Movies Fights Comics!! Kenshiro Strikes Three in America!!!

Kenshiro can't go undercover, even in his feature film.  The eyebrows always give him away.

Coming to America

By 1986, Kenshiro was well on his way to conquering Japan - the weekly manga was so popular that the editors of Shonen Jump had extended the run for a couple more years, and the Toei anime series was in full swing.  On this side of the Pacific, not so much. I was working in a comic shop at the time, and had access to the (few) copies of Japanese anime mags ordered through Books Nippan in California (at the time, pretty much the only wholesale outlet available for retailers not located in the larger cities) and so I kept my eyes peeled for any merchandise that my happen to pop up there.  Unfortunately, aside from the monthly anime magazines, there wasn't a whole lot left over after the regular Books Nippan customers got finished with the arrivals. My boss was nice enough to let me call Kevin Seymour(sp) in California every so often to see what overstock they had, but the well was usually pretty dry.

And the anime mags themselves were pretty expensive, so we could only order enough to cover the two or three customers who would buy them no matter what they were featuring that month. Since no one could read Japanese, the few who bought it did so mainly for the pictures.  No kidding.  Ten bucks or sometimes more for a bunch of pictures, most of which were basically advertisements for whatever Nippon Sunrise was selling that particular month, with the added bonus of Animage covering the most recent Miyazaki film.  It really was slim pickings back then, though the beggers and choosers rule applied.  Plus, the Miyazaki stuff was actually pretty cool.  And you'd get small folded posters and occasional other goodies as inserts, provided they hadn't fallen out somewhere between Japan and Texas. 

Anyway, I had a standing arrangement with the folks who bought the things that I could look through them when they came in and I took full advantage, generally looking out for Hokuto no Ken news, which was really hard to come by.  But in the early parts of '86, I started seeing ads or promos for some kind of HnK project that was different from the anime series.  The only reason I knew it was different was because the artwork was different.  I got on the phone with Tomoaki and he mentioned he knew a feature film was in some stage of development, but wasn't exactly sure of the details. He was more a manga kinda guy and wasn't really into the anime part of it.  So I wrote Mitsuyoshi and asked him to keep an eye out for what news he could give me, and by the middle of the year, he wrote back and told me that the film had already opened and closed and he had no idea when it would be released on video.

Kennnnnnn!!!!  Make them release your movie!

Well, needless to say, I was stoked. Unfortunately, it'd be over a year before I'd get any more news about an impending video release.  Talk about hell.  In the meantime, he sent me a few copies of what he called a "movie program" book, which I was left to assume was sold at the box offices and later in stores.  I would post a pic of it here, but I gave them all away.  Even mine.  Sigh.  So you'll have to settle for a link to the page of that Italian collector who has pretty much everything.

When I finally got word that the film was finally going to be released on video, it was almost 1988.  But that wasn't the worst part of it.  That would be the purchase price.  13,800 yen.  Now, when I first got into the anime thing, the exchange rate was almost 200 yen to the dollar.  Unfortunately, sometime during the mid-80s, our government caught onto us anime and manga fans and decided we were getting too sweet a deal.  Or something.  By 1988, the rate had dropped by a quarter, and would go down even further before the decade was out.  With postage and such, we we were almost paying straight up 100 yen to $1.00 by the time 1990 came around - at least when the middleman's cut was taken out.  Luckily for us, Mitsuyoshi wasn't interested in turning a profit, on this kind of thing, anyway.  But, still, 14,000 yen was a LOT of money for a bunch of geeks with minimum wage jobs. 

So, I got on the phone with Jeff Blend and a few others (including Randy Stukey, who threw in twenty bucks just 'cause that's the kind of guy he was) and we decided to go co-op on a VHS copy.  We'd throw in together and pass the copy around to each other so we'd all get 1st gen copies and enough time with the tape to make all sorts of extras for tape trading buddies.  Of course, since this WAS HnK, we figured there wouldn't be a whole lot of copies we'd have to make.  As I mentioned last post, the series really wasn't much of a hit with the American fans back then. 

A relic from the ancient past - a VHS commercial copy.

As I look at this thing now, I honestly cannot tell you a whole lot about it.  Or nothing that you can't get from a web site synopsis and watching it on youtube or wherever.  Yes, the violence is blurred  But, then, so is my memory. Part of me wants to pop it in the nearest tape player and watch it, since I've not seen it in twenty years.  Another part of me worries it'll get ripped to shreds 'cause I haven't been near a VCR that's been properly maintained in a decade.  Not that it would matter, since VHS really isn't collectable as such. I've watched the "Raoh wins" ending a few times elsewhere and honestly still think that looks strange.  Ken just doesn't belong face down on the ground while Lin talks to Raoh.  It's just...unreal.  There was so much about this movie that I remember liking the first time around - and much of it that I just didn't care for at all.  The soundtrack is cool enough.  "Heart of Madness" still rocks around inside my head from time to time. I really remember being pissed 'cause Toki and Mamiya were left out, but Jagi got a nice chunk of screentime. 

