The sixties were the dawn of Japanese TV animation. Animators feeling their way forward left behind a good many works.
But few would truly endure and exert a lasting influence. Most were forgotten; some simply sank into the silt of time’s river, leaving no trace to be found.
As time entered the seventies, Japan stepped into a period of rapid economic growth.
The income-doubling plan, coupled with American support, sent Japan hurtling forward, unable to stop,
forgetting to look down at the road beneath its feet.
The public’s moral and cultural development lagged behind the economy; young people could see no direction for the future.
Everyone knew only to keep going forward, forgetting what they should be doing.
Still, a flourishing economy and ever-rising national confidence
undoubtedly injected fresh vitality into animation.
And with tokusatsu at its height just then, animators seemed to draw fresh creative passion from it once again.
After the unruffled beginning of the seventies,
tokusatsu’s superheroes and the science craze brought by the Osaka Expo swept through the industry.
Hero animation and SF fantasy awoke again.
Immortal works—Devilman, Gatchaman, Mazinger Z, Ashita no Joe, Lupin III—came crashing onto the scene.
The birth cry of animation’s new age rang out across Japan.
It is no exaggeration to say that this was Japanese TV animation’s true golden age.
No one was content to follow convention. No one was working from a template.
Everyone was using their creativity to plant, in the wilderness called “the animation industry,”
new genes and souls utterly unlike those of today.
Major events:
1971: Shūeisha establishes the Tezuka Award. Ichirō Mizuki makes his anisong debut with “Here Goes Ryū, the Primitive Boy,” the opening of Ryū, the Primitive Boy.
1972: The epoch-making giant-robot animation Mazinger Z begins broadcasting. Sunrise’s predecessor, Sunrise Studio Ltd., is founded. The Japan Cartoonists Association Awards are established. Yoshiyuki Tomino’s directing debut, Triton of the Sea, airs, and the first anime fan club is formed. Devilman, the first animation credited to an original work by Go Nagai, airs.
1973: Isao Sasaki makes his anisong debut with “Fight! Casshan,” the opening of Casshan.
1970
30 March: Chippo, the Mischievous Angel airs, 240 episodes.
30 March: Animal Village Stories, 100 episodes.
I’m taking these two together. Both air on the same day, and both are strip-scheduled animation (obi anime) made by the same company, TV Dōga. The company is eventually bought out; its early works are lost or become difficult to release commercially again. As a result, most of the output of this pioneer of strip-scheduled animation can no longer be traced.
A quick explanation of these obi series: these are miniature animations shown after programs in the main slots—say, a standard thirty-minute show—finish, filling the interval before the next full hour. Most run under ten minutes. Examples include Instant History and Know-It-All University: Tomorrow’s Calendar from the previous two installments. These animations were generally made by TV Dōga at the time, so only a handful have left surviving material.1
1 April: Ashita no Joe (Tomorrow’s Joe), 79 episodes.
If someone talks about god-tier anime without mentioning this, they are not a qualified “anime master.” This year’s Megalobox, a huge hit on a certain site, is Joe’s spiritual successor, carrying on its legacy perfectly.
An immortal masterpiece that no history of Japanese TV animation can ignore, it opens the seventies with an earth-shattering bang. Its influence extends beyond animation. It deserves to be remembered for far more than the “burned down to pure white ash” meme.
Just as the opening growls in its low voice, “Tomorrow must hold something—but where is tomorrow?”, Japanese society then, like Joe Yabuki, had set foot on a road of no return. It knew only to go forward, not where tomorrow lay—until Joe met his future, met Tōru Rikiishi.
Rikiishi’s death shakes the world. The despair it brings reaches far beyond Joe alone. Yet through his own death, Joe sets the clouded night sky in everyone’s heart ablaze, bringing everyone hope, light, and the courage to struggle.2
This great work reaches still deeper into Japanese society at the time. It gives the young people of that age hope, and changes countless people’s thinking: “Oh, so these television manga can be for adults too.”
Although Space Battleship Yamato ultimately changes animation’s narrative style and subjects, it is Ashita no Joe that truly sounds the trumpet of the age, roaring its challenge to convention.
This animation is also the first pioneer in “crossing the boundary between fiction and real life.” Theme-song lyricist Shūji Terayama even holds a real funeral for the protagonist’s rival, Tōru Rikiishi, creating a sensation in society. Nothing like those flashy little bitches who use funerals to sell merch.
