| The 1970s-Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers | |
| The 1980s-Akira to the Rescue |
Longtime fans of anime have witnessed the following cycle several times: An anime series or film successful in Japan and elsewhere is released in the USA. A few articles in the mainstream media appear about Japanese animation and how this series will be the one that will finally make it big in the States. A few months pass. The show's ratings are terrible. Whatever merchandise the series generated is either hard to find or steeply discounted. Despite a loyal (but tiny) fan base, stations cancel the show. Whatever shows or movies that immediately followed in its wake die a similar death and we hear nothing of anime in the mainstream media for a few months. Sound familiar?
Why is it that anime has such a tough time breaking through to the States, when programs such as *Sailor Moon* and *Dragonball Z* are popular in other Western nations such as Canada and France? The purpose of this article is to review previous attempts to bring anime to the States, and determine if any trends exist.
How could an enterprising producer turn anime into a smash USA hit? My position (some might say my prejudice) is simple. We should categorize anime under the banner of "Foreign Film." Why? Anime *is* foreign film! It is a form of entertainment whose origins lie outside the USA. The heavy references to Japanese culture that exist in anime underscore this. The time tested USA strategy of aiming all anime at either the kiddie market or the hardcore animation buffs destroyed the chances of several series to gain popularity. Treating anime as foreign film not only acknowledges the serious subject matter of some anime, but also prepares the viewer for a certain degree of culture shock. Neither of these is possible if we simply call anime "animation" because in the minds of many, animation is synonymous with Walt Disney-style productions.
Unlike the European, who is used to viewing dubbed or subtitled movies, or the Canadian, who lives in a bilingual country, the American is not used to having his or her TV entertainment delivered from another country. The label "Foreign Film" suggests not only that the film was made overseas but that it contains elements that homegrown films typically do not. Historically, the foreign films welcomed in the USA were those that dealt with issues that the standard Hollywood film of their day did not.
Perhaps the most infamous case study in the history of anime in the USA is the 1970s classic *Gatchaman* which Sandy Frank originally brought to the USA under the name *Battle of the Planets* around 1979. American superhero comic books heavily influenced the original Gatchaman series; the influence is far more obvious than more current efforts such as *Dragonball Z*. The heroes of *Gatchaman* are caped and masked, just like many DC Comics superheroes, and they are youthful, just like many heroes Marvel introduced in the 1960s (Spiderman and the original X-men come to mind).
Action packed, exciting, and suspenseful, *Gatchaman* had an episodic continuity unheard of in animation at the time. It harkened back not only to comics but to the movie serials of the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, the series' villain Berg Katse might just be the best pulp sci-fi baddie since Ming the Merciless. Katse was an evil genius, cruel and cunning. In some later episodes of the series Katse revealed a particularly sadistic side of himself, being responsible for the torture of a captured member of Gatchaman.
Yet *Battle of the Planets* was not a real success in any sense of the word. Why? *BotP*'s producer Sandy Frank evidently felt the need to reedit the series for American consumption. Gone were several episodes, including all of the climactic ones. *BotP*'s writers toned down the remaining violence, and repeatedly told viewers that despite what they had just witnessed, no one was really injured. (As a note, the violence depicted in *Gatchaman* was no more graphic than the violence in the original *Star Wars* film. In the 1970s the broadcast standards for televised violence were much stricter than they are today.) All Japanese names were Anglicized. Sandy Frank's writers introduced a new character to fill the holes left by the editing; named 7-Zark-7 and designed to look as much like R2-D2 as legally possible, this character is possibly the most annoying in anime history.
For no apparent reason, the writers transformed one of the characters (Jinpei) into an android with an annoying speech impediment (Keyop). *BotP* simplified and reduced the angst of the two male leads in the translation. Katse fared the worst - revealed in the final episodes of *Gatchaman* to be a hermaphrodite capable of shifting back and forth between the sexes at will, he was split into two characters in *BotP*, the very male Zoltar and Zoltar's evil sister. Producer Sandy Frank succeeded in defeating Katse's menace in a way that the heroes of Gatchaman never could.
The shame of it was that a decent voice cast contributed to *BotP*, arguably the most talented voice cast in the history of anime shown in the USA. The cast included Casey Kasem, Keye Luke, Alan Ladd Jr., and Janet Waldo. This is in sharp contrast to the no-name casts that are typically used in many dubs of Japanese films and series (the voices on Ted Turner's re-editing of *Gatchaman* entitled *G-Force* are particularly bad, nearly as awful as the voices on *Voltron*, a kiddie mecha series). Had more care been taken in the pruning of the original *Gatchaman* scripts, Sandy Frank might have had a winner.