But I think my fondest memory of this was just being able to hold it in my hand, knowing I was going to actually see it in pristine form - the same way a fan in Japan would.  In 1988.  Most of you reading this probably can't understand how great a feeling that was back then because you now take it as a given.  But it was a huge thing to me.

I have fuzzy memories of Streamline buying and running the film during the '90s, but I never saw that version.  And really have no inclination to.  There was talk of one of the few groups that were doing subtitles back then borrowing our copy to use as a master, but I don't think anything ever came of that either. I don't remember any subtitled copies of the film at all.  Which is probably just as well - as I mention elsewhere, HnK just was not especially popular here during the '80s and '90s. 

Multiple Manga Misfires

One of the benefits of working at a comic book shop was having access to the catalogs of upcoming releases.  I was still heavily into collecting American comics back in '87, so I generally had a handle on the various comic book publishers and what they were putting out.  The late '80s saw what we referred to back then as the beginning of the "black and white boom," a period where everyone and their brothers were putting out badly-drawn black and white comics (color was comparably expensive to do in the days before computer coloring), usually featuring some variation of "mutant animal" in the title.  The distribution movement from mom&pop outlets, grocery stores, and drug stores (with revolving racks) toward specialized stores that sold comic books almost exclusively meant that publishers didn't have to deal with anyone other than one or two major distributors, and as long as they agreed to sell your book sight unseen, you were good to go.  Talk about Wild Wild West.  Anything went, and some of it actually sold to customers hoping to hoard all the copies of "Goofy Giraffes With Silly Swords" in the hopes they'd magically turn into mutant turtles somehow.  Basically, it was the housing bubble two decades earlier.  And it worked out about as well.  But, that's getting away...

In the midst of all those "mutant" whatevers, this was also the time when the Japanese manga titles started being translated and released by American companies.  So imagine my surprise when one day, I open the solicitation package and see this:

Too good to be true, right?

Well, as soon as I pick my jaw up off the table, the alarm bells start going off.  The solicitation itself looks legit.  Pretty nice, in fact, for the time period, especially from a small independent outfit.  Yellow paper.  Two pages, front and back, with illos obviously taken from the manga. Buronson and Tetsuo Hara and Shueisha Publishing credited.

"Bloosh!?"  Yeah, that's about what I thought.

Still, I can't shut off those alarm bells ringing around inside my head.  Okay, so they're marketing "Ken Shiro" as a "superhero."  No problem, one could still total up the non-superhero titles on the shelves at the time on one's fingers and toes.  No, the real problem was with the publisher. As in, I'd never heard of these guys before - an outfit called "Angel Comics." Whereas almost all the manga and anime wholesalers I knew of were based in California, this company had an address in New Jersey.  Okay, I'm still an optimist at heart at this point in time, though part of the nagging in the back of my head comes from the fact that I know how popular Hokuto no Ken is with the anime fanbase here in the US. As in, not at all.  Who the hell are these people expecting to sell to?  And even if they are legit, what kind of numbers can they possibly expect to draw that would satisfy the rights holders in Japan?  Yeah, okay, I'll buy 10 copies, but who will buy the other hundred thousand?

Heh, these guys exaggerate about this more than I did.

So, first thing I did when I got home is I picked up the phone and called just about everyone I knew and asked them about this thing.  Everyone knew just as much as I did.  Even Fred Patten, who had a nose for this kind of thing, knew nothing about Angel Comics, but did say that Eclipse/Viz was looking to expand their output and, as far as he knew, they had the rights to all the Shueisha titles, including Hokuto no Ken. 

To make a long story short, months went by and "Angel Comics" actually solicited for two months worth of material in the distributor's catalogs, then were never heard from again.  I can't say it surprised me.  To this day, I'm not sure exactly what it was all about and the only firm evidence I could find about the incident was in the Viz-In newsletter a year later after Viz had announced their intention to publish HnK. They described "Angel Comics" as an "obscure publisher" who had solicited a "pirated version," but were thankfully stopped for the good of all, etc. et al.  And that's probably as close to the truth as we're likely to get.  As someone who would be later involved in a similar situation involving the Captain Harlock license and some shady operation called "Coral Pictures" out of Florida, I can sympathize.  I can't emphasize enough how chaotic it was back then, with the Japanese companies apparently not much interested in cracking the American market, and with pirates of all kinds taking full advantage of the situation.

Okay, let's try this again, shall we?

About this same time, Viz, who had co-published manga titles with Eclipse Comics, decided to go it alone, sensing the American market was slowly growing large enough to support more titles.  I dunno whether or not the Angel Comics thing pushed them into choosing HnK as one of those early titles, but I'm sure it didn't hurt.  In announcing the new "Fist of the North Star" comic, Viz head honcho Seiji Horibuchi would declare it "...probably the most influential manga of the eighties." 

