Hi I'm Dranzerstorm
You may remember me as a regular contestant on the caption battle contest.
Welcome to Retro Retrospective, my world dedicated to the old guard of the Otaku world; expect some reviews of the old & obscure, and in-depth geeky knowledge with the occasional top ten and I now have a logo.
Little info about me
Well I'm British and I'm in to all things animated and nostalgia.
I've grown up with every cartoon going and have watched hundreds of anime.
Oh and to answer a question I was asked once, no I don't wear glasses in real life, I would wear Loke's sunglasses though.
Anyone of my generation will know that the introduction of children's cartoon channels made watching TV a million times easier than trying to watch after school runs of popular shows and seeing as we've lived through the entire life spans of the likes of Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Fox Kids & Disney Channel, we were given our moneys worth with the amount of cartoons that existed especially on Cartoon Network who started with much older stuff long before they had the funding to make their own cartoons, most of what they got was Hanna-Barbera cartoons of either talking animals with ties or crime solving teenagers and dogs with speech impediments from the 70s, we had Looney Tunes & Tom & Jerry and being from the European region I had a bunch of their stuff as well, (More on that in the future) But around 1992 after Hanna-Barbera finished releasing more older kid orientated 2 Stupid Dogs & SWAT Cats, the current president pitched an idea to stakeholders Turner releasing a large number of shorts from upcoming creators in a sort of succeed or fail system in the hopes of coming up with new ideas to take on rivals Nickelodeon who at the time had just finished powerhouse cartoons Ren & Stimpy and Rugrats.
In 1995 the What-A-Cartoon project was born.
It all started with the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory & Johnny Bravo, three shows that defined Cartoon Network of the 90s, there will be reviews of these later along with Cow & Chicken and a few others but the shorts I really want to talk about are the ones coming from creators that would play a huge part in the future of cartoons as a whole.
The first one Pfish & Chip and Gramps was created by Butch Hartman who would later go on to create Fairly Odd Parents for Nickelodeon. Hartman began his career as a small time artist for Don Bluth film American Tail. After a few slightly bigger roles for Dink the Little Dinosaur & Piggsburg Pigs, his more significant roles in the industry fell into place as an animator and writer for the run of Cartoon Cartoons before being poached by Nickelodeon for the similar named project Oh Yeah! Cartoons where he pitched the idea of Fairly Odd Parents which is still running strong despite the growing demand for everything to be a kids sitcom. Danny Phantom & T.U.F.F Puppy are also Hartman's work.
The other short Larry & Steve is even more significant as it was the prototype for Family Guy which is of course the work of Seth MacFarlane.
Looking back I would never guess in a million years that this would become one of the world's most successful adult cartoons but the proof is in the voice work and mannerisms of Larry & Steve themselves. Not bad for a college project. While Family Guy, American Dad & Ted are among his most well known works he was also a writer for the Ace Ventura cartoon and provided numerous support to Cartoon Network's shows as well.
With the next generation already here to continue the legacy left by What-A-Cartoon such as Man of Action, Pendleton Ward & Lauren Faust to name but a few, were in good hands for the future and hope that lightning will strike again.
Anyone who has seen my page knows a few things about how I operate.
I do top 10 features,
Anime Reviews,
In-Depth Retrospects (Working on a few at the moment)
and of course my favorite features the "Urban Legends".
But since there's been a lot of talk about cartoons recently, I've decided to add a new feature I call the "Cartoon Vault", where I review old and obscure cartoons that many people may or may not have seen, the first one will be done fairly soon. (At least it fixes my writer's block)
After showcasing the what if on the Dragonball Harmony Gold dub, I now present something a million times more terrifying. An Americanized Sailor Moon.
This poorly made image above is real, and here is the story.
When Toei Animation brought Sailor Moon to the States for licensing, it received two offers. One from DiC which is the version everyone remembers, and Saban the guys behind the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
DiC pitched a dubbed version of the show while Saban using it's Toon Maker division, pitched a two minute music video showcasing a live action segment of the five main characters followed by an animated sequence featuring the Sailor Scouts. The idea was to have a crossover of Live Action & Cartoon but that's not the worst of it, here's the plot.
After Transforming into Sailor Scouts in a way not much different to She-Ra, they would fight Queen Beryl on her Spaceship using Solar Windsurfers to breathe in space. Luna is now a white cat, Jupiter is black, Mercury is wheelchair bound, Mars is Asian and Venus was rumored to be Latino continuing the 90s cartoon tradition of catering for every person. And just to rub salt into that wound, they would also have vehicles.