*BotP*, like many series that followed it, inspired its fans to seek out the original Japanese version. However, it wasn't a hit. It does, however, reveal a pattern in the way that American TV producers have treated anime - the reduction of references to Japanese culture, the elimination of much of the violence, the omission of key episodes, the simplification of the plotlines. Every few years a new series (such as *Star Blazers* or *Voltron* ) was introduced and every time, the cycle was repeated.
With *Star Blazers* this was particularly unfortunate. The extended series provided a deep and moving antiwar message beyond the space opera trappings. In many ways it is a far more sophisticated piece of storytelling than *Gatchaman*. (In fact, fans of live-action naval pictures such as *Mr. Roberts* and *The Caine Mutiny* will likely appreciate the crew dynamics of *Star Blazers*). Yet again, writers removed Japanese names (the battleship Yamato, a real battleship in WWII, was renamed the Argo, and the lead character was rechristened Derek Wildstar in another attempt to Star Wars-ize a series that predated Lucas' film). And yet again, producers thrust a series into syndication with virtually no support. The original *Yamato* series is a lot of anime fans' favorite, and is gripping viewing even today. Yet it was shabbily treated, and quickly forgotten by most in the USA.
Oddly enough, several giant mechas from the 1970s (such as Raydeen) showed up as toys and as characters in Marvel Comics under the banner *Shogun Warriors* but to little fanfare. Even odder was the transformation of the Japanese toyline and comic book *Microman* into the American toy and Marvel Comic *Micronauts*; most fans of the comic are probably still unaware of the Japanese origins of the character designs.
On it went throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s. Series came and series went. Gorgeous films such as *The Last Unicorn* and *Galaxy Express 999* went unnoticed by many. During the 1970s and beyond, much of what little attention the mainstream paid to animation was geared towards the 'adult' animation of Ralph Bakshi in such films as *Fritz the Cat* and *American Pop.*.
In some respects Bakshi's work might be considered an American cousin to anime, due to its mature subject matter (although Bakshi's heavy reliance on rotoscoping is in sharp contrast to the purposely stylized imagery anime directors create). One of the few American directors of feature-length animation outside the Disney system, Bakshi's success could have provided the impetus for many to believe that American adults are willing to watch a feature length cartoon. An audience entranced by Bakshi could have opened the floodgates for acceptance of Japanese animation.
Yet Bakshi's work was not without its problems. His films were frequently criticized for their sexism (most recently in *Cool World*). Tolkien fans also took Bakshi to task for his adaption of *Lord of the Rings*. Fans of character animation criticized Bakshi for his liberal use of rotoscoping, Bakshi's *Fire and Ice* being essentially a tracing of a finished live-action sword and sorcery film. I agree with all the above criticisms. Yet I would also add that Bakshi is an extremely imaginative director, one of the few Americans of his generation who attempted to make animated feature films that were not exclusively kiddie-oriented. Those directors that came in Bakshi's wake did not emulate him by pushing the boundaries further, but instead chose to ape him, resulting in a very predictable and short-lived genre of Heavy Metal-type cartoons. Animation for adults became a dirty word instead of a viable possibility.
Animation for children fared far worse . . . most of the animated TV series in this period were essentially extended toy commercials! The animation was exceedingly poor, even by late 1960s Hanna-Barbera standards. No one, it seems, took animation seriously. Why bother to take foreign animation seriously either?
It was into this atmosphere that Katsuhiro Otomo's *Akira* developed its strong following. *Akira* is perhaps the best-known anime feature film in the USA. Several leading film critics have praised it, most notably Siskel & Ebert. The story, familiar to many animation fans, deals with the adventures of a motorcycle gang in Neo-Tokyo. Akira refers to a psychic weapon far deadlier than the atomic bombs which destroy Tokyo in the opening minutes of the movie. The post-apocalyptic setting is as bleak and as exciting as the doomsday British concept albums *Diamond Dogs* and *Dark Side of the Moon*.
Unlike most Japanese animated films, *Akira* possesses fluid animation that rivals the work in contemporary Disney films such as *Beauty and the Beast*. The soundtrack music is largely percussive and succeeds in adding to the tension the film creates, and the voice actors of the dubbed version (while certainly not well-known) are simply fantastic. Several sequences (the early fight with the clown-white biker, the nightmare midway through the film) are unforgettable. *Akira* builds slowly to a powerful climax, just as in real life it took several years for the film to break into the mainstream's attention. Several versions of the films are widely available on video today (letterboxed, dubbed, and subbed versions), and one mail-order Japanese animation club uses *Akira* as the introductory volume in its series on anime.
Yet using *Akira* as an introduction to anime is problematic. *Akira* is unquestionably a ground breaker, and its is hard to imagine someone who, upon viewing it, doesn't want to seek out more. The question is what can possibly follow *Akira*. It is such a unique and high-quality movie that almost any other animated film will suffer by comparison to it. Its production values are higher than average, and its story possesses a deep philosophy.