So, of course, it lasted all of eight issues.

You are already cancelled!

But, hey, I did my part. I bought 10 issues. Of course, my boss at the comic store looked at me like I was nuts.

I remember sitting down with Satoru Fujii, who did the translation work on that first run, in San Diego in the early '90s and having a discussion about why that original comic didn't catch on better.  All the standard theories at the time - the time for manga wasn't quite here yet, the comic was too violent, true "mangaphiles" don't like "flipped manga," etc had a bit of truth to them so far as it went.  But mostly it came back to that bugaboo that all true HnK fans know and realize deep down - the "good stuff" - the heart of what makes Hokuto no Ken appeal to us, isn't apparent until roughly a third of the way through the story.  It's one thing to tell someone "hey, wait until Toki and Raoh show up," when you can just whip out an episode or comic to prove it, but it's totally another to maintain sales of a bi-weekly or (worse) monthly comic up until that point.  And you can't just "skip" translating certain parts of the manga, as appealing as that may be.  Up until the introduction of Rei, the manga stories are, let's be honest, pretty repetitive stuff.  It's not as quite as bad as the anime, with filler (and stories adapted from later) so that it takes 20 episodes just to get to the Shin fight, but it's hardly earth-shattering material that's going to make some non-Ken fan think there's a reason the story is going to get any different a year or two on down the line. Basically, if the first five or six issues don't grab you, there's little reason to think that's going to change.

Viz dipped back into the water later in the '90s, getting as far as halfway through the Rei storyline before again finding sales hard to come by.  Or maybe it was my fault. I only bought two copies of each of these.

Would've loved to have been in the editorial meeting when they picked the cover for this one. 

"Who's the guy on the cover?"

"That's Kenshiro's brother."

"Is he in the issue?"

"No, he doesn't show up for another year."

"So, why's he on the cover again?"

"It looks cool. Plus, we're running out of color cover material."

"You think anyone will notice he's not in the comic."

"Eh, American comics have been doing this kind of thing for decades."

"Yeah, no one's gonna care."

Guess what?  Yeah, no one cared.  I probably could've saved them the trouble, but at least they tried.  The actual reproduction on these varied from adequate to awful, usually depending on the tonework that Hara used on the originals.  The more tonework, the worse the reproduction.

I totally missed out on the Gutsoon attempt during the aughts, so I can't really speak to those, but I understand they also couldn't manage to make it terribly far into the run before collapsing.  It's a shame, really (for manga fans, anyway), but I suppose it's a good thing that the companies streaming the anime didn't have to sell the thing episode by episode in order to make the whole series available, because it may never have gotten done. For newer fans of Hokuto no Ken, that's probably the only way they're ever going to see the meat of the series translated legally.  And for all its faults, the anime doesn't diverge all that far from the manga during the important arcs.  In fact, in some places (cough, Juuza, cough) I actually prefer it.  I once did a couple columns on the major differences between the manga and anime, but damned if I can find 'em...

I didn't know where to put this bit in the last two blog posts, so I'll just throw it in here at the end.  A lot of people are aware of the Gary Daniels' "Fist of the North Star" live-action film from the '90s.  I've not seen it, and have no pressing need to see it.  One night when I'm really, really drunk, maybe I'll check out a scene or two on youtube. 

But die-hard '80s Hokuto no Ken fans know the very first Kenshiro live-action film rip-off.  Made in either Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Korea (I mercifully forget which), it came out in the mid '80s and made the rounds among the fans over here who were either heavily into HnK or (more likely) Asian martial arts films in general. I used to show parts of it during my late-night version of what some of you guys might now call "Anime Hell" back in the '80s in convention video rooms.  Especially popular (read: lots of laughing and hooting) were the scenes of Kenshiro vs a bunch of guys on scooters (I guess motorcycles would've put them over budget), and the climactic fight with Shin where they actually animated (badly) Ken's shirt flying off.  On the good side...well, the kid they got to play Bat was spot-on.  Of all my tapes I gave away, that's one of them I wish I'd kept.

Twenty Five Years Fights Kenshiro! The All About Man Punishes Old Typewriting!

"Yeah. I'm looking at you."

My Twenty-Five Year Love Affair with Kenshiro (or does this headline make me look gay?)