3 April: Bakuhatsu Gorō (“Explosive Gorō”), 26 episodes.
Another sufferer from the lingering poison of Harris no Kaze. Nothing special about its story: the familiar formula of using sport to bring smiles to delinquents—ptui, I mean to give them a positive outlook. This time, though, the delinquent gets a catchphrase with a whiff of transformation about it, so at least the form looks slightly new.
5 April: Fun Animation Theater airs, 26 episodes.
An animated music-video program built around the Tokiwa-sō manga artists. Its main plot is a mystery, and it brings in quite a few of Fujio Akatsuka’s characters. A spin-off from a variety show, it has never been released on DVD; only a small amount of film survives.
Author’s note:
Tokiwa-sō, a sacred site of Japanese manga, was a wooden apartment building where Osamu Tezuka once rented a room. It was the birthplace of famous works by such noted manga artists as Hiroo Terada, Shōtarō Ishimori (later Ishinomori), Fujio Akatsuka, Fujiko F. Fujio, Fujiko Fujio A, Hideko Mizuno, Shin’ichi Suzuki, Naoya Moriyasu, and Norio Yokota.
7 April: The Adventures of Hutch, the Honeybee, first series, 91 episodes.
One of childhood’s tearjerkers, and Tatsunoko’s first fairy-tale work—though, thinking about it, it doesn’t seem very fairy-tale-like at all. It was imported into China. Besides the story, what probably sticks in people’s minds is the Chinese-dubbed opening song. Even now, you can still hear it sung as a nursery song in some kindergartens.
13 April: Akaki Chi no Eleven (“The Red-Blooded Eleven”) airs, 52 episodes.
The origin of Japanese soccer animation, a generation before Captain Tsubasa. Thoroughly realistic: everyone in the protagonist’s soccer club, from teachers to teammates, has a real-life model. The hero is based on Yoshikazu Nagai, then still a high-school soccer player.
Yet neither that grounding in reality nor its founding status brings corresponding popularity. Later on, the production team’s limited understanding of soccer brings exaggerated spokon staging down upon it once again. And it is born at the wrong time: Japan does not even have a proper soccer league of its own when it appears. To this day, when most viewers discuss Japanese soccer animation, the only name they ever remember is Captain Tsubasa.3
10 June: The Birth of Japan, five episodes.
It shares its name with one of the blue fatty’s long adventures, but this is a simple educational animation made by Mushi Production. Sadly, no visual material has surfaced online.
3 August: Kirin Know-It-All University: Cartoon Biographies, 366 episodes.
Bite-size educational animation sponsored by Kirin Beer, in the same series as last installment’s Know-It-All University: Tomorrow’s Calendar. It teaches through historical figures. Again, regrettably, there are no images available.
28 September: Otoko do-Ahō Kōshien (“Kōshien, the Complete Baseball Nut”) airs, 156 episodes.
Another baseball animation. This time the hero himself is called Kōshien. Its creator is Shinji Mizushima, known as the foremost baseball manga artist. Deeply unhappy with the physics-defying “magic pitches” in Star of the Giants, he creates a series of baseball manga to “set things right” and show people real baseball.
Unfortunately, the old-timers remember only Star of the Giants, later generations remember Touch, and the next remember Big Windup! Hardly anyone remembers Kōshien playing baseball properly anymore.
2 October: Kick no Oni (“The Demon of Kickboxing”) airs, 26 episodes.
An oddity in the seventies’ sports-animation boom, about Muay Thai and kickboxing. Its creator is once again Ikki Kajiwara of Akaki Chi no Eleven, mentioned above. This time you can hardly say the protagonist is “modeled on” somebody: it is the real person appearing, name unchanged. The animation depicts professional kickboxer Tadashi Sawamura’s career, and quite openly brings the man himself in to sing the theme song. “The Demon of Kickboxing” is Sawamura’s own nickname in the sport.
Incidentally, he also plays himself in episode twenty-seven of Ultraman Jack, or Return of Ultraman.
3 October: Ijiwaru Bāsan (“Mean Granny”) airs, 40 episodes.
The founding grandmother of on-screen scam artists. Put this protagonist on Weibo today and by tomorrow someone would probably have beaten her to death under a banner reading “To grow old without dying is to be a pest.” Her crimes include:
Drunk driving; taking minors into adult cinemas; setting an elderly couple’s house on fire; cutting workers’ safety belts; sealing with cement the concrete pipe a homeless person sleeps in; throwing banana skins in front of girls wearing skirts; and so on.
