those previous humorous stories fleshed out the world. Meifong's tale, despite taken centre stage, ultimately could be told in another science fiction setting and does not stand out.

Angel Links was excessively long to finish. It is strange how this production, a Sunrise developed series which still has a considerable amount of budget, can be reduced to this review which took less time to complete than the protracted time between episodes, but it was entirely that this struggled to actually reveal good moments, most of it did not win me over. This is entirely subjective, knowing the hard work which is put in any of these productions,  but Angel Links does feel average, and for reasons which are obvious for my personal tastes but with plenty that could have been successful with structural changes.