It all started in Ben Dunn's living room, sometime during the winter of 1985.  A bunch of us would gather there a few times a month to play Champions or just hang out and watch third or fourth generation anime vids Ben had managed to gather from here there and everywhere.  In between the giant robots slugging it out and Dr. Slump potty jokes, the first episode of a peculiar anime came on. Something the likes of which I'd certainly never seen before among the anime shows Ben had introduced us to.  It was slowly paced, with the requisite too cute by half little girl (complete with puppy), a boy who yakked way too much and a bunch of escapees from the latest Mad Max movie riding around on motorcycles.  About halfway through this mishmash of B-movie tropes, something even more peculiar happened:  one of the brutish thugs' head blew clean off.  Being a Cronenberg fanatic, my first thought was, of course, that in addition to The Road Warrior and Bruce Lee flicks, the folks who were responsible for this one must've been huge fans of "Scanners."  But the whole thing was about to get even more bizarre.  By the time Kenshiro let out that first "Atatatat...etc." and unloaded his thousand fists at Zeed, we were all laughing too hard to listen to the village elder explain the finer points of Hokuto Shinken to the audience.  Not that we'd have understood anyway, since none of us spoke a word of Japanese.  The general consensus of the show was that it was curious and good for a couple of laughs, but that lasted a whole minute or two and we fast-forwarded the tape to the next episode of Aura Battler Dunbine or whatever.

Still, there was something about it that stuck with me after I'd left to go home later that night.  That animation was no great shakes and I wasn't at all interested in martial arts films, and after all the goofy fists were unleashed on the thugs with the Zs on their heads, all thoughts of this guy being a scanner who spent all his time at the post-apocalyptic gym went right out the window.  Still, the show was...different.  Yeah, it was a mash-up of the familiar, plot-wise, but...then it hit me.  It was the character designs and the artwork.  I would be told over and over and over again during my early days in anime fandom that the artwork on Hokuto no Ken is "ugly" and that prevented a lot of people from getting into it, as if it didn't really fit into the "anime" style, whatever the hell that was.  As someone who grew up with Neal Adams, Steranko, and Jack Kirby, it seemed an odd objection, but since much of the appeal of anime and manga on this side of the Pacific is in the artistic differences between American and Japanese sensibilities, I guess it might be explained that way.  In any case, there was enough there to pique my curiousity as to exactly what would get such a "different" show made in the first place.  And that thought stayed in the back of my brain.

"Who are you calling 'ugly'?"

Anyway, we were so clueless that we didn't even have an idea what the bloody thing was called.  Something with "Fist" in the title.  It wasn't until a few weeks later when I was going through a C/FO publication of one kind or another where I noticed the LA chapter was showing something called "Fist of the North Star" in their meetings, that I figured my mystery show had a name, so I wouldn't embarrass myself when asking around for more episodes.  Assuming, of course, that there were more episodes.  I seriously had no way of knowing, even the most basic of information being extremely difficult to come by back in those days.  Enter Mary Kennard.

Mary is one of those under-the radar angels for whom American anime fandom owes a great debt - the rare early anime/manga fan with contacts, enthusiasm, a bit of understanding of the Japanese language and, most importantly, the willingness to use them all to help others without asking for an arm and a leg in return.  Plus, she had a killer tape collection.  And, amazingly enough, she LOVED Hokuto no Ken.  I can't remember where I originally got her phone number from, but she helped the C/FO-San Antonio tape collection get started and, more importantly for myself, personally, shaped the way I deal with others in the fandom.  She'd answer my questions to the best of her abilities and knowledge and absolutely loved doing so.  If it weren't for Mary Kennard, you wouldn't be reading this. 

Anyway, it turned out she had most of the HnK episodes up to that point and patiently explained to me about Shin, Toki, Mamiya, and especially Rei.  Turns out she was a huge Kaneto Shiozawa fan. It was...interesting to hear her go on about Japanese voice actors while talking to a guy who didn't know shit about much of anything.  I guess that's part of the definition of a true fan.  Anyway, she sent me the later Rei episodes, right up to that fatal showdown with Raoh, which was just a month or so behind the anime episodes airing in Japan.  Between her explanations and actually seeing those episodes, I was hooked. 

"My, that's a big...horse you have."

About that time, C/FO-San Antonio got in the thick of things in North American fandom and I was trading tapes like crazy.  I had contacted Mitsuyoshi in Japan and he'd agreed to tape TV anime for us, which meant we sometimes got episodes of stuff before any of my other contacts, which meant even MORE tape trading. The first batch of tapes I got from him included the great Rei death episode and the beginning of the Shuu/Souther arc, which just totally blew me away.  I mean, I was REALLY heavy into this thing now.  Unfortunately, even armed with my sparkling personality and first generation episodes of what I had come to believe was a real phenom here, I just could not get anyone else interested in this show. It just wasn't happening.  "Real" anime fans were into mecha and Dirty Pair and Urusei Yatsura, not mystical martial artist who made heads explode.  With "ugly" artwork.  Saint Seiya was all the rage.

On this side of the Pacific, anyway.  Basically, near as I could tell, Hokuto no Ken fandom consisted of Mary, Jeff Blend, Tim Eldred, Laurine White, Steven Barnes. And me. 