She has stopped a boy from committing a crime, but only for her own satisfaction, not from any sense of justice. She once has a near-death experience, but even the King of Hell dares not admit her and kicks her back to the human world to keep doing harm. A thoroughgoing old hag who refuses to die… And because this undying hag is so obnoxious, the work—specifically this first version—still has no home-video release, even though the author’s intention was to reflect on the mental-health problems of empty-nest elderly people and an aging society. You reap what you sow.
4 October: The Funny Judo Champion airs, 208 episodes.
Still sport: this time judo. Though the hero’s teacher is a cat that walks upright, on the whole it is relatively realistic—at least it hasn’t introduced a combat system yet… Probably also the first sports animation whose hero gets caught in a romantic war between two heroines.
5 October: Norakuro airs, 26 episodes.
Though its TV animation only arrives in 1970, this is a venerable elder with an animated history going back to 1933. Put the series’ stories together and you find its protagonist, little Kuro, joining the army, then, after the army is disbanded following the war, choosing to open a café and start a family. An entire personal history of growth and struggle.
Also, he’s a dog, not a cat.
7 October: We, the Salarymen’s Party, 26 episodes.
Hand-drawn animation for working adults. As the title says, it is about life at work. Unfortunately, no footage remains.
2 November: Magical Mako-chan, 48 episodes.
The third in Toei’s little-witch series after Sally the Witch and The Secrets of Akko-chan, and Toei Animation’s first original animation. Unlike the little heroines of the earlier works, this one is fifteen. The staff thoughtfully adds romance and pays homage to Andersen’s classic The Little Mermaid.
Perhaps because of this change of direction, it is less popular than its two predecessors and relies chiefly on the audience they have built up. Although it supposedly pays homage to The Little Mermaid, the mermaid premise disappears without a trace from episode two onward. Compare the first episode with the rest and you feel you’re watching another work.
1971
1 January: Kabatotto airs, 300 episodes.
A very straightforward title: just the names of its two leads. A light, five-minute strip-scheduled animation made by Tatsunoko, about the goofy adventures of a hippo and Toto, the bird lodging in his mouth. No main plot, rather like Tom and Jerry.
3 January: Andersen Stories airs, 52 episodes.
An entry in the World Masterpiece Theater lineage. Kyanti, the fairy chronicler from the land of magic, travels through Andersen’s world. What sights will those travels reveal?
Yes, that’s right: the main plot is our protagonist collecting a hundred cards to study magic and enter university. How are they collected? By entering Andersen’s original stories as an observer and helping their plots reach a happy ending.
Wang Xiaoming, look at yourself! Damn you, Decade!
15 February: Chingo Muchabei (“The Extraordinary Muchabei”) airs, 26 episodes.
The last black-and-white animation broadcast on Japanese television in the twentieth century. It is set in the Edo period, but it’s a comedy, so you can even spot anachronisms like television sets.
Hmm? Gin—tama?
3 April: Decision, an animated documentary, airs, 26 episodes.
Shōwa-era realistic Kantai Collection: historically accurate ship-sinking edition. A documentary-style animation by Tatsunoko, mainly depicting the historical events through which Japan courts disaster all the way from Pearl Harbor to defeat. It tells them through the decisions of commanders on both the Japanese and Allied sides, offering insights and lessons. Every sound effect is taken from actual documentary footage, and it breaks new ground in coloring, lighting effects, and the animation of explosions.
It later influences many robot and hero animations. For the first time, the audience encompasses a large proportion of adults, and it provides a measure of guidance for the later Space Battleship Yamato.
Unfortunately, it runs smack into the original Kamen Rider, which has just begun broadcasting, and gets brutally canceled…
8 April: Wandering Sun airs, 26 episodes.
The founding ancestor of idol animation, one manifestation of Mushi Production’s “fall.” Though an idol series, it is not quite what we now generally mean by “idol”: the heroine is actually just a folk singer. Strictly speaking, it should count as a founding work of music animation, a fairly traditional coming-of-age story built around the heroine and her rival growing up in parallel and being measured against one another.