The footage for the music video came from a first episode pilot and neither saw light of day, the footage still hangs around online and at conventions as an example of "It could've been so much worst"
The only thing that came out of the Saban pitch was a piece of merchandise called the Mooncycle. It's a very rare piece of Sailor Moon history as it came from the Americanized version rather than the actual series. If you have the Mooncycle it's worth a lot of money.
So there you have it, there is always something far worst than a bad dub, and next time I'll show you another grossly offensive piece of licensing. Til next time.
I now have footage, but sadly this was the best version I can find from a convention a few years ago.
Abridged series have been part of the fan culture of anime for a number of years now having turned poor quality dubbing into a joke, but a number of series have been dubbed in such a way that it turns from something fairly straight into a gag comedy.
Arguably the most well known gag dub is the Samurai Pizza Cats, the story goes that the original script and audio were not sent to the dubbing team at Saban, so instead of trying to work out what was going on they decided to turn it into a spoof comedy which worked so well that the creators of the original considered it better, but there are others.
ADVFilms & Funimation were notorious for reworking a number of shows into gag fests, either as DVD extras or as part of the show, most notably and more recently, Hetalia Axis Powers; it was obvious that the group wanted to put as much gags as possible so they got heavy with the accents and the stereotype jokes but the winner is the narrator for her sharp-tongue humor.
But when we British do dubs, we certainly go the extra mile; I've already mentioned Catgirl Nuku Nuku in a previous post but we have more.
Super rare dub "The Enemy's The Pirates" (the rarest in the world) was packed to the brim with gags especially with wise cracking characters such as space cat Apulo, sounding like a cross between Mother Brain from Captain N the Games Master and comedian Chris Rock. Ultimate Teacher another anime film differed between American & British dubs with the British one having more gags, Ultimate Teacher of course is the one series deemed un-reviewable by Bennett the Sage from the thatguywiththeglasses team.
But the winner and most obscure was BBC's take on Urusei Yatsura, as part of a cultural weekend celebrating Japan the BBC attempted to dub Urusei Yatsura but the way it was edited and scripted it became more like an abridged series. It was even called Lum the Invader Girl instead of it's Japanese title Urusei Yatsura. In fact see for yourself.
For those unfamiliar with the rarer titles in this feature, I will do my best to explain them in the comments if asked. Until next time.
To keep up with something I wrote a couple weeks back, my next review will be on Gunsmith Cats, a series I listed along with four others but included with this review is also Riding Bean as both series occur in the same universe and are short enough to be reviewed together, so here is the review for Riding Bean & Gunsmith Cats. That is one sexy car
Kenichi Sonoda is a familiar face to anyone whose watched 80s anime Bubblegum Crisis and Gall Force as he is the character designer behind them, although he's a lot better at drawing cars than drawing humans, judging by how good the picture looks.
His first work Riding Bean is about a transporter called Bean Bandit who receives money for courier jobs on both sides of the law, in the OVA he's framed for a kidnapping which he responds by chasing down the real criminal using his custom made car, styled using a Porsche 959 chassis with a Corvette Stingray engine and a few small design features similar to a Honda NSX. The series is definitely 80s due to the ultra violence shown in some parts but all in all extremely toned down compared to it's predecessors, it's an extremely early dub as well, nothing special to look at but it can be forgiven for the time period it was dubbed. Not much else to say about it, creator Sonoda fell out with the production company so another series wasn't made, instead we got Gunsmith Cats.
Existing in the same universe and taking a character who was originally Bean Bandit's partner, Rally Vincent is a bounty hunter and Gunsmith who takes jobs much in the same way Bean Bandit did, her partner in crime is an explosive former call girl Minnie-May Hopkins who custom makes hand grenades which becomes a form slapstick in the first episode.
After the introduction were introduced to Natasha Radinov a former KGB and a juggernaut type character who takes a number of explosions and bullets to kill which is trademark to the series as Bean Bandit himself could take bullets to the head and chest and tear through a car's bodywork with his bare hands; the rest of the short series is Rally & May taking down Radinov with their trusty Shelby Cobra GT500, not much else to say, both series are exactly the same in content, all feature more stylized art on the cars & guns and both series contain Rally Vincent, okay one version is blonde hair & Caucasian and the other is black hair & Indian but both characters look exactly the same; you know that's all you really need. Most series and movies based on the typical Chicago police vs violent criminals don't always see it's audience as being smart, so you see a gun you fire it, you see a car you drive it, but both these shows actually tell you what cars & guns are and why they are effective for the current plot which is Sonoda's greatest strength as a writer.
Final Verdict: Cheap entertainment that was good for it's time that has a lot of style and will easily draw you into the manga, and also translates well for a western audience.