The C/FO had a listing for "favorite anime" in the membership directory and out of the total membership, fewer than 10 people listed Hokuto no Ken among their favorites.  It was a really tough time to be a manly man among men.

Then, in 1986, three things happened, creating the perfect storm for this particular fanboy.  The feature film was released in Japan. I got in touch with Tomoaki Okuzumi, a Japanese native (and Hokuto no Ken fan) living in California.  And the Shonen Jump "All About the Man" book was released by Shueisha. 

The Rosetta Stone

I'm going to get into the HnK movie in another blog post.  In a strange turn of events, Tomoaki got in touch with me, instead of the other way around.  I guess he found my name in one of the C/FO publications, I don't know if I ever asked him where or how he found me. But he did.  I guess the stars were all lined up just right. Without him, none of those early Hokuto no Ken translations would have gotten done.  He'd call me up on the phone and we'd sometimes talk for more than an hour at a time about either what had come before or what was currently happening in the weekly Shonen Jump, which he got from relatives in Japan. I guess he either had a really good job or just really loved talking Kenshiro.  For whatever his reasons, his efforts were greatly appreciated.  When I had questions about this or that, he'd occasionally send me actual Jump pages from the weeklies when a new character was introducted along with written translations of song lyrics and such. 

And then one day, out of the blue, an extremely large package came in the mail, and it wasn't from Mitsuyoshi, but from Tomoaki.  Inside was, quite simply, the most important part of the puzzle that was Hokuto no Ken yet released, aside from the actual running manga.  And quite a bargain at 390 yen, I might add.

Everything you ever wanted to know about kumo no Juuza, except maybe the size of his package.

Now, I've sure there have been more colorfull and more detailed Hokuto no Ken books released over the subsequent 20+ years, but not many would prove more useful.  It had inverviews with Tetsuo Hara and Buronson, color-pullouts of paintings which would later become the covers of HnK books both in Japan and elsewhere around the globe, detailed character pics and discriptions of martial arts styles, a nifty reprinting of the original Ken story from Fresh Jump, facts and figures about the man himself and so much other Hokuto heavenliness that when I first opened it, I'm sure they felt the fanboy orgasm all the way to Kansas.

Want to know how long he can hold his breath? There's an app for that!

Now I understand that the All About the Man Special has been reprinted a few times in Japan since the original release in  '86 and I'm sure more detailed books have come out since then (this one only covers up to Raoh's death), but a recent scan of ebay shows this puppy is still getting bids of forty bucks or so, which isn't bad for a cover price of 390 yen!  "What a bargain!"  Anyway, I still think it's fairly required to have this puppy in your collection if you're a completist, but the rarity and price thing can certainly be a hindrance, especially to those who came into the series because of the new animation a few years back.  For whatever reason, Shueisha and Toei didn't release a whole lot of supplemental material for the manga and anime during their first runs, compared to the products of other companies, but I'm certainly glad if there had to be an exception, it was an important one.

Dunno why Raoh has a weapon here, seems just a tad redundant.

A welcome side-effect of the All About the Man book, at least for us would-be HnK evangelists, was it collected a lot of the needed reference material from the manga in one place.  No longer would you have to scan back over the manga volumes or anime episodes to find the name of, say, Rei's Nanto art (nanto sui cho ken), because it was right there on his page, along with his governing star (gi sei). In addition, it cleared up the whole Shin thing, since neither the name of his actual art nor his governing star were given in his original manga arc - just one of the many things they added as they went along. But, thanks to the good folk at Shueisha, all of that was now cleared up, assuming you had someone who could translate it all, of course.

Which is where Tomoaki came in.  Being a fan of HnK as well as fluent in Japanese, he was genuinely interested in helping me impart hokuto knowledge to the unwashed masses over here, whether they wanted it or not.  Back in the wild west of anime fandom (1986 or so) the rule wasn't "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself."  It was more like "If you want something done AT ALL, you have to do it yourself."  Basically, the only translations being done were personal pet projects for APAs, the occasional translation guides for conventions like Baycon, small movie or episode synopses for anime club newsletters, and Toren Smith's Urusei Yatsura manga projects with Miyako Graham. People with the skills to translate (and materials to translate from) were working on stuff they liked personally, and not much else.  Of course, since there wasn't really any money in it, that was to be expected. Anime and manga fandom was still a very small market, even after Robotech issued in a new wave of fans.  Personal computers were still incredibly expensive, word processors weren't a whole lot cheaper, and most work was still being done either by hand or by typewriter.  Al Gore had yet to invent the internet as we now know it and even Usenet was still in its infancy.  Even communication by telephone could be incredibly expensive, depending on what time of the day or night you were talking.  "Snail mail" was the rule, rather than the exception. 