Spokon influences this animation too, to the point where the heroine hardly seems to display any talent; she succeeds simply by moving her listeners’ hearts…
1 September: New Obake no Q-tarō airs, 70 episodes.
A color remake of the Q-tarō animation, introducing a new character, O-jirō.
25 September: Tensai Bakabon (“Genius Bakabon”), 40 episodes.
Fujio Akatsuka’s popular comedy. Though its title is the protagonist’s name, his father is the real protagonist.
Dad acts like an idiot, but at birth he was a genuine, unparalleled genius: he came out pointing one hand at heaven and one at earth, declaring, “In heaven and on earth, I alone am honored.” As an infant, he could produce countless inventions fit to endure for posterity. Even the work’s name carries a homage to Śākyamuni.
None of this changes its fundamentally comic nature. It doesn’t have some terribly profound philosophical meaning.
1 October: A Know-It-All Tour of the World, 1,006 episodes.
In the same series as Kirin Know-It-All University: Cartoon Biographies, mentioned above: the fourth entry. Its main thread is a journey around the world introducing scenery, local sights and products, customs, history, geography, and so forth.
3 October: Marvelous Melmo airs, 26 episodes.
A transforming “magical girl”: the heroine eats magical candy to turn into an adult. You might think we’ve already seen that sort of transformation—what about The Secrets of Akko-chan?
Except this work draws the transformation process in detail, and the heroine is naked.
Yes, you read that right. In 1971, on television, the heroine of a children’s animation suddenly goes from a little third-grader to a grown-up woman with curves and no clothes! Later, there are even scenes of an adult woman bathing with a little boy and providing sex education!
(No explicit action. It isn’t hentai. Stop getting ideas.)
How are the poor kids supposed to cope? (Sniff.)
4 October: Sarutobi Ecchan airs, 26 episodes.
Toei’s fourth little-witch work, by the old master Shōtarō Ishinomori. Though it belongs to a magical-girl series, its heroine has no magic. Only two heads tall, she should be on the superpowers/science side of things—although her surname is Sarutobi, which would suggest a ninja series. Her superpowers even produce several scenes where she challenges protagonists from other sports animations and wins hands down: Star of the Giants and Attack No. 1 from last time, for example.
Do that today and you’d get a dozen pages of fans naming and shaming each other on Weibo.
6 October: Make Way for Lord Kunimatsu! airs, 46 episodes.
Just a change of name: actually a color remake of the Harris no Kaze mentioned last time.
6 October: Apache Baseball Army airs, 26 episodes.
Another product of spokon’s lingering poison. The hero is a former high-school baseball player who once had limitless prospects. His dad wants to sell off his future and then go on being a useless shut-in. In a rage, the hero ruins his golden left arm and goes to teach in the mountains to realize his ideals. There he assembles a student baseball team and uses his experience and some wild, unorthodox methods—running naked and all—to keep advancing toward Kōshien.
7 October: New Skyers 5 airs, 26 episodes.
A color remake of the old black-and-white version.
7 October: The second GeGeGe no Kitarō airs, 45 episodes.
Its story, character designs, and so on continue the 1968 version; it is not a remake. Beyond being in color, it is basically little different from its predecessor.
Besides Neko Musume, I want to lick Inuyama too.
24 October: The first Lupin III airs, 23 episodes.
Strictly speaking, the 1971 Lupin III is not the first Lupin animation. There was a twelve-minute pilot in 1969—the animation playing now. It was this version that changed original creator Monkey Punch’s mind and made him agree to have his work brought to the screen.
Unlike its enormous popularity and fame today, the original production’s older target audience meant that some of its “excesses” alarmed parents and drew bad reviews. Ratings for the first Lupin III kept falling. Even bringing in Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata to make individual episodes for children could not salvage its dismal results. The first series of this enduring classic was actually canceled; only reruns several years later brought it popularity and acclaim again. You can only sigh.
Strip the story down and it is really about a bunch of awkward tsunderes—people who can’t admit their feelings—scheming against one another and refusing to own up to it:
Lupin enjoys being chased by Inspector Zenigata every day. Zenigata wants to catch Lupin and fulfill his ambition, but is afraid catching him will rob his life of its purpose. Fujiko Mine wants to toy with Lupin, enjoying stealing whatever he wants, but cannot bear to leave him utterly disappointed. Lupin looks like a master thief hunting treasure, but is actually forever giving way to Fujiko to capture her “mysterious allure.” Daisuke Jigen quietly watches over Lupin as he courts disaster…
Goemon: What about me?