The only other anime I have seen on this level is the later *Ghost in the Shell*, which we can think of as a logical extension of Philip Dick's android ideas. *Ghost in the Shell*, like *Akira*, deals with metaphysical issues in a science-fiction framework and, like *Akira* is both beautiful and deeply disturbing. The character development in *Ghost in the Shell* is so advanced that the dismemberment of the lead android is gut wrenching not simply because of its graphical nature but because we have grown to care about the android throughout the picture. One danger in using a film such as *Akira* as an introduction to anime is that it implies that all anime is of a similarly high quality.
The sad truth is that most anime cannot compete with the high production values of *Akira* or *Ghost in the Shell. * Fans may discover these films and then be shocked to find that the bulk of the anime available in the video stores are the repetitive Magical Girls and Mecha series. *Akira* is to anime what Sergio Leone's *Fistful* films are to the spaghetti western genre, a cut above the rest.
However, due to *Akira*'s popularity, cable stations in the USA began showing anime films (albeit often in an edited format) and several video companies sprang up to service the demand for anime. It was in this way that American audiences were introduced to such movies as *Vampire Hunter D* (an odd film that prefigures Stephen King's *Gunslinger* novel in its mixture of the supernatural and the western idioms) and *Fist of the North Star* (a film in which the graphic violence is redeemed only by its extreme absurdity). It seemed as if the entire backlog of 1980s anime was up for grabs, and much of this made its way onto the shelves of video stores. (Most of the better series, such as *Guyver*, *Ranma* and the excellent *Bubblegum Crisis* have a healthy number of Web Pages devoted to them).
The lack of mainstream reviews meant that casual fans were left confused by the plethora of often high-priced tapes. Instead of collecting multiple episodes onto a single tape, anime distributors typically offered only one or two half-hour episodes per tape; a long running series like *Ranma* or *Star Blazers* could have over a dozen different tapes available at once. Given the somewhat standardized drawing style of anime artists, and the tendency of VHS distributors to heavily hype their products on the backs of the cassette boxes, a novice also had little way of telling what anime was intended for children or adults. Tapes are often labeled "Not for Children" even if the only objectionable contents are PG-level profanity.
Many of the anime series on the shelves or on the airwaves were also poorly dubbed, creating a false impression of unprofessionalism. The stylized manner of the animation (in which the use of clever editing and meticulous draftsmanship partly overcomes the handicaps of limited animation) may be jarring to an audience used to fuller Disney animation or the more straightforward limited animation used by Hanna-Barbera and company.
The result of all this was the creation of a group of fans known as otakus. Otaku, in Japanese, means "fanboy" and is a non-flattering term. The otaku culture is as mocked as the Trekkie culture was before the Star Trek feature films became multimillion dollar winners. In fact, Annalee Newitz devastatingly criticized the otakus themselves in a recent article entitled *Magical Girls and Atomic Bomb Sperm*. Otakus seem to have a sense of humor about the whole term (one DOOM wad deals with the mayhem of an otaku meeting). Otakus pay large sums of money for imported Japanese laserdiscs of anime not yet available in the States and are involved in a fan culture that (just like that of rock bands like the Grateful Dead) thrives on nonprofit swapping of bootlegs and an atmosphere of mutual support.
Yet judging a genre of entertainment by picking on its audience is unfair and missing the point! Worse yet, mainstream articles that stress the otaku fanbase give the false impression that anime is necessarily an acquired taste. They also suggest that anime is a unique phenomenon. Actually, anime is simply foreign-made entertainment, and the USA experienced a similar influx of foreign entertainment in the European film boom of the late 1950s and 1960s. The same debates about subbing vs. dubbing that go on today raged in the early 1960s. While European film was initially a cult favorite, it later expanded in popularity and introduced Americans to such quality directors as Ingmar Bergman and Sergio Leone. It introduced a subject matter that was alien to the Hollywood formula, and made several actors and actresses (notably Sophia Loren and Brigette Bardot) rivals in popularity to American celebrities. If we correctly viewed anime as simply animated foreign films, perhaps producers would carry out more sensible marketing strategies.
Anime's Great Hope of the mid-1990s was Naoko Takeuchi's *Sailor Moon*. Prior to its broadcast, several articles hailed it as the series that would open the American market to anime. Even well-known humorist Dave Barry satirized the series. Fans of the show know what happened too well: while a hit on Canada's YTV, *Sailor Moon* bombed terribly in the USA.