But, hey, you do what you can, with what you have.  Which is what we did. Armed with the manga, the All About the Man Special, telephones, communication via the US Postal Service, and using my trusty antique manual typewriter and illos by Mike Cogliandro (who wasn't really a HnK fan, but a good sport nontheless), Tomoaki and I managed to assemble and distribute what I'm pretty sure was the first Hokuto no Ken guide of any note in English.  

"Hokuto no Ken: An Initiate's Guide," circa 1986.

The fanboy hype just oozes out of my typewriter, doesn't it?  Oh, to be young and in love.

Looking at this shit now, I'm amazed anyone could do freakin' ANYTHING back then.  First I had to take the illos, find a photocopy machine that could reduce them to manageable size, cut and paste them on a blank sheet of paper (and by cutting and pasting, I'm talking scissors and glue stick here), insert them into the manual typewriter, type AROUND the illos, then photocopy the pages again, which is why everything is so faint. Then you have to find a public copy machine that makes good copies, because you have to do one side at a time in order to make double-sided copies.  Then you reduce the pages yet again so two pages can fit side by side on a larger sized paper and fit together as a booklet. It's all rather...complicated.

I don't even have any original copies of this thing anymore, what's pictured here are the reprints of a reprint that the C/FO distributed through its newsletter in '87.  You can even see Randall Stukey's hand-written page numbers on the bottom of the pages.  Or maybe you can't. Sigh.  Hey, it this was 1986, okay. 

Manual typewriters don't have spell checkers, obviously.

I'll put the rest of the pages at the end of this in case anyone reading this hasn't abused their eyes enough with these.  If you read the whole thing, you'll see references to an Initiate's Guide, Part 2.  Yes, we did that one too, covering the Nanto Go Sha Sei arc, Yuria, and the end of the first series, along with some assorted bits and pieces like martial arts stuff and more song translations.  I actually liked it a bit better than the first one, mostly because we learned from our mistakes, but, sadly, I don't have any copies at all of it among the crap I've managed to dig out of boxes, so it may be forever lost to the dustbin of fandom history.  Which might not actually be such a bad thing...

Among my other HnK fannish activities during that maniac period of 1984-89 was a round-robin project that worked fairly well for the first round or so before everyone just lost interest.  For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of a round-robin, it was kind of a poor man's APA, usefull for smaller groups of fans who don't publish tons of material.  Instead of everyone making a bunch of copies of their "trib" and sending them to a specific collator for mass mailing, there's just one package that gets mailed from one participant to the next participant, who then copies whatever he or she wants from the whole, includes his or her contribution to the package, then mails the whole thing to the next person on the list, who does the same, until the package makes it back to the person who started the whole thing, who re-starts the process after replacing his or her original contribution with a new one.  This way, everyone only has to make one copy of their material and everyone saves on postage and only have to spring for the copies of stuff they want to keep.  Of course the downside is that if the one person who has the package gets lazy...

And, of course, I don't have much material from that either, which is kind of a shame.  I remember some fun stuff from that, including a strip from Tim Eldred about Kenshiro and Rei going to McDonalds...

Of course the translation/information game hit its stride in the '90s and never looked back.  Hokuto no Ken was no exception in this regard, though the fandom remained smaller than many comparable anime/manga from the time period.  When the net exploded during roughly the same time period, web sites like Evan Jacobson's most excellent Hokuto Renkitoza popped up, making amateurs like me superflous (well, okay, I always wanted to be super at something).

I have to admit to feeling a slight depression when I walked by all those arcades with all those kids playing Street Fighter 4 or Mortal Kombat 21 or whatever during the past two decades and thinking to myself "Do these people even know about Hokuto no Ken?"  But that  pales in comparison to the joy I feel now when I surf the web and realize just how LARGE the fanbase has grown compared to the small handfull of us who eagerly waited for the manga chapters or anime episodes to come out during that original run in the '80s. It just goes to show that quality wins out, whether it takes two months or twenty-five years.

I'm just happy I lived long enough to finally see it.

How to make the bad guys blow up REAL GOOD!

Hey, at least we didn't forget Jagi existed!

I know this probably still sounds lame, but I plead not guilty on account that it was fucking 1986.

Notice the "Sauzer" spelling.  We did that waaay back in '86 just to piss off Daryl Surat, who was probably all of 10 years old at the time.

Hell, we even did lame song translations!

Credit where credit is due. In this case, to Dudley Do-All, Mister Jeff Blend. The second biggest HnK fan I knew back then.

Next up: The Movie and the comics. Or, how Kenshiro found America a LOT tougher to conquer than Asura.

Godzilland Attacks Cool Stuff! Say Hellow to Comic Saurs Story!!!

Okay, before I get started I want to introduce everybody to someone.

He ought to be here any moment now. Yeah, I hear him, breathing fire and smoke as he passes the bathroom. The carpet is getting warm. 