Lupin III is a fairy tale for grown men, a poem for everyone who longs for freedom, yearns for dreams, and dares to challenge. The times and capital have stolen most people’s futures and hopes. It takes people who flash across the sky like meteors to steal them back. Perhaps this is a real form of salvation in a society awash in material desire, where money reigns supreme.
But there is only one Lupin, and he has only his own Fujiko. Few people can steal a life of their own.
Personally, I don’t much like this version’s opening. My favorite in the Lupin III series is still “Theme from Lupin III”: bursting with speed and swagger, with a rhythm so strong you can’t help bobbing your head.
Every man has his own world, his own aesthetic. And Lupin III is undoubtedly the one who lives most freely in his.
30 October: Ryū, the Primitive Boy airs, 22 episodes.
Another Tarzan-style animation, like Ken, the Wild Boy, but this time the original creator is Shōtarō Ishinomori. In short, you could call it Primitive Boy Looks for Mom, Picks Up a Harem, and Kills a T. Rex Along the Way. Looking at the animation alone, there is really nothing to “go down in history”—except its opening, Ichirō Mizuki’s anisong debut.
What? You don’t know Ichirō Mizuki?
1972
4 January: The Adventures of Pinocchio (Kashi no Ki Mokku), 52 episodes.
A Tatsunoko homage to Pinocchio, with major changes from the protagonist’s name to the premise. Unlike Pinocchio, the puppet Mokku has no humanity. The animation’s main story is his becoming a complete human being through good deeds.
The ending is rather “Warrior of Love.”4 Have a look if you’re interested; no spoilers here.
9 January: The second Moomin airs, 52 episodes.
The series’ second season. See last time.
10 January: Moonlight Mask, Lover of Justice airs, 39 episodes.
An animated version of Japan’s first homegrown superhero tokusatsu series, Moonlight Mask (1958). It uses animation’s particular expressive possibilities to realize many spectacular moves and monster costumes that were difficult in the live-action broadcast. It also refines and beautifies the hero’s design, letting this motorcycle-riding superhero—even Kamen Rider owes him respect—shine on screen again, looking cooler than ever. A production made with real care.
Unfortunately, its broadcast runs right into the original Kamen Rider. Today few know Moonlight Mask, and fewer still know that this animation exists.
1 April: Triton of the Sea airs, 27 episodes.
One of the early animations imported into China during the Sino-Japanese honeymoon, known there as Xiao Feilong, “Little Flying Dragon.” Other imports of the same period include GōShōgun—called Star Wars in China—and Dinosaur Corps Koseidon: childhood memories of the eighties. Back then, “Human cannon, stage one ready!” and “A-Zhong is here!” were children’s catchphrases. Many a child loved putting on the classic red cape with a short red sword at the waist.
Sadly, though a pioneer in China, it had few reruns, leaving a sharp divide between the generations who remember it and those who don’t. Even setting aside that mind-blowing final reversal of good and evil, its staff lineup wipes the floor with a certain show billed as the “national team”:5 Osamu Tezuka as original creator, Yoshiyuki Tomino directing and adapting, Yoshinobu Nishizaki producing. Three giants who opened an age, gathered in one place—and they give us an ending that almost kills everyone off…
They really were ruthless back then.
3 April: Chappy the Witch, 39 episodes.
Toei’s fifth little-witch work, a return to the beginning. Like the original Sally the Witch, the heroine once again comes from the land of magic. Almost every aspect of its story and premise signals homage to Sally: competent but leaving nobody with a particularly deep impression. Although strong ratings extend a planned half-year run to thirty-nine episodes, the work as a whole is undistinguished. Nothing much of interest to say.
5 April: Akadō Suzunosuke (“Suzunosuke of the Red Armor”) airs, 52 episodes.
Once a hugely popular period-drama property, with widely acclaimed television and film versions. Even the earliest work to sell toys of television-drama characters. Its plot follows the formula of a swordsman defending the shogunate, settling scores as he pleases, and upholding the way of the sword. In the final showdown he defeats the demon king and preserves Edo’s peace.
Its original creator is the famous Eiichi Fukui, who once shared the kingdom of Japanese manga with Osamu Tezuka. Even Tezuka was deeply jealous of Fukui’s talent.
Sadly, after only one installment, this work loses its father forever.