In some respects the failure was predictable, as DIC repeated virtually every mistake Sandy Frank made with *Battle of the Planets*. DIC deleted or heavily edited several crucial episodes. Whole scenes were rewritten. Sailor Mars' role as a Shinto priestess was reduced (the writers recast her anti-evil invocations as another Sailor power); lead heroine Usagi was renamed Serena. The writers also reduced violence and adult-oriented humor (in the original series, Mars' grandfather is a dirty old man). In a particularly apt parallel, one of the series' homosexual characters (Zoicite) was rechristened as a woman, just as the androgynous Berg Katse was rechristened as a male. Just like *Battle of the Planets*, *Sailor Moon* left the air before finishing a crucial storyline. *Sailor Moon* was also syndicated in the USA which meant that local stations often stuck it in poor timeslots. Most independent stations filled the choice timeslots with product from the Disney Afternoon and Warners' studios, leaving *Moon* the terrible early morning slots in many markets.
The DIC dub made several flaws that already existed in *Sailor Moon* glaringly apparent. The transformation sequences, while initially stunning, were long and repetitive in the later episodes. Audiences had no need to watch Serena and friends transform into the Sailor Scouts in every episode just as an earlier audience had no need to watch the five lions transform into *Voltron*. The plots of the show were often predictable: an attractive newcomer turns into a quasi-supernatural monster and must be stopped by the combined powers of the Sailor Scouts. This *Power Rangers* style formula has little in common with the often witty scenes of the Scout's everyday teen lives; the writers satirize the teens' crushes, fashions, and video game habits. Both the 'monster of the week' element and the 'teen life' element contrast sharply with the serious tone of some of the episodes in which several villains and recurring characters die onscreen.
Yet in other respects, DIC changed and updated *Sailor Moon* for the American audience in ways that are not as bad. The annoying bookworm Melvin was, according to the dubbed version, an avid Internet user. References to American fast food were worked into the scripts. Serena, the lead character, seems to have had her lines ghostwritten by Cher of *Clueless*. In fact, the Canadian voice actors largely did a fine job of bringing the characters to life. The Sailor Scouts in the dubbed version do not have the high-pitched childlike voices that many females in Japanese cartoons have. The voice acting helped to compensate for the limited and exaggerated facial expressions of the characters. Terri Hawke's voice for Serena reminded me a lot of what Jack Mercer's mutterings brought to Max Fleischer's *Popeye* series of the 1930s.
In many ways, however, much of the content of *Sailor Moon*, while new to Americans, was already familiar to the Japanese. The character design of the female characters, in which large round eyes predominate, is standard anime practice and dates back to early Japanese animators' appreciation of Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop. Yuri, of the series *Dirty Pair*, and Lum from *Urusei Yatsura* could pass for the Sailor Scouts' cousins due to their similar designs of long, flowing hair, slim figures, and huge eyes. While the Scouts may be the first cartoon characters in America to wear sailor suits since Donald Duck, such clothing is common in Japan. Sailor suits are standard issue in many girls' schools. In fact, one hilarious film *Project A-ko* deals with a superheroine who wears a sailor suit and actually *predates* the *Sailor Moon* series by a few years! (B-ko's desperation in trying to eliminate A-ko is as pathetic as that of Wiley Coyote's attempts to catch the Roadrunner).
Due to its lightweight nature, attractive character designs, gentle good-intentioned humor, decent voice acting, cross-gender and multi-age appeal, and impressive track record, *Sailor Moon* should have been the smash hit that finally opened the eyes of the majority of Americans to anime. Perhaps a series of prime-time specials to introduce the program would have helped the show in the same way that similar stunts helped the recent animated versions of *Batman* and *Superman*. There is no denying the likability of Serena/Usagi, and she could have been marketed into a very successful product. Instead, the romance and reincarnation motifs of *Sailor Moon* found themselves in reruns, and then in cancellation. It is still unclear whether the series' revival on the USA Network will win the series a larger fanbase.
The current new series being touted as having breakthrough potential is *Dragonball Z* which chronicles the adventures of a martial arts expert named Goku. I'm skeptical. The original *Dragonball* series bombed in America a year ago, and the show's current distributor is Saban, the kiddie-oriented outfit responsible for cheaply made live-action programs such as *Power Rangers* and *Beetleborgs*. Will Saban market the show to the teen market it obviously deserves? Or will Saban follow the lead of Sandy Frank and DIC? *Dragonball Z*, like *Sailor Moon* and *Gatchaman*, has a proven overseas track record and is an outstanding piece of programming. Given anime's track record in the USA, have we any reason to be optimistic?
Postscripts: This essay was obviously written before Pokemon made its way to America. Antonia Levi and I spoke about this essay via e-mail in 1999, during which time she suggested that Sandy Frank's crew might not have been aware of Berg Katse's androgyny and the death of Condor Joe when Gatchaman was initally licensed to Frank's company. This may explain why the final episodes of Gatchaman were never converted to Battle of the Planets episodes, and may also explain some of the hasty-looking rewriting of several key installments. Streamline Pictures, one of the main anime dubbers in the USA has since gone out of business
Author's Note: This essay is dedicated to TJ, the biggest Sailor Moon fan I've yet to meet.
Get your own Free Home Page