The sofa is shaking.  Excuse me while I grab my drink off the computer hutch before it spills.  He's a little worse for wear, but I'm always glad to see him, even if he's a bit pissed at me for leaving him buried in that big box for so long. Years, in fact.  Almost a decade.  I hear him behind me.  And I turn around slowly with my camera...it's...it's him. Yes, directly from the monsters' paradise itself...it's everyone's favorite walking yellow bag o' fun...the "king of monster," measuring in at 450mm X 430 mm...

Godzilland!

And, kids, you know what this means, right? 

Another episode of extremely cool and unnecessarily little dumb anime things from the "Comic Saurs Story!" Yaaaaaaay!!!!

So, Mr. Godzilland, sir, what do you have for us today? 

Oh, really.  Sorry to hear that.  Seems he's a bit winded from swimming over from the "happy islet!"  At his age, that's expected. Heck, I carried him from one convention to another for ten whole years before sticking him in that box.  His corners are all torn up and will probably need a bit of first aid in the way of packing tape if he's gonna last a whole lot longer.  Gee, it's been a while.  In fact, it's been so long that I really don't know what treasures are hidden inside.  So this is going to be a bit of a treat for me too as we discover together some stupid lost anime crap from 1986 or '87. 

Lessee, what's first?  Oh, yeah, this'll do.

Looks like a Zeta Gundam postcard book, with Shah or Chaa or Char or Shaa (or whatever the spelling is this week) looking up at us through those cool shades.  Poor guy is the last of his kind, here, as I actually sent all his buddies away through the mail some 15 years ago.  If you look really closely, you can see one of the ZGundam mechs reflected in his shades.  Or maybe that's just the lousy cameraman who's too cheap to buy a proper scanner...

Hmm, what's next.  Oh...lookie...

It's a Touch stationary kit, just the thing you need to write a goofy love letter to the baseball player in your life.  It even comes with a little button, hearts and stickers so you can personalize to your heart's content.  Then you can stick it in the envelope and mail it off so he'll get it just in time for the playoffs!  This show was a huge hit back when I was heavy into anime fandom, though I only met five or six people over here who claimed to be fans. 

Hmm, what's this?

Catseye notepaper.  I had Mitsuyoshi send me lots and lots of notepaper 'cause I wrote lots and lots of notes back in the '80s. I mean, sometimes two or three letters per day.  After a while, that really adds up.  It got so bad that I started running out of Japanese notepaper and had to resort to getting artists over here to create stationary for me.  Sad thing was, they were happy to do it.  That's how much mail I sent back and forth during the heyday of fandom tape trading and such.  These things generally came with anywhere from 20-40 double-sided pages each and sometimes I still ran out.

Lessee, what's next...

front

Oh, yeah, what good is Catseye notepaper without a Catseye backing board to write on.  At least, I think that's what these things are. I had several from different shows at one time - thin illustrated flexible plastic boards.  Pics on front and back.  I've always assumed they were for use in combination with the note paper, but who knows?  They just look purty.

back

Oh, here's something for the Robotech: The Movie fans on your Christmas list:

Megazone 23 stationary. I hope you can read the story, 'cause I think that's the best part.  I mean, they make it so you don't have to even watch the movie.  Considerate, no?

A set of City Hunter audio cassette labels. Back in the stone age, before I-pods and mp3 players, we had things called cassette tape players. If you're ever forced to ride in your hippie grandpa's Volkswagon bug or granny's old Caddy, you might actually see one of them. Otherwise, forget it.  Come to think of it, no one writes letters or mails postcards anymore either, so that explains why I still have this stuff lying around.

Speaking of postcards, here are two more from the original Macross. How these managed to survive the mail is beyond me.  I didn't like Macross nearly so much as a lot of hardcore fans I knew, and I usually managed to send out most of the stuff connected to shows I didn't care a whole lot for to truefans who would stick the shit on their walls and so forth. I've always been strange that way. Why have crap in your closet that someone else might enjoy?

Speaking of which, here's a Minky Momo note book with about three pages left in it. I could never find anyone who wanted it, so I used the paper to send notes to the people I didn't especially care for.  You know, the people who wanted five hundred episodes of two hundred different shows on VHS six-hour speed by TOMORROW!  Nothing says "fuck you, but here's Dave Merrill's address" quite like Princess of Magic Minky Momo.

Here's something you don't see just everyday.

A Hokuto no Ken "Posicco Card."  How special. I dunno how obvious it is owing to the piss-poor kung fu photo ability of the moron who took this pic, but that's an actual film piece in the upper right corner. In this case, it's a pic of Ken carrying Shin's body. The card assures me that the film is "only for you" and I should "feel free to use it!!" along with a picture of a pair of scissors and a dotted line to cut on.  Of course, if you cut it out, it leaves a huge honkin' square hole in the middle of the postcard which makes it rather difficult to mail. I guess that means you're supposed to mail it first.  Yeah, right.  This one's going back in the bag...