23 April: Anime Document: Munich e no Michi (“Animated Documentary: The Road to Munich”), 16 episodes.
Based on reporting on Japan’s volleyball team before it leaves for the 1972 Munich Olympics, the film replaces some footage with animation to help present the whole. I’ll count it as animation for now, though it does feel a little like selling something under false pretenses…
8 July: Devilman airs, 39 episodes.
Who is that? Who? Who?
That’s a devil—Devilman, Devilman!
Since this series won’t cover Daddy Netflix’s Devilman crybaby—it was broadcast online—I’ll say a little more about Devilman here.
SPOILER WARNING
Basically, what people rave about most is the 1972 Devilman manga and crybaby, which really does take the manga as its basis. The 1972 TV Devilman is really just an “original animation” Toei confidently dreams up from the manga’s premise.6 Its story is all greatness, glory, and ideological correctness; Akira is positive and upbeat, mowing down enemies for the woman he loves. A very typical superhero animation combining the traits of Kamen Rider and Ultraman.
But the animation barely touches the ideas Go Nagai wants to express. Fundamentally, it is for children. The manga, by contrast, uses sex, violence, and shocking, bloody events to give every reader a baptism of the spirit.
Through the relationships between demons, Devilmen, and humans, the manga keeps interrogating the people of its time: What is justice? Who is the demon? What do people live for? A resounding slap in the face for a public that cannot be sure of tomorrow under the Cold War. Those blood-drenched scenes and appalling images bring far more than a visual shock. They are a warning to the mind: how long can human goodness hold out, and how far can human evil run unchecked?
The manga’s ending gives everyone a vision of despair, but does not stop at despair. It still lets people see the greatness of love. It is on another level altogether from works that can only show how dark, deep, and brutal they are by killing off girls.
Besides, even setting everything else aside, its devastating everyone-dies ending remains enormously influential. Even Evangelion’s orange-juice ending owes it something.
Yet what the 1972 animation leaves us is a canceled series with a great big harmonious ending: Miki and Akira happily confess their love and go on living together.
Congratulations. No heads lost.
Beyond that meaningless ending, probably all anyone remembers of this version now is the opening song with its thoroughly mangled reputation, and all that famous material for “erotic-image searches.”
27 August: My Dear CoCo airs, 13 episodes.
A rare girls’ animation about fashion design. Yet with a visual style utterly unlike the manga, terrifyingly wide-set eyes, and dowdy hair, it single-handedly buries its own standing as the founding work of realistic girls’ animation.
1 October: Science Ninja Team Gatchaman airs, 105 episodes.
A superhero animation that, before Mazinger Z, establishes the “classic episodic giant-robot plot.” Inheriting the legacy of the monster craze—the root of giant robots—it is a pioneer of realistic SF.
The standard plot: beat up the bundle of experience points the evil organization sends each week, watch its officer get chewed out by the evil overlord, then go back to base, hug a girl, and placate the professor.
What looks like a “fight cartoon for little kids” actually incorporates many stories about war, science, and environmental pollution, interspersed with topical social questions such as family ethics and current affairs. It ends up attracting plenty of big kids instead.
Gatchaman opens a new age of hero animation and giant-robot animation. Even without a giant robot of its own, its story structure profoundly shapes the works that follow, continually encouraging animation and tokusatsu to nourish one another.
A new world opened. Credit where it is due.
At the time, this animation reaches an astonishing peak rating of 26.5 percent. A planned one-year series becomes two, and directly, deeply influences Tatsunoko’s later hero works: Casshan, Hurricane Polimar, and Tekkaman, the Space Knight.
Last October, these four pillars of Tatsunoko hero animation gave us Infini-T Force, billed as Super Tatsunoko Wars.
Truly excellent works must draw on everyone’s strengths without being trapped in anyone else’s mold. And among the things that endure, beyond the great works that open an age, many more owe their survival to persistent questioning, reflection that pursues a problem to its roots, and the courage to confront entrenched wrongs. Certainly not to supposed little innovations within a formula, and certainly not to meaningless deaths.
Everything serves the story. And ultimately, the story reflects the souls of its creators. A work with nothing to say is like a soulless block of wood; a work that parades its ideas and erudition ends up looking more like a frog at the bottom of a well.
As for those who nourish themselves on the regurgitated cud these two sorts produce, and use it to feed the ignorant, there is only one name for them: the rotten timber of the age.