Huh?  What's that you say, Mr. Zilla, sir?  You're getting tired of me reaching my hand into you?  No?  What then?  Everyone has gotten tired of looking at old shit and has headed over to Carl Li's site?  Okay, whatever you say.  But I can't let you leave without showing them your egg-shaped letter set and have you tell them your story, can I?  Of course not. That would be rude.

So, kids, be sure to wave goodbye to Godzilla as he swims back across the sea to his happy islet.  I'm sure he'll be back very soon with more goodies to show everyone!

Queen Eve Blows Up Love Robot and Goofy Guy! Juuza Twists Cel Contest!

Anime stuff, circa 1986

Fun N' Games

Okay, after that last mammoth post (remind me not to do anything like that for a while, please), it's time for a change. Of some kind.  I'm gonna start off with something I call...

Cross-cultural Hilarity Simularities, or RWG's seein' things a wee bit strangely today.

All together now:  "Awwwwwwww."

Doing the whole Matsumoto groove last post, I got to thinking about the whole Tochiro/Emeraldas thing and damned if it didn't remind me of something I'd seen just a couple years back.  Of course, I could've just been having flashbacks of the other fifteen other Leijiverse versions of the same damn relationship...but, no that wasn't it.  The scruffy little guy with the big heart.  The aloof, powerful, gorgeous gal with the big ship.  Hmm, where have I seen this recently?  Yeah.

Ohhh, yeah.

Love isn't blind, it's deaf and mute too.

Tell me I'm wrong. I dare ya. Now, I'm not sayin' that Andrew Stanton and the Pixar guys are drooling Matsumoto fanboys like me and the Corn Pone flicks crew, but only that some things are just universal: no matter where you go in space and time, there's always gonna be at least one awesome example of womanhood who is willing to go slumming when the right shlub flies through deadly radiation to fix her ship or plants a shrub in an old shoe and holds an umbrella over her head in a thunderstorm.

Well, okay, I'll be honest. It helps if the Tochiros and the Wall-Es are writing and directing the things.  Just sayin'.  But aside from the wish-fullfilment, fairy-tale aspect, there's a nugget of truth in this, isn't there?  Isn't there?

Hmm, okay, just for grins and giggles...

Name: Tochiro Oyama

Physical Characteristics: Short. Big Glasses. Bo legs.

Hangouts:  Dead worlds, Big ships with lots of skulls and crossbones.

Hobbies:  Fixing things,  Collecting scraps to build spaceships.

Hangs with:  Guy who is incredibly difficult to kill.
Ideal mate:  Obsessively driven woman with a big gun

Name: Wall-E

Physical Characteristics:  Short. Big Eyes. No legs.

Hangouts:  Dead worlds.  Big ships with numbskulls and lazybones.

Hobbies:  Making squares.  Collecting scraps.

Hangs with:  Bug who is impossible to kill.

Ideal mate: Obsessively driven bot with a big gun arm.

Name:  Emeraldas

Characteristics:  Quiet, with a nasty temper.

Hangouts:  Big ship with lots of robots.

Symbol: Red rose in a vase

Hobbies:  Blowing up spaceships.

Name:  Eve

Characteristics:  Quiet, with an incredibly nasty temper.

Hangouts:  Big ship with lots of robots.

Symbol:  Green plant in a shoe.

Hobbies:  Blowing up ships.

See. Incontrovertable truth:  No matter what language you speak, English, Japanese or robot, incredibly goofy guys CAN win the love lottery, provided they have the writers on their side.  With Valentine's Day coming up, I was tempted to leave this one 'till next month, but...

Okay, so much for the FUN (well, okay, I had fun). 

On to the GAMES.

I hope to make this a regular feature, or at least as regular as I can before my anime cel collection runs out.  As you may have noticed, I really like being smart ass with my captions.  I figure I'm not alone.  So, with that in mind, I proudly introduce the "Smart-ass Caption Contest!"  It's just like every other caption contest ever run, except that I'm gonna use animation cels from my collection instead of pics from the 'net.  Some are pretty boring, but since most are from Hokuto no Ken, you can figure a lot of them by nature lend themselves to the absurd.  But in an incredibly MANLY kind of way. 

Well, most of them, anyway...some are just...well...I'll start out with an incredibly easy one.

"If you can't snark on this one, you don't deserve to live!!!!"

I have a couple of extra SPT Layzner cells lying around, along with a few generic cels to shows I don't know.  Whoever comes up with the best caption, gets one or two of 'em and I'll even pay the postage.  Assuming anyone is actually reading this stuff and wants to put themselves out there, leave it in the comments section below.  The blog's only been around for a couple of weeks, so I'm giving this one another month or so before I figure no one cares.

"So, when did this skull all-hell-breaks-loose button get installed, anyway?"