Time will be the staunchest ally of classics and ideas.
4 October: Astroganger, 26 episodes.
But I was here first! Being a giant-robot animation, getting inside a giant robot—all of it…
Why, Mazinger Z, why are you so practiced at this? How many times have you and Kōji done Pilder On?!
It could have been the first landmark work, like Mazinger Z, but low popularity buries it in the river of history. A pioneer of super robots and giant robots, yet even Super Robot Wars won’t let it play.
Unlike piloting Mazinger Z, controlling Astroganger involves merging, like Gai Shishioh and the Brave robots, to fight hand to hand. That doesn’t stop Mazinger Z beating it bloody and leaving it in the dust. In the end, it has to rely on Chargeman Ken!, made by the same company, to get dug up online, then on a certain commander who won’t stop to prolong its life as remix material.7
I don’t know whether to call that sad or just lamentable.
5 October: Tamagon the Counselor airs, 308 episodes.
A Tatsunoko monster animation for very young children. Tamagon solves clients’ problems by laying eggs that hatch into strange monsters. Once out, though, these monsters mostly cause trouble and make a mess; rarely do they deal with anything cleanly.
5 October: Hazedon airs, 26 episodes.
In itself, just an ordinary, romantically tragic fairy-tale animation. What makes it special is its production team: the future Sunrise.
Of course, at this point Sunrise is still just a subsidiary under Tohokushinsha.
Everyone knows Sunrise, so a quick word about Tohokushinsha. This giant’s business covers:
Commercial production; television-program production, including animation, films, and documentaries; audiovisual sales; character merchandising; overseas film-rights operations; television-program distribution; satellite channels; merchandise sales; copyright and intellectual-property protection; and on and on. One of Japan’s biggest companies.
In short, not short of cash. So when it makes Garo, it isn’t afraid to burn through it.
7 October: Onbu Obake (“The Piggyback Ghost”) airs, 52 episodes.
Drawn from Japanese folklore, it stands alone among the depressing children’s animations then in vogue. The others torment you through the middle, then give you a happy ending. This one gives you the happy reunion, then smacks you in the face with a Warrior-of-Love death blow. No coming back from that.
7 October: The Gutsy Frog airs, 103 episodes.
The true founding ancestor of “two-dimensional” anime fandom. Earlier animated characters were at least “three-dimensional” within their animations. This protagonist, the Gutsy Frog, is a flat frog living on a white T-shirt.
Admittedly, he gets pressed into it when someone trips and lands on him. Yet he still has the ability to become partly solid—even bite people.
I’ll take one.
3 December: Mazinger Z airs, 92 episodes.
Once you’ve heard enough hype, go back to this origin point of super robots and you’ll find it doesn’t actually invent very much apart from the way the robot is piloted. Less a founding ancestor than the great synthesis of robot animation’s SF elements at the time—tokusatsu, superheroes, and so on.
“Super robot” does not just mean the robot’s immense fighting capacity, or the combat power that it and its enemies possess beyond any existing technology on Earth. It also stands for an evolution in which stronger enemies make you stronger, and a way of fighting far more savage and ferocious than your opponent’s.
Those spectacularly explosive battles are precisely what ignite the hot-blooded spirits of young people living on a planet that keeps moving forward. The science-fiction premises and tokusatsu-hero-style attacks strike directly at boys’ senses.
This work, packed with Go Nagai’s unrivaled bad taste, sex, and violence, finally transforms itself, blazing the trail for giant robots and making robots truly the stuff of men’s dreams.
Time turns resolutely to 1974. From this year on, animation as a medium is about to enter a new dimension, and for us viewers today, familiar faces begin to come into view, one after another.
Animation has passed its centenary. This thing that embodies our dreams and fantasies seems decrepit because of its industry: homogeneous subjects, Narō-derived source material ruling the roost, too little courage to overturn the old, too little drive to create the new. More than one big name has cried “Anime is doomed,” more than once.8
But a renaissance does not only mean an inability to innovate in subject matter. It also means people are willing to revisit the classics.
If so many old trees can put out new flowers, why do some new trees refuse to flower no matter what? Unwilling to put down deep roots, unwilling to climb higher—how can they achieve anything? Human imagination is for roaming freely beyond the heavens, not for making an advertisement to disparage someone else.
What people need is never more bandwagon “I like this bit” memes. The devil’s power has far more uses than erotic-image searches.9